The new character models will be the best thing to happen to WoW in years.

[Yig]

I agree that it shouldn't be a major selling point of the expansion, but it is.

These model updates are FREE. You don't have to buy WOD for them. They aren't a "major selling point". They are a major feature, yes, coming out of the art teams development schedule for the expansion.

It's so funny how WoW players seem to live in this bubble with no knowledge of the outside world. Seriously, they're revamping the 10 year old character models to look only a few years outdated, and that's what you're excited about?

But you don't need state of the art graphics engines anymore to create beautiful and aesthetically pleasing STYLIZED art. We've hit a peculiar plateau at this point where we pretty much have everything we need now and have had it for a while to create something that looks as visually pleasing as a Pixar movie sculpture wise, we can sculpt in game models with all the personality and detail of a sculpture you sculpted by hand. They actually use hand painted acrylic paintings in WOW for textures sometimes to make it look more painterly.

It may not have the nuance and technical horsepower needed for the filters and shadows of a fully pre rendered Pixar movie, but with cartoons, that's just icing on the cake. We are at a point now where it really doesn't matter anymore. These aren't going to look terribly outdated no matter how far into the future they go, because they use charm and style cleverly, like beautiful origami or paper models. It's silly to act like state of the art graphics are somehow necessary at this point to be legitimately excited about something. It's just missing the fucking point.

Going back to look at Blizzard interviews in 2001-2003, they just wanted a game that would look like the concept art, a Don Bluth animated world. We're pretty much there now, of course there will always be room for more FX and lighting techniques and emotive animations, but you're really misrepresenting the significance of this project based on a myopic and procedural scale of judgement.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course it's the same team. Blizzard only has one WoW team. The people making these things are artists, animators, etc. and would be working on some other part of WoW if it wasn't for the new models. Or do you really think they hired someone specifically to work on these things?

No. Only the art team team works on art projects. Animators and concept artists and modelers work on animation, concept art, and models. They don't work on anything else unless they have a talent in those areas. All this project is doing is depriving new models, new animations, and concept art from other parts of the game. But at the end of the day, it's still just new models, new animations, and concept art you're claiming is being deprived.

So you're left with saying you want more custom models and animation somewhere else. But we already are getting an unprecedented amount of new models and animations in our raids as well as this project, so it's basically just speculation and whining to complain about this. If you don't care about visuals, this project isn't depriving you of anything.

- - - Updated - - -

Revamping char models is the same type of waste of time as the revamping old world in Cata.

No it's not. Part of WOW's expansive feel in expansions was giving us the sense of entire new worlds to explore that were connected and had a distinct sense of place in the scheme of the overall universe. As well as giving us a place to go when you're at the end game, the place where "end game" players go. Cata didn't have that Dalaran or that Shattrath, we were back with revamped original Vanilla cities, so it felt recycled.

Cata's mistake was in making the new zones spread out and instantly accessed using portals, which destroyed the feeling in your mind of having a world you had to travel across and disrupted the overall feeling of being somewhere else. It felt like a bunch of instances. Then revamping selective areas of the old world made things inconsistent and cost a lot more time and resources than this project is for little pay off outside of alt levelers.

This is not analogous at all. We're still getting an unprecedented amount of new models and assets ON TOP of this project. It's just speculative whining to use this project as a basis for criticism. And too many of you are mistakenly making your own opinion into "the norm", which is understandably one of the most common glitches or bugs in the software of the human mind, but you should try harder to overcome and question your biases. And be nicer to puppies and old people if you're not already.

- - - Updated - - -

About the only legitimate criticism here is that you'd rather have a brand new player race and starting zone than improved character models. But in many ways with having new animations and new models, we're getting almost a dozen new races anyways outside of forcing yourself to look at this as procedurally as possible. Unless you really had your heart set on being a murloc or naga or ogre, there's not much reason to complain here.

And based on the hints echoing around the art team, we're getting more than just simple updates. We also have brand new hairstyles and other expanded visual customization on the drawing board, including altered anatomy, like orcs who stand up properly as they do in the concept art. It remains to be seen when and if it actually happens. But do we really need new races while the old races look outdated? I understand if you feel the answer is yes, but I'm glad Blizzard disagrees.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

brand new player race

Thing is, people don't understand the consequences of a new race. Look people qq about lack of race lore for Draenei, Blood Elves,Worgen. So really adding another new player race would make this problem EVEN worse. Sometimes I think people really have a hard time thinking before saying it. I've done this before so don't think I'm trying to say I'm perfect.

[Heyer]

Don't forget that every single NPC using the old models will have a face-lift as well.

[Yig]

The cinematics are not rendered in real time. They're recorded by the devs and play like movies. That's why they're kinda blurry, if you didn't notice. They don't render pixel-for-pixel like actual graphics. (Therefore, unless they re-record the videos we will not see the new models in them.)

This isn't actually true precisely, they are actually rendered that way to an extent if I'm not mistaken and then edited by hand in ways like smearing the frame to make a mouth open and close, but they only look blurry because Blizzard compressed the movie files to fit on hard drives. A better example is the fully animated actual cinematics we get, not just the new Wrathgate style in house machinima cut scenes. There used to be a few places to download them in full HD, like press kits, and one of the Collector's Editions had every Warcraft cinematic ever made presented in full 1080p if I recall correctly. I just thought you may be interested to learn that.

[Steampunk]

Don't forget that every single NPC using the old models will have a face-lift as well.

That's what I'm most excited for.

I really dislike that Blizz hasn't shown any new previews since BlizzCon.

[Al Gorefiend]

That's what I'm most excited for.

I really dislike that Blizz hasn't shown any new previews since BlizzCon.

You didn't miss fem Undead did you?

[bionics]

I can see the nostalgia threads about the old models coming already.

"Miss my old toon with half the polygon count. Does anyone else? Now that I can see and relate to every single one of my character's facial expressions I no longer feel like the game is as valid a form of escapism!"

[cmats4020]

Thing is, people don't understand the consequences of a new race. Look people qq about lack of race lore for Draenei, Blood Elves,Worgen. So really adding another new player race would make this problem EVEN worse. Sometimes I think people really have a hard time thinking before saying it. I've done this before so don't think I'm trying to say I'm perfect.

Some things are hard to let go. New races were and still are a big selling point to expansions! The devs could literally create a new race with lore to boot and increase the lore for other races, but they just don't because they need a story to go along with it. However, no stories have really come up to affect certain races. You used Draenei as an example, but the way Blizz implemented Draenei left them with no lore-progression. Their main antagonist is the burning Legion, so we will see no lore-progression for them until we fight the burning legion. Same goes for the Worgen. Their main problem is finding a cure when we already know that finding a cure is next to impossible as we would just be playing British humans if a cure ever came up. If Blizz could find better story writers that could create mini-arcs for the lesser developed races, then it would be possible for Dwarves or Gnomes to gain a better significance, but that's just not happening right now, or so it seems.

Otherwise, sometimes people just like having new things.

[Deleted]

Yea i am also very much looking forward to it. I'm hoping that blizz will go on strong with this, and not listen to all the people who will undoubtedly whine for various reasons, like being very attached to the old models etc. The new models are much needed just now, it'll perhaps even attract a lot of new players, which is really needed to keep the game going strong.

So far im very pleased with the models that was shown at blizzcon