WoW engine limit?

[LanToaster]

That's the whole point of modern program design, changing stuff is as easy as adding stuff, because you have layers of abstraction and separation. Ultimately, to change from normal player models to "slider customizable" models, all you need to do is provide a way for the program to convert the slider settings into the mesh.

Sure, modern Program design aims to be flexible. But, again, we are talking about a game build on an (by standards) ancient Engine.

I´m not a Software Engineer, and while I still doubt you are one, I´m very sure you dont work for Blizzard.
So, neither one of us knows how WoW Fares with "Modern Design".

What exactly are you changing? Yes, the server now has to store your settings (as if it already didn't, like hair color), so you have to modify a few database tables to store new values. You need to change the Character creating UI, but that's just rewriting a blizzard addon (well, basically. if you are interested in that more, read the exported lua files), exposing those sliders to players, changing the player object protocol (changes every patch almost btw).

I dont know what exactly has to change for more customization.
As I said: No Software Engineer. I´m highly interested in it. I take most of the Information I can get. If you have any Indepth stuff, say it.
The Guys from CIG (StarCitizen) talked about their Customization for the Models, and from the Problems they explained it isnt as Easy as it seems.

Another Example, why it Cant be that easy to change the core of the Engine. Is the Quality of the Pixels.
Today, modern Engines can display whole Planets, and have a seamless Transition from Space, to Surface. Where in any distance the LoD looks so much Better than in WoW.

WoW, doesnt even have LoD as far as I´ve seen. Not to mention Modern Shaders. If we take a Look at Overwatch, which has a similar Graphic Style to WoW. You can see how much Better it looks Engine Wise. (Not Textures, or Models, but what the Engine does with it).

There is so much an Engine can do with Textures to make it look pretty. Back when WoW Started, where Bump and Normal Maps a thing. Later came Parallax Mapping. Now Tessalation is a newer thing. Then you add PBR. (Maybe theres something newer that I dont know of).

That is all stuff which would only Expand on the Graphics side of things. Sure, you dont need PBR on a game in the ArtStyle of WoW. But if done right, Tessalation, Normal Maps and LoD could even improve Performance ontop of making it Prettier.

But theres a Reason why the only thing that appears to enhance Textures is specular Maps, and a bit prettier Lighting.
Probably, because these are things you can just change in the Engine.

[cuafpr]

its old that's for sure, how much of the core code has been changed, most likely a lot (majority?) but there are limits, heck even the language used could be a limiting factor (though i have no clue what is coded in). they finally disproved the myth that increasing the default bag size would break things, that says a lot imo. Other limits are there for sure as well, destructible land, buildings, trees etc.... foot prints in the snow that never go away. Armor that shows damage vs just low durability. all things that would be cool but limited by current tech.

[Tackhisis]

I don't think they should be worried about some idiot running Win 7 in 32 bit mode (is that even possible?)

Why would someone run a 64-bit OS on a standard 2-4GB machine?

[ls-]

Why would someone run a 64-bit OS on a standard 2-4GB machine?

Sadly, people actually do it T_T

[Cracked]

Why would someone run a 64-bit OS on a standard 2-4GB machine?

The fact that you only have 4 GB of RAM doesn't mean your program can't use more. Computers swap RAM to disk and back if needed. If you have a x64 capable CPU, running x64 applications will be faster (since no one compiles x86 applications with x64 cpu in mind), so your PC will be faster on 64 bit OS. Plus a million other reasons.

[Lahis]

Why would someone run a 64-bit OS on a standard 2-4GB machine?

Why someone would try to play WoW on a 2-4 GB machine?

[Lochton]

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

Not much, other than more advanced AI for now. The exploration islands are just scenarios. Of course, they are messing with bigger event phasing now.

[HuxNeva]

WoW2 will never happen.

It has happened. It was called Cataclysm.

Now I know you are referring to the engine. That changes incrementally each and every patch.

[Deleted]

A friend and I were talking and I'm curious. How close do you think we are to the limits of WoW's engine? Blizzard has said throughout the years that WoW 2 is always on their mind, but it won't happen until they reach the very limits of the current engine. I barely know enough to understand what they mean by that. It makes me curious though, how close are we to that limit? Is there some way for us to tell?

Where did you get this from?

[lesty]

Where did you get this from?

Probably his ass

[Deleted]

As a software developer with 10+ years experience I can tell you there is no limit. Not everything will be easy to combine and implement but if you have the resources there are theoretically no technical limits.

[Acelius]

My biggest gripe with the engine is that it isn't optimized very well and underperforms on modern hardware.

[TOM_RUS]

Where did you hear that?

Where did you get this from?

You have to wait and see yourself. Hopefully beta in early 2018.

[Sansnom]

However, player models have nothing to do with the engine, but rather how you use that engine. All the things you are describing are domain specific, what engine does is the underlying stuff - you give it all the things necessary to produce a scene and it does it (graphics engine that is). You give it a player mesh and it incorporates it in a scene. It doesn't give a fuck if the mesh has 20k verts or 2k verts. The customization changes the parts of the mesh - and that is done on top of the engine, so no.

The player model does play a part. You need to know what the engine can and cannot do and then supply it with the data it can process. You cannot just give it a set of numbers and then the engine just churn out an imagine.

Graphics engine are evolving all the time and the player is evolving with it.

[Elfezen]

They also said multiple times that they're never going to make legacy servers...

Legacy Servers is something that they already had in their inventory, a new mmorpg is something that they have to build from scratch and invest millions of money that will almost surely have a bad result according to them, and they acctualy did try to make a new mmo but they scrapped it and made it Overwatch

[Rekz]

As a software developer with 10+ years experience I can tell you there is no limit. Not everything will be easy to combine and implement but if you have the resources there are theoretically no technical limits.

Oh really? You have me completely convinced -.-

[Deleted]

Actually, you're wrong. It is a heavily modified WC3 engine. This has been common knowledge for years now.
What they did is that they used the WC3 engine, tore it completely apart and built it up with an MMO in mind.

Therefore it's still considered a heavily modified WC3 engine.


Had it not been a WC3 engine then we would've had body sliders by now.

Actually, you're wrong. It is not a heavily modified WC3 engine. This has been common knowledge for years now.
What they did is that they started building WoW on the WC3 engine, realized it was not gonna work out and started building a new engine, there's some old dev articles about this, cba to look them up now, but this screenshot from "wow 0.1" (before they switched to a custom engine) should tell you enough, this was wow on the wc3 engine, before they switched:

[Miatog]

There are days I hate google. I know I heard it from an interview this year, but all my google attempts get me is a single PCGamer interview and talk about.

I'm sure you're going to keep not believing me, don't blame you, but I know I heard it in an interview. I want to say it was Ion but I'm not sure.

At any rate, thanks for the answers about the engine limit guys.

[Kagthul]

That is the thing. Im running the 7700k and still have issues with higher settings.

literally dozen of threads about this in the computer forums.

Its not so much a WoW's-engine-limitation as it is a limitation with any secure client server game. ALL of the major MMOs have similar issues, and do different things to alleiviate them. But its there underneath in all of them.

Hell, it even affects non-MMO games; one of PUBGs biggest performance bottlenecks is having 100 or so people in the same area, because those draw calls cant be issued or updated until you get info from the server, causing the entire engine to tank around that one bottleneck.

And that's a thoroughly modern game (yes, its in early access, but there quite simply IS no "fix" for that particular issue; if there was Blizzard and other MMO companies would have figured it out by now).

[HolgerDK]

You have to wait and see yourself. Hopefully beta in early 2018.

To me it seems that developing a DX12 codepath for the WoW engine would have been worth mentioning at Blizzcon.