So, I logged on to my Hunter, thought I’d take her into Dragonflight. Now I rolled her at the start of BC, and at lvl 28, my guildies ran me into Razorfen oneortheother and I tamed a black and blue battle boar. He was badass, all edgy and armoured. So, every expansion since, even with all the new pets I have, I always pull out Bricktop (yes, that was the year Snatch came out) and he’s by her side when my troll first sets foot in a new expansion.
So, I summon Brick, and they changed him. I suppose ‘updated’ is the proper term, but his armor is softer, rounded looking, almost watercoloury. Same with my Hyena, he’s absolutely ‘cute’ now. It’s something I have noticed on character models too. Tauren and gnomes look especially cartoony, way more than before. Even NPC’s like the new Gnolls and Centaur are definitely less spiky.
Am i Crazy, or in a game where they had to edit out a mass murderer calling someone ‘B***ch’ and where I have heard the peon quest in the Orc starter zone referred to as ‘causing physical and emotional trauma to a lesser being’, is this all part of a gentler, softer WoW, and are we just the frog getting boiled slowly, not noticing till one day the whole thing looks like some Chibi anime?
The “spikes” you’re talking about from the old stuff is just…like…textures painted on a piece of paper pretending to be fur or hair. I understand some people might not like the updated designs/models, but the old stuff was from literally 2 decades ago in a lot of cases. We’re talking PS1-era polygons here…
I don’t think the new ones are too bad, but you do have a point that they are making everything ‘cuter’ with the remodels, I think the Gnolls and Centaur are where this is most apparent.
OG Hogger:
DF Alpha Hogger (way too cutesy):
Luckily, they fixed it thanks to people complaining, here’s current Hogger:
I always find threads like this one odd, cause it makes me wonder if people if people are playing the same game I am. To me the game has always looked like this, even back to the original RTS games, they were always cartoony and exaggerated. All the new models in the last few xpacs are just higher resolution versions of what was already there.
It just goes to show how differently people preceive things. Your boar OP is the perfect example. You see the updated version as cutesy and the old version as harder edged. Where I see the new one as what they were trying to make all those years ago but were too limited by the tech at the time.
Fair play. And I’m not convinced I’m right by any means, but I just keep feeling like assets are being drawn gentler, rounder faces, cuter features. I mean, does a high polygon count mean tusks and fangs cant be sharp anymore?
I do appreciate the input, and am willing to accept that it’s my perception of it, I remember feeling the same way about Overwatch designs as well, so maybe there is something to the lower rez. It’s just weird, and I can’t quite shake what my brain thinks I’m seeing.
Newer graphics in general probably have this effect even unintentionally. Thing is older graphics have the trait in which they can look more “uncanny” which can create a more natural dark, gritty and brutal/horror like design.
I see it as people remembering one form of past experiences to be that way they remembered. Come to this time and technology it changes that experience they once had by far, it’s not just the art but whole game experience.
What they did to Hyenas (and gnolls tbh) is an absolute crime.
Look at the detail in this. Yes, its dated and very old. But it has many different shades and clear attempts at detailing. There are oranges fading into reds and maroons which then fade into purples and pale colors. There are spots where the fur seems a bit more worn down, either by the elements or battle. You can see there is some stuff going on inside the ears that give it an illusion that the ear actually has wrinkles on the insides. The mouth has lips and the snout has what could be seen as some freckling. Nothing is one solid color. It is many colors. Despite being old and pixely, it is still somewhat believable.
And now we have the paintbucket tool… You have some details, but there is no color fading. They dropped a red paintbucket on it and used the airbrush in grey in certain spots. It was nice to get an update, but it very much felt like a “eh W/E lets just slap the rest of it together” kind of update when it came to actually finishing.
WoW’s post-WoD aesthetic shift has been awful. The best example is to go to Un’goro and tame a devilsaur and then go get one from Zandalar and have them both out at the same time.
The old devilsaur has edges, looks like basically a t-rex with some spikes. The new one is soft and round, non-threatening with soft eyes.
People will always retort with “WoW was always cartoony” or some stupid crap like that. But there’s a difference between cartoons. Modern WoW is Nick junior, old WoW is 90’s X-men.
Keep in mind the complaining about Hogger started in the DF beta. Hogger NEVER had a unique model, so naturally when the gnoll model in general got updated, he wound up with a generic model that looked nothing like his other depictions outside of the game.
I even said at the time that people were making a mountain out of a molehill and that he’d likely get his own model that was in line with his artwork before DF release.
The whole game has gone soft unfortunately. For a game full of guys in their mid 30s they have completely missed the mark with the modern art design. Everything is seemingly tailored to be preferred by my 6 year old daughter. So yes i agree with you op.
Some of the new models have been good but I agree some have lost detail ironically. Especially color mixing and fading like you say. A lot of older creatures have more hints of different colors on the body and many updated models have essentially flat colors now. The purple hyena looks less cool to me now too since the color isn’t as vibrant and varied.
