Why was this removed? (Vanilla Rain)

[runique]

It caused "visual distress" in some players.

Filthy casuals

[Deleted]

I still encounter rain pretty frequently. Especially in Stormheim (And on top of that, it rains pretty heavily there).

I don't think many care for Stormheim. The OP was talking about vanilla zones. I would love more weather effects in vanilla zones (and darker nights). They could add pitch black nights if no lights are around and sell torches

[Dsc]

if i recall right, it was removed to get improved, but they scraped it or it got forgotten. Same thing with the "Nights" in vanilla actually beeing dark.

I had forgotten about that. I still love Duskwood till yhis day, on my very first toon ( a gnome lock) at about oh... lvl 13 or so? I made it all the way out there from IF/Dun morogh.
I corpse ran up from westfall, (wolves murderized you back then, just like Elites on the side of the road really were Elites. you needed a party of sorts to do some of the quests, all just to explore. a buddy and I came from another game, we both went out and explored the world in our own ways.

Duskwood was legitimately creepy, we were super impressed. His name was Rebb, it was funny when I discovered "Rebel Camp" in Stranglethorn Vale.

Thanks for the memories. And yup the rain was cool too.

[Daedius]

It caused "visual distress" in some players.

I love how the few ruin it for the rest, for anything... what's stopping Blizzard for putting in a toggle function for said visual effects? It's the absolute worst form of "remedy" to the issue...

[Frolk]

I'm sure there's a reason for it, I just don't know it. I wish we still had this

That rain is a billion times better than what shit we got in stormheim,i need it

[Tart]

Once again, people reply without knowing the answer.

The reason it was removed was because it was far too advanced at the time of its implementation. The weather effects were fine on "light" effects, small showers, light dust storms, etc. When the effect hit "high" it was a beast on many systems at the time. Heavy lag was the biggest complaint. ZG was actually the main culprit. The weather inside the raid caused massive performance issues when on "high". Some raids had to stop when it stormed because no one could see anything, many were lagging, and general issues of the kind.

The weather system was removed for an overhaul and was added back in only with "low" settings and a much reduced frequency. There may have been various other reasons but this was the main concern.

I think having a raid stopped due to adverse weather conditions is fantastic.

[rasako]

Yup, also in Highmountain near the murlocs in the north.

And I find it annoying more than anything else. I don't know what it looks like on (very) high end machines, but with my gtx 660 it's mostly just white streaks (similar to the video in the OP). When moving in a straight line it's ok-ish, but if I turn a lot (like following a bendy road) the streaks can start to get close/overlap making it hard to tell what's ahead/where I'm going.

If it were up to me I'd remove it entirely. But as long as it's not everywhere I can deal with the occasional annoyance.

While I understand where you're coming from, the game was designed to simulate a real, living world. It's a shame that the artistic vision of Vanilla WoW has been lost to complaints. I'd argue real life rain is far more of an annoyance than this particular particle effect, and the huge hit in immersion that the game took because of losing little things like this really sucks the life and magic out of the world.

[Thelxi]

I'm sure there's a reason for it, I just don't know it. I wish we still had this

I'd love to have this in game. In stormheim there is similar rain, but I don't think it's as stormy as this here.

[xuros]

Those rain storms were great. Best hard rainfall though was in Starwars Galaxies!

[ComputerNerd]

Woah, triggered over nothing, are we? And I'm anything but "ignorant", I was part of the Potato-class computer crowd for a long time and still am compared to many modern setups. Fact still stands that changes in graphics to make them less taxing are probably made for that crowd.

No facts there, only assumptions.
There is rain still, and many other default options or effects which will still tax lower-end systems.

There always has to be some inferior crowed that is to blame for something.
Can't the removal or change to something ever be deemed to be for some other reason.

[Jakisuaki]

The rain in game causes "visual distress" right now. I can barely stand to play when it's raining and it rains everywhere all the time right now.

but......why?

[Wildmoon]

It's worse in Stormheim.

[deniter]

How can anyone be surprised? They have removed a lot of stuff to make the game look less like a world and more like a game.

[Deleted]

Apart from nights and good weather they also removed the spiral sky in the spirit world for some reason back then before enough complaints had it changed back.

[Azgraal]

Oh god, I hadn't seen that ingame for years!!! That was amazing!

[Jakisuaki]

So this is what I've gathered from these comments:

Those for:

- The rain looks and feels real and adds to the immersive feeling of the game.
- An mmorpg should feel like a world, not just a game.

Those against:

- It's inconvenient when leveling & causes me distress
- It eats up older rigs, which was more of an issue in the past than it is now.

The solution:

An updated weather system that allows different graphics settings for those that WANT the immersive rain effects and those that don't.

[Queen of Hamsters]

(I second this, wow at this point is not worthy of being called an mmorpg, it's just an mmo and has been for ages)

In your opinion. It's very much an MMORPG in every sense of the word to many if not most, and a world feeling like a world doesn't hinge on weather effects for everyone...

[Jakisuaki]

In your opinion. It's very much an MMORPG to others, and a world feeling like a world doesn't hinge on weather effects to some of us...

Oh god here we go, I deleted my own opinion because I don't want this thread to derail. Alright?

[Deleted]

In Valley of the Four Winds it also rains from time to time.

[Eleccybubb]

Sorry but people claiming "visual distress" are full of absolute crap.