Why are Wow characters so Goofy Looking?

Community General Discussion
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My guess is that mmorpg players would like their characters to look handsome, beautiful,
elegant and heroic. But Wow characters look like some goofy cartoon character you might find in a 1940s Disney animated cartoon. Wow has a few nice looking characters that come across as cool looking and dignified. Such as Jaina Proudmore, Khadgar, and Greaymaine.
But all the player characters look awful. The humanoid animal characters are just silly looking and the living dead are just plain ugly. The only redeeming race are the Vulpera
those are cute.

This is coming from a long time sci-fi, fantasy, rpg fan. And even I see this weirdness in Wowā€™s character designs. After years of playing I tend to just ignore it / overlook it as a sacrifice to playing a great game. But sometimes I just stop in my tracks and think good
grief those characters I see are just plain goofy looking! Half the time I expect Mickey Mouse or Elmer Fud to come around the corner holding hands with Daffy Duck.

So, does anybody have a clue as to why the Wow development team decided to originally
go with these ugly weird looking character models? And why they havenā€™t tried to rework
the character models to look better?

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Cause Warcraft 3 units look cartoony.

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The cartoonish aspect is an intentional shtick, and arguably what sets the Warcraft universe apart and kept it popular.

Also, another one of these threads.

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Only Alliance NPCs and mostly humans ā€œlook cool and dignified.ā€
Cool story, bro.

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Because I envision my toon looking like this

:ocean: :dragon: :ocean: :dragon:

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Correct me if Iā€™m wrong, but WoWā€™s engine couldnā€™t handle well defined models when first produced.

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Yeah nothing is new in the forums. As well as someone posting pointing that fact out. It goes together
like lettuce and tomato. Oh, well?

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I just want a catgirl, is that too much to ask?

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I rather like how we look!

I think the fanart certainly does the game more justice but ingame has a sort of simple style. It feels like an evolution from classic but not distant enough to feel foreign.

I think say hyper-realistic elves, humans and night elves would probably look pretty hot.

I donā€™t think Iā€™d play my Draenei (my most played race) or my mechagnomes if they were hyper-realistic. Some of them are just better cartoonish.

I deliver you mine from my random assorted other mmo I play;

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If you want people to make original remarks, make original complaints. ĀÆ\_(惄)_/ĀÆ

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There are no original complaints. The remark I was addressing is the same type of thing you see in other forums that are just a simple ā€œFirst replyā€ meaning they got to reply first.
Except that in Wow forums it is always more of an insult.

Hey what can we do. Some people just gotta be nasty. Oh well? At least the rest of the people replying are nice.

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How about this:

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Style of the game. I like the style.

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Level 10 bait account. :white_check_mark:

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Okay, Iā€™m glad you think Greymane is cool, but how is it possible to butcher his name like this?

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Another Ai ā€œnot trollā€ thread

Gee, why does the stylized graphics look like stylized graphics instead of generic anime stuff

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Thanks to its cartoonish style, wow still looks decent after 18 years. If Blizzard went for ā€œrealisticā€ graphics, the game would look very dated by now.

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I like the way they look.

The updates to the character models a few years back was one of my favorite changes they ever made.

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The cartoon style is what making the game look modern and preventing the game from looking dated. If they went for realism style it wouldā€™ve looked dated few years back and more restrictive and expensive.

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So that it can run on a 10 year old toaster pc

1 Like