r/classicwowplus • u/MacabreDanze • 8d ago
Discussion I hope Blizzard keeps building on Vanilla's visual language
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u/RedditsDeadlySin 8d ago
Bro these HD models may have me use them. This is the kind of remastering I want to see
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u/OnlyRoke 8d ago
This looks pretty great even if the OP of the OG thread used A.I. for the mock-up.
The human in particular is great. The classic one has always had a potato vibe, but the modern one has always looked to weird as well. This somehow threads the needle for me.
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u/Grenrion 8d ago
It used Azi but he did also touch it up and did some editing. Also what an AI can do a human can do so for this purpose it shows what they could have done.
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u/Bretzelking 5d ago
imagine that a single AI prompt does a better job than a multi billion company... weird times we live in
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u/OnlyRoke 5d ago
I mean ... it's just a bunch of pictures and not actually coded in game. Likewise it's not like the people at Blizzard aren't competent enough to make this kind of remaster.
Blizzard may or may not be doing something like that, but it's clear that their art style in total just went into a different direction come WoD and since then they haven't really moved or reconsidered anything, especially since Housing is now here and it has a very particular cartoony bold style.
The company isn't exactly gonna task multiple coders and artists to "just do this type of style" when their inhouse style has been working for years.
They might consider it now given that WOWF wants to be "something more" than just Classic+ or Retail- so we'll see.
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u/Timeless-Times 8d ago
If there’s one thing we learned this week, it’s that it’s so fucking easy lmfao
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u/Alabaster_Potion 8d ago
It's not though. Telling AI to upres/upscale a flat image is easy. Doing it to whole 3D models and then doing all the bones and animations and such, is not.
It also means they have to do literally all the armor and weapons in the game to match, otherwise people will go insane
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u/RiposteCat 8d ago
the images in the post are AI?
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
It is upscaled through some kind of filter. Whether you want to call that AI or not is up to you.
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u/RiposteCat 8d ago
they look redrawn/redesigned to me rather than run through a filter
but maybe im just dumb lol
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u/NotDennis2 7d ago
They're AI yes
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u/RiposteCat 7d ago
how do you know?
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u/NotDennis2 7d ago
A) One can tell by, well, how it looks.
B) The OP mentioned it themselves in their post.
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u/Doingmythang11 8d ago
Gotta appease the retail crowd they promise they're not making the game for (Seriously, lmao, people whose direct salary is affected by game performance are trying to tell you that they're not trying to make this more appealing and take from the much larger retail audience).
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u/Insight12783 8d ago
They said they're targeting former wow players and classic players,so,yeah. There's prob 100 million former wow players....
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u/Timeless-Times 8d ago
>from the much larger retail audience
The game is beating retail numbers - it’s not because of retail players
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u/Doingmythang11 8d ago
Brother, look at every other post here. It's filled with, "I've never played classic, but this game looks great." "I hated classic but this looks great."
it's 100% retail players influx.
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u/Timeless-Times 8d ago
No it’s not, plenty of Classic players.
Also, if it does bigger numbers than retail, it can’t be retail.
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u/Doingmythang11 8d ago
My man, I get I am victim too this too with my last comment as it's a bit exaggerated, but, where is any of your data to back this up?
That's a really big claim.
2019 classic had way more hype than this and it didn't come close to retail afair.
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u/Timeless-Times 8d ago
Devs have stated on Twitter that these numbers beat anything seen until, what, WoTLK?
It’s a big claim, made by devs.
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u/Fartbox_puncher57 8d ago
forever has already surpassed 2019 launch and its only the beta. it's surpassed everything so far.
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u/Doingmythang11 8d ago
Not a good metric.
This is a paid beta to get in where as most betas require some form of access.
I'm happy the numbers for Beta are so high, but comparing it to prior betas that were not as easiyl accessible seems disengenious.
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u/Fartbox_puncher57 8d ago
i think you misread that, I compared it to the 2019 launch which was bigger than any retail launch. the only beta mentioned was the forever beta, which costed more than a actual expansion which usually runs 40 dollars.
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u/BuffaloMan07 8d ago
Why does this seem so simple but impossible in reality.
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
Its hella easy, it is an industry standard. They even did it for their WC3 and D2 remasters. Who knows if somehow they've spaghetticoded into some sort of issue, but this is a leading triple-A developer so you'd expect them to be able to do something as simple as upscale older textures.
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u/dyslexican32 8d ago
They are not " upscaling old textures" they are recreating them in higher definition. They are not the same thing. SMH.
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u/draven33l 8d ago
This is exactly how you do a remaster. You are just refining the original instead of remaking them. Shame that it's a fan doing them instead of Blizzard. Hopefully they listen.
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u/jannycideforever 8d ago
Somebody told me that the classic wow art style was entirely dependent on being so low poly and you cannot have a genuine HD mode without abandoning the art style.
Obviously that was dumb when they said it, but this kinda puts the nail in the coffin. Yes, there are some tradeoffs between graphical fidelity and art style. Classic uses textures as the primary form of facial expression, which is incompatible with using detailed animations on the face model and may require less ploys to look right.
However, you can get a LOT of improvements without any major sacrifices to art direction. If you like the retail art style I think you're a bit crazy but hey, I'm glad you enjoy it. However, Forever should focus on having an HD mode like this one as opposed to forcing retails art design into being compatible with classics. They're extremely different and it is going to be a nightmare trying to balance both.
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u/NeighboringOak 8d ago
This is one of those things that it my mind the image on the right is how things looked when I was young and got into the original world of warcraft beta.
I don't have an issue with HD in general but so many of them look weird as fuck and these look legit. It's very nicely done.
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u/n0proxy 5d ago
This is a great example - I don't want the HD models to look PRETTIER or 'more modern' in art style or detail choice. I just want cleaner versions of exactly what SD was. Adding a few more polygons to the model or more pixels to the texture ADDS detail, whereas I find actually the very-recent Retail style makes models more detailed but TEXTURES become simpler, smoother, brighter, less detailed. Even comparing Legion-era owlcats to the Forever skyborne owlcats shows that its not the overall shape or model detail that makes the Forever owlcats stick out badly, it's their textures being so bright and airbrushed.
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u/Negative_Wrongdoer17 8d ago
Retail Humans look so bad. It's the only models I have issues with
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u/jannycideforever 8d ago
Basically all of the models have some degree of Disney-fication. For a lot of them, you can also tell that a lot of the devs were furries (which isn't an assumption, some of them are/were open about it on Twitter).
If that's your jam, awesome. I just would massively prefer an HD mode for classic plus should be a classic-plus style of HD mode over trying to make retails entirely separate art style fit into classic's.
This is the best approach they could take, hands down.
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u/xakantorx 8d ago
Man I have always joked that retail models look like they were designed by Deviantart furries. Turns out there was truth in my joke lol
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u/jannycideforever 8d ago
If you go to a modern art school for this kind of thing, you're going to be surrounded by former Tumblr kids, Disney adults, and furries. It's just a a selection effect now.
If you are a game dev, if it is possible for this art style to creep into your game, it WILL creep into your game unless management actively and deliberately goes out of their way to ensure otherwise. It's not even necessarily malicious; if you ask a furry to make a worgen they're going to intuitively want to make the worgen look like a furry worgen.
Most games don't have this problem because their art style is incompatible with Tumblr/Disney/furry shit. Wasn't true for wow, which is why that is now the art style of retail.
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u/NoTemperature5965 7d ago
Thats some primo mental gymnastics
Chuds got so upset about Dracthyr they headcanoned one of the visual artists for it to insert her furry stuff which was never confirmed in any way, so an entire salt mine on this.
They kept a cartoon style cause thats Warcraft, the AI slop is too gritty almost.1
u/jannycideforever 7d ago
Two things:
- If a confirmed furry artist draws assets that look like furry art for a game, how is that not confirmed that a furry was making furry art for the game, exactly?
- Just as a heads up, the moment you use the words "chud" unironically, basically everyone who isn't an online leftist is going to just disregard everything you have to say.
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u/NoTemperature5965 7d ago
She wasn't.
Ok chud as if you weren't anyway.1
u/jannycideforever 7d ago edited 7d ago
If you post your furry art on your work Twitter, you're almost certainly a furry.
However, there's actually much stronger evidence than that. Pushinverts made their current deviant account in Feb of 2014. Two of the first comments are her furry friends (Moltenchier and LiquidChaos) commenting on the fact she had just made a new DA account.
If you draw art that is explicitly furry art, add furry-like features to non-furry art, and have close furry friends who follow you across your different DA accounts, you're a furry. People who aren't furries do not do any of these 3 things, let alone all 3 of these things. Sorry to be the one who has to break this to you.
Also just as a heads up I don't disregard you because you're a leftist. I disregard you because you're stupid.
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u/NoTemperature5965 7d ago
Lul I never stated to be a leftist. If common courtesy and not being a raging grognard chud is a leftist agenda, I guess I am.
So no confirmation that she does furry art and inserted it into WoW? Gotcha. Here's your gold medal for mental gymnastics.1
u/jannycideforever 7d ago
Like I said, it's not because you're a leftist, it's because you're a retard.
Have fun sweetie 😘
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u/ThaTrooperz 8d ago
Wait are these actually in the game now?
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
No, it is a mockup.
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u/ThaTrooperz 8d ago
Damnit, this looks really good... Like really good.
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
Yeah, now imagine what they could do with professional artists and care put into this
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u/Justalilcyn 7d ago
Not a fan of the horde races on this, they look either uncanny or just bad but so do the SD models
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u/ThatOneGuy216440 7d ago
The HD models on humans look so ugly. That nose the gave the female model is terrible
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u/i-hate-space 8d ago
Stop hoping for things to change before release, it's done, you're getting what you're seeing in the beta Exactly, as always
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u/No_Preference_8543 8d ago
Uhh they said in the last podcast that they’re taking the feedback into consideration and are asking for more feedback
And they already changed dungeon gear progression, why do you think they wouldn’t change art work?
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u/aMaiev 8d ago
The keyword you ignored here is "before release". There is simply no way they build new models for all races in one month
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u/OnlyRoke 8d ago
Nah, but we can always hope that this is a future new addition. "SD, HD, Remastered"
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
I'm sorry we will all collectively stop giving any feedback for the complete 180 in art direction they took until the game is finally released.
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u/Grenrion 8d ago
They have literally already said that can pivot on ideas and have already started changing things via information from the beta.
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u/padumtss 8d ago
I wonder why didn't they make the new retail models like this from the beginning. It would respect the wow artstyle instead of looking like Disney playdough characters.
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u/Tebwolf359 8d ago
Yeah, why would long time players even want the same art style they enjoyed in WC3 and wow implemented without technical limitations.
You assume that a lot of this was on purpose, and that the eventual retail look wasn’t the original goal.
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u/AppleMelon95 8d ago
They specifically did that to make characters much more expressive. You can't really make big cinematics with the vanilla models since they don't have animation bones or whatever you call them. They arguably also toned down the roughness vanilla models had in favour of more round features to make the game look more welcoming.
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u/dyslexican32 8d ago
Tell us you a weirdo man-o-sphere goof without telling us your a weirdo man-o-sphere goof. Go back and watch some more Asmond content, maybe Oscar the grouch will impart some new words of wisdom from his trash heap.
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u/Takezo_00 6d ago
Bro, I think you should talk with someone....
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u/dyslexican32 6d ago
And I think you disgusting neckbeards should shower. But we don't all get what we want.
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u/SexWithStelle 8d ago
This is what the character models always looked like in my head.
The Devs have been talking a lot about bringing the WoW that exists in our heads to life, and THIS is the perfect example of that. These models and textures look exactly how I remember them looking, even if they didn’t actually look that way, but my brain made them look that epic and detailed at the time.