Feedback: Graphics don't feel like Warcraft III

General Discussion
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I am personally in a conflict because of the graphics. On the one hand it looks great and very detailed but on the other hand it’s just not Warcraft 3. When hots came out i thought - it would be nice if they could make a Warcraft 4 in that style. I think hots, diablo 3, starcraft 2 etc. have the same cartoony style but warcraft 3 reforged looks different. So why is that so? I would prefer if they would use the style of hots etc. And i also don’t see a need to change the sounds of Warcraft 3.

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43

I’ve seen wow’s and overwatch art style and after looking intensely at the gameplay trailer i’d be so bold as to say that this remaster is not being developed in house either. The other alternative would be that this team might not be working closely with the other ones. So far it seemed like every blizzard game came together under the same art and visual style, until now that is.

In addition to that the trailer that is up on the playwarcraft3 site also seems quite different than how blizzard usually presents things.
on the same site they have featured heroes, one of them is a human paladin, remove the lordaeron emblem from him and try imagining if you saw him out of context would you really say he’s from warcraft 100%?

I know they wanted to have this ready for blizzcon and such probably rushed things, but it’s seems a bit too much… look at the art careful and the animations too. The animations are also pretty rough, not something I’d associate with Blizzard. If there’s anything that blizzard excels at is presentation and polish, but i can’t see much of that here.

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44

Copy of my comment from another place. First of all I would like to say that what has been shown doesn’t look warcraftish enough to me. If i was shown reforged footage I wouldn’t tell that this is warcraft related. Also I would like devs to keep old spell and items icons the same but in higher resolution like 128x128 or 256x256. UI doesn’t see to be finished yet. And finally I really don’t want Blizzard to chop off Dreadlord’s tail, please Blizzard keep it. Tail life matters. If I got to make a remaster I would keep the cartoonish style but in HD so when you scroll in to looke closely you could enjoy all the beauties of detail.

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45

I really don’t get the complaining you will get used to it, it looks awesome.

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46

it’s not complaining, but just making observations. If there’s anything I want at all from this is, if it truly is developed outside of house that they’d disclose that. I’d be more at ease.

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47

I gotta disagree with you. I don’t think that “Metalness” makes the game takes away from the Warcraft experience. I feel that Blizzard is doing a great job on that department but I do see inconsistency in their art direction. For example, the farms have a realistic feel nonetheless you then have some structures like the Barracks and the Castle that look more cartoonish.

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48

To be fair, this is an issue. People shouldn’t dismiss others as “Complaining”. I do agree and I do like the approach that Blizzard took for the game, but this after all is feedback. People have and should have the right to voice their opinions. At the end, this is made for fans, the fans have the right to voice their thoughts. If you happen to agree or disagree is another thing entirely. We all can always agree to disagree and move on.

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49

I hated the derpy warcraft 3 graphics to begin with. Always wanted to play this game with WoW Models instead

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50

My biggest issue with the graphics is the excess of details on common units, they look too heroic, taking the footman as an example, they should keep them as simple as posible, leave the high detailed armours for special units like the captains and heroes.

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51

This. The new footman looks just as, if not more heroic than the new Paladin.

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52

There are a lot of arguments here fully relying on pathos here (“I feel, therefore…”) and not a whole lot of logos (“This is a fact, therefore…”), so I would propose we all try to focus justifying feelings with facts, instead of justifying feelings with more feelings.

Now, in response to the OP suggestion that “metalness” and its contrast to the cartoony style of Warcraft, and because metal contrasts to toonishness that this is therefore a problem. I argue that contrast is not a bad thing necessarily. All the time in art, color contrasts are used in order to arouse the human eye: black with white, purple with green, orange with blue, etc. Contrast in taste is also used to enhance taste: sweet with savory, savory with spicy, spicy with sour, and so on. Saying that, “because it contrasts it is bad,” is false because contrast often enhances the attractiveness of something, not the opposite way around.

Instead, what I propose is a problem is an inherent conflict with the image that our eyes were greeted with on the Stratholme mission. Look at how some objects are bright and shiny and dazzling (such as the metalness of the armor) and notice how other objects, and parts of objects, are dark, grey, and muddy. Now notice again the ambient surrounding of the Stratholme mission: it is dark, dreary world where the sun is not shining… I in fact could not clearly discern when it was day and when it was night - day looks grey and night looks bright. Now notice that the shiny, dazzling objects remain dazzling, and how glowing pastel colors remain bright pastels, despite the darkness and despite the day-night cycle. This is in conflict with reality and with how our brain tells us things should look. Our brains tell us at night things should decolor towards greyscale, and metal should not shine… and if the daytime is overcast and grey armor and objects should also not shine, glitter, or glow in deep pastels. You might have noticed it - but your brain did. I propose this is what the real problem was, at least in terms of unit models… ground textures is another matter.

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53

I played W3 in the days, I played WoW from Beta to Pandaria, I play HOTS. I’m no pro, but I’m a graphic designer. The new graphics is an Age Of Empires art and not a Warcraft art and it would harm the game. Warcraft’s (Warcraft 3 included) success till these days is mostly because of the art style. Here’s why:

The simple, sketchy, cartoon, bright style affects greatly player’s mood. They may be wars and mass murdering with blood, but the surroundings are a fairy tale and you can go grim with smile.

Graphics and art since day one are competing to be more and more realistic. But where’s the art when everything is photo-realistic? You go back to the symbols of a cavemen. That’s the true art. Catching something complex into few simple lines.

And that’s also the trick why W3 graphics, and WoW have such big impact and stayed cool for so long. When you want to upgrade graphics, you go the WoW way. You create the models just slightly better and use more detailed, but still bright and shining textures.

And the best thing is that this art style also needs much less computing power. So it’s just another benefit for W3 and WoW.

This art style is also much more visually clear and you better navigate in complex battles. You can better target units, structures and foes. The power of this art style is represented in today mobile gaming, where the screen size is physically limited. Games with realistic graphic are more painful to play on portable devices.
And in fact the only Blizzard game that can benefit from more real art style is Diablo.

Keep it simple, keep it clean. Get inspired in WoW art style. Don’t mess it up with chasing over some realism. Save that for cinematic and merchandise.

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54

I think it looks great but it can still look better its not final there probably more tweaking gonna be done still, personally i love the graphics huge improvement but anything even better looking would be fine by me also :smiley:

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55

I like the new graphics alot, I think it is a cool new and refreshing look also what WC3 needs, new and refreshing or else we will continue to stay with the same small player base that is left as before.

Also there is an option to stick with the old WC3 graphics if you want to. Which is great, because some of you will never be satisfied, with new looks.

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56

“Heroes of the Storm” shoows how Uter(model), and other heroes should look like, dont make graphic so realistic it loses originality of old warcraft and becomes casual.

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Definitely vote for realism, and i like what they have already done.

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58

To be honest having realistic orc and pastel metal knights would have looked off imho

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New, better graphics are a given, what’s disliked is the massive departure from previous art styles.

I swear, the pro-New Model crowd makes it seem like people are asking for the old models to be retained. Nobody is doing that. What we’re asking for are new, HD models that stay true to the spirit of Warcraft. These look nice, but they don’t.

Ideally, the graphics in general should be designed in such a way that a HotS model could be ripped and imported into the game, without looking out of place at all.

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“Heroes of the Storm” shoows how Uter(model), and other heroes should look like, dont make graphic so realistic it loses originality of old warcraft and becomes casual.

I agree absolutely, except on Uther). I find his head in Hots too fat and his beard weird. Still waiting for a remodel)

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I’ve actually seen people defending that lol.

What I think we need is something most people will be happy with and work from there, so…

Does ANYONE dislikes the new Grunt? Why?

1 Like