Add new comment

You're really off-base here.

WoW has very few dedicated, stand-alone, "tools" as far as creating art assets are concerned. The vast majority of tools they have are a few Maya and 3dsmax plugins to help with import/export into the game engine, setting up animations, setting LoDs, and so on. Modeling, texturing, and refining a map aren't really esoteric, difficult prospects - especially given an existing texture and asset library.

As for the NWN2 challenge - just use a Wacom tablet. Paint in grey-scale height maps, use Mudbox, whatever floats your boat. This is not a difficult process, so long as you stop exclusively using the amateur-focused map tools that ship with the games, and start using actual professional art tools.