I’m not a purist in any real sense of the word, but I think they could pull the art-style as a whole a little closer to the look and feel of the original Warcraft games.
The gritty photorealism, while nice on its own, doesn’t particularly feel like Warcraft; beyond this, I’m more than a little concerned of the impact this is going to have on Warcraft’s Custom Modeling Community.
It’s no secret that Pro-players and custom map makers, modelers, skinners, etc. kept WCIII alive far longer than the overwhelming majority of RTS. Pro-players were good, Custom modders were able to reinvent the game time and time again with ease.
And that’s the problem with the massive departure in art-style. How feasible is a large modding community when the overwhelming majority of them simply aren’t going to be able to create anything of similar quality?
Want to tweak a WoW model to fit in with WCIII (Ie, Gronn), well I hope you’re an AAA Model Maker specializing in gritty photorealism, because otherwise you’re out of luck and the WoW iteration is going to clash heavily with the new WCIII-style.
Want to bring over, say, Garrosh from Heroes of the Storm? Hope you’re ready for tweaks beyond your capability, otherwise the centerpiece of your custom campaign is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Unfortunately, the new art style doesn’t mesh with any other iteration of the Warcraft universe. In a vacuum, it looks fine, but it’s unfamiliar and is going to deprive of us of those simple, but extremely useful edits that helped keep the original Warcraft III alive.
They are giving the option to switch the styles, past that It doesn’t matter what they would do, it will most likely brake almost all the custom assets considering many use existing textures or models to save space. They did say they are going to allow both types to exist simultaneously so at that point It will just be a quality thing and that problem already exists today, with some custom models being FAR better (Higher Polly count, better wraps, and such) then others.
I completely agree. The new art style does not look anything like the original, not in design, and in my opinion not in quality.
All the points you raise about custom maps are very salient.
I’m currently banking on them including a classic graphic style. Hopefully that would allow for corresponding models to be used in custom maps. Otherwise using old custom maps with Reforged might look like some freakish hellscape.
They are, they said they will have the option to switch between the 2 styles, + the 2 types (HD and SD) of models can coexists at the same time on the same map.
I know we have an option to use the SD models, although I don’t think it’s entirely justified to expect everyone to now-terribly outdated models simply because they decided on a massive departure from the previous style.
The core of my complaint is that Warcraft III: Reforged, in theory, allows for a lot of potential what with mixing and matching HotS and WoW assets and edits. Unfortunately due to the art style being completely alien to Warcraft that’s now an impossibility.
I appreciate your post, but I disagree. I prefer the new art style they are taking this game in the direction of. I like the darker, more badass and gritty look to it.
The trouble with that is anything they would do will brake the older models adding 1 more polly to something will cause anything that used the old to brake. even just re skinning the existing models would destroy a lot of custom assets because many of they use textures and models from the old style. The new art style is just effectively adding a second set of things for moders to use, in addition to removing a lot of limits that the old system had.
I’m not suggesting we overwrite them or anything, and I fully realize that the new models invalidate old custom models. I get that.
My point of concern here is that the art style used for the new models, baseline, clashes heavily with other Warcraft products and that puts a pretty big limit on what is and isn’t possible.
I guess that comes down to taste then sadly. For me I love the new models, I feel they synergies much better with what we have in WoW now a days then the (In my opinion) Stubby units we had before.
Not to say I didn’t like the old set, I just love what we where given. I feel it in affect gives moders 2 sets of assets to work from rather then 2 slightly different sets of the same.
Lastly I feel I should add that with the limitations being lifted mostly from the map editor we will still probably see your dream set made eventually as enthusiastic fans crate a middle ground.
WoW and HotS rips are going to clash significantly with the WCIII: Reforged models. That’s not really a matter of taste or opinion, it’s just fact. What I’m asking for is an art style that allows for synergy between the games.
And this is where I guess we have to agree to disagree, because I feel they do a good job of blending in most cases, Yes it’s not perfect, but ask yourself how well dose a HotS or WoW model blend in with the old graphics, or that of SC2 (Or each other…)? in all cases they end up being slightly janky because each game has a style its own.
But that’s the trouble, and where it dose get into taste. What you may find fit’s as a happy medium others may still find goes to far, and others still may find it doesn’t do enough and still looks dated.
I would just like to let the devs and the artist know that I love the new style, the game has needed this for 10 years. I really appreciate the effort Blizzard is putting into this. I do hear the concerns about unit readability, however this is always a case when updating a game. The reality is that the whole community will experience the change at the same time and those who adapt faster will perform better.
This will future proof the game and I am very supportive and will continue to support the game whether it is through micro transactions or add on content. Really just grateful.