Hello - I’d like to plead the case for new character models in Wrath classic. I’ve asked a lot of folks in pug raids their thoughts and have yet to receive a “no way, gross!” response (though I admit that’s a small sample, I’m not pushing the bandwagon fallacy here). But it did make me think.
The character model revamp offered a lot of emotive features to the models that give your character more uh… well… character? I really like them and thought the art team did a fantastic job at making them expressive; the cast animations for fire mage or other jobs are really cool. I do see some valid points arguing against it so I’d like to posit a counter argument to a few of those cases off the top of my head:
- They look out of place in classic, with different resolution and fidelity.
Response: I see tons of people in retail WoW wearing classic, older armor sets, and they still look cool. My mage in retail rocks ulduar mage set, and my paladin rocks the Sunwell set. Both look great, even with the higher fidelity character models. I understand characters in some cutscenes won’t quite match the fidelity of player models, though to be honest I don’t know how much that matters to players in general. I think the reason they look fine is that most people play zoomed out some, so it ends up looking cohesive enough.
- It takes the “classic” out of classic WoW / I liked the older models
Response: Make it something you can enable or disable as a matter of preference. Is it so inordinate to do so? Any more inordinate than, say, porting an entire older version of wow to run on modern computers as classic does? Anyways, Everquest, when it introduced new character models, allowed you for a time to enable or disable them.
I understand that might mentally detract from the game given the idea that others won’t necessarily see your character as YOU see it or vise versa, but given how most people don’t play first-person and are generally zoomed out, how much will you REALLY notice? Seems more like a personal or mental reservation or choice. People play on different graphics settings so generally people may not see the world or your character as you see it, anyways.
One other thing to consider: What if Wrath is your “last stop”. That is, either they don’t push “Cata classic” (which doesn’t sound all that um…classic) or you choose not to migrate forward to Cata classic. If Wrath is your indefinite stop, why not add some fun to it by introducing more emotive, expressive, and interesting character models and animations to it or, at the very least, the option to enable them or disable them as you see fit? I think it offers a new dynamic to something that may very well be here to stay, as vanilla WoW classic is.
Anyways, thanks for reading. I look forward to some constructive feedback or if you have some conversation to add to this.
