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Nah, its a good terrain artist, and fantastic level design.

See all those tiny hills that make the mountains in the background? Now, do you think that a designer modeled and textured every one, one by one?

The textures mapping to the crevasses, that can be done and probably is done with a filter, identifying where they are and applying the vegetation to it. Pretty much every current engine has that kind of technology now. Weathering effects that keep going down a hill but not up it, pretty standard.

As for the bumps in the hills, yeah that is the work of a talented terrain artist putting a lot of polish into the game. It is not the only place that blizzard puts a lot of polish/care/love into the game. They do the same thing with little doodads, plants, ambient effects, sounds, and music.

Everything is polished to a mirror shine as far as art direction and level design are concerned.

There is not bumpy-wowstyle-mountainside-button, that would look like crap and would be just plain lazy.

WoW's "secret sauce" is polish, lots and lots of polish.

I believe that a lot of WoW's beauty comes from ground textures and terrain modeling.

Well, yeah, a lot of it comes from ground textures, since that is by far most of the game that you'll see is ground texture. Its everywhere you go.

But take a gander at the complexities of the terrain art in and around the cities, that is just plain old fashioned polish.