---
title: 'WoW Forever Doesn''t Know What It Wants to Look Like | Xaryu Reacts'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9ZJxzY5CiQ'
video_id: 'o9ZJxzY5CiQ'
date: 2026-09-25
duration_sec: 1245
channel: 'Xaryu'
---

# WoW Forever Doesn't Know What It Wants to Look Like | Xaryu Reacts

> Source: [WoW Forever Doesn't Know What It Wants to Look Like | Xaryu Reacts](https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9ZJxzY5CiQ)

## Summary

The video is a reaction to Crendor's video about the visual style of WoW Forever (World of Warcraft Classic Plus). The creator discusses the controversy over whether the game should use classic, retail, or remastered graphics, and shares his opinion that the game should feature classic WoW graphics with subtle HD upgrades, similar to the StarCraft I remaster. He also highlights issues with visual consistency, such as HD models appearing in standard definition mode, and praises the environment team for their work on lighting and fog.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to the controversy** [00:00] — The video starts by introducing Crendor's video about the WoW Forever graphic style controversy, noting that Crendor is a chill and valued opinion in the community.
- **Subjective nature of graphics** [00:52] — The creator acknowledges that the graphics debate is subjective, with some wanting pure classic, some wanting retail, and some wanting a blend.
- **Creator's preference: classic plus** [01:40] — The creator states he prefers classic WoW graphics with slight upgrades, citing the StarCraft I remaster as a perfect example of this approach.
- **Disappointment with retail skeletons** [03:14] — Instead of a remaster, the creator feels Blizzard just took retail skeletons and slapped them on, which is not what he expected.
- **UI should be reimagined classic** [04:13] — The creator agrees with Crendor that the UI should be a reimagined classic UI with HD textures, not just the retail UI.
- **Wish for classic style with retail backend** [05:32] — The creator's big wish is for classic WoW style with the systemic backend of retail, and notes that the action bars are a good example of this blend.
- **HD/SD toggle inconsistency** [07:36] — The creator points out that toggling HD off doesn't affect everything, like certain mounts and druid forms, which breaks immersion.
- **Community reimagining** [09:09] — A Reddit post reimagining the owl bear form in SD style is praised, showing that a simple downgrade could win community approval.
- **Need for consistency** [11:22] — The creator emphasizes that the main issue is visual consistency—when you pick an option, everything should match that option.
- **The point is consistency, not beauty** [13:29] — The creator argues that the point isn't whether something looks good, but whether it fits the classic aesthetic consistently.
- **Good blends: professions and character screen** [14:23] — The professions tab and character screen are praised as good blends of retail and classic, but the consistency isn't maintained throughout.
- **Environment team is crushing it** [15:44] — The creator loves the new lighting, fog, and water effects, which make the world feel more alive without changing the layout.
- **Weather improvements and community input** [17:47] — The creator hopes for more weather improvements and suggests Blizzard should pull the community on big decisions they're unsure about.

### Conclusion

The creator is enjoying WoW Forever overall but hopes Blizzard will address visual consistency and consider community feedback on major design choices.

## Transcript

There's a lot of conversation and controversy. Oh, controversy. Dun, dun, dun. All right, guys, this is a Crendor video talking about does Ralph forever know what it wants to look like?
Crendor is a chill dude, right? He's not overly negative or positive about the game. So I value his opinion and his perspective. We've talked about this a lot. I had this on my watch later from a few days ago. I haven't seen it.
But Crendor, he's more of a retail guy, I think. but he puts out really interesting videos about, like, random tidbits of knowledge that, like, nobody else would think about except Crendor.
So, yeah, I don't think he's making a video to harp, just to harp, but I'm curious what he has to say here. There's a lot of conversation and controversy about the new Wow Forever graphic style going on right now in terms of whether it's the fog in the lighting
or the character models or the user interface, But I kind of want to just give my opinion on the whole situation here and talk about what I think, because it's a very subjective situation. There's certain people that are like, I want it to look as old as possible, like actual classic WoW.
They just want them to carry the classic WoW graphics over and be like, that's it. Like, I'm good. There's some people that do want the retail WoW graphics, and they're like, what's wrong with that? You know, I play retail WoW. It's fine. Blah, blah, blah. There's some people that want some of the things to be retailed.
There's some of the people that just want the old graphics but upgraded slightly. And so I'm somebody that I was hoping that these HD graphics would just be the classic WoW graphics but upgraded slightly.
And I think I'm in that third boat. Like, the classic WoW graphics, but updated slightly, though, I think is... You know, you kind of get the best of both worlds. It's not just straight copies from retail, but...
You know, it is somewhat of a remaster of a game in a sense, so... Just copy-pasting the old ones either. Yeah, so that third one is kind of where I'm at. One of my best examples of this that I keep mentioning in my other videos
is the StarCraft I remaster. If you look at the StarCraft I remaster... I actually never played that. you will see that everything here kind of holds true to how it originally was. But they have just taken that and upgraded it in resolution, in pixel quality.
But when you look at it, you go, oh yeah, that's still StarCraft I. In fact, a good example of this, actually, is if you look at Classic Era side-by-side with Cataclysm,
or Wrath even, Wrath, Cata-ish. Cataclysm, if you look at the models and stuff, is actually different than the era ones. But they look...
It basically is up-res, kind of. But they're still the same model. They look almost identical, but it just looks a little better. That's how Cataclysm was. Or even Moth.
Even a little bit of Wrath. They slowly got better over time. But it wasn't just like they changed the model into a WAD. the StarCraft remaster has a really cool thing where you can hit F5 and toggle between the old graphics and the new graphics to kind of compare and contrast the two.
And that's kind of what I thought we were going to be getting here with WoW Forever. But instead, it feels like they just kind of took some retail skeletons and were like, this is what you want, right?
And I think it must have been like they didn't know people wanted this. I even heard that streamers and YouTubers, when they were there, were telling them, like, you need to add this in. Like, they weren't even going to have the standard definition graphic options, which, like, blows my mind, because, like, it's very clear that many, many people like the old classic style. I would say even a majority of people do, and so to recreate this game in a Classic Plus style, which they themselves said, like, this is our version of Classic Plus, guys, to just be like, here's some retail skeleton characters, like, it feels like they just don't know.
They didn't understand that people want that. It feels insane to me. I feel like you would have to assume that. I'll even see that with the user interface. A lot of people, they log in, they're like, oh, it's the retail UI.
Why is it the retail UI? I want the classic UI. And again, this is something that I thought was just going to be... This is interesting. I wasn't expecting Crendor to go here because he's actually more of a retail player, as far as I know.
Correct me if I'm wrong. So if anyone was not going to say this, I thought it was Crendor. because he's coming from the retail side of things for the majority of it. So, like, a reimagined user interface based off Classic WoW,
but with updated HD textures, right? Like, when you look at the Classic WoW UI, a lot of it's kind of grainy, but it's still got that stone feel, and I thought they were going to take that and just do, like, a reimagined, upgraded look of it
instead of just, like, slapping on retail. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I actually think that's like, that's pretty much exactly what I was envisioning too. And I think a lot of people might be in the same boat right So yeah I glad he brings that up That a fair point That kind of exactly what I was thinking It like just an updated classic versus the retail asset
Yeah, fair point. Like, I don't hate retail. I still play retail a while, right? I mean, I don't mind the user interface. Like, it's not going to stop me playing the game. I still play it. I'm still enjoying it. But I'm like, I do wish it had, like, some classic visual elements to it.
And my big thing that I've been mentioning is I wish it had the classic WoW style, but with the systemic back end of retail WoW. And it's, you know, like you can in classic. So they actually did do this, by the way.
The action bars are exactly what, friend, we're talking about. They're reimagined classic action bars, higher fidelity. Like they actually look like they're updated, but they are not the retail action bars.
but they are not the classic ones. They're updated classic action bars. Who loves the action bars? I actually think they look pretty nice. I mean, I actually am not using them right now, but I think I probably will. They actually look pretty nice.
Like, they're not the classic ones, but they're updated classic ones. I thought, like, that kind of style would be carried out throughout, like, kind of everything they did, right?
Oh, you can actually go in and click edit mode and move the Classic WoW UI pieces all over the place. And I thought they were just going to do that. Like, oh yeah, you know, that'd be pretty cool, right? You're keeping that style of Classic WoW and you're able to move it around.
But it's just retail. And I think that's kind of thrown a lot of people off. I think that's why some people are like, it's retail minus. My opinion is just that I wanted classic World of Warcraft, but just polished.
Like, I didn't want it to lose that feel of Classic WoW, but I wanted it to look HD and polished, which kind of brings us to our next point, which I like how he started off this video. It's like, hey, look, this is subjective.
You can like the modern stuff or the old stuff, or you could want the old stuff remastered. I fully agree with Grendor. Like, the old stuff remastered is kind of what I was hoping for, but, yeah, that's an opinion.
You know, not everyone has to agree with that. Is the juxtaposition of the graphics having a standard look and the graphics having an HD look. And so when I first heard of the option to toggle these two on and off, I was like, oh, okay, that's cool, everybody gets what they want.
But what I've realized from playing it is sometimes when you turn off the HD graphics and go to standard graphics, some things still look like they're in high definition. Like, for example, I've seen one that people use as certain mounts they designed, or the druid forms for the new elf race.
and I think that is a big issue and I think some people might not care, right? They're just like, whatever. But to me, as somebody who constantly talks about immersion, when I'm playing in this classic world
and I'm seeing these kind of older models and all of a sudden I get like a high-definition model that pops up, it kind of throws me off. I'm like, oh. Right? And it's not a game-breaking deal,
but from an immersion perspective, it kind of does throw you off a bit And it almost feels like they don't really know what they want, or they're trying to please two different audiences, which, you know, I think if you're trying to do that, you need to have some sort of, like, downgrade.
Like, I think that's something they need to genuinely look at is, hey, we designed this really cool HD thing, right? I actually like the owl beast elf druid form thing, but it's like, how can we downgrade it?
I like it. Okay. So, more 2004. uh and like you know it doesn't have to look crusty and shit but like just make it look a little there was a lot of people that were linking me a reddit post or a tweet maybe of someone who
reimagined what it maybe could have looked like um i think i found it if it was um reimagined to look like it was built back then and i don't know if you guys like this or not if you saw this
Reddit post, but someone made this. A standard definition, skyborn owl bear form. So, you know, you keep the moon, you still have some feathers. W, love it, love it, love it, W. Yeah, so like,
I don't want to say everyone likes this, but I don't know if I've seen a single L in the chat. Wow. Is there still not a single L? Wow, this is one of the most one-sided things. I don't know if that many of you would like it. I thought there would be some people that
don't like it, but this is crazy one-sided. Yeah. an SD owl bear form like this, I think, like if Blizzard put this in, imagine how much praise they would get.
It would be ridiculous. Hey guys, we heard you. You now have an SD option. People just, oh my gosh, not only are they listening, but they crushed it and it looks good. Right? Like,
this would mean a lot, I think, to a lot of people doing something like this. Right? And yeah, something like this, if it ran by, you don't blink twice. It fits in the world. A lot of it just a color palette But a lot of it is the geometry They really toned the geometry down to it not just like all these crazy shapes It very simple color palette but still new right
So anyway, hopefully, you know, we'll see. A little worse. And I feel like, I think there's something going on sometimes where they're like, well, why would anybody want that, you know?
But you know what? I should have given, I think the artist was on there. But I should have given the artist credit. It is... This is a Reddit post. This guy from Reddit didn't make it.
This is a tweet that someone found from NateSadeOnX on Twitter. NateSade. So, that's the guy who imagined it, right?
But, like, if you're going to put in a standard graphics option, that should mean that everything you're seeing is a standard graphic. And that's... I feel like, otherwise, You're going to get this weird kind of muddy water of like, this looks HD, that looks SD, right?
And it's just kind of all over the place. And so I think what a lot of people are looking for here is consistency. When I pick an option, I want it to be consistent with that option that I've selected. And I think you actually get that a lot with the character models as well.
I think a lot of these character models almost look a little too HD or a little too retail. I think the Tarn is one of them. I think the Tarn definitely looks a little too retail. But then there's other ones where I'm like, oh, yeah, that doesn't look too bad.
I think it's very much a race-by-race type of thing. There's certain races where I'm like, yeah, you know what? That actually looks kind of like a classic plus. So the retails, just for clarity, the retail ones,
it's not like they tried to make them HD. They're literally like there's retail models and classic ones. But I actually agree. There's some retail models that I don't mind. Like the retail Night Elf actually doesn't look bad.
the retail human looks awful the retail gnome looks awful but the retail tauren looks awful too the retail troll looks okay the retail undead actually looks okay the retail
I'd have to see maybe more of them the retail skyborn or blood elf I think looks okay so it's kind of like split in my own opinion some of them I really hate some of them I'm like oh yeah actually
it doesn't matter I don't mind at all and then others where I'm like no that looks kind of retail-y so I feel like they really need to kind of go through these races again and be like how does this feel right
like look at it with a classic perspective to be like does this look like it would be a classic version of World of Warcraft or does it look like it'd be a retail version and I've seen people online even posting things like look at this
frog or this rat this looks ugly like it's from classic wow why would you want this and I'm like that's not really the point The point is, it's this visual consistency. I might even play that part again.
And again. And again. And again. Because that's what people are just missing. It's not the point whether or not you think it looks good. And if you think that's the point, then you're missing the point.
The point is the consistency. Actually, I'll play that again. I'll just replay that one. Does it look like it'd be a retail version? And I've seen people online even posting things like, look at this frog or this rat. This looks ugly.
Like, it's from Classic WoW. Why would you want this? And I'm like, that's not really the point. The point is it's this visual consistency. If you want to have something look like a Retail WoW thing, you can go play Retail WoW.
But, you know, I don't want it to look like it's straight up like 2004 Classic WoW. Like, you can take that frog and make it, you know, a little more HD, a little more polished, actually give it like eyes or like a face that looks kind of normal, but it can still
look like that old school Warcraft style. And I think that's what a lot of people are just looking for. I will say that there's actually some elements they've added that feel like they're a decent blend here of retail and classic. I think the professions tab is a really good one.
It kind of has that clunkiness of the classic WoW feel, but it feels kind of retail-y as well. I like that because it feels like they blended the two together. and then there's the character screen
where it shows all your gear and stuff and that's another one that I think actually looks pretty good where it feels like they've kind of blended the retail and plastic elements together and that's really what I'm looking for. I really like this type of stuff.
The action bar they did a really good job on too. I already mentioned, but there's some aspects where they did a really nice blend where it's like, nice, but it's just not consistent throughout the entire experience. The mini-map is another example
where it's not the retail one. It's really just a nice blend. You can like the mini-map or not like the mini-map. I think it looks okay. But at the very least, what we can say is it's new. It's not retail, right?
And it's not plastic. It's a new thing. And I think that's really what a lot of people are looking for. Is it consistent? Is it just straight copy-pasted? Does it feel out of place? As opposed to just like,
here the retail window Here the plastic window right Like this is what I looking for like a reimagined version of that classic style Now finally I want to talk about the graphics And I actually just made an entire video going through each zone looking at the graphics the fog the water the lighting
I'm somebody that loves all that stuff, so I've been looking at it all over the place. And I actually really like that. I like what they did here because it's a great way to make the world feel more alive and more real
without actually changing a lot of what the world is, right? Like, Azshara stays the same. Ashenvale stays the same. But when you have different lighting and fog and water, it really does make it feel like a more modernized version of that old world.
And I think this is another perfect example of what they should be doing. Like, I think this is great. I even loved it when it was like raining out and the fog was rolling in and it was like kind of hard to see or it's like nighttime and you're in the shadows and it's just kind of misty and dark.
And I'm like, dude, this is awesome. Like I genuinely love that. But there are a few instances where it felt a little too foggy. There's some instances where it felt a little too bright. I agree. We were going to a snow zone yesterday on stream.
I can't remember exactly where. It was like bright white. I was like, I need some sunglasses. This is crazy. And then, yeah, some zones, like, I wish I had a fog slider. But, like, overall, bro, like, the team that's doing the environment is truss crushing it.
You know what I mean? They're crushing it. I was running through Un'Goro Crater, and it was bright as hell. I think some of those zones, they haven't tuned yet, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. because I was dying as a ghost and then running places
and turning the post-death black and white screen to just be like normal so I could just go explore. And, you know, some of those zones definitely had some lighting issues.
For example, another one I saw was if you go to Uther's Tomb, dude, Uther's Tomb looks like those headlights the trucks have. That shit was like bright. I think I went blind from going into Uther's Tomb. It was insanely bright in there.
I didn't go in yet. There's definitely some places where they need to tune down the fog, tune down the lighting. But that's one area that I think they're doing a great job with. I really love how that's been implemented.
And I'm looking forward to see what else they do. Because I'd love them to just go over all the weather. Like, make the rain better, make the snow better, make their, like, the sand. And after he posted his video, Blizzard literally put out a thing saying, like, the rain is now improved.
So, I got to go. Grandeur's in charge now. There it is. And maybe even have the weather be kind of impactful. Nothing crazy, but, you know, maybe you move like 10% slower when it's like a snowstorm or a sandstorm or whatever it is.
Or like 5%, right? Where it's just a little immersion things like that. I would love if they did stuff like that. So, overall, I'm still having a great time playing it, but I do hope they start, you know, giving us some like open communication
communication being like, hey, you know what? We agree or disagree or this is the path we're going to take. And, you know, it seems like they are open to that. They've done surveys. They're just like, we want to talk to the community. So, we'll see what happens. But, I mean, overall,
you know what I would like if Blizzard did is, you know, continue doing what they're doing because overall, like, it's working and people seem to really be enjoying themselves. But on really big decisions that they are really just
authentically unsure about, Just pull the community. And be like, hey, guys, how cool would it be if Blizzard was like, hey, guys, we have this idea. We want to be sure we're on the right track.
What do you guys think? And they actually just pulled the community in a real... I'm not saying they did it with some of these things like Skyborn or big, irreversible things. I would actually like that.
So RuneScape pulled every tiny little thing, right? Which I think is awesome. But that would be different than this. This would be more like, let's pull the big stuff that has really big implications that we're authentically unsure about, which would be different.
Obviously, I've been a big advocate for pulling everything, to be honest. That's probably what I would have preferred, but clearly they didn't go that direction. But something like that would be a cool middle ground, maybe. You know, at the end of the day, even if I complain here, I'm still having a great time playing the game.
I'm still excited to keep playing it. I'm excited to keep exploring, seeing these new zones, trying these new quests. because everything else, I've been having a great time. It's been fun. So let me know what you think down in the comments section below. Like, comment, subscribe.
And I'll see you next time. Okay? Okay. Okay. See you. Crandor, everyone. That was solid. I think I had pretty much that exact same take. I talked to, like, Guzu.
I think Guzu has a very similar... Like, pretty much all the content creators, I think, feel like this very same way. It's like, this owns. If we're going to be nitpicky, the one thing we can talk about is our cohesion. But besides that, this owns, right?
So cool. In the meantime, guys, we got some lunch. Got a little rice, chicken, beef, salsa, avocado, green onion. I am drooling. Oh, my gosh.