Actually they look pretty BAD. Elemental has the most generic, unispired, dull art direction I can remember in a while.

Not that gameplay was any better, anyway.

You can even dislike WoW art direction as a matter of personal taste, but surely Blizzard knows how to deliver a vivid, compelling art style, with good animations and 3D assets that have a personality even with a very low policount.

Point me another game that look as good as WoW being so little demanding about hardware.

World of (ninja looter) Craft: Wolf

Wolf from the new Lich King anorexic and extreme bad hair day. I knew a gf like this once (you didn't want to be the one to wake her up on the morning).

Age of Empires! (awesome game):

Age of Empires Online (Disneyland?  Where's Jafar & the Cartoon Network? omg)

Settlers (replacement to Lords of the Realm - awesome economic warfare game):

Settlers 7, idk if this even looks like the same guys!

Age of Empires again, just because it's so cool.  You can play it today, and it's still cool:

Age of Empires (Disneyland?):  The fruit bushes are bigger than the settlers, the goldmine is a huge rock with gold coins sitting on it so....they don't have to get their hands dirty??  The sail on the ship is so short it won't hold wind and the mast is huge (nearly perverted anime style).  None of the rooves are straight.  The canopys are too big.  The lighthouse has light even during the day.  The water looks like candy.  IT'S WEIRD!!!  Someone give me a better word.  /pls

Here is WarCraft III.  Winows 7 can't handle the memory management anymore, but it was an awesome RTS for Windows XP:

And here is a more common PsP3 RTS that's very popular.  I'd like to play it, but don't own one: Fat princess

Diablo II, dude gets so greedy, he shoves the (spoiler warning) huge gem in his forhead:

Zug-Zug wants to realse World of WarCraft bug free, directors get greedy and kick him out, WoW is bugged, they patch it, Zug-Zug needs a job and goes for....girls with guns?...In a dungeon.  Now I'm all for girls.  And I'm all for guns.  Heck you can even feed me cake, idk.  But fantasy is suppose to be...orcs & spears, barbs, catapults, and I'm getting fuzzy-wuzzy-mommie-still-wa-wava-love-a-U!  /puke

(Can you get a shorter skirt on the next patch, and bend over a little more pls...WTF!!)

I won't pick on Elemental unless you insist, but it's cartoonie too.  I guess I'm looking for the name of the style.  It's not Picaso.  It's not surreal.  It's almost anime where you need to have 2 or 3 elements of porn in a cartoon setting that's asian.

If I'm being too negative here, please assist me and I'll tone it down, but the gist is...WTF cartoonie?  Why?  The economy is bad enough.  Why make more bad stuff no one will buy except 3 year old pvp'ers?  omg - I just gave the evil marketing people the idea for the next First Person Shooter: Baby Bottle Wars now, on Xbox 360! /palm-face

There are a few factors in the more common use of what, as has already been described in this thread, is known as stylised visuals.  The single largest factor is simply the industry's shift to mainstream entertainment, and the search for increased profit margins.

The first primary reason is simple performance.  Realistic rendering of light, shadows, particles, models, textures and so forth has some very large system requirements.  By lowering the complexity - such as that of a stylised art design - you also lower the system requirements.  This ensures that your game can run on a host of machines, and thus increases your potential market.

The second primary reason is that of the cost of content creation.  Making enemy models for id's Rage, for example, is expensive.  Very expensive.  Animation, Textures, Bump Maps, A.I., etc.  It's not cheap to make AAA quality content.  By using a stylised art design, you can lower the cost of production of the content for your game.  Instead of 150k polygon models, you can use 15k polygon models, decreasing contruction time considerably.

The third primary reason is that of standing out.  World of Warcraft's Art Design made it standout upon it's release; since then, we've seen it immitated in every conceivable genre.  Now, Publishers are looking at ways to make their product standout from the pack.  One way to do this is simply use a different art design.  Look at Borderlands, for example.  The original art design was a gritty, very realistic one.  The one we have now is something unique, distinctive.  People remember Borderlands.

The last reason, and the least used one, is simply artistic direction.  Chosing an unique art style to match your game design, lore, characters, setting and story is the primary method for helping mesh the entire chaotic mess of a game into a perfect, unified whole.  This is often neglected; few Publishers allow their Developers the freedom to do this; it's either Call of Duty Realistic or World of Warcraft Cartoon - these are the proven sellers, so mimicking them is safe, secure and trust worthy.

I'll end this with an example of how Art Design can make your game distinctive, memorable and incredibly unique and fresh...

... and also completely alienate the mass market, and thus cause it to be shunned by consumers.
This is the game 'XIII', released for the PC and Original Xbox.  It didn't sell very well, however ask anyone who played it: it was memorable, fun and a damn fine game.

Sorry, I couldn't sit by and watch the Naruto's dad is the troll in Elemental.  Here's proof:

See:

So why are we getting other 'things' in our games?

ZehDon, WoW was blockie: Toons with puppet mouths, arms that looked like large triangles tacked on, bears with square limbs.  They changed to Disneyland.

Age of Empires went from full rendered units to .jpeg-ie looking things to save memory, and now are going for Disneyland.

Diablo had ghosts, burning churches, and now we get some baseball looking guy on steroids you'd hug after a game in Torchlight <--Disneyland.

Don't get me wrong.  Not trying to say Asian art is bad.  Saying 15 year old art is creepy bad.  I'm looking for a word for it.  It's not asian, but it might be an asian influence.  idk.  idk where it's coming from.  All games today are doing this.  It is odd.  I need a word.

You do realize that half of those pictures you posted aren't actually views of the game in action, right? It's mostly a bunch of concept art and boxshots.

The troll from Elemental was concept art; they don't look like that in game.

The first two "pictures" of Age of Empires are promo and not the actual game.

Warcraft 3: Definetly not what the game looks like.

Fat Princess: The first pic is promo art, the second isn't even the same game. It's fanart of Princess Peach.

Diablo: Boxart, and I doubt that is a gameplay pic of the game you compared it to.

Some of those games might actually be cartoony or "realistic," but you can't use the boxart and promo pics (or fanart of a different game ) to try to compare them and "prove" games are moving toward a cartoony art style.

okay Kyogrel12 I give up.  All games are wonderful.  My bad.  /twitch /twitch

No one is saying all games are wonderful. Anyway, sure they aren't good or bad cause of a choice about their art style.

Honestly it's not our fault if you keep making stupid, shallow statements which are mostly untrue.

Did I say that? I must have missed that. Is the text invisible or something?