Well, to these guys, anything that profits the company, is a cashgrab, because everything should just be free to the consumer. ![:grimacing:](https://dou48tnq0ocoa.cloudfront.net/en/warcraft3/images/emoji/twitter/grimacing.png?v=6" ":grimacing:")
Unless it’s good, of course. If they like it, then it can cost anything, but if they don’t like like it, no one should have to pay for it.
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Actually, if I recall correctly, the debate ended when we kinda agreed that the Forsaken in the Horde was a weird decision that didn’t fit the events of TFT 
Now this is the kind of statement that might make some people think you’re a casual fanboy 
As an old fan of the franchise, how can you say it looks like Warcraft? I mean, yes there are abominations and taurens and paladins, but the overall style is so different…
It’s not even close to WC1 and WC2.
There are countless differences with classic WC3 except a few assets (Rifleman is very faithful to the original). Characters proportions are one of the main issues, but not just that. For many models, the art style is closer to some anime or manga than Warcraft III.
And of course it’s nothing like WoW, where characters have more realistic proportions.
I won’t discuss this forever, but just look at the footman. It’s the most obvious model, showing how different it is from the original game.
Of course there is the matter of his pauldron’s size, but not just that. Everything is different: the way he stands, the colour of his armour, the tabard that didn’t exist in the original game, the shield that is completely different, the sword that looks like a weird toy (because of the crossguard). If you had showed me this model without telling me it was from Reforged, I never would have guessed it was from a Warcraft game.
I could go on and on on this topic, about other units, buildings, etc. And I know I am definitely not the only one who have that feeling: from what we’ve seen so far, Reforged’s style doesn’t feel like Warcraft III.
Actually, come to think of it, there is no consistency in the art styles of all Warcraft games. It really bugs me that yet another art style is being introduced for Reforged.
True, the story has been moving on with WoW.
However, that’s precisely what we are criticising. The story was completely twisted in WoW, retconning so many parts of the story and making a lot of weird decisions that are discordant with the previous games. Blizzard should have developped the lore in accordance to the other three games, instead of screwing it up and 15 years later trying to fix it by updating one of the first games.
You say Warcraft is their IP so they can do whatever they like with it? Sure, so here’s my suggestion: screw WoW; we, Blizzard, decide that we ignore the mistakes we’ve been making for 15 years and make a brand new start with WC3 Reforged.
I would love that. The moment couldn’t be more right: Warcraft III is being remastered and WoW vanilla is back. One can dream, eh?
Anyway, even if we are too late, we’re still entitled to express our views on the subject, right? Cutting off discussions by saying there is nothing we can do about it is not very productive.
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I don’t even think, except for a lot of orc units, Warcraft 3’s art style outside of the actual art really matched up with the previous games either. Maybe closer to Orcs & Humans than Tides of Darkness. Humans lost a lot of the regality and grandeur from Warcraft 2 (overall elaborate, dramatic structures and lots of noble/heroic units) and kind of looked more ‘basic’ in Warcraft 3. Granted, this was their first 3D game and all and had to budget polycounts for performance.
Orcs had a huge shift too from their stone and metal heavy building designs to light wooden, almost nomadic, looking stuff. Which does make sense considering their plight at that time and where they were as a people in the story after Warcraft 2. Even the most iconic orc, the Grunt, kind of went from a very daunting appearance to something a bit more basic, a bit more rough and tumble in Warcraft 3.
I know comparing a full sequel to a remake isn’t exactly fair, but the Warcraft 3 Footman was kind of a big bummer for me even back in the day after Warcraft 2. Went from a really heroic-but-straightforward design (lots of silver, gold, a nice standard longsword, and rather notable plume on the helmet) to just kind of a guy. The only thing that makes them stand out is really the shield, though with the Defend ability it makes sense to adjust theming in that regard for emphasis. The armour isn’t even textured in a way, to me, that makes it look like metal? Even though they did do it for others (in various ways, Militia’s equipment has baked in specularity on the textures for a very polished metal, Knight armour kind of has the same problem as Footmen but there’s at least shading and it’s kind of blue-grey to make it look metallic).
While there’s still enough differences between this art and the Reforged Footman:
https://i.imgur.com/JuKYH30.jpg
I will continue to say that I like the Reforged footman more than the Warcraft 3 one. It’s closer to the original 1996 concept though I wish it took just a bit more inspiration from that art for things like the fauld/belt, the blade length, plume size, a less slab-like shield, and either committing one way or the other to what’s under the armour. From the neck down it’s like this weird scaled material I genuinely can’t guess as to whether it’s leather or scale mail. But around the neck itself you can see chain mail.
Is it weird for me to think that at launch before any expansions happened, it just made sense and I don’t recall there being any huge retcons in Classic? Once expansions started happening especially with the first three drawing so heavily off previous materials, sure.
Now trying to address the “developed the lore in accordance to the other games” and “screwing it up”. The scaling and scope of both the setting and narrative and characters in it has always been huge jumps and leaps:
Warcraft: Orcs & Humans was just about a kingdom and some monstrous invaders.
Warcraft 2 was about a whole continent of nations and clans with the expansion adding another.
Warcraft 3 was about a conflict spanning the entire globe.
World of Warcraft, initially at the time, was taking a magnifying glass to that globe.
Between that scaling (and let’s be honest, Warcraft 3 was really when a lot of high fantasy stuff really kicked into gear) and the passage of time, it does make sense that for such a long-running and elaborate series they want to add a bit of writing or dialogue here or there to fluff and iron out a wrinkle for the canon as a whole. I think ignoring the context of Warcraft as a whole (in both regards to the setting and as a series) is kind of contrived.
It gets even more bizarre when we only have one concrete, actual example to work off of right now in regards to any tweaking of story elements in Reforged. Even then it was just Stratholme’s appearance and structure. We don’t have any new writing to go off of just yet, so I don’t understand grabbing the torch and pitchforks yet. Because on the other hand, I’m pretty familiar with the bumps in the road of modern Blizzard writing. Diablo 3 was the most predictable thing in the world before it even came out. Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm suffered from middle-of-the-trilogy drivel and a lot of the new story beats just kind of took the piss out of Wings of Liberty. The epilogue missions in Legacy of the Void have made me eternally cranky. World of Warcraft: Battle of Azeroth is simultaneously trying to be fan service and compelling all while completely tone deaf and inefficient.
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Apparently a lot of messages have been deleted after yours, including the constructive ones. Thanks mod ![:confused:](https://dou48tnq0ocoa.cloudfront.net/en/warcraft3/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=6" ":confused:")
Anyway, long story short, Triceron and came to the conclusion that WoW vanilla’s lore and sandbox gameplay were fine and it started to go downhill after vanilla.
I’m sorry I don’t have the will to rewrite my posts, it was quite long
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Bah, that really sucks. We were getting back on track too.
Anyways, I was looking up some of the Reforged concepts and models and thought I’d share this.
In the WC3 campaign, Baine Bloodhoof is represented as a smaller Tauren model. I think that with his prominence in WoW, and their talks about making unique models for units that were just reskins or recolors, I was wondering if they would give him a new look. So this is what I found
This is the current Reforged Tauren Chieftain model. It looks like an upressed Chieftain model from WC3.
However, here is the concept art that was shown in Game Informer
Very different from the original Chieftain. The totem has horns instead of wings, his Runespear is now an axe, and he’s wearing a different type of armor and a helmet. Also he has no ring in his nose.
And this is Baine Bloodhoof in Mists of Pandaria game cinematic. Could this concept art be a variation that is supposed to be Baine?
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In my opinion they have to change the face of Tauren units…
In the Reforged concept art the face is PERFECT, it is very similar to the Warcraft III Tauren
http://classic.battle.net/war3/images/orc/units/portraits/tauren.gif
But when we see the model of the Tauren Hero, or the Tauren unit… I do not know what they have done but it looks wrong, they have to change the face of the Taurens and the color of the fur has to be much darker.
https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/wowpedia/3/33/Warcraft_III_Reforged_-_Horde_units.png
Maybe it’s not Baine, maybe the model we have is Cairne and the Reforged concept art is the generic model of a “normal” Tauren Chieftain
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Can we make some mega thread about art only ? And everyone follow the procedure and concept how to write feedback
I mean our precious opinion is scatered all around other threads , where wast majority of ppl dont even read + impossible devs read our fights (but dont worry they dont read art stuff).
I was even thinking about to record a video and provide feedback in that way, in a single thread which i would create and openly call everyone to participiate and tell things what they like or not in demo…
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Surely we all have many ideas in mind but I think we should wait until they show the models they have been working on during these months since November (for example, night elves) and even they may have heard the feedback and changed some models that had already shown (for example, footman shoulder pads).
Once we see the work during these months and knowing that this forum is a mess, we should think HOW and WHERE to give our feedback about Art
Anyway this is a good place to start:
https://www.hiveworkshop.com/threads/warcraft-iii-reforged-artistic-textures-ui-feedback.309860/
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World of warcraft maybe be moving with or without people, but is it moving in the right direction? The story telling is garbage, made for kids without critical opinion…
As umbridge says:
Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged. Let us preserve what must be preserved, perfect what can be perfected and prune practices that ought to be prohibited
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No worries. Honestly it was pruning that was necessary and although it was off-topic, I felt the ‘putting of my foot down’ to the behaviour I was receiving was necessary too.
The one thing I was going to ask at least though was if you had any visual reference for the kind of Footman design you’d like to see in Reforged. Doesn’t even have to be a Warcraft reference if there’s another place you think has a nice “standard fantasy soldier” visual.
Totally possible. Looking at that old Mists model and even his current one, that art definitely draws from both. But certainly isn’t the stock standard Chieftain and Cairne (though since his model is identical in Warcraft 3, I’m going more off his other renditions after 3) so it does make me think, too, that it might be a less decorated Baine.
The fun thing I noticed is that the axe shares a bit of the silhouette as this axe from Cataclysm.
https://i.imgur.com/F6zKyNU.jpg
This is the one downside I’ve really noticed to the evolution of the Warcraft style to stuff that’s a bit more… comic book-y than ever before. Tauren kind of stepped away from being really bestial bull and minotaur people to more anthropomorphized bovines in-game for World of Warcraft. Outside of it in official art (save for a bit of Hearthstone/TCG stuff) they’re still really close to the early era stuff around Warcraft 3, but ever since the model updates in Warlords they really got more cowlike.
It subscription numbers climbed throughout the initial release and through two expansions, where they peaked in the second with 12 million players. So they hit the ground running and people were really on with it. Maybe the story hasn’t been as intimate as it could’ve been (although I liked all the Arthas/Lich King stuff in Wrath, was an interesting take on how an NPC handles or thinks about the heroes that are the player characters) but the volume critiques seemed to hit in the latter half of Mists of Pandaria and onward from there.
There’s a lot of good ideas but the in-betweens of how to get to point C from point B and point A before that do leave something to be desired when they are addressed. Or addressed at all. Let’s also not forget that, yes, World of Warcraft is the main platform for Warcraft lore but it isn’t the sole source.
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All of EternalShade’s topics are still there. Deleting of about 20 post here is kind suspicious.
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I think the original footman art you linked is pretty decent. There is no doubt Blizzard (or LemonSky) got inspiration from it for Reforged. However, you can also tell the differences: size of pauldrons, sword… There’s too much exaggeration in Reforged footman. And even though that art work is good, I think it fits better for a hero, like this one: http://us.blizzard.com/static/_images/games/war3/wallpapers/wall1/wall1-1024x768.jpg
I can’t think of any reference of something I’d like to see in Reforged, apart from a few pictures such as those: Warcraft III Reforged - Artistic/Textures/UI Feedback | Page 15 | HIVE
although they are not perfect, they make the footman look too fancy imho (especially the last picture, with golden rims and fancy belt buckle. I’ve always seen footmen as regular, underpaid infantrymen who just fight to defend their land, in opposition to knights, who are, as I see them, noblemen whose main activities are war and the king’s service.
I’d like to see footmen somewhere between the original one and Stormwind Guards in WoW, maybe.
As for the rest of my deleted reply:
Yep, that’s what we discussed about with Triceron. We agreed that vanilla, despite its imperfections, was good enough regarding the lore. The only major exceptions I can think of is the Forsaken in the Horde, quite far-fetched decision I think, and warlocks + their demon pets walking around in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, which is a bit odd considering how much effort we spent to get rid of them. Apart from those examples, vanilla was quite faithful to the previous games, and things started to go downhill afterwards.
I completely understand Blizzard’s will to iron things out. I also agree to say that it’s a bit early to take out the torches and pitchforks, since we haven’t seen much of Reforged.
However, it depends on how much they plan to rework the campaigns. Changing the Captain’s name to Falric, in RoC human campaign, would be fine to me. Swapping red dragons for black dragons in “Blackrock & Roll, Too!” would be nice (it wasn’t even a retcon from WoW, it was a mistake in the orginal game). However, I wouldn’t like draenei’s look to be changed, for example, because it involves a massive retcon.
Therefore, I think it’s appropriate to provide feedback and say what we want to see before it’s done and before it’s too late. Without the pitchforks for now, of course, but it’s the right time to express our worries (if it’s not already too late). And we’ll see later on, when we get some news, if it is necessary to keep criticising Blizzard’s direction for Reforged.
There, I think I summed up my initial reply!
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World of warcraft is in the lowest number of active players in its history,
And good ideas? I guess you must always be too kind to blizzard,
I repeat the story is garbage and utterly it’s rehashed s@$t…
Seriously Disney could sue them for plagiarism…
Have you watched Disney’s Atlantis? If you haven’t, go watch it, and then go to this “highborne” elves… From their runes to their looks, to their dome, everything is straight out of Atlantis…
Jaina… Such a cool character is warcraft 3,now a mere and simple walking reference to frozen, I found it hilarious when she made a reference to frozen in heroes of the storm…
But that was intended as a joke, world of warcraft loves to take jokes seriously… They made her motive sailor like… Changed her hair to look like elsa’s even during her battle she summons Olaf…
Are those good ideas?.. A 15 years old could have come out with better ideas
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Your move, ace.
I have no idea what these two phrases mean.
Oh dang you’re right. They have the same hairstyle. What’s next, orcs are green just like Warhammer orcs? When and where will Blizzard stop?
Also I like how Arthas (Anakin) Menethil (Skywalker) gets to duck criticism.
Let’s not kid ourselves, sometimes Blizzard isn’t very original and it’s not just in the modern era.
EDIT: Like really. What’s next? Scottish dwarves? Elves fashioned in a very Tolkien-esque way? No wait I’ve got it. Minotaurs. No one’s ever thought of minotaurs before.
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Having read Chronicle Volume 3, I didn’t see any major changes at all to the campaign. The story and plot are still the same. I think most of the “retcons” are just going to be minor filler, and map designs like the Culling, meant to keep any WoW players that might give the game a try from being confused because “THAT’S A CONTRADICTION!”
I also think the only real change we’re likely to see in terms of lore is the correction about how long Terenas actually ruled Lordaeron. 70 years in the Classic version of WC3 was a bit unrealistic.
As for the art style… Blizzard’s been doing oversized pauldrons for ages now. It’s their thing. You’re telling them to change their thing.
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I think this is probably the most likely case, knock on wood. Just a little bit more in-between stuff that isn’t anything major and doesn’t actually rob from the major story beats and elements. Just more fluff and clarifications.
Yeah I know Blizzard has some size issues
Joking aside, I’m aware weapons and armours have been having exaggerated sizes for a long time, but in Reforged it’s just too much. Just look at this picture:
You can’t even see the footman’s head when seen from the side! It doesn’t even look like an armour anymore. Maybe it’s ok for spacemarine armour…
Another example: today I showed my girlfriend what Reforged Taurens look like. She knows nothing about any Warcraft game, but she immediately said his weapon was oddly big.
To be honest I’m not a big fan of cartoonish exaggerated proportions, but I can make my peace with it if it’s kept sensible. So I’m not asking Blizzard to change their thing, but to just keep it a little bit coherent and reasonable. And if possible, it would be nice if Reforged still looked like Warcraft 3. I don’t really get why some things would be changed just for the sake of change. Warcraft 3 already has exaggerated proportions, WoW too, so why not keeping the same proportions instead of making the game look like some manga or something like that?
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Well that’s actually kind of okay since Warcraft’s camera is from above and when it’s top down/isometric, you need stuff from the waist up to be much more noticeable. That’s why I always take these comparison pictures with a grain of salt because we’re seeing a very up close and personal promotional render. Rather than the standard game camera where we’ll be seeing the Footman 99% of the time.
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I agree, some parts of the model need to be exaggerated a bit so it’s more noticeable from standard game view and immediatly recognisable, which is probably one of the reasons Blizzard games have (almost) always had big, cartoony proportions.
However, I don’t see the necessity to emphasise models’ features so much, even if they are seen from a distance. They have never been exaggerated this much in Warcraft 3, why would they need to be in Reforged?
Even from above, most of those oversized or weird features still bother me a lot (especially pauldrons of course ). When I watch Grubby’s playthrough in Stratholme, for example, I can’t help but notice how bizarre footmen are. Besides, units can be seen from a closer view in cutscenes and when using mouse wheel to zoom in (though I admit those cases are not so common, but still)
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To avoid a lot of stuff running together, especially with the new graphics. Everything in general is more polished, detailed, and busier. Warcraft’s style has always been exaggerated in the basic art but because of the 3rd game’s limitations as the first 3D title, the much simpler shapes work to set everything apart. Which takes a backseat when they’re going for this kind of “idealized Warcraft” aesthetic talked about in interviews.
I think the problem might be most prevalent with smaller units. We don’t really have any good or longer footage of huge amounts of Grunts but I don’t think that’ll be a problem for them. Could likely just make a pretty quick count of their spaulders and/or axes.
It’ll just take us retraining our eyes for a small period of time. Just looking at footage though from the Culling, I’m counting Footmen via plumes, pauldrons, and shields which are the three most notable and easy to pick out details for me. Ghouls thankfully seemed to get bigger wrappings that go with their own exaggerations (their hands are gargantuan now) so my eye picks them out that way.
Of course this will be different for everyone in how they distinguish things from moment to moment, but it’ll just be a slight retraining and adjustment time if I had to guess. Just like how while they aren’t changing anything numerically (turn rates, attack animations) it might take a minute to adjust muscle memories with the new visuals.
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