alt Hacker NewsI miss the low res aesthetic of WC2. It's so sad that everything has to be high res nowadays. I never really liked WC3, maybe for that reason.
And although SC1/2 brought genuine improvements in the genre in many ways, there's something so much purer about the high fantasy tone of WC over the scifi tone of SC. Maybe it's just pure nostalgia, but it feels like something deeper, something more real.
WC2, SC1, and things like Heroes III (and somewhat today with Factorio) perfected that 2D art-style. It might not have as many pixels as WC3, but every single one of them was thought about and considered by someone with artistic merit.
It wasn't until nearly 20 years after WC2 that a 3D game got "graphics that look almost 2D in quality (SC3)".
I think it's also very telling that World of Warcraft made infinity money, but World of Starcraft never happened. High fantasy always lends itself to the "I can make a difference as a mortal man" but sci-fi seems to always trend toward "too big for human consumption."