Game of Thrones is by no measure High Fantasy. Its Historical Low Fantasy; since the basic premise is based on the War of the Roses, and magic is both a rare and capricious force in the world. And of course a fair amount of Game of Thrones appeal is built around political intrigue and infighting. Fuck, Dragon Age has more in common with Game of Thrones than Warcraft.
Game of Thrones is, strictly speaking, high fantasy, in that high fantasy is defined as being a unique world, while low fantasy is our world with fantastical elements. It's certainly 'lower' high fantasy than Warcraft, but it's not "low fantasy" in of itself.
My point about GoT was that its been a massively influential property in the fantasy genre and because of that, its kind of setting the tone of the genre for people who aren't as deeply familiar with the many branches on the fantasy tree.
Don't really agree.
First, for those familiar with the fantasy genre, GoT (and ASoIAF) were a breath of fresh air. I'm speaking in part for myself, and for the people I was in contact with at the time (part of a writing group focused on sci-fi and fantasy). Less moral binaries, far more moral ambiguity, a world less fantastical and more closer to our own. Course it's not the only fantasy property to have done this, but whatever the case, GoT was big for those already invested in the genre.
Second, for those not familiar with fantasy, I can buy that GoT might have been an entry point, but how influential has it actually been? I think it's certainly been influential in the TV landscape as a whole, showing a willingess for serialized storytelling, and an appetite for high budget fantasy shows at that (think Witcher, Wheel of Time, Amazon's Lord of the Rings, etc.), but as a concept? How many fantasy series have been created since that are clearly GoT inspired? Lord of the Rings for instance has cast a large shadow over the fantasy genre that exists to this day, but GoT? Not so much. You mention Dragon Age, but even Dragon Age is still taking inspiration from LotR-esque tropes, from elves, to dwarfs, to orcs...sorry, "darkspawn."
Third, even in a world where GoT didn't exist, I doubt the Warcraft movie would have fared much better. Even casting aside its issues with execution, you still have the standard trope of "good" humans vs. "evil" orcs, and a smattering of elves and dwarves to go with it. Not saying this to rag on the Warcraft IP, but, well, Warcraft I isn't winning any points for originality, and as the movie is based on it...yeah...
Mind you, I bet you ten bucks that had the movie been done in house by Blizzard to the quality of their xpac cinematics, it would have been way more successful.
Dubious. You could have done the Warcraft movie in CGI, it still wouldn't remove the issues with it.
Much as I'd love to see an all-CGI movie for one of Blizzard's properties, the cost would be astronomical. Overwatch, sure, since I'm guessing its animation style is cheaper than the ultra-high fidelity used for Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft, but as for those other IPs? Yeah...
I don't know why they didn't do that. Aliens would have come from other galaxies just to watch a feature-length film with that quality of CGI.
So THAT'S why the zerg were invading Korhal.
I think you’re under estimating how much raw computing power Activision/Blizzard have access to. Though I would be very curious to know which of us is right.
I'd wager that Disney has far more resources than Acti-Blizz. That, and none of Disney's CGI movies have used the fidelity of Blizzard's cinematics. If they did, I'd imagine Disney's animated forays would be much fewer, and much more expensive.
