Mists of Pandaria and WoW Art Style-Outdated WoW Graphics Engine

[Flalia4]

So a game that's 8 years old can be played on a computer that's more then 10+ years old? Whats the problem exactly? More accessibility. And even for 8 years wows graphics have aged very well, I doubt the same will be said about SWTOR in 8 year's if it's still around then.

[Baar]

The amount of care that is put into design is quite impressive That's a lie, as WoW looks almost identical on a 2002 PC at LOWEST and a 2011 PC at ULTRA. Clearly, they haven't put impressive amounts of design into the game. World of Warcraft is quite cartoonish, that’s obvious and it’s on purpose, it’s a design decision and I think it’s a really good one, it adds a lot to the longevity of the game, and it also makes it possible to play on low-settings and still have the game looking good.
but after questing or raiding on a certain area, they will probably notice in the end that there was something special on that scenery that they just couldn’t quite put their finger on what it was. Lie, the last time any gamer was awed by graphics in WoW was in 2005. I was impressed with every zone in Pandaria. You don't speak for anyone but yourself.


The design ends up being extremely appealing Lie, the last zones that were extremely appealing in WoW were Feralas, Barrens, Un'Goro Crater, Wetlands and Tanaris from WoW Vanilla. That was EIGHT (8) years ago. Same answer as above.

I’ve played other games with the latest generation graphics engines and I must say that while some like to take advantage of showing off the engine capabilities, and try to impress players with technicalities, like using extremely high resolution textures and latest vertex shaders, most of them fail in delivering superb design Yet another lie this guy is saying that Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, and Call Of Duty 2 (even SWTOR) graphics suck compared to WoW's ancient graphics from 2004.
No he didn't mention a single game. YOU did.

Cba to continue. You get the point.

Replies are in red. I still don't see any lie.

[Holes]

OP is a lie.

[shimargh]

SWTOR looks like ass.

A labyrinth of copy/pasted corridors with painted on scenery fooling you into thinking the game has depth.

I played since day one, i'm no fanboy, i hate somethings about the game, but that image IS NOT WHTA IT SAYS, i played on high textures AND medium textures (even now with the "atlased" textures) with and without AA and bloom and that WAS NEVER THE CASE. pls put your facts straight, don't go throwing shit just because.

[Sturmbringe]

This is a problem that many games face and it's a hard one to tackle, new and possibly better OS's also play a big role in this area as they can control which threads go to each core.

But I agree, this would be a major improvement as CPU's seem to be evolving into more and more cores, instead of the number of transistors in each one, eventually things get so small that technology might hit a physical limitation. We’ll just have to wait and see, maybe some new scientific discovery will change this and we get back to single core CPUs (Hello quantum!)

Optimization for 2+ CPUs would be great, but I don’t know how feasible it is, I suspect it would take major resources to do any kind of major improvement on this, resources that might be better spent somewhere else since the game runs just fine on current CPUs.

There are also many constraints software wise that make this something very hard to accomplish with such a complex game, I suspect that some optimizations can be done but the game will continue to use some cores more than others, simply because some threads will be under a heavier workload than others and you can’t easily split them into multiple ones, some calculations require one thread and don’t run well in parallel, any kind of major change on this I suspect would probably require an almost complete rewrite of the game code or some special compiling, but this is mostly speculation on my part, maybe devs can tell us otherwise one of these days.

This is yet another example of how Blizzard lie.

Above, they say that developing tech to take advantage of multi-core CPUs is technologically imposible and/or not feasible. Apparently they have never heard of NIVIDIA's THREADED OPTIMIZATION TECHNOLOGY.

Threaded optimization makes your GPU benefit from multi-core CPU's. Since NIVIDIA did develop such a tech, I really can't see why Blizzard with their multi-billion $$$ income cannot make use of it.

This technology is available to my Nividia Gigabyte GTX 580, alongwith PHYSX technology which Blizzard -again- make no use of. I am so tired of Blizzard's lies, really I am.

[Granyala]

I use the above computer at work, and run the game to post and cancel auctions. Sometimes, when I am travelling, I also use the above PC to quest and do other tasks. It gets me about 25 FPS all settings at lowest.

Go into a 25man raid and then come back here and try to keep a straight face while telling us how great WoW runs on your pocket calculator.

Above, they say that developing tech to take advantage of multi-core CPUs is techonologically imposible and/or not feasible. Apparently they have never heard of NIVIDIA's THREADED OPTIMIZATION TECHNOLOGY.

This technology is available to my Nividia Gigabyte GTX 580, alongwith PHYSX techonology which Blizzard -again- make no use of. I am so tired of Blizzard's lies, really I aqm.

It IS impossible to implement retroactively in such a large game like WoW. They'd have to rebuild it from scratch.

[Masser]

SWTOR was a bad game compared to WoW, but graphics-wise, it just beats WoW's face to the mud.

What? Are you blind? Mists of Pandaria has much better Graphics than swtor.

[Granyala]

What? Are you blind? Mists of Pandaria has much better Graphics than swtor.

While it may be personal preference, I found ToRs gfx quite dull and... somewhat unimaginative. Maybe it's because most of it is just copy/paste from movies, dunno.

[Tenjen]

pandarens visibly bloat their cheeks when underwater. There are a hundred little details like this on the new models.

Iam amazed that the artists are pushing such good new designs and details on such an old engine. it reminds me of an artist friend who can use a few lines (i kid you not, like 10-15 curved lines) and create an image using negative space to make it look more detailed than many adobe photoshop artworks. another artist i know of who scribbles and the end result looks the same as high quality 3d rendering. The musical artists of the part were able to create fantastic varied music with acoustic instruments while many popular artists today have songs that sound very similar made with tech that has massive varied applications..(that arent used).

my point is. Artists are capable of making wonderful stuff with the most basic of tools. Blizz has shown this potential in some aspects of their new level designs and npc models (i'am not going to touch armor and weapon models, it will derail and burn this thread down in flames)

in the end its all irrelevant. I enjoy WoW. The graphics are updated for new areas and look neat. And i still enjoy wow.

[Evil Inside]

You should try SWTOR at ULTRA. Your heart will literally stop from the awesome graphics, guaranteed.

My point is that WoW graphics engine is so ancient that it will even run on a 2002 PC. And no, WoW isn't even using 50% of my card's and CPU's horsepower, which is sad.

So what's the problem? The engine is not ancient and is frequently updated, they chose to keep the requirements low to pull in people with shitty computers, you know, you can play on a shit computer and it'll play fine, but it looks awesome on high-end computers. I think you're just complaining for the sake of complaining, or you're just a butthurt swtor player.

[Yig]

WOW's design in it's graphics blow SWTOR out of the water. If you can't appreciate that, fine, but SWTOR's design is just laughable compared to the care that goes into the way every plant and tree is placed in WOW's zones. SWTOR's graphics have nothing but shiny lighting to make up for their bland and generic models and lay outs. I saw something I couldn't actually believe in SWTOR, something I saw WOW change in 2004 8 years ago, the exact same tree models were placed side by side in SWTOR, not even rotated in any way to change up the branch lay outs, the branches were all exactly the same, side by side, for multiple trees. This creates a repeating pattern the eye instantly sees which creates a kind of visual fatigue which bores the eye and ruins the composition. Your player character is a stiff dead mannequin, if you rotate to the left or right, your entire body is frozen in SWTOR like a plastic action figure rotating around on wheels. In WOW, every movement is reflected in subtle ways in your character model which make it feel like a real animated puppet in front of you that you can almost touch in a virtual setting.

You are simply impressed by tricks used to impress the untrained eye. SWTOR wishes it had the visual quality of WOW, it's advancements leave gaping holes compared to WOW's solid and hand crafted appeal.

[Sturmbringe]

So what's the problem? The engine is not ancient and is frequently updated, they chose to keep the requirements low to pull in people with shitty computers, you know, you can play on a shit computer and it'll play fine, but it looks awesome on high-end computers. I think you're just complaining for the sake of complaining, or you're just a butthurt swtor player.

The problem is that WoW isn't even using 50% of my November 2007 CPU and 2010 GPU at ULTRA settings. The problem is that I can play WoW at ULTRA settings with my CPU and GPU 50% underclocked. The problem is that WoW does not look awesome on Ultra settings. In fact, it looks pretty much the same on my 2002 computer at LOWEST as it does at my desktop PC at ULTRA.

Bottomline, the problem is that Blizzard is too lazy to bring the game to 2012. The game is still at 2005/2006, with the sole exception of water textures upgrade.

[Bonkbonk100]

SWTOR? Good looking? Did they finally fix the jagged shadows and below average textures? I am not bashing the game just because it turned out to be a huge disappointment for me, but that game didn't look good, espiecially when you consider it's a barely half a year old.

[OmniSkribe]

Bottomline, the problem is that Blizzard is too lazy to bring the game to 2012. The game is still at 2005/2006, with the sole exception of water textures upgrade.

1)Yeah yeah and Wow is playable with 25/40 ppl raid on computer 8+ years old and your SWTOR can't ever draw more than 30 ppl in one scene (Devs posted that engine cant draw lotta characters simultaneously without huge fps drop and other problems)
2)And yes Wow has terrific ART-Style (cartoonish graphics as was stated above is design choice). SWTOR don't have that (character models is a joke, animation is a joke)
3)Wait what and there is YOUR PhysX in Swtor except robe phisycs? Yeah so much use for a technology.
4)I u DON'T UNDERSTAND that fancy shaders and eye tearing bloom effect everythere IS NOT enough to be beatifull there is no point to disscuss this theme with you anymore.
5) Oh wait and I have forgotten to say how WoW's world is infested with small details and swtor world is copypast borefest. (Nar Shadda, Coruscant is an example)
5)The whole thread is about how SWTOR awesome and wow sucks, please close. Author is not very good and providing solid facts and understanding what he is talking about.

[Evil Inside]

The problem is that WoW isn't even using 50% of my November 2007 CPU and 2010 GPU at ULTRA settings. The problem is that I can play WoW at ULTRA settings with my CPU and GPU 50% underclocked. The problem is that WoW does not look awesome on Ultra settings. In fact, it looks pretty much the same on my 2002 computer at LOWEST as it does at my desktop PC at ULTRA.

Bottomline, the problem is that Blizzard is too lazy to bring the game to 2012. The game is still at 2005/2006, with the sole exception of water textures upgrade.

Obviously it will run fine when you're sitting idle in sw or looking at a wall, go into a 25man raid and see how you fare. And you're passing off your opinions as facts, wow looks good at ultra and many people, myself included, like the art style. Anyway just seen your signature, this is obviously a bait thread so I'm outta here.

[Jaese]

So you're whining about WoW having the ability to be run on low-end PCs with all graphics at the lowest?

Sounds like good business practice to me, especially since the game looks amazing at Ultra. Chill out, man.

And SWTOR was/is ugly. Their engine is garbage.

[ablib]

In fact, it looks pretty much the same on my 2002 computer at LOWEST as it does at my desktop PC at ULTRA.

Well, at least you finally admitted that you don't have an eye for detail. Which leads me to wonder, how this thread could continue.

[obao98]

All i could understand ( in a language that the OP might understand) is :

Blliz : inside this box u have 1 bar of chocolate for u to eat at your pleasure

OP : ok
( OP opens the box and finds 3 bars of chocolate instead

OP : fuc**** blizzard! i got 3 bars of chocolate instead of 1!

The OP loves chocolate btw.

HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH THIS IS THE BEST POST IN THIS TOPIC! EXACTLY THIS!

Also, what the OP, ITS´S ALL BULLSH*T.

My old PC was a Pentium 4, which I used to raid back druing WotLK. I raided 25 man, and my graphics NEEDED to be set to the lowest possible settings in all aspects. I literally raided ToC 25 looking at the ground EVERYDAY because I could not handle to even look at the bosses that my computer would simply freeze.

A few months later, with the release of ICC, I just could not raid anymore. I couldn't even play through the trash in the instance. I HAD to buy a new computer. And during all of WotLK I could not ENTER Dalaran. AT ALL.

I DARE you to raid in that computer you said runs WoW perfectly, or even do a BG. I DARE you. Play through a raid and a bg, make a video of it and post it here. Let's see if you can put your money where your mouth is. Pure talk. 100% bullsh*t talk.

[Riordrian]

I’ve played other games with the latest generation graphics engines and I must say that while some like to take advantage of showing off the engine capabilities, and try to impress players with technicalities, like using extremely high resolution textures and latest vertex shaders, most of them fail in delivering superb design Yet another lie this guy is saying that Battlefield 3, Crysis 2, and Call Of Duty 2 (even SWTOR) graphics suck compared to WoW's ancient graphics from 2004.[/QUOTE]


you know design isn´t the same as graphics. design is how the world is modeled and whatnot graphics are just the textures obave that all (at least to my understanding )

hope i made myself clear a bit being german thats not quite easy

[obao98]

On a more serious note, these retarded kids that think games are all graphics need to be shot in the head.

You are the reason why pathetic games like CoD release a new game every year. Same sh*t, terrible story, 2 hour games that you play through in one day, and then spend some weeks playing multiplayer, because you only care about graphics.

Funny how you always come back to WoW though, and its "terrible graphics".

On a scale of importance, graphics are probably one of the least important aspects in a game.

Learn that you vermin.