Did they or were they just copying Warcraft 3 art style with higher poly count? Or were they continuing the old pre-Warcraft 3 prototype and expanding it into something else?
The thing about cartooney art style vs a realistic one is that it ages better, but they had no way of knowing it would reach globe-shattering popularity. The only thing they can know is that it's a bit less resource intensive (to make and to display). Keep in mind something 2D would be even less resource intensive.
I'm pretty sure, based on nothing at all but playing the game for a decade or so, that all character animation in world of warcraft is either motion capture, or extremely painstaking animation. Poly counts and cartoonish texturing had very little to do with why the game looked good and aged well. It was the animation that made the difference.
World of Warcraft at launch had relatively low polygon count models and worked flawlessly on low-spec graphics hardware, but the animation was spectacular and miles beyond what any of its competition was doing. The feet of a moving model actually touched the ground as if it were a solid object; literally every other MMO I played from that era had models where the run or walk animation was completely decoupled from movement speed, with feet sliding around disconnected from the ground.
In addition, WoW had coherent and consistent art direction with characters, enemies, and environments all feeling like part of a thematic whole.
Blizzard had clearly spent ridiculous amounts of time and money on the visuals of the game, the animation in particular. They just did it while targeting low-spec hardware to avoid limiting their audience.
There’s a very big difference between cheap for the game developer to make, and supporting cheap hardware.
> something 2D would be even less resource intensive
But then you lose the players that value immersion, who I suspect are also more likely to drive word-of-mouth promotion.
I would not have played WoW nearly as much as I did, or encouraged others to do so, without the option to go first person and turn off (almost) all UI elements-- being able to fully dive into the art design and feel like I was there was more than half the appeal to me. Other MMOs that went 2D/isometric never kept me engaged as long.
> But then you lose the players that value immersion
Depends on player, but to me all MMORPGs feel less like an environment and more off an Amusement parks.
Because events in them are designer driven and not player driven. Could players cause Cataclysm or liberate a city for a day or a month? No. Because designers want to appease a mass of players, they make events repeatable, which cheapens the significance of event (you get an achievement, and you get an achievement).
Compare this to something 2D but more systemic like SS13, where unintentional actions of a single individual e.g. a clown puting a bag of holding in another bag of holding can completely change the round. I.e. spawn a life-threatening singularity that might destroy the station.
Or hell a sabotage by a spy might have side effects. Lets say a spy trying to cause a blackout to eliminate his target unintentionally unleashes a horde of monkeys, infected by the furry virus, from captivity. Monkeys in turn unleash a dangerous space kudzu which results in station being plagued by both a literal furry plague, a bunch of violent apes and a sentient and malevolent plant.
The thing about cartooney art style vs a realistic one is that it ages better, but they had no way of knowing it would reach globe-shattering popularity. The only thing they can know is that it's a bit less resource intensive (to make and to display). Keep in mind something 2D would be even less resource intensive.