The WOW for all CPU argument is flawed.

[vesseblah]

even my 8 year old computer can play WOW at 1024x1080 at high, smooth.

Try run full LFR with that computer and then come back telling us it works smooth at high settings. Killing boars in Elwynn alone does not count as playing.

[fishface]

Updating the models would be good, but the main issue is with the clunky animations. Get some mo-capped cut scenes going. Some decent voice acting, some cinematic flair. It's 2012 for crying out loud. We may have been on dodgy Playstation era games when WoW was started, but we have Mass Effects, we have Uncharted, we have Arkham City and Skyrim.

The animation/voice acting/cinematics/story of cut-scenes are all a joke like you say but it's the fact that they're there that bothers me. I just think they're a band-aid solution to improve the storytelling of wow. Then again I'm a major proponent of Half Life's method of narrative and cut scenes in any game leave me rolling my eyes. Wow would be much better if they added supplementary literature in the game, journals, notes etc. it wouldn't affect people who power through, whilst giving those who are interested more texture to their experience.

On topic to the actual thread, I recently had 2/3 of my ram corrupt itself on my ass leaving me with 1gb. So I'm quite appreciative of blizzards policies on the matter. (Though I still want improved character models ofc).

[Spaceshaman]

What this dude said. Ultraxion alone will kill your PC.

[ajanu]

Honestly, if you can't get with the times, these game developers are not going to wait for you.

This is the information and technology super age. Stop living in the dark ages. I know that some people cannot afford to buy new computers. Those people have no right to complain. The game is made with a certain minimum system requirement in mind. If you can't meet those requirements, you don't get to play. It's that simple.

Adapt or die.

Untill this year when the mobo started to act flaky I was playing on extra low settings on a PC that was 1 year old when WoW was released. I built the PC to be the best I could afford, it lasted me from the end of highschool, through university, and untill I was employed and married. If my wife and I didn't both have computers that wereon their last legs, I would not have bought another PC at all. Just because you live in the "Super age" (WTF is a super age??), those of us with real lives and normal priorites don't think we should need to upgrade their PCs to play a game they bought years ago.

[bloody251]

What this dude said. Ultraxion alone will kill your PC.

Ya man, I have an average 30FPS in Stormwind with everything set to ultra. But, when I fight Ultraxion in LFR, my FPS drops to 1...

[Brubear]

I bout my desktop in '04. It's a dell Dimension E510 desktop with an aftermarket video card I bought (can't remember the exact specs on the card) Has a P4 3.0ghz chip and 1gb of ram (mb only supports 2gb, never upgraded it) I have to keep damn near all of the settings on low to run the game. I don't even run recount anymore since when I do LFR it lags me out (it was okay on 10m raids, too much data in a 25m raid) I often get disconnected from battle.net because it takes me so long to load up.

I'm finally buying components to build a new pc because my sisters boyfriend has an extra motherboard and video card he's letting me have. If Blizzard had decided to rebuild the graphics engine to make it look better they would have lost a LOT of customers who would be unable to run the game anymore. It's part of the reason why it was so popular. Not only was it more casual-friendly than any other MMO but the PC requirements where much lower than a lot of games out there.

[javen]

I know a LOT of people who run old machines and report really low FPS in any non combat, non-stationary situations. I guess it's both a good and a bad thing that you can succeed perfectly fine in most dungeons/raidswhile barely being able to tell what's going on.

But yeah, they've made technical improvements with every expansion, which is good, but it's not the "play on any machine!" it maybe was at one point. Of course, having to upgrade your PC in order to continue playing current games is kind of the nature of the beast.

[frumper]

The graphics are so horrible because WoW's graphics engine is complete and utter garbage. You wonder why SWTOR and GW2 can play on 4-5 year old PCs without issues? It's because of the graphics rendering engine. Blizzard is completely capable of using a new engine, but they're just too lazy. As long as Blizz is getting subs for the junk they're spewing out, it'll never get better. As long as they're making money off what they do already, they won't change.

swtor can play on 4-5 year old PCs without issues?
hmm, my 4 year old gaming computer must be an abberation then. I'm lucky to get 30 fps on the lowest settings, and my 2 year old desktop I get 50 fps on mid settings, not exactly stellar performance. The quality of graphics though I find to be a better overall feel in wow. Star wars has an odd jump behavior that just looks terrible, along with some other animations, and the textures feel rushed. Playing wow again after a month of star wars, the polish was amazingly clear to me.

[Deadraline]

When I first started WoW my computer was about 7 years older than the game. I started in vanilla and didn't upgrade my computer until after BC. I don't remember all the specs, but I do remember lagging BAD anything I went to stormwind or Ironforge. Darnassus ran smooth most days. But while in the world questing, or just doing 5 mans I didn't lag at all. In raid situations things would get a bit itchy depending on where I was. But even now it doesn't take the greatest computer in the world to run WoW. I am running it off a $500 computer, not made for gaming or anything special like that, just a basic computer. I run graphics on high/ultra and the only time I lag at all is in 25 mans. Being able to play WoW really doesn't require anything special. My parents play it on a laptop that is now border lining 10 years old. And it was a cheap laptop. They have lag from time to time, but can run 5 mans and be in the world with no problems at all.

[crimsonhead]

I was running:

Pentium D 2,8ghz
4 GB of RAM
nVidia GeForce 7900 GS by MSI
Intel MoBo (stock, came with hp desktop bought @ Best buy)
Generic HP v17 Monitor

~ Cost was $1000 USD

This computer, while I loved it and had to clean it to get it to proper function for WoW raids, would run at ~ 15 - 20 FPS in the world, 10 FPS in org, 10-15 FPS in 10 mans and 1-5 FPS in 25 man raids, they were literally unplayable.

New Computer

Intel i5 2500K Quad-Core Processor by SandyBridge 3.2 Ghz (Turbo Boost @ 3.7, I OC'd @ 4.2)
Twin nVidia GeForce 460 GTX with SLI Bridge
ASUS p8P67 Pro Motherboard
8 GB (going to be 16 this week) of RAM
23 inch and 21 inch acer monitor.

~ Cost $2200

I run everything now at Ultra, Wow, Skyrim, Deus Ex, SWTOR. In WoW, FPS is ~ 70 in Org, over 100 while questing, ~85 in 10m with drops of 60-65 with encounters and ~75 in 25 mans with drops to 60 with lots of crap going on. Sometimes, I don't even noticed FPS drops, it just runs smooth.

The reason for my first build to shit the bed was due to the Pentium D processor, due to the way this was constructed it bottlenecked a lot, blizzard addressed those with Pent. D Processors and tried to put in place fixes, but there were none. It was impossible.

Gaming companies will eventually exclude exclude even the most loyal of their playerbase to rise to the times and the occasion of the "modern era", they have to. I mean, they could stay on their old ways to encompass everyone but there is a threshold, games our coming out that are better, faster, look cleaner and really charm the playerbase. I once read somewhere that when DOOM came out for PC, the graphics engine on that was so advanced, that no graphics card at the time could play it on ultra, it was future proof.

That is where we are headed, like someone said, adapt or die. Yes it costs money, and I know with the times we are in it's hard, but even the simplest of luxuries cost money.

[Spaceshaman]

DOOM was a masterpiece in coding. It ran even on the lowest 386SX computers, although on the lowest resolution.

[Mad_Murdock]

That is where we are headed, like someone said, adapt or die. Yes it costs money, and I know with the times we are in it's hard, but even the simplest of luxuries cost money.

You guys just aren't thinking with your business caps on. It's very simple, if you're producing a product and especially if it's your very first product, to run on the widest range of hardware\software\etc. If you could make a product that 95% of the people in America would buy or make a produt that 85% of the people in China would buy, Which product would you build for ? The one marketed at 300 million people or the one that markets to 1billion people ?

Eventually people will have to upgrade, that's a given, even when talking about cars and cellphones. But cars and arguable cellphones will most likely take priority over a PC and so the PC will get whatever is left over, and that's the system you better be aiming for if you are in the business of making money.

Go to Best Buy and look at all the gadgets and add-ons you can get for an iPhone and look at how few thngs they have for everything else ? Why don't they have equal amounts on display ? Because you display what has the largest market and will mostly likely sell.

[neccowafer]

I always feel bad for people who didn't play WC3 before they played WoW and don't realize that many of the original graphics are direct tributes to the models from WC3. They don't usually notice the distinctive "warcraft" style to the graphics and are just like "omg graphix suk in this game!" but I'm still happy to see some of the same trees and even hear some of the same voice acting on certain mobs. Really brings back memories.


Anyways I have a CPU about 3 years old. Age of computer isn't the real factor here, what you're not taking into account is what the computer was originally bought for. I bought my computer a few years ago to basically multitask a lot while working on a lot of different things and open a billion firefox tabs as I tend to do, and for basic school things/internet use. Yes, I was playing WoW at the time, but I was not playing terribly seriously and it was the only gaming I really did on my PC so I didn't feel the need to buy a gaming one.

So basically my computer came with a decent amount of RAM, a decent (for the time) CPU, and of course a really really terrible graphics card. For a long time my computer ran WoW at.. well, if I want a smooth 30-60 FPS I needed to play on Fair or Low. My graphics card started screwing off and I had to go down to perma-low and was only getting like 20FPS.. I upgraded to a new (but not "new" or incredibly high end/expensive) graphics card and can do either ultra at about 45-ish or high at 60.


I could play it ok on this computer pre-upgrades, but if I had only bought a computer for the cheapest price possible for only the purpose of using microsoft word and checking my email and facebook or whatever people do these days, it probably would have been really, really hard to play WoW on it.

My old computer was from 2001 (but it was 2008 so only 7 years old when I replaced it, not 11) and it was really built only for those purposes, and it was pretty much impossible to play WoW on it. I was okay out in leveling zones, but only on Low with a draw distance of "huge ominous wall of fog everywhere." If I went into a major city or Dalaran, usually it would crash on me in some way or another. I had to go there for a quest when I was leveling and it was like making a powerpoint of someone trying to swim across a city through a wall of transparent, semi-frozen jell-o.

[Deleted]

People playing a game solely for good graphics in my opinion don't understand the concept of video games and games in general.

[airea]

Well, it's not as easy as just changing code "Using (BlizzardOldEngine);" with "Using (BlizzardNewEngine);". Animation needs to be fixed. On EVERYTHING, everything needs to pretty much be remodeled. Everything needs to get textured.. AGAIN, in some cases some new textures might be needed aswell.

There's a ton of stuff to fix. Sometimes it's even better just to REDO it all, instead of trying to use the old things. So I'm happy that they don't do it. As that meens we would pretty much get an expansions work or in worst case a new games work, in getting the same old world that we have today.

What you have noticed thou, is that they have started to fix alot of things, like water and such. It's better to fix one thing at a time, than to fix everything at ones. Because stuff bugs out less by then.

Thing is, you're forgetting the part where Blizzard can do this, and they just choose not to. They have LOADS of money every year after paying their employees, yet they make excuses such as not having the resources or the money when something important needs to get done. The game is almost 8 years old, and so is the game engine, as well as some of the graphics still used in the game. I know doing this is very difficult for them do with the amount of staff they have right now. One of the things I've always believed is that Blizzard needs to hire more people.

They have this money sitting around, why don't they do something with it? I dunno, maybe they use the excess to fund Titan, but I'd think that'd be pretty cheap- making players pay an excess for something they deserve a better version of, in order to fund something they know nothing about, which they may not even enjoy. In any case, it's definitely within their power to do this.

---------- Post added 2012-01-17 at 11:47 AM ----------

This is the kind of thing I expect to see, over simplified 'just' arguments, because making an engine is just that simple, because putting everything you've done into that new engine is just that simple.....

No I mean everytime they release a new version of anything it's always rebuilt from the ground up right? and of course if you've got a problem the best solution is always to throw money at it, money makes everything easier and quicker....right?

Not directly, no. What does make things easier and quicker, is having more people to do them, and work out solutions to problems with more ease. In my opinion, we're entitled to having a game that doesn't fall too far behind on it's graphical properties (4 years or so is fine, but 8? Seriously?), keeps the story flowing throughout the world, and adds some new and fun content with each expansion. If these are all done right, each expansion should last long enough to do the same thing once more. Don't you agree with this?

I'm not saying Blizzard should hire me, or that I know exactly how to solve all of this, but I do think Blizzard needs some more assistance in figuring out how, and to complete the content they already wish they could, but don't have enough time for. That's something money CAN buy.

---------- Post added 2012-01-17 at 11:55 AM ----------

swtor can play on 4-5 year old PCs without issues?
hmm, my 4 year old gaming computer must be an abberation then. I'm lucky to get 30 fps on the lowest settings, and my 2 year old desktop I get 50 fps on mid settings, not exactly stellar performance. The quality of graphics though I find to be a better overall feel in wow. Star wars has an odd jump behavior that just looks terrible, along with some other animations, and the textures feel rushed. Playing wow again after a month of star wars, the polish was amazingly clear to me.

If you're going to comment on someone's post, at least read the rest of there comments following. I stated I was over exaggerating a bit. You're complaining about getting 50 fps in SWTOR using mid settings on a 4 year old system? Our eyes only process 30 fps normally, anything more than 45 is a waste. However, I agree with you about the fluid nature of WoW's animations.

[Emane]

Thing is, you're forgetting the part where Blizzard can do this, and they just choose not to. They have LOADS of money every year after paying their employees, yet they make excuses such as not having the resources or the money when something important needs to get done. The game is almost 8 years old, and so is the game engine, as well as some of the graphics still used in the game. I know doing this is very difficult for them do with the amount of staff they have right now. One of the things I've always believed is that Blizzard needs to hire more people.

They have this money sitting around, why don't they do something with it? I dunno, maybe they use the excess to fund Titan, but I'd think that'd be pretty cheap- making players pay an excess for something they deserve a better version of, in order to fund something they know nothing about, which they may not even enjoy. In any case, it's definitely within their power to do this.

And the thing you forget is, it takes time. Because if you are upgrading the graphic engine, everything else is stopping. Because otherwise it will be wasted work. This will halt or give double job for them. Making LESS content. Say that it takes 6 months to upgrade the engine, and everything. Do you honestly think that the community will sheer in joy when Blizzard releases that patch with only updated graphic engine AND some balance issues, no raid, no nothing.

Really do you think people will take that? Even when they say "But we updated EVERYTHING!", people will still complain "But it wasn't broken! Why fix it?" And some people will be "yay new graphics." and some will be "Is this Blizzard excuse of a patch?!? I pay $15 per month and I get nothing?!" It's not something that you do on a weekend because it could be neat.

And throwing more money at it won't help, trust me. It comes to a point where effectivity peaks and then go straight down, you can't keep adding more people to it, then it will never be done.

But most important, updating something as crucial as the graphic engine, or physic engine will take ALOT of time, aprox. 6 month or something. And anything graphicwise that's created during that time, will have to be redone. From scratch. Basicly meening, it's not defendable from a fisical POV to do it. Therefor they wont.

You pretty much have 2 options
Updated Graphic Engine Only (6 Months)
New Raid/Content (6 Months)

You can't choose both.

[Affectionate]

Just because you bought a "top of the line computer" 4 years ago, and can run wow on ultra on it dosnt me the majority of the player base has access to that.

My current PC base is 3.5 years old, and I paid 400$ for it back then, Ive put roughly another 400$ into it for upgrades since then, new mobo/cpu more ram, new vid card.

If i turn shadows anywhere above the 2nd to lowest option, I wont see over 10fps. Ive basically got everything down to minimum except view distance and water, and Im perfectly comfortable with the 45ish fps normally 35ish 10man raiding, 25mans I drop down to like 15, and dont enjoy it

I'll prolly be dropping 400-500 before MoP comes out as Ive got more options financially now but regardless, I wont be running around on ultra without suffering.

[SamR]

The graphics are so horrible because WoW's graphics engine is complete and utter garbage. You wonder why SWTOR and GW2 can play on 4-5 year old PCs without issues? It's because of the graphics rendering engine. Blizzard is completely capable of using a new engine, but they're just too lazy. As long as Blizz is getting subs for the junk they're spewing out, it'll never get better. As long as they're making money off what they do already, they won't change.

Are you seriously trying to argue that SWTOR runs better on older computers than WoW? You must not be playing the same game I am.

Load up SWTOR or just go read the forums and then come back and tell us how SWTOR runs "without problems". I've never heard the WoW graphics engine praised so highly as it is on SWTOR forums...

[Mad_Murdock]

Our eyes only process 30 fps normally, anything more than 45 is a waste. However, I agree with you about the fluid nature of WoW's animations.

I believe this has been proven false quiet a few times.

http://whisper.ausgamers.com/wiki/in...an_eye_can_see

"If you don't want to read it all, then the short answer is, the human eye / brain combination can see well over 100 frames per second and thus far the limits have not thoroughly been tested yet. Suffice it to say, IT IS NOTHING LIKE THE 24, 30, 60 or even 100 fps crap, that gets spouted on the Internet"

[Jacob6875]

I like the fact that wow runs great on lower end computers. I bought a $350 laptop about 8 months ago to use in class at school and to my surprise it runs wow perfectly fine on medium settings. It's pretty cool I can play wow if I happen to have time between classes or a class gets canceled without notice and I am stuck at school for a few hours etc. When I briefly played Rift I tried installing it on the same laptop but even on low settings it was unplayable. Even the menu lagged a lot.

If u are wondering about the specs its an AMD 2.4ghz x 2, 4gb of ram and an integrated video card.