The art direction is literallt all over the place. Even in the datamined stuff. Nothing, literally nothing has the classic art style to it.
Why abandon the idea of ”keeping the timeless classic artstyle” when they literally had 2 segments at blizzcon explaining why they love and desire the classix style so much?
This whole thing just feels extremely rushed in my opinion and im concerned for the future of the games art direction. If this keeps going, we’re playing classic with a retail skin on it in a year from now.
From what I have seen it's really just the skyborn zones. Everything else they have added just feels like classic, riverglades, dalaran and the new dungeons all feel more like classic which makes the skyborn so interesting on why they are so different besides the obvious retail art design.
Personally I think it's some last effort executive meddling. Then they just took a unreleased retail race and slapped it into Forever, duct tape and all.
Not really likely that it was a rushed decision. It coincides too much with the takedown of Turtle WoW, which was what WoWF claims to want to be. An extended version of OG WoW without expansions. New areas, balance changes, additional races and class combinations. TWoW had all this and more.
They didn't take action on multiple private servers for years and then suddenly they struck out of nowhere. Now, they introduce TWoW under their own IP. (I know TWoW illegally used the IP, that's not my point).
To me it coincides too much with the takedown, that I can only argue that it was preplanned. They took inspiration from TWoW, they worked through Alpha until it was semi-ready and then they struck down TWoW and some collateral servers that had grown out of proportion. Years in the making, at least.
they wanted a good chunk of retail players to play so they gotta make it fluffy for them because its easy money if it wasn't for beta access no one on classic would be buying that horrible looking race especially druid god those forms look horid
Yeah, it kinda feels rushed. Seems like they had a few unused assets from Retail and had to put them somewhere else. Actually, there's one creature that was datamined that is completely new and does have the original Classic art style. I want to hug whoever made this one at Blizzard, cuz its exactly what I'd expect from a classic+ art direction https://imgur.com/a/btow3Kb Other than that, everything else is straight-up Retail.
My theory is that Forever wasn't supposed to be released for another 6 months to a year but someone up top made them release it early. That's why the Skelfs are just Blood Elves with a blue filter added to them because the models we see now were only meant as placeholders until new, unique hair styles and faces could be created for them. Likewise the conflicting assets were there just to get the basic framework down before a final pass would homogenize them all into one uniform art style.
But since the game was released early, the suits said "That's good enough, just release it as is."
It's so apparent that the sky elves were stuck with the blood elf models and faction split last minute.
They're tied to raid content so I don't think they were supposed to be a playable race at launch, but they were probably faster to push out the gate than what they had planned for blood/high elves.
The real answer is classic models weren't supposed to be in the game. Retail hd was originally the only option before they showed streamers and they begged blizzard to add classic models to the game.
Nothing impedes them of doing it in the future, forver is nor meant to be static so changes like this should be expected if blizzar is really serious about the "forever" bit.
I don't think it will be done, i think we will get more and more retail backports and almost no new assets on the classic style.
The only thing I can think of when I see a shared split race that can go horde or alliance, is that some bean counter told the board they could save money on assets and work by making one race shared across factions.
Usually the bean counting comes first. Then they tell you “ok, we crunched the numbers and this is the budget we’re giving you for this project.” Then it’s up to the management side of the game to decide where that money is going to go, and one shared race freed up a considerable amount of time and money that could be spent elsewhere.
Same with reusing old blood elf assets that have already been fitted for all the Vanilla gear and are transmoggable. Everything is a tradeoff, with time and budget being the biggest constraints.
The last sentence is the scariest. "If this keeps going, we’re playing classic with a retail skin on it in a year from now." This is basically my biggest concern, after seeing so much of whats in Beta.
Very solid breakdown that didn't really need to rely on subjective terms or personal preference. Just a lot of "this art style is objectively not the same as what vanilla was, and anyone can see it if you use a few examples."
I’d say they’ve also had their fair share of critique (diary gear, Cosiantus). Funnily enough the critique sounds the same, mostly being “It has too many polygons, making it look overworked and out of place”, “It looks like it came from a private server”, and most funnily: “Why the fuck is everything new so purple?”
It really helps that the vast majority of the community goes absolutely apeshit over the 2007 art direction getting spurned. We obviously have that here too, but it’s getting drowned out by retail players. RS3 fortunately didn’t have the numbers necessary to effectively brigade OSRS.
good point, i shouldn't say they've nailed everything, however, they have done a really good job most of the time. i remember old zeah development and they missed the feature density of the new areas, and they were receptive to feedback to match it to the style of the mainland. in my opinion i think modern zeah after its thousands of tweaks fits perfectly
Yeah Varlamore was well executed too. The things they offered were brand new in many ways, but felt like things that could have come out back then (if the tech would allow it)
My problem with the Skyborne is just that one smurf blue color. The others are acceptable and actually I wish the normal skin color was a touch bluer so it didn't look so much like regular elves. The purple is a bit much but still tolerable because it is desaturated. The blue would likewise be more tolerable if it was adjusted to be grayer.
Same goes for the druid forms, they need to be less bright and less saturated and then they won't be as obnoxious.
Even then it's still way differently stylized from classic. The plainstrider for exmaple has a lot of texture detail in the scaly skin, beak scratches, scruffy ends on the hair. While the newer stuff is very smooth and uses a lot of big shapes.
Less people would have noticed, but the color is far from the only thing that makes it feel different.
I feel like the saturation (or intensity, idk) of the colours is too much. Plus, aren’t these supposed to be more elemental than arcane, considering they live in skywall?
Its also all so curvy and smooth. Plainstrider looks like a featherless chicken that had a bad haircut and just woke up at 2am. Bear form's face looks like my dog's when i dont give him his favorite spot on the couch.
The things on the right look like they jusy came out ofthe hair salon
Some assets do feel very retaily yes. Sometimes I see Skyborne hunters with pets that I recognize as straight 1:1 rips of animal models from Dragonflight. It is slightly jarring. It doesn't really impact my enjoyment very much but it's a minor negative in the artstyle for sure.
It's very strange that the environment team is doing such a good job making new zones which fit perfectly into the classic art style yet the new mobs, weapons, and armors are all retail with maybe crunched textures and some fewer polygons.
Is it going to get to the point where all of the characters and their equipment are modern hd while standing in a ps2-era world?
It's just inconsistent and weird. I suppose it lets them monetize retail assets twice though, huh? :D
Not that strange, they’re entirely different skill sets and done by entirely different people I imagine. The person leading the environments team understands what authentic classic design means, and the person leading mobs and character design doesn’t at all.
They're not all reused. They are making some new ones. The undead paladin charger for instance is brand new. In that case though I would have preferred if they had reused an asset. Undead paladins should have just got a recolour of the Alliance charger like they did for blood elves in TBC. There was no reason to make a new one, especially when it just doesn't fit in at all.
It's this. Everyone seems to think blizzard is creating everything from the ground up. Yeah, no. They are using assets they already have around. Also, the environment team? Got some news broskis, it's fog and lighting updates my dude. Very little is actually new.
The problem is, they've changed the way they make assets since Vanilla. The old way is a map applied to a blocky model. It's outdated.
Yes, they could go back to that style "to make it feel like classic" but then the maps will still have new art in them, and the models will still be more advanced - Making it still feel "not like Classic."
It's not hard to learn how to do assets in old style. Any artist can do that just by looking at old assets. It's not magic. Private servers did it. They just choose not too most likely to cut the cost by just porting retail assets.
It’s probably a failure in leadership philosophy among the artists.
They equate higher quality work to retail level art, and simply do not know how to dial in the work to the nostalgic crappy aesthetic that mentally most classic wow players adore, and find to be alive.
Like no artist wants to be the one that speaks up with their lower poly sword and says “um boss I made this in line with the standard and I think this is how the design should be”. Insert dude being thrown outta corporate window meme for speaking up type shit.
I mean, my guess is that the world building tool is just something already built up with existing assets. This is why through all the world you see copy-paste assets like scout towers and houses. For new zones, they just edit the terrain and grab from the asset pool.
Weapons, mobs and armor on the other hand are being created from scratch. Something people should remember is that none of the people that worked in 2004 is in Blizz so that mentality is very much lost. They are mostly likely borrowing talent from retail and they are used to an art style and aren't translating it to Vanilla well.
It's likely because new zones don't need to be backported into retail Warcraft so they're their own thing.
Models do need to be compatible between Retail and Forever so they can be reused for both.
I believe the reason the Skyborne look so much like Bastion is because that style wasn't remixed endlessly in retail.
I guarantee you that after the pitch, one of the big questions was how much could be shared between retail and forever and if it was up to Microsoft, WoW Forever would be Classic+ but with retail assets and art direction, simply because you're reselling the same product twice.
They haven't said it but it really looks like Skyborn is made originally for retail. Then it was transferred to Forever because they needed something for extra $$ to make executives happy.
I am mostly worried about the future of this game. In the end Blizzard is a big company. Their goal is to make money. They don't have room for true passion projects (and that's what players really want to see). It's very likely we'll see similar shiny things that cost extra in the future as well.
Hard disagree tbh. The questing in the Skyborne zone may feel like it's right out of Cataclysm, but the art design in the zone itself does not. And I don't think even Blizzard would add another Blood Elf reskin to the game.
They very clearly reek of "We need something similar to Blood Elves to fill the gap but it needs to be something new."
In reality I just think they weren't even considering the SD art style at all until a few months ago.
Some of them are straight literal 1:1 rips right out of retail, I've seen the comparisons.
I pray to God that the Forever devs just chalk this up as placeholder models and does something fitting to the game.
I mean it's not like they're really losing out on any work done, you know... since they're ripped right out of retail and slightly altered(mostly color/patterns).
The HD models are out of retail too, but at least they fit the color scheme of the game, aren't big and bulky and stand out like a sore thumb until you look closer. And even then most of them are fine for the most part with the updated graphics. Plus of course they are on a toggle.
I like the environments, I'm mostly criticizing assets. The zones and lighting are beautiful and I want them around, but seeing an elf run by with a literal Dragonflight pet while a neon-colored owlbear druid runs beside them is jarring.
I don't think so tbh no. Artstyle cohesiveness is a legitimate complaint to have here, but it's very low on my priority list for me personally. If the actual gameplay starts being like retail some day then I will be a rabid complainer though absolutely, but I really don't have much of an internal reaction if stuff just visually looks kind of out of place, even if I can recognize it's negative
yeah if i could talk to the artists directly, i would want to make it clear that they're made beautiful, vibrant, high quality art and they've done a good job at that.
my issue is that it's a totally different art style that isn't in line with the classic flavour. in my opinion, any new forever asset in order to maintain the same art style should have:
angular silhouettes not rounded/curved
low poly geometry not dense
texture communicates the form rather than geometry
Coulda had gryphons and wyverns up there. Coulda recoloured the MOP crane, it'd look closer at least.
Also, what's up with these druid forms? It's bear form, not owl form. There's nothing owly about Skyborne, they are an elf. Nightelves have elvish bears, taurens have horns, the Skyborne should have either a blue tint and elvish looks or tap into their elemental links somehow.
the argument is its ugly and makes no sense and the reason it exists is because the artists are on a pause from retail content atm and they're bored so they made this monstrosity and put it in classic
Many people will recognize the issue but think it’s minor and won’t make a real difference. However I think art cohesion in an MMO is so important to immersing myself in it. If I’m out in duskwood vibin out and a skyborne Druid in cat form runs by its GOING to take me out of it a little bit.
This also has NOTHING to do with “what’s better or worse.” It simply doesn’t fit alongside the world and vanilla models
Retail WoW capital cities literally looks like Fortnite lobbies. Unfortunately the people that care about artistic direction and cohesion are in the minority, the people that will pay $15 for a hotdog mount are in the majority, and Blizzard isn't about leaving money on the table.
Purchaseable cosmetics are coming, it's just the classic strategy of "boil the frog," get everyone hyped then enshittify the game.
….if they would have been made in 2007 I wouldn’t have an opinion because it would have been the newest thing for the then current version of the game? That’s not the argument though. Retrospectively looking at these models and designs, we can see what vanilla (and even TBC) and say that they don’t match the aesthetic
I'm a lurker and don't what the context of this, but this model feels like it was made by someone who has never seen a bear. The face looks like a wolf superimposed on the bear model.
So, if you notice the current bear models for night elves and taurens, you’ll see that their normal model faces blend into the bear face. This is what’s happening here as well: the high elf model face blends into a bear.
This might not seem like a big issue yet but if Blizzard keeps on forcing HD monster + item models on Forever the game will come to a point where it will lack identity. If they want to push the HD option on Forever we should also have a HD/SD slider for items and monsters.
What i don't get is that the environment itself is really low definition compared to the HD models, so i feel even in this case we will STILL end up with incoherent graphics (unless they literally rebuild the entire world)
I much prefer the art style of the SD character models, but to be honest some of them look so cooked with how they map to the retail skeletons that I'm forced to use the HD ones to avoid looking like some low-poly skin-walker.
From the different 3rd parties brought on as consults it seemed blizzard only wanted to use HD models initially for the relaunch and a compromise was made relatively late in the development cycle. A few of the game leads helped get them to include SD at the request of a bulk of the consultants.
The models we have are their attempt to SD the elves, owl bears etc they didn’t push hard enough probably to split the difference between the SD and HD players.
They’ve put themselves into an awkward position deciding to tackle both. They’ve doubled the work or are left having SD and HD players a little dissatisfied
I do worry it's a matter of how far they push the line. The problem is it's a bit vague and hard to define what we mean by the original wow aesthetic, and also, I'm definitely not opposed to improving the looks of things, but not every "improvement" actually looks better. Hopefully they're open to feedback, for once.
"the game will come to a point where it will lack identity."
I guess that's kinda their plan. They probably hope most retail players will move to Forever after the Last Titan, and Classic players are used to the changed artstyle by then, so forever will become the next retail.
I don't even care if it is retail or classic style, but a mesh of both is an abomination and should not happen, this has been a problem in retail since WoD and not that they have the chance to start fresh they should commit to a style and run with it.
I don't understand why it's so hard for them. Turtlewow introduced custom models with the same tone and poly count you'd expect in Classic. Classic was pretty enough in its own right, why does everything need to have the theme of retail?
It's not a huge deal for me but yes they do look out of place for sure. Also the sky elf models look really out of place. They need to add sd models for them.
It's as hilarious as it is depressing to see a bright blue elf with taffy-neon pink hair in Orgrimmar and imagine that someone at Blizzard actually thought it was a good idea that seamlessly fits the aesthetic of classic. It's like someone found out how to port their retail character into Vanilla.
I don’t mind the model, what I mind is that everyone who picked one picked the brightest damn blue in the game 😂 i don’t know how anyone wants to be Blue Elf when they could be… normal
I understand where people are coming from but I feel like it's gonna be an uphill battle as the concept artists from the Sam Didier/ Chris Metzen power metal dark fantasy era are not the new generation talent entering the industry. I'll fight it too it's just gonna be a constant struggle to keep a dead artstyle alive.
Warcraft has never been power metal, dark fantasy. What on Earth are you talking about? I seriously have no idea where you guys got this idea from, outside of convincing yourselves of it in order to try and sound like Classic and Retail are more different than they are. Warcraft has always been more comic book/cartoon-y and often times more vibrant than other Fantasy genres. That was literally one of the main criticisms of World of Warcraft upon release, as other MMOs went with a more grounded Fantasy art style.
All of the concept art specifically from Chris Metzen and Samwise Didier fits that genre. In fact the same concept artist went on to do albums for Swedish power metal bands and was the singer/songwriter for blizzards in house metal band. It's not a stretch at all really.
If you don’t know this, right around the time they went to make scarlet raid in SoD, Josh actually wrote about how it was the first time his team was brokering a relationship with the art team since these were truly new models.
Brother in Christ, it looks like retail because it IS the retail team that is doing these. They didn’t hire some new art department, your boy is trying to do what he can in the company to have this built.
What Id call out is that I think this is the spellbreak team working on this. Ever since around dragonflight they had acquired this studio that made a game called spellbreak - when they did that - the art style became dramatically more feminine and Disney like.
I’m talking about the difference between shadowlands vs dragonflight. If you know, YOU KNOW, LOL.
Ooof yeah that style is so apparent after looking them up. Not bad work just not what this community is looking for. They need to go aquire some nerds off the net who have been working these private servers damn.
The joke I usually use is interview some big fat guys with beards and ask to see their playlist. If it’s heavy metal or some early 2000s rock that’s probably your guy, lol.
Basically if you were were going to a creed concert find a guy who draws.
This is what their cinematic team looked like at blizzard back in the day.
I don't actually mind the idea of an owlbear, it just looks way too busy with all the feathers and the colours are way over the top.
But in general I have no issue with a druid transforming into something resembling 1 or 2 animals that are in game already or something that is new but fits the aesthetic. Also owlbears like this exist in D&D for example and would fit the Vanilla Wow aesthetic well if done correctly.
This might be one of my biggest concerns. The art of so many things just take me out of classic and right into retail. At times I feel like I almost want to use the HD models to get some consistency but I just dont like them like the classic models
It’s literally just Retail Classic. They changed so much that it barely even resembles the game they are trying to imitate. Hard pass, gonna stick to classic. Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining.
This is honestly, an absurd take. This plays nothing like Retail. Like, at all. This is 90% Classic gameplay with a few added QoL changes. You either haven't played Retail, and don't know what you're talking about, or are deliberately lying so you can force yourself to hate something. Pretending that this is anything even remotely resembling Retail is just straight up misinformation.
Spirit of classic was just PR. They’re trying to sell the game to everyone. Not a target audience. I’m shocked this isn’t common sense from the community at this point that blizzard hasn’t cared and the community doesn’t hold them accountable. They argue over who the game was intended for in comments instead of turning their pitchforks to blizzard and demand the absolute highest quality of the game from the company with the most capital in MMOs.
Bald guys 2nd sentence on stage “EVERY change or update was measured in the spirit of classic” then he showed you blue elf’s and everyone started going “WeLl tHe gAmE iS fReE, WhO cArEs aBoUt $30 ElFs. We AlwaYs PaY foR tHe neW rACe”
Their first change was literally factionless blue elf’s. Spirit of classic steaming from it.
every big release starts like this nowadays. bf6 was made for both cod kids and battlefield vets and it backfired so now they are trying to make amends and pander to battlefield fans.
i suspect it will be no different w forever. the game will loser players fast and then blizzard will just start bending over backwards to every classic player whim.
every company has to "try" at first to see if they can make a game for everyone, i guess.
I would fully agree and fully support if they made the game 100% SD/HD switchable.
But by the looks of it, I doubt they're going to do that. They're going to have to work twice as much for the same content. It's a big bite they decided to bite off, let's see if they can chew it.
The funniest thing is that retail players are the ones who are sick of the random allied race recolours. This is for the whales and the players who don't care about the game having any kind of internal consistency.
Thank you! So much of what they've said is directly contradicted by the game itself. It drives me crazy that people are citing the sales pitch as if that has any bearing on reality. Pay attention to what they're doing, not what they're saying
I don't think it makes sense for them to sell this to everyone. They already have the Retail audience captured. What they want is strengthen the hold on the Classic/ex-TWoW audience. The worst scenario for them is Forever ending up capturing Retail players while a significant portion of Classic players goes back to other flavours of Classic (including pservers). Because then they just wasted money.
I think at this point they're on track, and the small deviations seem mostly either accidental or not significant enough. But the true test is going to be how they handle QoL-creep overtime. In the end no matter how much you argue with people in the forums and think they're insufferable, if they truly "go back to classic" then Blizzard has lost their investment.
Blizzard is eventually going to push the HD route, alienate a lot of players, then wonder why a chunk of the playerbase leaves for private servers again.
The Sky elf situation looks like something forced from the top. The whole Classic team clearly is aligned on the vision, all the new mechanics, quests, dungeons and zones really feel Classic, they nailed it... all except the Sky Elf stuff. It really looks like some manager showed up and said, "hey we need to make some money with that Forever stuff, just add some elves, people will like them, and just re-use this discarded Modern stuff we have there".
i think the same, like the guy on twitter who is working in the classic forever team and made the new zone riverglades. he would never implemented this race after this banger tweet. so its definitive a decision from higher up, otherwise it would make no sense to add this race into classic, the blue skin color in the world is so bright its hideous. his tweet https://x.com/Marmstrongwow/status/2102585118305161513?s=20
Which covers this topic, and its my main gripe with the game, with Skyborne being cross faction the second, I think both these issues primarily effecting the new race is the main reason they get so much flak, in that its likely this would not have happened if they had not been added.
I couldn't agree more. I'll play at launch because new MMO experiences are always a blast, but I expect more additions like the skyborne before too long. I hope to be proven wrong, but I don't expect it
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u/Grenrion Sep 22 '26
From what I have seen it's really just the skyborn zones. Everything else they have added just feels like classic, riverglades, dalaran and the new dungeons all feel more like classic which makes the skyborn so interesting on why they are so different besides the obvious retail art design.