Anyone else think that this is probably WOW’s best artwork ever?
I did that quest in Boralus earlier where you kill the false prophets, and while running back to the market it struck me that for a capital city it had for the first time ever the feel of a real, living, breathing town.
Other places within the game are also quite breathtaking, such as the open world complex at Atal’Dazar, and the beautiful jungles of Zuldazar.
For me also Drustvar captured that feeling of menace that you got first in Darkshire all those years ago.
The only downside to this is I would say the world is far too small, and that enlarging it and bringing in max level flying would vastly improve things.
BfA has the most pixels. And for the most part, they are well used - on the landscape at least; I’d make some changes among the people who do models, and who sign off on the results.
The pixels come at a price though, a price paid by us in lag, and CPU and GPU utilization, and new hardware.
The graphics people were given an increased budget - they were allowed to use more of our PC resources. They certainly did that. I had to buy a new machine, even though my old one still works fine for everything but WoW. I have never minded the subscription, but when it comes to upgrading before I need to so that some arty types can show off how many pixels they can cram into my screen, I do question my choices, and Blizzard’s.
Apart from that entirely, there is still no zone in BfA that I would rate as well as, say, Wrath zones - and I am looking forward to Classic specifically so I can live appropriately in the Vanilla zones again.
I love the three Warbringers shorts - I love the art style and credit it for bringing me back. Hats off to the production team behind those.
Also the BfA cinematic is excellent. Whatever people think about current Blizzard it’s undeniable they can still bring the goods in the art department.
I think I slightly prefer the work in Legion in-game but thats just personal aestetics.
Suramar is still impressive imo.
While I do think the zones are very pretty, and I do quite like the Warfront sets I am really sad about losing class sets. It’s just really hard designing a set that says both “Death Knight” and “Paladin” or “Demon Hunter” and “Druid” at the same time.
I can agree, the zones are great both visually and in terms of music.
Transmog sets are good too, this is the first expansion where I have seen people actually transmogging levelling gear appearances. The Zandalari and Kul Tiran style is very fitting, the Orc & Human and Undead & Night Elf Warfront/PVP sets are very popular too.
Some things are nice but for majority it feels boring …
Drustvar looks nice, but the other two locations are boring, horde part is just stranglethorn/tanaris 2.0 super boring jungle (cant wait for flying to see all the tree tops from above, will look billion times better)
Same with the sets and weapons, yeah cool pirate tricorn, but thats all? Its barely leveling gear tier of design, raid gear looks boring most of the time, fit usually for one race/class and 8.2 sets are even worse …
Almost forgot music is nice, but I usually listen to my own so I ignore it …
I think it’s a fair argument that WoW was popular despite already looking outdated way back when.
I wish they moved their resources from art design to gameplay and class design, I’ve never cared about how a game looks if it plays well and currently WoW does not play that well.
I love the different zones and graphics qualities, esp at sunset type times. The moodiness of Nazmir makes me want to swat mosquitos away and the Drustvar forest makes me want to eat halloween candy:)
