Other tech has sufficiently advanced now that wow’s old character models and drawn on outfit aesthetics are very noticeable now. It’s less exciting and makes alot of the rewards, mounts, mogs and weapons less appealing. Everything simply is beginning to look too dated.
For those who know it’s like comparing genshin impact and it’s animations to zenless zone zero. Genshin became less inspiring in some ways due to it’s lack of comparative visual fidelity and wow feels the same way for me these days.
Looking at the tier sets, because we’ve all been farming old raids this week, there’s a discernable increase in quality over the years. For a game with roots 25 years old I think it looks great.
I don’t want WoW to be an Anime aesthetic.
I don’t want WoW to be realistic graphics either, that sucks in large-scale combat.
It’s a good balance between textures and cartoon.
I think that makes it hold up better than something that was top of the line realistic at the time, but doesn’t hold up to yet better graphics of the modern era.
Being cartoonish is about graphic style not about graphic quality. Even if wow had modern engine, the style would be the same but with more quality, with better animations and effects.
This is the worser offender of the two, we waited 20 years for a lean emote, and much of the armor and stuff could use a graphical touchup to match post-SL zones in the old open world, I’m talking 3D cartoon trees, not the 2D theatre prop ones we have in all the zones.
WoW doesn’t need to change its style, but character models at least need an update.
Kul Tiran faces, for example, are all hideous. We need some variety so that there can at least be handsome / pretty Kul Tirans to choose from.
Most races are due for new hairstyles that have animations/ movement.
With housing coming up, we’re going to spend a lot of time looking at things like plates of food.
WoW can keep its cartoony style while its assets don’t look so hideously blocky.
I agree with you, but there is a couple of exceptions. Seems like the art team is fresh out of college and lack creative talent. I was being nice about the college part. However I see a lot of nice gear/transmog for Horde.
The game had an art style in classic and BC, in Wrath they started to abandon it, then claimed the ugly look the game had was part of their “art style.” It’s a convenient excuse.
No one is saying it should be an anime aesthetic. Likewise no one is saying realistic graphics. Just, better. There are old sets that need to be improved, maybe given texture boosts. Likewise, the character models are outdated again (older now than they were at the time of the first revamp in WoD).
We have some tech that makes sets look 10times better. No more flat painted chests blizzard, slap3d models on top of pieces. Even the tube dresses could lool better if more work went into them.
Some time ago we were shown galywis cloak physics, if they could bring that to cloth cloaks and overall dresses…