So Much to Sort Through: New Character Models

There's a ton of stuff to deal with given the recent announcement of our blast into the past (that somehow threatens the present, apparently?) But I figured the easiest thing to touch on was character models.

Blizzard has been talking about revamping the old vanilla races for a long time, and now we're finally getting a look at them.

I think Blizzard has really accomplished what they set out to do. The overall silhouette and theme of the various races remains the same, but they look… just… so… much… better.

So far, we've seen the most of the Orcs (in fact, the new Garrosh model was basically our preview for that) but we're also seeing the male Dwarf in the intro cinematic. Additionally, male Undead, female Dwarves, female Gnomes, and male Tauren have shown up as well.

They're all in their underwear, but you get a very good sense of them:

These were all found on MMO-Champion, along with a whole lot of other pictures, and they are from the Blizzcon art panel.

Really, I think these will work out great. There's no sense of them replacing the look of your old characters - they're just updating them. (Yes, I would have liked Tauren with necks, but that guy looks great, so I can't complain.)

We have yet to see Night Elves, Trolls (unless you count the Council of Elders in ToT, specifically Sul and Mar'li,) or Humans, and it remains unknown whether the Burning Crusade races will be included in the revamp. Personally, I think that the Blood Elves and Draenei (especially the Draenei, given their prominence in this expansion) definitely deserve to be included, but the Goblins and Worgen are probably good enough (personally, I don't think they look any worse than the Pandaren.) [EDIT: Yes, apparently everything before Cataclysm is getting an update, so hooray for Draenei and Blood Elves! They even said that once they are done with the vanilla/BC races, they might also take a look at the Cataclysm races, though this is definitely on the back-burner.)

Actually, it will be really exciting to have my Worgen toons no longer jump six years in graphics every time they use Two Forms. Ok, granted they'll be jumping forward four, but… Worgen look awesome now.

More analysis to come, but I figured I'd get this one out of the way. This is pure good. Hooray!