the world of our imagination

Blizzard has put out preliminary notes on the upcoming 5.3 patch "Escalation."  A glance at it shows they are taking some care with the story line and are actually following up on some early 4.0 story laid down and neglected since.  Good for them, the world and its story hasn't been this "interesting" since the original game.

However... that's not why I am writing this post.  Or maybe it has something to do with why.  Remember the original game?  The MMORPG that is.  The opening cinematic?  The very first scene, with the dwarf warrior and his bear walking towards Ironforge?  Shown with a detail - hair, snow, muscle movement, one only expects on console games or movies?

That's, unfortuantely, the world of our imagination.  We try to pretend we are in that world, when not actually in PVP or a Raid.  Shut off the names, the name plates, the glowy sparkles, the heads up displays, and just watch the events in Azeroth like it's a movie unfolding a story.  And our imagination often fails, of course.  Becuase everything looks sorta goofy.

I bring this up becuase of a small graphic in the webpage with the patch notes.  Along with screenshots that look like they are taken from a turned-up Windows box with bad gamma, and therefore look more like cartoons than 3-d reality, there's a matte drawing of a Horde lookout in the Barrens.

Look at that.  It looks like one could walk right up to it... taking care not to turn an ankle or stumble in the loose dirt of the chaparral.  I wish so much the game looked like this at all.

I wonder where this is.  Kuanchichi will need, before this patch drops, to clear all Barrens quests reset from Cataclysm, if I find it I will take a screenshot to compare.