We’re all too familiar with the typical “mountains” in WoW, which are less like mountains and more like unusually angular, pointy hills. This style works if it’s worked into the zone design well, but it’s kind of a letdown in some ways. Even areas that are supposed to be particularly “mountainesque” like Ironforge’s mountain and Blackrock Mountain suffer from this. Some of the areas in Pandaria come closest but are still lacking.
What I’m curious about is how possible it would be to create mountains that more closely resemble their real-life counterparts. In other words, they’d:
- Be far less steep, with climbable sides
- Be much larger, in some cases taking up an entire zone’s worth of terrain or more
- Have flora and fauna scattered up their sides
- Have visible climate changes with increasing elevation
- Have roads winding up and down their sides
- Have multiple caves and small clearings/flat areas on their sides
- Possibly be a member of other similarly-sized mountains to form a real mountain range
Is one attempting something like this likely to run into the limitations of WoW’s engine? What are the reasons for this style not being more common?
