I definitely like the art style used in Elemental. As James pointed out earlier in the thread, Elemental's only shortcoming as far as the look goes is it's lack of Variety. Once that's taken care of, on a "looks" perspective, I think we'll be all set.

I do agree with the OP's dislike of all things "cutesie" though, I just don't count Elemental as something cutesie. All things that are cutesie must burn in the depths of Tartarus.

LoL I'd like to see them take that advice.

Are you talking about stylized? There is a difference between stylized and cartoon art styles, and no stylized does not make your character clearer to see, because that's what it is, stylized. Stylized is probably second worst form to 3-D model next to anime. I won't go into wow because I have not seen the concept art, whether it is stylized or not I cannot say for sure without viewing it. The reason stylized is second worse to 3-D model is because it is harder for the 3-D modeler to translate information over, because in the very sense it is stylized. Now this doesn't mean it can't and hasn't been done before.

I think they were originally going for an almost stained glass look, that didn't actually come off very well as hoped. Still, I like the art style, it's just a pity the game in general still seems to run like crap vs the technical quality of the graphics.

I actually love the environment graphics. (except all the brown on the Empire side.)

Character graphics and animations really could use some work though, and I always play with outlines off.

I bought the collectors edition when I was into WoW when it came out and I have the Art Book that came in it. The book is actually pretty damn sweet. Even if you just forget that it's "WoW" and look at it as a Fantasy Art Book it kicks ass. From an artistic perspective I'd have to say some of it is indeed "Stylized". I did a lot of art and was in some shows in high school but when I went to college I aimed for getting my AA in Comp Sci and let my art dreams go by the wayside. Sometimes I regret that decision even to this day and wonder how far I could have gone with my art had I the time and inspiration to keep it going throughout my life.

Being someone who knows art then you should understand that there is a difference when it comes to looking at a piece of work from the eyes of an artist, then there is from the eyes of a for lack of a better term, fan. Don't talk this as a insult, but just because you did some art pieces in high school doesn't mean you can and will view a peice of work the same way a professional artist will, just tossing that out there. Moving along with this, like I said I won't nor can't say anything about wow"s style because I haven't seen the concept art.

@Uga-bugga

Talking about Diablo. Are you steaming knowing how Diablo 3 graphic looks like now? Using old games graphic (like Fallout, Commandos, etc) to compare with recent games has flaw in it argument. You still need to take account about game engine limitation. But character concept wise, you are not far off though.

You should post graphic screenshot from Dawn of War 2 while you at it.

I think I know what happened.  Metzen and Samwise (artists) had kids and they are watching Saturday morning cartoons.  'That's' the influence.  lol.  Hey, thanks for the warning on D3.  I haven't checked it out for years.  /gasp!  They made machine guns with roses and tea parties in Dawn of War??? no way, you have to be joking. (WalkerK19)

No you were messing /w me.  D3 and Dawn of War do not have fuzzy bunnies with big googlie eyes bonnets and pink bows. Don't do that.  I was very concerned.

Um no, a contracted artist working in a studio is hired to do concept art that will fit the them of what the studio, or visual developer decides. A artist that is hire just doesn't start drawing, but instead there is more involved to it then simply just drawing.

Honestly, some of the bigger considerations for developers to go "cartoony" are because it ages better and tends to be easier on the system requirements. WoW is almost a decade old now but it aged so well that it still looks good (in the technical sense, not necessarily personal taste). 

Indeed, that's very true and I know the difference. No offense taken. Some of my work has beat out "professional artists" in contests (not that I think it would now). In the art world you can only really call your-self a "professional" artist if you're getting paid for your work. I'm sure you've heard the term "starving artist" heh. That covers a large chunk of people in the art profession these days.

Personally, I don't think a artist needs to be making money to be able to call themselves an artists. My art skills have admittedly definitely lacked over the years. As with many things in life if you don't keep them up you get out of practice or for lack of a better way of putting it, you "lose skill". Still, it's like riding a bike or playing guitar, once you learn it and know it, it never truly goes completely away nor does your love for it.

That's very true. I followed Borderlands pretty closely for a while during development and I was pretty saddened when they decided to go for the cell shaded look over the original gritty look they had to start with. Their main excuse for doing it they said was for "system performance". I think I read somewhere that was one of Bioware's reasons for doing SW:ToR like they are as well and I think they even mentioned because it would "age well" also.

I don't mind cell shaded or cartoon looking games if they're done right and not aimed at kids. There have been a lot of great cell shaded games over the last few years (No More Heroes for Wii). I do get annoyed though when something that could be incredibly cool if done in a realistic style gets cartoonified if it's something I'm really looking forward to.

FPS and MMOs probably have to worry most about system specs. Both are terribly expensive to make, and need to be played by many people. Historically, graphics-heavy MMOs have not done well (Age of Conan, the new Final Fantasy) because they severely limit the amount of people who can play them, and MMOs depend on subscription income. And as an added bonus, MMOs are meant to be played for a long period of time, so presumably they'd want something that can keep looking good. At some point, this "age well" excuse is going to stop flying, because it's been a while since the graphical boundaries for a game have been pushed. Crysis was the last Great Mover. The only reason that "realistic" games stopped looking good in the past is because technology advanced enough to make it ugly. Everyone thought Half Life 1 looked good for its time, but look at how much of an improvement Half Life 2 was. That kind of advancement is, I think, not really ever going to repeat again. We're already playing at insane resolutions and most games designed for PC have PC-grade texture work, meaning they'll still look good even if we're playing on standard 35" monitors at some point in the future. Most of the advancement of visual technology is in shaders now, which is not directly part of the "realistic" style.