World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor will add completely new player models for the game’s oldest races.
Can you believe World of Warcraft first came out back in 2004, almost ten years ago? While the game’s new races, such as the Worgen, Goblins and the Pandaren, have nice, modern models, the original eight races: Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Undead, Tauren, Trolls and Orcs, are starting to look a little rough around the edges. Warlords of Draenor, the latest WoW expansion, aims to change that, giving a much-needed face lift to the game’s oldest player models.
The new models are a substantial increase in polygons from their old versions. The old Dwarf male, for example, had 1,160 polygons and was mirrored on both sides. The new model is 7,821 polygons, has higher texture resolutions, and the face doesn’t have to be symmetrical anymore. Some other cool new features of the new models include animated hair (including facial hair!), and capes being animated using the new model’s bones to flow more naturally.
Check out the images below, which feature the Orc male, male and female Gnome, male and female Dwarf, and the Undead male:
Blizzard is currently working on the Dwarf female, Tauren male, and female Troll models, and promises that all of the original eight races, as well as The Burning Crusade‘s Blood Elves and Draenei, will receive new models for the upcoming expansion pack.
This seems like a lot of work to put into such an aging engine, it makes you wonder why they don’t just start from scratch with WoW 2 or something?
Source: MMO Champion
