Revamped World of Warcraft Human Male Looks a Lot More … Human

Blizzard Entertainment has released the first images of the revamped Human male character model that you'll find in MMO World of Warcraft when the Warlords of Draenor expansion hits this fall. The game's current Human male model has received a great deal of criticism for its "odd proportions and face geometry," but that's all been fixed, Blizzard said in a post on its website.

"We've taken great care to ensure we're not changing so much that he looks completely unlike anything you'd expect, while also correcting some of the more glaring problems," World of Warcraft art director Chris Robinson writes. "We hope you enjoy the results!"

Blizzard's overall goal for its character model revamps is to honor the style of the original, while at the same time boosting fidelity and fixing issues with the past designs. Personally, I think the new Human male looks like Shrek's human form in the movie Shrek 2. That's OK, I guess.

All eight of World of Warcraft's original playable races, as well as the Draenei and Blood Elves, will get character model overhauls in the upcoming Warlords of Draenor expansion. However, it's unclear which races will be available when the expansion launches later this year. The fact that the new models have more polygons and animation effects might mean that you'll need a better PC to run World of Warcraft in the future, but Blizzard isn't sure about this just yet.

Blizzard has already released renders of the revamped versions of Orcs, Taurens, Draenei, and Night Elves, as well as the Human female. Robinson adds that Blizzard is expecting some of these in-progress models to start appearing in the Warlords of Draenor alpha test "soon."

In other World of Warcraft news, Blizzard recently published a blog post regarding the Warlords of Draenor starting zone, the Tanaan Jungle. Here's how Blizzard sets things up:

"In primordial Tanaan, even the plants have teeth. Darkling fronds stab out at unlucky wanderers, or conceal canyons that plunge miles deep beneath the canopy--and these are far from the jungle's worst dangers. Each day, warlords fell even wider stretches of Tanaan’s wilderness, striving to finally rend the gates of space and time for conquest unending."

Warlords of Draenor is World of Warcraft's fifth expansion, following The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), and Mists of Pandaria (2012). It comes with an instant character boost to level 90, which you can unlock right now by pre-purchasing the expansion. By Blizzard's latest count, World of Warcraft has 7.6 million subscribers, far outpacing any other subscription-based MMO on the market.