It doesn't seem that long ago that the Worgen and Goblins were the brand-new, shiny races in WoW. But at the risk of reminding everyone of the cold and indifferent passage of time, these guys joined the game almost four years ago. For me, that's half my time playing the game, and while they're still technically on the newer side of things (coming six years into a ten-year-old game,) the fact is that they're really not that new anymore.
The Pandaren are, of course, as similar in age as a playable thing as it can be to them, coming out in the very next expansion. But while the Cataclysm races were an incredible step up from the vanilla races, and a noticeable step up from the BC races, in truth, they're already showing their age.
One of the most exciting features of Warlords of Draenor is the character model revamp. They've done a good job so far of making them look better without being too different (and that's a process that's still ongoing,) and in many cases the revamp is doing some really remarkable things (the Tauren look a hell of a lot better, for example, if you ask me.)
But while the BC races are officially in, and in fact both varieties of Draenei are already revamped on the Beta (presumably they were prioritized given their huge role in Warlords,) the Cata races are most likely not going to get worked on until all the others are done, if ever.
Now, minus the "if ever," that's perfectly correct. The fact is that if you compare a current human or dwarf model to a worgen, it's just not fair.
But there are a few things that could be touched up.
Now, I know that the Worgen Female model is a really big sticking point with a lot of people, but for whatever reason I tend to create characters of my own gender, and I'm a guy, so it isn't something I can comment on all that intelligently. But the first thing that comes to mind is facial rigging.
The thing that blew people away about the Pandaren was their range of facial expressions. It was kind of a revelation, in that we now realized just how limited our current models are. The Pandaren can laugh and cry and scrunch up her mouth to one side or squint solemnly in mediation. The older models, even including the Worgen, can basically flap their jaw about and look in different directions.
And beyond that, there's still some clipping and animation issues that pop up as well. Shields and some Two-Handed weapons on Male Worgen have to go through their cloaks. There's that annoying freaking flip-leap that my Warrior does with every. single. attack.
Goblins I know got a bit more in the way of facial expressions, but I don't think they've quite got the Pandaren range either (while I like Goblins a lot, I just don't play Horde as often, and my only real Goblin character is my second Hunter, who has never been at the current level cap.)
Given that it looks like we could very well get all or nearly all of the vanilla/BC races revamped by the time Warlords comes out, I hope that the modeling team at Blizzard can spare a little look at the Cataclysm races. Obviously it wouldn't be as drastic a revamp, and may in fact be hard to notice, if it's done well. But for those of us who are obsessive about this, it would be deeply appreciated (and also could mean great stuff for machinima, which they stated as one of their motivations for the revamp in the first place.
Pandaren are probably fine. I don't think we need a constant cycle of model revamps.
No comments:
Post a Comment