wow 8K Upscaled Vanilla WoW Intro Cinematic

[Starym 3,800]

 

We have another gift for the 15 year WoW anniversary! After they recently did a solid run in the Diablo franchise, it seems Upscale are turning to the Blizzard flagship. They're starting from the (MMO) start, with the legendary Vanilla intro cinematic, which probably drew a whole lot of us old-schoolers in when we first saw it, and we now get to see it in glorious 4 or even 8K (for those crazy ones of you that actually have an 8K screen)! This could also serve as a WoW Classic intro for those that experienced Vanilla for the first time this year, so let's just get into it:

Ah the old drums of war that have been reignited on-and-off throughout the past 15 years - which is your favorite part of the cinematic and if you joined at the start with Vanilla, was there a particular part of the cinematic that drew you in to the game? For me it was 100% the Tauren in Mulgore, and it's had me playing that race for pretty much 15 years.

[Jettafae 8]

Wow. This was awesomely done!

[Halock 156]

That looks incredible. A really good cinematic to do it on, too. It doesn't look bad even by today's standards, it's just blurry. 

Thought they did the most good on the night elf and orc's solo scenes. Seemed to struggle with the Forsaken's. Whatever processes they were using seemed to struggle with the hair and green light. 

I was thinking the other day; was reminded by this video -- Warcraft used to have really good cinematic music. Seasons of War sounds amazing with or without the visuals. What always blows me away is that the music literally spells out the action (you can 'hear' the running of the elf, the horror of the Forsaken, the click/hesitate/boom of the dwarf's gun, etc) and yet it still sounds like a cohesive, self-contained bit of music. 

'Why Do We Fight?' does that too. You can hear every. Single. Action in it. It's beautiful. 'Arthas, My Son' and The Dark Portal are iconic and beautiful, Xaxas is unusual but absolutely fitting. Probably the only thing that carries that cinematic. Then you get Times Change. And it's got some good things going for it, some unique stuff. But it meanders a little too much for my taste. 

Then Legion, Battle for Azeroth and (as far as I could tell) Shadowlands are little but musical cues. They're awful to listen to by themselves. They start, stop, and change with little to bind them together.

And I think that's a shame. I wish I could still look forward to the trailer music the same way I look forward to the reveal of the login music. The music absolutely blends with the cinematic, here, creating an experience it's very hard not to be whisked away by. 

So I'm jolly glad they did put the effort in to update this, because the graphics now look as good as the music does!