Extreme Makeover: Human Female Edition
by JR Cook - 10 years ago show comments
Senior Art Director Chris G. Robinson knows how to do many things, the least among them being how to keep an entire community in suspense.
A series of cryptic tweets from Robinson at the beginning of the month revealed that World of Warcraft’s art team was gearing up to lift the curtain a little more on the updated character models that will be featured in patch 6.0, ushering in the Warlords of Draenor expansion in grand style. Players can expect to see higher-quality textures, more robust skeletons, and improved animations to capture characters’ personalities in ways they never could before. While a handful of models have already been revealed to the public, either via BlizzCon 2013 panels or the official Warlords of Draenor website, it’s been made clear that unveiling them will be a multi-step process, with revelations coming in waves rather than all at once.
Just days ago, the anticipation levels skyrocketed with the announcement via Twitter that the green light for the next reveal was within grasping distance, complete with a close-up photo of what appeared to be hair from the unannounced model.
This morning’s lucky recipient of the art team’s makeover was revealed early in Blizzard’s workday via what appears to be a new “Artcraft” blog series to be the Human female.
The choice to go with Humans this time around makes sense, as they are one of the most popular races in Azeroth at the moment, ringing in as the top choice in the US and for EU servers according to RealmPop (Human females were third and second in the rankings, respectively). They’re also one of the first races to be represented in Warcraft lore, making their debut in the real-time strategy games that inspired the World of Warcraft MMO. Horde fans, however, will likely be disappointed, as this addition heavily skews the model previews in the Alliance’s favor, with the Humans joining Dwarves and Gnomes versus the Horde’s solitary Orc entry.
Though female models for the Undead and Gnomes were revealed at last year’s BlizzCon during the Art of Warcraft panel, the models currently available on the Warlords of Draenor preview site or as static images on the official World of Warcraft blog have all been male up until this point, marking at least a small victory for the ladies. At the moment, the new Human females have not been added to the viewer on the expansion’s official site, but this is expected to follow shortly.
