WoW Petopia Community

Blizzard why didn't you hire fans that can do this crap?

Would be so epic to see them hire fans that can update models better .

a quick correction: it's "would this have", not "would this of".

regarding the changes in question, I don't see why the characters really need to be in such high resolution. We see them from so far away most of the time. As I almost only play B.Elves, I'd have liked to see a tiny bit more variety of facial hair - not huge beards or anything (like humans), just a bit more variety.

Sukurachi wrote:a quick correction: it's "would this have", not "would this of".

As a fellow grammar nazi I couldn't help but fix the typo

I'm fine with the models but I would love more hair style and color options across the races.

I like the models we have now just fine

Frankly I liked the old models and don't appreciate that the option for using them for elven models was taken away when Demon Hunters were added. I had to change my character's face for the first time ever, because the "new" one looked nothing like the old.

The models we have now are fine, but I don't see why we couldn't have some traits from fan models as options. I like the human female's hair style a lot, and a more mature male BE face is always welcomed. I've also always wished that they'd raise the head of female BEs a bit so they weren't looking down slightly, and closed the female tauren's mouth..

Right now though I just think we need subraces. I know it'd be a lot of work but it'd add so much to character customization. Dark iron dwarves, half elves (for both factions), Mag'har/brown orcs + straight back option, Highmountain tauren, taunka, various trolls (forest, etc.), wildhammer dwarves, and so on.

Would also appreciate smaller cosmetic options such as scars, more piercings, new faces, new hairstyles, tattoos, war paint, etc.

Oh and let's not forget worgen and goblin, the two races that still need new models. They're looking more and more outdated... and I hope they're pretty liberal with the female worgen, because I don't think people would mind if they got a complete overhaul. Personally, I hope they make faces with and without the perma-snarl, and bring back the glowing eyes and prettier hair styles.

I would kill for tauren antlers.

Tankperson wrote:I'm fine with the models but I would love more hair style and color options across the races.

Seconded! The lack of options for some of the races is shameful. This is the sort of thing that could have easily been added during the model revamp.

I suspect Zed's post is at least partially, if not completely, right on this. They do slip in some updated models but only a few at a time and it seems they need some justification for spending time on them. Many of the uprezzes we received this time were really lovely (ignoring the pre-fix hipster bears ), but it'd take a huge amount of work and money to do the rest of the models the same way in one development cycle, and would cut heavily into expansion development.

As for the topic on hand, the fan-made blood elf designs are lovely but I don't know enough to understand whether they were a practical option or if there are reasons Blizzard chose as they did. I don't mind the in-game models anyway. The only character models that I really wish they'd re-worked in a different way to the original are female worgen and Tauren, both of which feel untrue to their race themes to me. To me they both feel as if the creators were terrified of them being unpopular if they weren't skinny and curvy but they ended up weird instead.

For me, those fan-art redo's are too close to uncanny valley for my liking. One of the reasons WoW has so much appeal is that the character/NPC models maintain decent detail while not being too realistic looking. Blizzard has done really well with the cartoony style and it's a style that has lasted, gosh, what are we at, 12-13 years now. It's a thing that ages well, especially as they work on updating stuff within their frame of work/game engine.

I... have mixed feelings on those particular fanmade models. They're incredibly well done but they don't feel like they'd fit in the game as it stands—they're too high poly and the texture work on the blood elves is too realistic (while the texture work and overall style on the human feels like it'd fit in a korean MMO; the face and hairstyle in particular feels very similar to something you'd see in Aion or what have you). Don't get me wrong, I do really like that style, but it definitely feels inconsistent, like seeing a MLP mod being used in L4D. Okay, maybe not that extreme but you know what I'm getting at.

That said, I'm still really salty about new character models because there are still SO many problems with them. The vast majority of those problems, at least from my perspective, are texture-based which makes it extra frustrating because if I was willing to risk my account I could fix them myself (and I have, at least in theory and for some of the issues). Dwarf hair colours, tauren death knight fur colours, the colouration of some of the night elf faces (as linked above). They're such easy fixes and they won't ever get fixed because it's been too long, they let the models go live with the incorrect textures, it's been over TWO YEARS and they're still not faithful to the old models and too many people have created and recustomized characters without referencing the old. The only way we're going to get our old characters back is if they add new faces and hair colours and fix the bug with class-specific skins/faces in the dressing room or add skin to it or make recustomizations (minus the gender swap) free and they will never

NEVER

do any of that.

There are actual model and animation problems with the new models that haven't been fixed as well (someone on a different thread was talking about the female BE bow animation being off, though it's looked awful to me since BE went into the game so I never looked too closely since then, and there are female dwarf and female draenei hair styles that are so far off from their originals that you could never mistake one for the other) and those are things that I don't have the skillset to fix, but textures are well within my purview and I wish they would accept outside volunteerism for that. I know why they won't, but I still wish they would anyway. As it stands all I can do is scream into the void and be upset about it and have that make absolutely zero difference. I want to help, I'm willing to help, I'd love to get paid to help but let's be real, I am not about that fair wage lifestyle when it comes to stuff I'm genuinely passionate about, and I'm passionate about the visuals in a twelve year old video game :P

Edit: a lot of the reason that "fanwork" tends to outclass "actually in-game work" is because fanwork typically doesn't have a deadline; I can spend several days working on fixing the black/blue tauren death knight skin without interruption but a texture dude at blizzard has to do all the skins plus probably a bunch of tier sets or weapon skins and unique models or recolours for the next dungeon/raid and probably another murloc or seven in that same time frame. Not to say that Blizzard's art is rushed (though yes, sometimes it is) but more that they have different priorities than fanartists do, and they can't necessarily nuture a personal project in the same way. I mean, when they can it's fantastic! But it's not quite the same—almost by definition, every fanartist's fanart IS a personal project (unless it was a commission, then it was someone ELSE'S personal project but y'know, lol). 'course, probably not saying anything that's not already common knowledge, but... I dunno man. I just wish I didn't have to beg a GM for a recustomization for my druid when 7.0 was en route and I knew old model NE would no longer be available, or that I didn't feel like I had to spend nearly $100 fixing other characters via race changes cos there was no way to make them look right on their new models, and that I didn't still have at least seven more characters that are in the same boat but are too low priority to spend the $25 on :(

I'm happy for the most part with all the updates. I did have to switch like two faces for my characters, but generally I like the higher resolution. The only things that could make me happier would be more hair styles (and colors) and re-texturing the old gear that I adore (98% of my mogs seem to all use vanilla gear >.>) to suit the new high resolution models...and tattoos

The fan-made females look a little too...anime?...for me. I think slightly too soft and doe-eyed? I like them better as they are now.

Takanuka wrote:Blizzard why didn't you hire fans that can do this crap?

Would be so epic to see them hire fans that can update models better .

One thing that has to be taken into consideration, is no matter how much better one could redesign/re-imagine any of the races, they are all bound to the same fate... They MUST be true to the originals iterations.

If they went ahead with any of the above suggested, they unfortunately do not look similar enough to the original models/style, and therefore if implemented would have received much more backlash from those whom loved the toons they had come to know/use for many a year.

If they were to add the above suggested as additional options? Sure but they would still have to be edited to match WOW's very distinct styling or they would look out of place.
(Eg. **The male BElf has a small dark pupil, and they never have ingame, **The Human female has a black outer line to everything, her hair, cloth, armor, etc. Wow does not use this style)

They have to take all of it into concentration, even down to the animations as well. With the new models came new animations and I LOVED the new Male nightelf bouncey run, enough to race change to it. But, it was not true enough to the original run (even if it was less fluid and stiff) so they axed it back to the "Carrot -> Butt" run.

So while I wholeheartedly agree these examples are beautiful, they are not of WOW's artistic style.

Tankperson wrote:I'm fine with the models but I would love more hair style and color options across the races.

And facial hair options. Every race needs a long wizard beard, not just gnomes and dwarves. I guess they get tricky to animate and set for armor clipping (but they already let gnome beards clip funny). More gnome mustaches, like a soupstrainer that completely covers the mouth, styled or not (or one of each). And 5 o'clock shadows and a four day scruff.

Xota wrote:And 5 o'clock shadows and a four day scruff.

I would SO kill to have 5 o'clock shadows for my B.Elfs... I mean, what's the use of picking the gayest looking characters if they can't keep up with fashion trends?

Definitely agree with stubble/scruff and long beards for everyone.

Lupen202 wrote:Definitely agree with stubble/scruff and long beards for everyone.

Though maybe not for the female characters... except the female dwarves. Everyone knows that real female dwarves have beards and are indistinguishable from the males.