A Story in a Loading Screen

While waiting for Stratholme* to load the other day I got to thinking about how the loading screens reflect the design principles in World of Warcraft. 

Not necessarily instances, since their loading screens are meant to evoke a locale for the instance, 

From Wowpedia because I was lazy this time.**

but the loading screens for places such as the Old World.

From Wikia because I had trouble finding
my own copy.

The Vanilla/Vanilla Classic loading screen for the Eastern Kingdoms is a good example of what I kept turning over in my head. It's plenty raw as far as graphics goes, but it's designed to evoke certain aspects of the various races whose starting zone is in the Eastern Kingdoms: Humans, Forsaken, Gnomes, and Dwarves. There's a Human Paladin, a Forsaken Rogue, a Dwarven Hunter, and a Gnome... Something? But hey, the Gnome is on a Mechanostrider, so at least there's that.

then The Burning Crusade expansion dropped, and with the arrival of Draenei and Blood Elves the loading screens changed:

From Wowwiki. Yes, lazy again.

The Human is now a Mage, the Forsaken is now a Priest (I think), the Blood Elf is the Paladin ("That's a Blood Knight!" --Quintalan), the Dwarf remains a Hunter, and the Gnome is... Maybe another Mage? I like to think she's a Warlock, since she's got my questing buddy's attitude all over her, but either way she's definitely a caster of some sort. Nevertheless, the look is more professional than Vanilla's version yet still evokes the essence of WoW: a game where you can drive the story by being who you want to be. 

Times come and go, and the ages pass. No, not a riff on The Wheel of Time --okay, maybe it is just a little-- and Wrath drops. This is the expac I started with, so this was what I was most familiar with when I started playing:

From Wowwiki. Again.

The Dwarf Priest gets some love here, along with the Blood Elf Mage ("About time!" --Neve), the "Small but Mighty!" Gnome Warrior, Forsaken Rogue (guessing here, because of the weapon hidden by the Mage), and the Human Warrior (because Paladins don't use daggers) Rogue. (Corrected by Shintar, but I was right about that not being a Paladin!) By looking at the graphics of the loading screen alone, WoW has grown up. It's no longer rough around the edges, and unlike previous expacs you don't get the impression that different artists created different toons on the loading screen and were then jumbled together into a mish-mash.###

WoW had a unified vision that people were moving toward.

Then Cataclysm dropped, and that vision became even more evident:

Wowwiki once more.

From that point onward, in late Fall of 2010, World of Warcraft's Old World featured the faction leaders based in each continent. 

If you ever needed evidence that the focus of the game --and the plots involved-- shifted from the players to the faction leaders, there it was in full color. Considering faction warfare was to be a primary focus in Cataclysm --and the associated media that Blizz released with Cataclysm-- it made sense, but the thing is, Blizzard kept this same loading screen through both Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria. It was only in Warlords of Draenor that we then received our final update to the loading screen:

What's with the lips?
Wowwiki again.

Okay, so what gives with the artwork? Oh, not the bottom four on the graphic, but Varian and Sylvanas in the upper left and right respectively. All of them have a cartoony feel to them compared to the more realistic look from Cata/Mists, but Varian and Sylvanas are pretty much over the top. And apparently this is how things have stayed in WoW, because I logged into Retail this morning on my L1 bank alt on Ysera-US and snagged this loading screen:

Uh... Isn't this out of date?

Isn't Varian dead? and Sylvanas replaced? And... Oh, nevermind. 

Okay, the point isn't that it's out of date, it's that Blizzard has provided us what their vision of the game is right here in front of us. I suppose you could say that in terms of focus the game has calcified, given that late Fall of 2014 was the last time the Old World loading screens were updated. Over 8 years ago. 

Say what you will about the old loading screens, but at least the promise of an open world to explore was there. And that promise was lost as the focus changed from an open world to a very specific story featuring, well, NOT YOU. Oh, you're there, of course, but you're at the beck and call of those truly featured in WoW. As much as they may call you the Champion in game, you're conveniently in the background when the real players come on stage.*** Maybe these loading screens are meant to inspire you, but give me generic races and classes in the Vanilla-BC-Wrath days. At least the inspiration then was "play a character like this" instead of "play someone in the service of these people".

*One of the things I've started doing under the header "making my own fun" has been to enter into places such as Stratholme on my L80 toons and do some creative farming. There's still plenty of demand for Runecloth these days, so I can always sell what I get, but for those toons that never got a T0 set in WoW Classic this is a chance for me to fill in that gap. That gear may not have been "Meta" or "BiS", but I truly liked the look of those sets. Now that I think about it, only Cardwyn 1.0 got the complete T0 set. Azshandra was close, but I think she's missing the shoulders or something.

**Did you know that you had to use a product such as Snip and Sketch to grab the loading screens? I discovered this when I began capturing them for posterity's sake and good ol' Print Screen wasn't working; all I kept getting were the areas hidden by the loading screen.

***As it has been since Burning Crusade. I saw the end of Sunwell Plateau back when my Horde guild did it back in late Wrath, and it was Velen and Liadrin who did almost all of the talking. 

###EtA: Thanks to Grimmtooth for pointing out that The Blood Elf Mage in Wrath's loading screen is done by Genzoman, which means that multiple artists' work were used on Wrath's Old World loading screens as well. It's just that those loading screens were a lot closer together in style than, say, the Vanilla loading screens. If you want to see more of Genzoman's artwork, you can find it here on DeviantArt. Just be aware that you have to have an account to see some of it, due to its adult nature.