Poll: Is WoW graphic too cartoony?

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  1. #21
    Currently I'm playing Rift, before that I was playing swtor, and before that I was playing World of Warcraft. That being said..

    WoW looks better than Rift, and Rift came out like 5-6 years after WoW...

    swtor looks plastic....



    They made a great choice on the WoW graphics, it ages reeeaally well. Keep the style, but continue to increase the detail by increasing the pixel/texture count w/e as the newer models look alot better than the old. Vanilla races are on their way tho so its fine.

  2. #22
    I think they overdid it with Pandaria.(and that is mostly due to the color palette they chose to use in some areas) Most of the time it is fine to me. Some of the early Worgen male builds looked like they were straight out of a Disney film, they fixed the males and then managed to screw up the females. It is a fine line, and very subjective. I think the entirety of Northrend while cartoony manages to have a great vibe.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Zarc View Post
    Currently I'm playing Rift, before that I was playing swtor, and before that I was playing World of Warcraft. That being said..

    WoW looks better than Rift, and Rift came out like 5-6 years after WoW...

    swtor looks plastic....



    They made a great choice on the WoW graphics, it ages reeeaally well. Keep the style, but continue to increase the detail by increasing the pixel/texture count w/e as the newer models look alot better than the old. Vanilla races are on their way tho so its fine.
    SWTOR isn't realistic though, it is cartoon, just a higher resolution cartoon than WoW. Rift graphics blow WoW away though IMHO, but Rift is on the more realistic side of things so it isn't an apples to apples comparison. WoW's graphics are pleasant and unobtrusive, in other words they get the job done.

  3. #23
    I think the cartoonish style of WoW is perfect. Sometimes the exaggerated shoulderpads, armor designs and weapons looking like some nightmare spawned in Scrapheap Challenge do get annoying, but they fit the style and they fit the theme of Warcraft.

  4. #24
    Someone mentioned the lack of color differences in the 'more realistic' looking games, and that is spot on. Look at Rift, the environments can be down right beautiful, but most of the time you can barely make out the characters from the background, they all just kind of blur together, in WoW, they seem to "pop out", you can always make out the characters in it. And for how it looks, a game like Rift runs considerably worse than WoW on equal hardware, it is a great looking game, but it isn't exactly Crysis, there is no reason it, FFXIV, Age of Conan, etc, etc should run so poorly as compared to WoW, when they either don't look any better or haven't aged well at all. The only other MMO I enjoyed graphically on all aspects, was Warhammer Online because they have a very similar art style (hmm I wonder why, cough Warcraft was meant to be a Warhammer game, cough).

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Waezlur View Post
    I think the cartoonish style of WoW is perfect. Sometimes the exaggerated shoulderpads, armor designs and weapons looking like some nightmare spawned in Scrapheap Challenge do get annoying, but they fit the style and they fit the theme of Warcraft.
    One thing I feel they could change is the look of some weapons. Not because they look too cartoony, but because they look like toys. Some of them look like they'd make a squeeky sound when you hit something with them...

  6. #26
    The Warcraft series has always be inspired by the style of morning cartoons and American comic books.

  7. #27
    Someone bored again? This discussion has been dead for what... close to 9 years now? :P

  8. #28
    I can accept the arguments for wanting better character models and more detail, but changing the art style would be a massive mistake. The art direction of WoW is one of the things that really appeals to me.

    Someone mentioned the lack of color differences in the 'more realistic' looking games, and that is spot on.
    The real world is full of colour, but somewhere along the line somebody thought "realistic means muted colours and greys and browns", which is ridiculous. So the colour palette in quite a few "realistic" games is anything but.

  9. #29
    WoW would definitely deserve a graphic overhaul - but only in terms of number of polygons and texture resolution.

    When you take a screenshot, it's supposed to look like a drawn artwork, not a photography.

    The style is imo much better than other mmos', namely GW2 and Rift with their tryhard realistic graphics, Tera with it's blur and bloom overload and finally Wildstar, that reminds me of one thing:

  10. #30
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Velthy View Post
    Not at all. Other MMOs are more cartoonish. The graphics in WoW are fine and like ridish said, it is how it ment to be.
    I agree with this. WOW is less cartoony than other MMOs, even newer ones.

  11. #31
    This debate is so 2005.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Ricirich91 View Post
    I think it too, but just sometimes (especially in Cataclysm) many models look pathetic due to the overcartoony style. (personal POW)
    Care to give us some examples?

  13. #33
    I hate the look that western RPGs have in general and quite frankly I probably would not be able to play wow if it had that same look. I do think a few things could do with updating but overall I like the art style that blizzard does with there game.

  14. #34
    I think they can improve textures and increase polygon count; do things that make everything more detailed and realistic ... while keeping the art style. Use Garrosh as an example. He is still in the art style, but looks miles ahead of the other orcs; though I think they should take it even further.

    One of my biggest gripes is the way they do most of the trees in the game. All games use the basic flat panels and texture them to look dimensional; but what other games do to give it a more realistic feel, is not use huge flat pieces. Using the huge 'sheets' on the trees makes it look like a kid painted sections of cardboard boxes. Smaller sections to give trees a more detailed, realistic look, without changing the color palette or theme. Even in MoP, compare the pine trees with the cherry blossoms. The pine looks pretty good, the cherry blossoms, being a new tree model, look almost as bad as the vanilla models with a touch up.

    I think they come into issues with trying to keep the game usable on as ancient a machine as possible. That creates limitations until they can program and update the way their graphics settings work. It is just one of those things. Just like if you use the console commands and increase view distance, reduce fog, and increase ground clutter distance and density beyond max settings, the game looks tons better to me.

    I think just higher resolutions on textures and higher poly counts would go a very long way to updating the look and feel of the game without changing the art style at all.

  15. #35
    I like cartoonish ctyle but not all of them. Warcraft is one of them that I really like. Warcraft always looks great with it style since WC3. The kind of cartoonish I don't like is disney cartoon and all those 3d animation cartoon movie.

  16. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Thelxi View Post
    This debate is so 2005.
    I know, hipsters, all of them.

    Anyway WoW needs to be more gritty, more realistic and more something! No, no really it doesn't, the general graphic style is okay with me, what I dislike is the utterly out of place whacky goblin (and to some extend gnome) crap, I take it for what it is though, comic relief. The rest, even though low fidelity, is still acceptable to me. Given the poll result it seems most others think so too.
    Last edited by Cosmic Janitor; 2013-09-18 at 10:44 AM.

  17. #37
    Warchief Tucci's Avatar
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    I really like the art style of WoW but I definitely would love to see a lot of improvements in the engine. But the more "realistic" it looks the heavier the toll it will take on hardware and it's already an absolute monster already when lots of people are on screen. No home computer in the world can handle the load it puts on a system in certain situations at a full 60+ fps. Funny part is it may actually improve FPS if the whole engine got an overhaul.
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  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by vep View Post
    Exactly. These graphics are timeless, if you ask me.

    The graphics are a huge part of what makes WoW appealing to me. In comparison, when I played Rift with it's mighty "realistic" graphics, I found it to be extremely depressing. I mean, even the grass color was depressing >_>
    Really? I love Rift's graphics, the game is beautiful.

    I think WoW's graphics need a massive update. I don't think the game needs photorealism per se, but you can maintain a cartoony feel while improving the overall graphics to the game.

    Something like this:


  19. #39
    Warcraft 3 has been pretty cartoonish, and i think it suits wow.

    Starcraft 2 has a pretty serious look, especially with all of the new physic death animations, but i think that would not be all that great in wow without a massively upgraded graphics and engine.

  20. #40
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    I do think wow is very cartoony, compared to SWTOR and GW2, but I dont think it would suit any other way

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