World of Warcraft dev blog details character model revamps

World of Warcraft players have long been clamoring for updated character models, as many of the Vanilla races lacked the level of detail (and wrists, in the case of Humans and Orcs) seen in more recent races such as the Pandaren. In light of that, World of Warcraft's senior art director, Chris Robinson, has posted a new dev blog on the game's official site that gives players an inside look at the process behind the model redesigns, which are planned to hit the game alongside Warlords of Draenor or sometime thereafter.

Robinson notes that the team is looking at the model revamps as "a sort of 'spiritual update' to the art content that currently exists in-game." So while the team is rebuilding everything from scratch, the goal is "to do so while retaining the core look and feel that has always made them your character." To give an idea of the scale of these updates, Robinson states that the team is increasing polygon count (sometimes going from "less than 1,000 to over 5,000"), "more than doubling" texture resolution, "increasing bone count significantly to support updated animation and facial expression," and even "retouching nearly every animation for all of the characters." If you want every last detail about the process (and some preview shots of the finished product), just click on over to the official post below.