In the midst of all of the anger directed at Blizzard right now, I wanted to give a special thanks to the art and design team.

I'm no expert on game design, nor am I quite sure how teams work at Blizzard, or how the game design process goes between mechanics and art.

But with all the justified salt flying regarding the poor mechanical aspects of BFA, along with Ion's AMA that wasn't really an AMA so much as an AMWIHPAF (Ask Me What I Have Prepared Answers For).....the best thing about the expansion, in my opinion, is the art and design.

The cinematics. The Warbringer videos. The zones. The allied races. The leveling experience. Most, if not everything that was done by the design team was done wonderfully. The mechanics feel hacky and poorly thought out, but there was a lot of love poured into the design/cosmetic aspects of the game that's hard to ignore.

As an example, I found myself exploring the different areas of Boralus. In the upper class area where Lady Proudmoore hangs out, there's a cat lady house. They could've just built a house and threw in some cats. Nope.

• The cats get different fur colors/models to show their weights and breeds.
• The cats are all named individually and each has its own little animation based on where it's sitting in the house.
• The house is full of knocked-over items and clutter to make it look like the cats are just having a ball in there.
• The cat lady herself gets a custom animation to show her HOLDING one of the cats.

Boralus in general has taken on the same "living city" aspects that Suramar had, except we actually get to hang out and enjoy the city rather than constantly dodge elite mobs without a moment's rest. There's people walking around and selling stuff. There's a friggen toy vendor that sells actual BOA toys. There's inns, diners, libraries, a military academy. Even the hostile area where you do your world quests is populated and richly decorated - it makes SENSE that there'd be a shittier part of town where you could get mugged at any moment.

This doesn't stop once you get to the questing zones. They're fucking gorgeous, and the quests they provide are all pretty engaging and interesting for the most part (aside from a few). Even the 7th Legion zones are gorgeous in their own way - they REALLY hit the nail on the head with the general atmosphere of the different zones.

I don't like a lot of what they've done to the game mechanically. Whoever's making those decisions seems to be taking shots in the dark and missing every single mark.

But the visual aesthetics, the design of the world itself, and the cinematics? This is what I think of when I think of Blizzard.

Submitted September 17, 2018 at 09:57PM by QuantumDrej https://ift.tt/2pgbeni