Why has, in the past 2 expansions, spell animations devolved into Warcraft 3: Reforged mobile game style? We used to have such beautiful spell animations, but now they all look overly cartoony and goofy for no reason.
And it’s not like those are all just new spells that got animated poorly, a lot of the current animations took the place of much, much better, older animations.
I can’t say exactly what was what for other classes, but for Paladin, I can give a solid few examples.
Divine Storm. It used to look so good, a tempest of holy hammers and holy lightning surrounding the Paladin. Now it looks like Fisher Price hammers popping in and out of existence.
Judgment used to be iconic in that it dropped a holy hammer on someone’s head. Now it’s a Fisher Price hammer being thrown.
Hammer of Wrath is similar to what it once was, a lightning hammer being tossed. However, it actually lost part of its animation, in whicb a small, quick, red, Judgment hammer would land on the target as the lightning hammer hit. But they took that out, for some reason.
Avenging Wrath, went from bright, elegant, strong, glowing and layered wings that gleamed power to droopy, sagging wings. The only good aspect of the new Avengibg Wrath is the Paladin’s whole body glows yellow. But the wings are just so, so dumb to look at it.
And that’s just four of the most glaring ones.
Like seriously, go look at Warlords of Draenor spell animations, or anything prior, and compare them to now.
Even Classic, with its limited animations, actually has better looking combat. It’s simple yet sophisticated and pretty. Retail just doesn’t have that any more.
I truly don’t understand how Legion was supposed to be the expansion all about “class fantasy”, and yet since Legion came out, I haven’t felt like I’ve been playing a Paladin. I feel like I’m playing something completely different. It’s so unreconizable.
Edit: Check out how beautiful and awesome spell animations were in WoD. Why did we ever stray from this? Was it to purposely upset fans?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=emb_title&v=_vh4b6KQWiM