I find the HOTS style better because IT IS STILL SAMWIZE, while WoW since TBC and onwards has been Wei Jiang and other artists with a mishmash of art no one knows if it is warcraft anymore, and later we got MoP which blizzard went full Dreamworks and Pixar, which they ripoff til this day because the morons who still plays that crap loves the pixar style.
If i am to give a good example of how to remaster the old to new while keeping the aesthetic of the original, i'll mention what Bethesda did to morrowind Assets in Curse of the Tribunal, where is still the original armor from the original concept art adapted to skyrim's artstyle from the late Adam Adamcowicz
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Ingame style of WoW is still for most part decent artleast for ingame style cutscenes like Crossroads and alike. The sort we saw sometimesfrom Wotlk (Fall of the Lichking scene for one or Garrosh being an impulsive manchild and attacking Varian earlier), those were very much still done under Samwise or sprouting directly form his preestablished direction. BFA Jaina is also closest we got to proper looking Jaina as far as her face goes, HoTS Jaina is quite different to Wc3 one including the colourscheme. I enjoy the look of HoTS but its it's own thing ultimately as i said earlier.
I would never try to shift Wc3 off its original style too excessively. I do like newer terrain textures, they are atleast faithful to original coourschemes nad designs for most parts, RF HD ones arent, and were stupidly changed for no good reason. We have best reference in wallpapers and treasure trove of Samwise's own artwork for Wc3, Frozen Throne, and his private and unused art that was on Sons of the Storm page, aswell as most of the work he did for early WoW. Wc3's texturing should still try to emulate Samwise's own colouring and shading just as it did with original assets. While only changes should be mild fixes and tweaks to make it properly uniform as some assets are far older than others(Footman for instance) and have tons of minor mishaps or issues or bad execution(RoC Demon Hunter/Illidan tattooes being very crude and pixelated vs his TFT model, where its more tidy and drawn on properly.
Meshwork should be pretty much what War3HD models are with the faces and details being identical just in higher fidelity to originals, as they did drift off wildly in some cases (Orcish heroes having generic WoW orc mugs even more exaggerated than in WoW; Paladin/Uther looks like a sad shepard dog instead of stoicly powerful and respect inducing mentor and warrior that will smash orcs into smooth paste) in some cases less so (Keeper looking a bit different and having different beard etc). Deathknight looks pretty spot on for HD Arthas both a living and undead version. Texturing is also ever so slightly off and a bit too preoccupied with more modern way to space things out, making perhaps at tiny bit more challenging to do good reskins as we saw for classic models.
However animations and for most part proportions and overall look are PERFECT and i think this should be the basis off which a truly well executed remaster of Wc3 should've been made/should be made.
WoW atleast stuck to drawn like aesthetic, and didnt turn itself into glossy "hyper-realistic" nightmare that most modern games seem to be preoccupied at becoming. It's still pleasant to look at, definetly much more than RF which is vomit inducing, regardless of "Quenching" it or not, its just bad and needless implementation of technology that noone really needed in an isometric RTS/RPG game with occassional upsclose scenes. If WoW is well off with way it is designed in current year, why the hell change Wc3 into something it was never ever meant to be? It still bothers me because it did poison the well and all the bigger projects that happened since Reforged launched adopt it's hedious style and it will just stay that way.
If it was done correctly in the first place we would not have this discussion and everything in the community would be unified under same aesthetic, and older assets could coexist with refreshed ones within reason. The leak only shows they would still be off the base but in different direction and perhaps to lesser degree instead of following up on something that was Nigh-perfect.(and for the record i do love some SC2 War3HD models with almost no gripes held: most Demons except Infernals Dark Ranger, Warden, Sentry/Ghost of Vengeance, Human tower, and especially Priestess of the Moon and Crypt Lord and his beetles are all very well made.)
