A modern comic graphics in World of Warcraft? A glance at Mulgore makes this dream come true for a short time.
World of Warcraft has, with its nearly 18 years, gone through quite a long time. Occasionally, the wish arises among some fans to update the graphics. Some take on this task at least partially and recreate some locations from WoW in the Unreal Engine – often in a more realistic style. Now someone has rebuilt Mulgore while maintaining the comic style.
You can view the beautiful result here.
What can be seen? The roughly 30-second clip shows the streets of Mulgore, the starting area of the Tauren in World of Warcraft. In the background, you see the large mountains of Thunder Bluff, and in the foreground, a totem alongside scattered trees and the green plains of the vast area.
Although the area is only shown briefly and from a single camera angle, it clearly shows how beautiful the whole thing could look.
How was this done? The Reddit user todtodson took on the task of assembling available assets from another Blizzard game and, along with some self-created content, pieced together the rough design of Mulgore. Many of the objects come from Overwatch, Blizzard’s shooter, which also relies on a stylized comic graphics but is significantly more modern than that of World of Warcraft.
This is how other players react: They are quite enthusiastic. In the WoW subreddit, the video received almost 4,000 upvotes in less than a day and an approval rating of 95%. Many note that this is a much prettier style than many other attempts to put WoW into new graphics – as such attempts have always occurred in the past, often sacrificing the charm of the comic graphics.
So writes ComeNalgas:
Man, I would love nothing more than a WoW 2 with a modern engine. It would be glorious. They wouldn’t even have to change the core gameplay. Just balance things out and start fresh.
Banadona feels similarly:
This style could actually work well for WoW. It wouldn’t age as quickly and is still cartoonish enough that the original would be recognizable.
Diifficulty_Mirror_517 also starts dreaming:
This is everything I never knew I needed for WoW.
Although there are also some voices that believe this graphics would ruin the charm of WoW, most seem to respect the effort that has gone into this small project.
What do you think about it? A nice idea and at least a small glimpse of how a modern WoW could look without losing its comic charm? Or would this graphic style simply be inappropriate for WoW?
