WoW art style peaked with Wrath of the Lich King, or is it just nostalgia?

[McNeil]

Their art style has always been on point. Some zones they did better than the others no matter what expansion they came from. Netherstorm, Grizzly Hills, Vashj'ir, Jade Forest and AU Shadowmoon Valley are easily some of my favorites that stand out the most. Hellfire Peninsula kinda ruined itself for me because it didn't have any of the trees from WC3, Borean Tundra felt all over the place with its different landmasses, Twilight Highlands felt uninspired, Townlong Steppes felt the same, AU Nagrand felt like a downgrade because it lacked the charm of a vast landmass compared to the original.

[Kaleredar]

I think WotLK began many of the art direction trends we see today in WoW. I feel like WotLK approach zones from a more hollistic design standpoint, rather than just a "focal point by focal point" type design. Zones like Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord felt alive no matter where you were in the zone. It didn't feel like all the animals milling around were just fodder for quests or arbitrary obstacles; they felt like natural parts of the environment that belonged there.

And the focal points themselves felt established as well. In Vanilla and BC, a lot of focal point questing areas were just sort of ramshackle encampments dropped onto the landscape, with enemies being squatters in ruins or the temporary camp of some marauding warband that you set out to disrupt. But in WotLK, you were raiding Vrykul villages or fortresses that felt integrated and permanent, or iron dwarf cities, or giant Titan ruins, or saronite scourge embattlements, etc, etc.

That being said, zone design has come a long way. The amount of detail that they cram into every nook and cranny has increased significantly with every expansion.

[GreenJesus]

MoP did it better than Wotlk I would say. What WoTlk had was a central theme: beat the lich kings plans in each zone and eventually reach icecrown citadel. MoP was more adventurous and open ended. Both good in their own ways, but I think wraths felt more urgent and had a more meaningful end goal.

What blizzard needs to do is make zones with flying in mind like Stormpeaks. Rather than create mazes with the roads to stretch play time, just make a zone look "realistic" and not just some "maximize amount of mobs and world quest potential per square feet" algorithm.

[themaelstorm]

So, not to discuss the merits of gameplay, hardcore v casual or whatnot, but rather the aesthetics of World of Warcraft.

I strongly feel that Blizzard never managed to produce anything as internally consistent and aesthetically unique as Wrath was.

There was something about Northend, its art, its music, its inhabitants, the lore of the creatures inhabiting it, its world building that somehow never been replicated in subsequent expansions, even if certain zones, creatures or bits of lore stood out, they never been as coherent and meaningful again.

Icecrown as a whole felt like it captured the best of what made Outland great and then managed to amplify it.

Even the emptiness of something like Icecrown (the zone) somehow felt...fitting, it somehow managed to be empty, but full, dull, terrible and beautiful.

Northrend felt as an ancient land, one that could have truly been the home of Old Gods, scuttling spider horrors, giant Vikings, Valkyries, dwarves, ancient machines, legions of zombies, tombs of dragons, dense forests, lost jungles and herds of mammoths roaming the tundra.

From the moment you set foot on any of the southern corners, your progress northward made sense, filled with horrors and surprises, but made sense.

Everything after, just felt....disjointed. All over the place. Brief moments of brilliance but otherwise uninspiring.

I disagree.
I mean, I agree that WotLK was really special. But I disagree that the "world building" was unmatchable.

The following exp, Cataclysm was a bit awkward. It was the first time (and kind of last?) that they didn't make a set of thematic zones and each kind of was its own thing. I mean you-know-where was a beautiful underground landspace but awkward to play (hi, rogue here.) Hyjal imo wasn't that impressive looks wise, but still felt great because of the content. Twilight highlands was... ok. Uldum was great but whomever decided the WHOLE REGION should be a Indiana Jones reference... well, I hope they learned a lesson. (I'm so glad we are back to Uldum under a new context tbh)
Firelands (questing area), imo, was pretty cool but overall small zone.

Now we follow that with pandaria and comes my biggest disagreement. Pandaria, imo, is the greatest world-building piece blizz did since wow itself. The areas were large and settlements had spaces between them, making it feel like a real world. The connections, the separations of zones, the history... it really is amazing. And nothing felt odd or out of place. It made great use of eastern concepts, building them into Warcraft style. It felt "real."

Then comes WoD, which for me was the WORST world building. The whole continent felt like a game zone. Zone and monsters. Granted, spire of arak was an amazing zone and I somehow enjoyed the starter areas but overall, it was just too much cluster. I didn't feel like visiting a real place most of the time. I don't know, maybe it was supposed to be this way.

Legion's concept was simple. DEMONS. But the maps and the world certainly didn't feel like GREENGREENGREEN. I mean, I think we all had enough of it eventually, but the areas were pretty good and interesting imo.

I think BfA was also great. I mean, walking around Zandalar for the first time, the visuals for Kul'Tiras... it's been pretty impressive. I really like even the regular armor sets in this expansion as well.

[Easo]

Absolutely disagree. MoP was definitely at least as good as WotLK, one should just look at Serpent's Spine and how it connects the zones together, or the beauty that is Jade Forest.

[Thage]

I think WotLK began many of the art direction trends we see today in WoW. I feel like WotLK approach zones from a more hollistic design standpoint, rather than just a "focal point by focal point" type design. Zones like Grizzly Hills and Howling Fjord felt alive no matter where you were in the zone. It didn't feel like all the animals milling around were just fodder for quests or arbitrary obstacles; they felt like natural parts of the environment that belonged there.

And the focal points themselves felt established as well. In Vanilla and BC, a lot of focal point questing areas were just sort of ramshackle encampments dropped onto the landscape, with enemies being squatters in ruins or the temporary camp of some marauding warband that you set out to disrupt. But in WotLK, you were raiding Vrykul villages or fortresses that felt integrated and permanent, or iron dwarf cities, or giant Titan ruins, or saronite scourge embattlements, etc, etc.

That being said, zone design has come a long way. The amount of detail that they cram into every nook and cranny has increased significantly with every expansion.

This hits it right on the head, yeah.

[Release]

MoP did it better than Wotlk I would say. What WoTlk had was a central theme: beat the lich kings plans in each zone and eventually reach icecrown citadel. MoP was more adventurous and open ended. Both good in their own ways, but I think wraths felt more urgent and had a more meaningful end goal.

What blizzard needs to do is make zones with flying in mind like Stormpeaks. Rather than create mazes with the roads to stretch play time, just make a zone look "realistic" and not just some "maximize amount of mobs and world quest potential per square feet" algorithm.

Stormpeaks is still the best realised, most incredibly atmospheric zone blizzard have ever produced. I'll die on that hill. Overall Blizz managed to do a great job of making Northend feel unified, large and forbidding. It was a place you wanted to explore and contained secrets. I think its the closest i've ever felt to being a true part of the world and that's why I spent longer there than any other expac.

Additionally I think the great weight of lore helped. It wasn't just a random place Blizzard revealed at Blizzcon. Even during Classic you knew the Lich King was in Northend plotting. My favourite expansion.

[rhorle]

Personally I prefered the Burning Crusade. It seems that after that they went for a more "realistic" style then just doing colorful weird stuff. All of the stuff since while still cool and good have just felt like they are missing something.

[Pakheth]

I disagree in a way. Wotlk nailed it's theme and the zones are quite beautiful and I find them still to be impressive, but in MoP and Legion we got a level of detail to the world we have seen little equal to, especially in MoP with all its little roadside shrines and small things you might not notice at first glance. Go into a Pandaren village and look at all the objects the art team made to flesh out the Pandaren culture. You find small huts littering the land, NPCs walking the roads, talking to each other. It feels like a living breathing world. Same with Suramar, the city feels like a city and the art style is consistent throughout.
We saw the start of this in Cata with Uldum and Twilight Highlands, with small villages and outposts that only functions to flesh out the world, this was sadly missing a lot in WoD in my opinion, the zones were much more empty which both Uldum and Twilight Highlands also was.
Not to mention the zone transitions in Legion are amazingly done, something they started with back in Wotlk and have evolved masterfully to what we have today.

Zandalar isles didn't give me the same level of immersion as MoP and Suramar did but the art team did still did an impressive job with Kul Tiras.

But one thing I wish to give the art team credit for above all is that the art style is kept consistent which can't be easy when you have multiple artists making all manner of assets to such a huge game. Inconsistency has always been one of my biggest criticisms of FF14 due to how the characters doesn't look like they belong out in the open world. The difference in textures are just too obvious and weird.
Characters are smooth and sleek while ground, rocks and trees are grainy with horrible res textures. WoW textures are amazing in comparison because the style is consistent all the way. Can't say I wouldn't welcome an upgrade to old trees and rocks though.

[Grimbold21]

Despite its faults, MoP art style is incredibly detailed

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Nostalgia. Or you're just bias toward Norse-style architecture.

Wrath looks okay but you can't deny that stuff like MoP, Legion, and even BFA still look better.

[zebreck]

Hard Disagree. Wow's art peaked with BC. There has never again been anything as hauntingly, ethereally alien in concept and fulfilling in execution as Zangarmarsh or Netherstorm. The game has unarguable gotten prettier since BC, but they've never since let their artists' fever dreams loose like they did in BC.

[Cæli]

due to social hive minds people are lead to think that some things are better now, when you watch carefully you realize that today's artstyle looks a lot like random smartphone moba texture wise, the current team still do good with gear models, but they're struggling with some particular terrain, new arathi or stormsong really shows how bad they can be, on the other hand the darker zones like drustvar have a much better color palette. it was more balanced before, less smartphone-y textures.

very often you watch a zone and it really feels artificial, you can feel the designer putting plants and trees to try to look organic like before, but they just can't do it. plants and trees that looks more often like cardboard despite being higher "res".
so I'd say they did better before. maybe they hired a bunch of low skilled artist and lead artist coming from random cheap game companies.

[Destinas]

Well, the inspiration and stories told are different in each expansion. WotLK had Scourge stuff being inspired by Gothic architecture. That style worked very well for Scourge things, but it wouldn't exactly work for Pandaria. Pandaria had a lot of Chinese inspiration, with Mongolian (Yaungol), Nepalese (Grummles), and Southeast Asian (Krasarang) influences mixed in.

Similarly, WotLK had other influences. Vrykul (and Howling Fjord) were inspired by Scandinavian/Nordic areas and cultures. The Alliance Northrend buildings were more modern versions of Scandinavian buildings, while Vrykul were meant to look more ancient. Tuskarr had heavy Inuit inspiration. Taunka were meant to have more of a northern Native American inspiration (as opposed to the Tauren, which were inspired by southwestern Native cultures). All of that fits, since it tells the story of Northrend better from a visual standpoint. It's on par with Pandaria.

If you're talking about the layout and design of the zones themselves, well, same as above. Northrend had fjords to show that it was in a northern climate, inspired by the real world. Icecrown itself was meant to be a glacier, and feel alien compared to the other areas in Northrend. Zandalar had grassy mountains, jungles, deserts, and swamps inspired by central and South America. Pandaria had rolling mountains, jungles, plains, and bamboo forests inspired by Asian landscapes. They're all designed to feel like their real world equivalents (some places have larger plains, some places have taller mountains with everything squished together - just like real life).

You're absolutely welcome to like the designs of one expansion better than another, there's nothing really wrong with that. However, it's a bit unfair to compare them, since they weren't designed with the same goals in mind. Not every expansion has had the "end boss" with their main fortress open and visible from the start, like in Burning Crusade and WotLK. Not only were there less nostalgic bad guys from WC3 to showcase in later expansions, but players also didn't respond to that well anyway. People liked seeing more parts of each continent through patches, where they could add new areas, reps, lore, bad guys, etc. For instance, the Thunder King (and his island) was very popular in Pandaria, because it felt new, but connected it to the rest of the continent.

In the end, Shadowlands may be what you're looking for. We go to these different areas of the Shadowlands with different designs that show different aspects of that realm, with the Maw as the max level zone. Not only will some of the architecture be directly inspired by Scourge stuff (Maldraxxus, Torghast), but there will be other zones/races heavily influenced by other things (Revendreth has a Victorian/Gothic inspiration, Bastion extends on Vrykul/Nordic lore, mixed with Greek). And, in the end, we know where the BigBads™ are. We also know that the Maw is meant to feel dangerous and alien.

[Relapses]

What the fuck? WoW's art is pretty much the only thing that is consistently improved upon between expansions. Saying that WoW's art peaked in 2010 is like saying PS2 graphics are the best we'll ever see.

- - - Updated - - -

Unpopular opinion: I never liked the cartoony almost-cellshaded feeling of WoW's artstyle. It's also inconsistent, with some parts being looney-toon levels and others being fairly high fidelity. I think this becomes especially clear when you look at the flora in the zones (like Zandalar) and compare it to the architecture. The plants look properly proportioned, at worst just fantasy, but buildings and ornaments all look wonky and wrong.

This is a very unpopular opinion because it begs the question why the fuck you even bother playing WoW in the first place? ESO will easily scratch the same itch.

[Phuongvi]

Boren tundra, Zuldrake, Dragonblight ... would like to have two word with you

[Bumkin]

All expansions looked amazing , BFA is beautiful, the art team of wow should get an award

[Doctor Funkenstein]

It's more the style of art has changed (for the worse), rather than the actual quality thereof.

It's most notable in faces. They've gone with a more simplistic style with little to no real features, with everything being overly smooth. Subjective as it is, I find it pretty repugnant compared to the older styles.

But hey, at least they're actually using the color black now from time to time. Prior to WotLK, I'm pretty sure they had an internal memo that forced them to never use it in any of the assets whatsoever. (And even in WotLK it was just used for some minor shading, usually in the terrain.)

[Boricha]

I think Storm Peaks is one of the best zones they've made, but I would have to say MoP wins overall for art.

[cparle87]

Nowadays we have stuff like mini zeppelins,small flying gilded boats,and all kinds of weird shit. Do they look good? Of course they do,but do they fit within the universe of WoW? Not really,they're nice but very out of place.

You didn't play WC2: Tides of Darkness, did you? We've had zeppelins and battleships since then.