Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

in my eyes, this style is far superior, atmospheric, just better fitting warcraft.. i ask why didnt they style entire wow like this, did the w3 designers retire or what

wow has lost a lot of life in its design compared to this w3 screens

Blizzard lost they're touch

Early versions of the WoW beta and alpha looked quite different in terms of scale and design.

Back in the day when Warcraft 3 was under development Blizzard were initially promoting the idea of it being a "Role-Playing Strategy" game rather than a traditional RTS like Warcraft 2, Starcraft or Command & Conquer. In early 2000 this video was distributed on gaming magazine CDs/DVDs (way before Youtube and other streaming sites were a thing although IIRC FileFront may have had it up for download?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcFIMEXqDFI

Shortly after this video was released Blizzard switched tack and announced that they were reverting Warcraft 3 to a traditional top-down RTS with some RPG elements. I'm pretty sure they realised internally at the time that the early builds of Warcraft 3 had potential as a completely different type of multi-player game as internet access became more prevalent and those builds formed the prototype of what would eventually become World of Warcraft a few years later.

Their first approach on World of Warcraft DID look somewhat like this but they chose to go with a different design.
I liked the cartoonish style, but I wouldn't mind playing a more warcraft 3ish game either.

Oh fuck yes