Blizzard, Your art style is perfect! Don't change it

General Discussion
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As someone who’s been playing WC3 for over a decade and an active member of the map making community and I beg blizzard not to listen to the vocal minority who have been constantly complaining about the Reforged art style. These people claim they speak on behalf of the Warcraft 3 community but they do not.

The majority of them appear to be asking for more cartoony, lower quality art assets, they want WC3 to look like a clone of HOTS or every other cartoony game we get for $15 off Steam nowadays… I’m shocked these people are actually asking for LOWER QUALITY models. It makes zero sense and really demonstrates the blind nostalgia some people are falling for.

The short stumpy models worked fine back in 2002 but this is 2018 and being able to create wonderful, HD Warcraft Maps is a dream come true for most editors. We us those gorgeous, detailed models in all their glory!

Half the complaints are just nit-picking and baseless anyway; “Spell Breakers Helmet is the wrong shape”, “Jaina’s boobs are too big”, one guy even complained the metal is too “shiny”…

Blizzard, the art style you’ve chosen is perfect! We want epic looking, glorious battles in full detail not “Warcraft: Whimsyshire”.

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Long time player, since wc2.
I agree 100%. Many are just falling for their own nostalgia. But warcraft needs to move on.

That of course doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Hughmongous shoulderpads for instance. But the general idea is great.

Keep at it blizz. Tale the community feedback with a grain of salt.

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There’s too much “we” in this post. You insist that other people are trying to speak on behalf of the whole community but how is your point of view any different?

Please don’t look down on us just because we asked for a continuation of established Blizzard art styles. It’s not blind nostalgia. It’s a past, present, and future preference. It’s a big reason why many of us love Blizzard games.

Just because people want to keep faithful doesn’t mean they want low quality. I respect your taste and think you should be able to freely express that, but please allow us the same liberty.

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we (I and my brother) disagree with usage of too much “we” :slight_smile:

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I have to say I completely disagree with you on quite a few points.

I want to start by making sure you understand that the art style means so much more than something being HD or shiny.

A good Art style is what allows us to tell the difference between a footman and a militia at a glance in an instant during the heat of battle without any trouble at all.

Don’t you think that what we saw so far was much more cluttered and harder to differentiate between units than Warcraft 3? If so it means the art style for reforged needs to be altered for greater clarity.

To say that what we saw so far was “perfect” is just dishonest, not even blizzard would say what they showed was perfect as they are clearly going to be changing things from this work in progress build.

What makes Warcraft 3 so great is that the art style was able to provide both function visual indications as well as innately show off the in depth character of all of the units. We know that an orc Peon is a funny, somewhat dopey little guy because of the art style, the way his face looks in the portrait and combine that with the iconic “Work, Work” and you see how it isn’t just an HD orc worker, it’s that goofy peon dude who builds your burrows who you know and love.

There’s so much good in the original art style and so much to learn from and emulate that is just so much more valuable than just making some shiny HD units.

Remember that there’s a reason why Warcraft 3 is still played today and dozens of other rts games have come and gone.

There’s a reason why those old campaign cinematics still hold up today.

Warcraft 3 is truly a masterpiece and to reforge it with some shiny HD graphics that don’t at all preserve the spirit of the original game does it a disservice.

TL;DR Reforged art style isn’t perfect, Warcraft 3’s style is objectively better from a functional point of view, and to reforge Warcraft 3 without preserving what made the original so great is shameful.

Learn from what made the masterpiece so great instead of trying to out-do it with HD graphical fads.

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I want more shininess and less muddy textures, thanks

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Undead and Orc should be scary. I was disappointed that Zerg in Starcraft 2 did not look nearly as scary as in Starcraft 1. Keep up the realism!

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Im fine with the new direction of art style, as long as they can manage so that it does not blend in with the background. In the game preview for example knights melded into the ground textures. I could hardly see the attack animation.

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i have not complaints on how the game looks, i think the game looks beautiful and it will only look better as time goes on :smiley: all the models they have shown just are amazing to look at… my worries are with them messing with the story and taking away some Easter Eggs

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Yeah…don’t act like your opinion is better than someone else. Blizzard wants everyone’s feedback. I don’t agree with anything you’re saying, but your opinion is valid as mine. Setting down a little aight bud.

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I don’t know where you get off including people in your “we,” but am I to understand that you didn’t like Warcraft 3’s art style? Many people obviously liked it due to its wild success. Why change something that is a staple of the Warcraft game series? The units as they are now look incredibly over-the-top with accouterments and embroidery. Its a mess. A shiny, pointy, mess.

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well… I belive he can use as long as there is more than 2 person agree with him? I mean… we doesnt mean “everyone” it means “I , him and her” as example? so he is not doing a mistake when you consider there are people agree with him

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I don’t think any want lower quality models, they just want them to be more in tune with the “Warcraft look” found in both WC3 and WoW. A valid complaint is that it’s harder to differentiate the units now when you look at them from above. Grubby himself says that he found it hard to micro because he couldn’t recognize which unit was which.

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Totally agree with op. In high definition all the details come more alive. The cartoon revamp would really make it worse. Worst scenario would be to change it to rounded HOTS style.

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Agree a lot! If people want the old style they can play it now and they can play it when reforged comes out, new HD models i just love and i am already excited to see each and every single new model in game, just zooming in as close as i can, probably able to even make some dank wallpapers with the right background! :smiley:

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^^THIS

I’ve seen everyone try to explain what “Warcraft look” means. I don’t think anyone really gets it (I don’t either) but everyone can recognize it.

The best explication I read on this forum was: Less geometry, more texture, brighter colors.
Like, most characters don’t have eyes, but you don’t really notice since the texture makes it look like they do :slight_smile:

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I absolutely love REFORGED art style, and when I got to see one of those screenshots I instantly felt that warcraft 3 was back.
P.S. Jainas breasts are really way too big.

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People forget that WC3:R is really important in China. And the chinese got tons of games with very bright colors. It’s important to stand out if you wanna get any fresh blood into wc3 in china.
(And let’s remember that china pretty much saved the wc3 scene from dying during the 2013-15 era)

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Yes, I’ve always really wanted a Warcraft game that looked more like its cinematics, I’m really happy with the current art style. Let’s just try it out for once and if people don’t like it then we can go back for Warcraft 4.

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The problem is not the colors, but the ‘realistic flavor’ they put in everything.

I have been a warcraft and world of warcraft player since 17 years ago, it influenced me to the point I’m a 3D Environment Artist now, even though I totally disagree with the OP. But I’ll not use argumentum ad verecundiam here (he shouldn’t do as well).

The in-game graphics of warcraft franchise never were ‘realistic’ in this way. It may look fantastic in CG cinematics, but in game it doesn’t look too good, it’s not part of the core style of the franchise. That would be Diablo, not Warcraft.

MAIN POINT: That kind of graphics they are using right now tend to age faster, it’s hard to bet in it when the very purpose of the game is to be remastered to last longer. so it’s always better to do more stylized graphics with ‘handpainted’ textures in this case (even if it’s PBR). World of Warcraft or even the BlizzWorld map of Overwatch give us some good clues of what a modern warcraft would look like.

Diablo 3 was made to look more cartoony when it shouldn’t, since the series was more realistic and darker. So there’s no reason to Warcraft Reforged not be keeping the original style of bright colors and the stylized hand-painted stuff of it visuals, it fits better and it’ll help the lifespan of the project, trust me.

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