Do You Want a WoW HD Texture Pack?

[Lazy Gecko]

That said, the stylized look of the game has worn well and ramping it up to some version of realism would probably look worse than people think. I really wish they'd fix trees though. That would do so much.

It seems as though the vanilla trees were revamped in Cataclysm but were little more than retextures. The flat-hexagon like texture surfaces for the leaves is painfully apparent from a distance on a flying mount (you can tell overall that the old world really wasn't designed to be viewed from the height of flying mounts). The Pandaria trees on the other hand look fantastic.

[Stevegasm]

The textures get better and better with each new version. I never set foot in old content unless I have to for some reason, so it doesn't bother me that the old content looks terrible these days. Rather then time and effort be put to use on upcoming stuff, so no.

[yuca247]

I don't know if there's more but I know lotro for sure lets you download a normal client or a high res client. I'm surprised Blizzard hasn't thought about something like this. If you know you have a crappy computer than you install the normal client. If you have a beefy computer you know can handle high graphics you install the high res version. That way you don't alienate part of your subscriber base.

[twelvethirty]

Yes, but Blizzard would have to re do the entire engine, or at least optimize it much more than it is now.

[frumper]

WoW is high def. Not every texture is, some look like crap, but many are. As a few people have already pointed out, HD on consoles refers to 1080p, or 1920x1080(2MP) resolution. WoW can play at much higher resolutions, personally my lowly iMac plays it at 2560x1440(3.68MP). If wow looks bad to you, maybe its your monitor, or maybe your settings aren't maxed, but I find that the resolution quality is much higher than anything on a console. The polygon counts are much lower in wow per object, but that is because its an MMO.

The engine is very good, the game plays very smooth. That is what an engine should do. You don't need a new engine to add features either, features have been added to the engine many times since release. It isn't like a giant block of metal that is largely the same, its code, you can always edit/rewrite code. The question is always going to be is it worth the time for what you'll get. Personally, I think redoing character models is a giant waste of time. My character is about 1" tall on a 27" monitor and he's covered in armor. I largely see his helm, shoulders and weapon which are already created with the higher poly art limits.

[whitefox]

Textures, should you not have worked on the respective maps recently, can be a nightmare-ish pain to re-do.
Hell, im working on a little cartoony pirate for a small kids game, I only have his diffuse and shadow maps done, each at 256x256, and its taken nearly four hours. I can't imagine going back and re-working several gigs of assets.

But heck yea, would love to see it done.

[Bathory]

Nope. Couldn't run it. Comp isn't that capable for such things, I lag enough as is.

[ComputerNerd]

Higher resolution textures means a lot of work sunk into updating them.
I would rather see that invested elsewhere.

[Zyranthian]

In an ideal world where it wouldn't take tonnes of time and resources to redo all the textures in the game, sure I'd love higher res textures on older stuff, but I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the other content you would need to sacrifice to make that happen. Its not just a case of scaling them up, theres only a finite amount of data in those textures and scaling them up to a higher res isn't going to magically make them more detailed. Imagine it as the difference between a DVD upscaled to 1080p and a Blu-ray movie natively outputting at 1080p; its a pretty significant difference.

It would take artists many, many, many hours of work re-creating a lot of the textures to make it happen, and it doesn't matter how much money or how many resources they have, you're still going to be sacrificing the content that those resources could have otherwise been spent on.

[Deleted]

WoW graphic engine is pretty good, it supports pretty much everything other newer MMO utilize at this time. They just have low resolution models and textures.
Considering impovements I saw over all this years, its code is most probably many times rewriten by now and grown like 5-10 times since release. So no, it's not as old as people think.
For the other parts of engine(not graphic), well it's still a standard any new MMO try to reach and many fail.

[Wazooty]

Not really, I prefer being able to actually run the game smoothly. Besides, I think the current graphics have a certain charm to them.

I don't think you understand the idea of texture packs.

They're optional.

[frumper]

I don't think you understand the idea of texture packs.

They're optional.

He's answering the OP with no he would not support them, then heres why....

[Deleted]

I have to agree with this. There severs would never handle it but. There is a reason mmos don't use super good graphics. Even elder scroll online had to real them back from the skyrim engine.

Servers aren't the problem. Money is.

There is cloud gaming support for incredibly complex and good looking games these days, tonnes more demanding than WoW in terms of latency.

MMOs are developed to reach out to as many potential players as possible, and then to keep them over extensive periods of time. A huge portion of the target audience plays on terrible hardware from years ago, which is why the game needs to update itself at a very slow pace, lest it should outrun the pace at which part of the subscribers update their hardware.

[Anjerith]

"HD" is such a fucking console moniker. All it really means is the thing is running in a high resolution, with High resolution textures (sometimes!). WoW has been capable of the former since Classic and WotLK began to add the latter in. Pretty much every area of the game now features "HD" graphics.

I think you simply mean "More Complex" which, given the general opinion of Varian in the ending of SoO, is not necessarily something everyone agrees with.

[Deleted]

Gameplay over Graphics. I don't like games that release a HD remake or a HD upgrade.

[Deleted]

I think there should be an option 'I don't care'.

seconded. it seems people dont know that a poll is totally worthless if an option "i dont care/i dont mind" is absent

[Khaza-R]

If it was optional, why not?

[vesseblah]

Note: Textures would bring the game's textures to 2k resolution. Would affect all content.

MoP (and most of Cataclysm) content is already done at higher quality than the previous expansions. New textures wouldn't help much when the bigger issue is very low polygon count of all 3D models. High res texture on low poly count model looks even worse shit, kinda like gluing on photographs of real people into paper dolls.

[Clone]

Gameplay > Graphics = excuses from people with bad computers

I remember when I'd used to say the same thing before I got a new system. Newsflash people, good gameplay and good graphics aren't mutually exclusive.

[frumper]

"HD" is such a fucking console moniker. All it really means is the thing is running in a high resolution, with High resolution textures (sometimes!). WoW has been capable of the former since Classic and WotLK began to add the latter in. Pretty much every area of the game now features "HD" graphics.

I think you simply mean "More Complex" which, given the general opinion of Varian in the ending of SoO, is not necessarily something everyone agrees with.

My first laptop had a 1920x1200 resolution, that was in 2004. Vanilla has always been played on my computers at "HD", as Anjerith eloquently points out that its been capable since release.