WoW engine limit?

[Swalload]

There are no limits to the current engine

How is life in your bubble?

Every engines have their limitations. WoW's engine can't even handle Normal Mapping (or if it does they willingly decided to make the game uglier than it should be).
In every cut-scene we see how things are clunky, in every escort quest where the NPC you follow gives you a quest you see him disappear and being respawned in the spot right next to where he first was. Those don't make a big difference in our gameplay experience right now but we can already see some limitations being met.

[makketota]

How is life in your bubble?

Every engines have their limitations. WoW's engine can't even handle Normal Mapping (or if it does they willingly decided to make the game uglier than it should be).
In every cut-scene we see how things are clunky, in every escort quest where the NPC you follow gives you a quest you see him disappear and being respawned in the spot right next to where he first was. Those don't make a big difference in our gameplay experience right now but we can already see some limitations being met.

And how many here actually have background in software engineering ? A game engine isn't some static entity. It's constantly been updated and has no arbirary limits beyond how much time Blizzard are willing to spend on it.

[Narveid]

What is maxed out for you?

What resolution?

Oh right, you could probably notch up resolution beyond 1080p etc. Point taken.

[owbu]

watch the engineers panel from blizcon a couple of years back. They talked about this in detail. Basicly, there is no limit, they rebuild the base structure of their engine to the point, that they can rip out any part of it and replace it by something new. The only reason WoW doesnt use better grafics, is that they dont want to lose people with bad pcs.

[Wavebossa]

And how many here actually have background in software engineering ? A game engine isn't some static entity. It's constantly been updated and has no arbirary limits beyond how much time Blizzard are willing to spend on it.

I do, and you're wrong.
IF this was the case why do you think Unreal Engine 4 exist? Frostbite 3, Cryengine 3

Yes, code is not fully static but the foundations more or less are.
There is a reason why we still aren't on UE1. You can't keep patching and bandaging.

There are some things that simply cannot be done easily in current WoW engine.



To say that there is no limit to any game engine screams "I have no idea what I am talking about"

[Lazy Gecko]

IIRC the engine has a hard limit on 1024 for texture resolution (most games today use 2K or 4K), so we will never see textures surpass that level of fidelity. And that's not touching on things like proper normals, parallax, PBR, etc which the industry has standardized over the course of WoW's lifetime. I think WoW only has simple specular maps for reflection effects (and even that seems to have been scaled back in use).

[Kuntantee]

Some things are improved, others aren't. For example, the way armor pieces are handled in game is still the same. They are making armor pieces "3D" buy just anchoring some random model. Not sure if this is a conscious decision or simply not feasible.

[Deleted]

You have to keep in mind the WoW engine development was started somewhere around the year 2000 (it is a custom engine, not a modification of the wc3 engine, that is a common misconception).
Ofcourse it has been altered and improved over the years, but at some point you will hit a cap on what an engine can do with lightning, asset loading, tooling, memory mangement, etc. etc. At that point you have to make a decision if you are gonna mostly rewrite the engine cores to bring it up to par or create a full new engine.

The first has the downside that you likely can't use all of nowadays technologies because it will have to be compliant with all the old code you created from 2000-ish onwards. The latter has the downside that you likely won't be able to run the current game on it and have to create a new one.

If you look closely at the difference between vanilla and mop, and then mop and legion, you can already see that Blizzard has long ago decided they will go with the first route. Just a quick glance at an old zone like silithus and comparing it to a zone like Aszuna and you will see that most of the engine has in fact already been rewritten.
It wouldn't surprise me if they brushed up the coding of the old zones etc also a bit when they changed them up for leveling scaling for BoA, allowing them to brush up the engine even further.
So at this point you can expect the current engine to stick around for at least a few more expansions, and keep receiving recodes/upgrades along the way. I find it highly doubtful that they will invest the time and money into building a new custom MMO engine.
At this point in time i doubt any company will want to take that risk, as the gaming market is slowly shifting a way from the "oldschool" MMO concept; Nowadays gamers want quick gameplay for quick rewards, always with a carrot on a stick to keep them going.
Us oldschool gamers that like long, involving gameplay with lots of emchanics and deep story, are now far and few between and our ranks are thinning rapidly, sadly.

Hence to answer your question: Expect the current wow engine to last for a few more expansions, maybe somewhat longer until WoW dries out. I wouldn't ever expect a WoW 2 and more so expect Blizzard to keep heading into the direction of games with simplified gameplay and lots of lootboxes to buy. Low cost development, high reward, games like HS and OW.

I would see they have understood the limits and are working towards a new game. And although it could be a matter of subs or w/e I would not be surprised at the momentum of opening vanilla servers followed by tbc etc servers : It is a way to keep people engaged and not unsubbing when in a future expansion they stop using this engine and start a new game without any gaps.

[makketota]

I do, and you're wrong.
IF this was the case why do you think Unreal Engine 4 exist? Frostbite 3, Cryengine 3

Yes, code is not fully static but the foundations more or less are.
There is a reason why we still aren't on UE1. You can't keep patching and bandaging.

There are some things that simply cannot be done easily in current WoW engine.



To say that there is no limit to any game engine screams "I have no idea what I am talking about"

I'm not wrong. Blizzard engineering panel specifically adressed this, so you can go watch that if you want a more authoritative source on this. It's really all about how Blizzard are willing to spend their resources.

[Chemii]

When people talk about the wow engine I try to explain the Theseus' Paradox.



I realise its not entirely the same thing but when people go on about graphical limits it triggers me a fair bit.

[ls-]

IIRC the engine has a hard limit on 1024 for texture resolution (most games today use 2K or 4K), so we will never see textures surpass that level of fidelity. And that's not touching on things like proper normals, parallax, PBR, etc which the industry has standardized over the course of WoW's lifetime. I think WoW only has simple specular maps for reflection effects (and even that seems to have been scaled back in use).

Heh, even though they can push armour/weapon texture res up to 1024, they normally use 256x256 and 256x128 textures for gear.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The biggest IMO change in terms of the engine was the view distance addition. That was a massive change.

[Swalload]

And how many here actually have background in software engineering ? A game engine isn't some static entity. It's constantly been updated and has no arbirary limits beyond how much time Blizzard are willing to spend on it.

I make games for a living, there's a reason there are many engines out there, they have their pros and cons and their limits and innovations. Hell even in one company more than 1 engine is used, because they have limitations and the goal is to use the one best suited for the needs of the project.

Sure it's possible to improve and engine and push the limitations or add tools and shit but there is a base that makes it hard to work with sometimes so it may become not worth it at some point.

[ls-]

I'm not wrong. Blizzard engineering panel specifically adressed this, so you can go watch that if you want a more authoritative source on this. It's really all about how Blizzard are willing to spend their resources.

There's such thing as diminishing returns. At some point it becomes too time- and resource-consuming to try to add certain features to old engine or any other type of project in general because it's written in different era, w/ different tech/features in mind.

To add a new feature one has to rewrite a lot of related and even unrelated code, yes, you often have to touch unrelated code because prev dev(s) or you yourself couldn't care less about projects extensibility. So eventually you may reach a point when you need to change so much that it's not worth even attempting it.

I'm a software engineer at a certain hardware manufacturer, not gaming, but still >_> I think I'm actually quite lucky that I don't work in gamedev

[Yuyn]

IF this was the case why do you think Unreal Engine 4 exist? Frostbite 3, Cryengine 3

Many of those are built/rewritten from the previous engine. They're 'separate' because of API and licensing concerns, rather than meaning they're a complete from-zero rewrite. (Some new versions of engines are a complete from-zero rewrite, but that's often not the case, too.) id Tech 4 was based on id Tech 3 which was based on id Tech 2. There were significant rewrites, but they initially started with the previous version.

This is basically what Blizzard has been constantly doing with WoW. They have no need to worry about licensing concerns, and the API concerns are completely in-company (so they're less of a problem when you control the only codebase using the engine).

Also, for people with framerate problems coming from CPU usage, try dropping your Environment Detail slider to 7 or 8 if you currently have it at 10. Outside of heavily populated (Dalaran) or exceptionally complex (i.e., parts of Suramar City) areas, the number of small objects being drawn, controlled by environment detail, is almost always the culprit on a high-end PC.

[Daedius]

Considering the game is bottle-necked by the CPU, and games that have far better graphics are way more optimised and can achieve better fps than WoW on high settings... the engine is struggling.

[Chemii]

I do, and you're wrong.
IF this was the case why do you think Unreal Engine 4 exist? Frostbite 3, Cryengine 3

Yes, code is not fully static but the foundations more or less are.
There is a reason why we still aren't on UE1. You can't keep patching and bandaging.

There are some things that simply cannot be done easily in current WoW engine.

To say that there is no limit to any game engine screams "I have no idea what I am talking about"

Replacing the bottom row of bricks in a wall is much harder than just building the wall from scratch in a most cases. It doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Most of the time this is driven by funding, not the ability to do it.

[Aeula]

Any limits they have they can just break down. WoW's engine is surprisingly flexible and is built to be updated.

It'd need to be something pretty big that the engine simply couldn't do. Like maybe VR or something?

[Wolfbear]

There are always limits, but it's amazing how much they have improved the clunky ass engine after all this time.

[thilicen]

The fact that we're seeing more updates in BFA, I don't think we're at the edge yet.

And no, every time WoW2 ends up being a talk, people want more real looking, or reboot, and so on.

About that, I missed Blizzcon this year. Did they mention any specific changes / upgrades to the engine?