Diablo III art petition skyrockets - Fans agree

Already apologize if this is a repost but consider it an update, couldn't find any past news on the subject so I thought I'd bring it into some light for anybody who hasn't seen it yet.

Well I have been keeping up with the news lately one big ticket item is Diablo 3. Frankly a friend of mine mentioned he was disgusted a few days ago about the art and started showing me differences between cartoony pictures and realism that blizzard seems to be drifting away from. Even with their limited graphic capabilities the concept art has always remained extremely high quality and it really shows which direction their game is going to take.

Diablo 3 (Examples below) has stumbled into the same problem that the new starcraft has been showing off although Diablo being a much more sinister game is getting huge media attention over this. Fans posted a petition, which when I first added my name was around 2000 nothing too spectacular.
( http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?d3art )

Now it is up over 20,000 signatures and I think there is an extremely good reason for this. I have loved blizzard games since I first went out and bought Orcs and Humans telling everybody it was the greatest game ever made. Then my friends and I hooked up an old school LAN in their house so we could play Diablo together after school. Hellfire (Sierra port? Still confused as to how this happened) was even fun still have them all in a box in the basement. I think I can safely say I have had plenty of Diablo experience and completely agree with the turn in art style, it's jumping away from the series, the quote from Keith Lee Lead producer for Diablo III shows even he is aware of this intentional change.

“One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for ‘Diablo III’ is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in ‘Lord of the Rings’ — not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn’t allow you to have a lot of contrast.” - The rest of his comments can be found in a great article over at http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/07/02/diablo-iii-art-direction/

The petition has done an excellent job posting requests for changes, why these are made and has added some amazing illustrations to show that blizzard is making happy shiny graphics compared to the old scarred dark and grim show they used to put on. Here are a few of my favorites although more can be seen at the petition linked earlier in the article.

http://i31.tinypic.com/2zta5o7.jpg ;
This is a light source reference to show that D3 doesn't have limited lighting which adds to the effect from previous games in the series.

http://i27.tinypic.com/vep6ix.jpg
Some spell effects and terrain changes show a much crisper style of art.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo32.jpg
Original almost looks blurry to try and add a smudgy "But I blared the contrast to hide skin blemishes" concept to their art style.

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l318/frostwake/Diablo31.jpg
This will be my last example and it speaks for itself.

Now it's not just Diablo that's changing its art style we also see Starcraft and obviously WoW sticking towards a brighter less grim lighting effect.


Starcraft 2 concept art (Above)



Original Starcraft game art

I lost the original image I was going to use for a direct comparison but it was of a zealot concept from SC1 and it was incredible how much detail and realism they added to the character. That one looks like a pokemon, Mewtwo doesn't play Starcraft and I don't want to reverse aging to enjoy new game titles. Not to say the new Starcraft wont be excellently made I have good faith in my favorite gaming company to date. However their new style of art is less than impressive in my eyes.



Look how muscular young and vibrant this old chap is, I do say he looks like quite the hero.

http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/barbarian.xml

Follow the link, look how old fat and useless he's become, say hello to the future!


References:
http://kotaku.com/5021491/diablo-iii-producer-+-color-is-your-friend
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/characters/barbarian.xml
http://www.cdaccess.com/gifs/screen/d2barbarian.jpg
http://www.visionfutur.com/img/linux/starcraft1.jpg
http://mystarcraft2.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/starcraft2ca_012.jpg
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?d3art

[EDIT] About 24 hours from original post the petition has gone up from 20,000 to 28,600 looks like it's on the rise.