i miss the old zones like wintergrasp and the barrens that have a solemn peace to them… everything about the post classic art direction feels like it’s on an ever increasing amount of sugar and/or stimulants
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You know, as I sit here going through the sarkareth fight again, I agree. It’s a lot.
Not everything needs to look super polished and shiny to be great. I can still enjoy Westfall to this day!
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i made a blademaster mog with the trading post item from a few months ago and was wandering around the barrens listening to red hot chili peppers
i made a previous thread that the only music that fit torghast was jake paul
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I don’t agree. I like how a lot of the colours pop out at you.
Visuals-wise Dragonflight feels as adventurous as WoD levelling which was nice.
Then again I probably do not have as much sentiment for the same areas. My first memories go back to Exiles Reach then coming to Tiragarde Sound → Doing quests and dungeons until I could do Stormsong Valley and partway through I was ready for Shadowlands with the big variations in landscape of the Bastion/Maldraxxus/Ardenwield and Revendreth.
With that said I have gone back and done Loremaster and there is a charm to some of the human settlements (Lion’s Inn, Dusk Watch and Lakeshire tend to have mini communities of their own when the game is busy which I think is very sweet - First place I could actually talk to real people in an Inn??)
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If the Modern WoW art team was to redo Winterspring it would 100% look better.
Old WoW zones reminds me of in-game map editors or things like city-builders.
It’s a lot of low effort copy-paste with a lot of terrain distortion using the “hill” and “valley” tools.
The veil of immersion is not there, I don’t feel like I’m in an immersed video game but I feel as if I am staring at a map-editing tool.
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i meant winterspring actually i got them confused
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I kinda get what you mean, A lot of these new maps feel almost oversaturated with points of interest and sub-zones. Like there’s a difference between varying the landscape to reflect how non-uniform the world can be, but too much of a good thing can just as easily become bad.
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I think this is partly why I feel so relaxed in the older zones. There are not a bajillion things everywhere lighting up and screaming for my attention. I get overstimulated easily and sometimes modern WoW maps make me feel very tired.
Some of the architectural details too feel a bit cluttered. Like all the floaty stuff in… oh my, I already can’t even remember what that place was called. The blue people zone in Shadowlands with wheatfields… all the floaty structures actually looked messy to me, like someone just sneezed out a bunch of assets into the air.
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I kind of agree, yeah. I like when you walk into a new place for the first time and there’s that whimsical idea of “Holy Jesus, look at all the stuff.” But eventually, it does wear down on you. I miss Feralas, Winterspring, and other such zones. They had a simplicity to them that was fun.
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Ditto.
Right there with you, I meant Winterspring too, the snow Zone.
I adore the modern art direction. I think it’s one of the best aspects of WoW — the way they went from essentially an RTS engine (and graphics) to making a beautifully-stylized world. If only the old zones could have the same fidelity, style, and definition.
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Mate, you say “newer” and then compare stuff to 15 year old classic zones. Yes, i like them more too, but word “newer” is misplaced
Your two categories for wow art are vanilla and literally everything else?? There’s still chill areas. I like the nostalgia of visiting old zones for leveling but the art is still amazing.
I think you just like open spaces. Parts of Ohnaran plains are as peaceful as anything in vanilla. Meanwhile I bet there’s vanilla zones like feralas you might find too cluttered
The centaur are a pretty big departure from the ones we used to have, honestly the new ones are too sleek/humanlike, and pretty.
Horses aren’t pretty, they are dirty beasts lol. I like how barbaric the old centaur were as well, and had flies around them.
This honestly sums up my feelings:
Cartoony, overly-stylized, very unique. It has tusks! But still clearly a turtle.
What we have now:
A lot more realistic, lacks that certain charm/personality of the old model, it’s still a turtle, just not as cartoony and fun as before. It’s more ‘ordinary’ than anything else.
Cata areas are good enough in color, now there are some places that look like carnibals, I wouldn’t complain if I could see as many butts as in a carnibal do 
Can we at least acknowledge wrath and tbc brought us some of the ugliest zones known to man
I’m not convinced the guy doing the ground textures in the Borean Tundra wasn’t having a seizure
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Not really, they were impressive in their times and Eversong Forest was one of the most beautiful areas even expansions ahead.
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There are exceptions, like Eversong and grizzly hills, but they are exceptions
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I personally think they did a very good job with that zone. I liked it a lot more than Howling Fjord.
They nailed it with the red and yellow grass and foliage, and jagged rocks and stuff.
(The picture is of a tundra in Greenland.)
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I kinda do and don’t agree, OP. I think for me it’s mostly sort of hit or miss?
I adore most old zones; I mean, this very moment I’m sitting in Bahrum’s Post in Dun Morogh while I’m eating lunch. I’m slowly doing the dwarf zone quests from the beginning, and despite how often I do these zones anyway, I always enjoy them immensely. I think they have a wonderful simplicity to them that feels very grounded and ‘realistic’ in that high fantasy aesthetic way. The old world in general appeals very greatly to me, and I have a very deep connection to it in a way I don’t often feel with newer zones (despite the fact I haven’t even been playing WoW a year yet).
That said, I have newer zones that hit that high point for me. Val’sharah, Azsuna, and Suramar are outstandingly beautiful zones, and I love exploring all over. Yes, they got a lot more fantastical elements to them and a lot more going on, but in some ways they still manage to feel ‘grounded’ in much of their regions. I’m sure my Legion bias is part of it, of course, but I also have a deep love for Night Elf zones and Teldrassil in particular - and these zones are essentially like upgrades to Teldrassil (and, in Suramar’s case, a bit of Eversong Woods), so they carry that same magic and connection for me.
Speaking in terms of Dragonflight, I adore the Plains most of all, and because of the time I spent doing Dragon Daycare, I’m coming to appreciate Valdrakken a lot more too. I wouldn’t say either feel like “home” in the way the old world zones or Stormwind does, but they still hit the right notes of fantastical without going overboard with it.
But yeah, idk. I do definitely feel more love and connection to old zones than I do newer ones since around Mists of Pandaria. I don’t think all new zones are awful, per se, but there definitely was a noticeable design shift with regards to many of them.
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