The engine is an ancient mashup of and already old engine. It's a miracle it looks this good.
The engine is an ancient mashup of and already old engine. It's a miracle it looks this good.
I am the lucid dream
Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh
Or there's the alternative of upgrading instead of asking for "BETTERGRAPHICSCOREKTHX".
Laptops are also not really good gaming machines unless you spec for ones with specific capabilitys. Also, the 360, while older hardware, it's ment for pure gaming, plus they can optimize for one pure setting.
WoW's engine has even less in common with Warcraft 3's engine than Portal 2 does with Half Life 2 and a lot of newer games have poorer multi core threading than WoW; though admittedly the bar is set extremely low there. (Rift doesn't even have multi core functionality last time I looked and GW2's was marginally better than WoW's).
Armor does have a higher polycount these days in comparison to the early days and there has been some lighting improvements, although it could always use more. The main problem with WoW's engine is their is so much junk accumulated in it that the final results don't measure up to the performance needed, with completely unnecessary slowdowns for many people. It is what is and WoW is an almost ten year old game running uninterrupted with multiple additions and that is just going to have negative consequences for optimization and it has very little to do with the fact Warcraft 3 was a RTS; just check WoW against it's contemporaries and you will be surprised just how well the old girl is holding up.
"New engine" seems to the big buzzwords around this subject, but I have never seen a truly successful engine rehaul on the scale some people expect of an engine rehaul ( I hear EVE has done a pretty good job but I never really played that game so can't comment); Azeroth isn't going to suddenly have Crysis 3 fidelity but is only ever going to have enhanced versions of existing assets, much like Blizzard are doing incrementally instead of doing it all in the one day.
Barring a few improvements ( such as the infamous player models and some other lighting improvements) the game is looking about as good as it's ever going to look and the only thing which could be realistically argued for is to ask for it to be less of a burden on computer resources.
WoW looks great compared to it's contemporaries but comparing it to GTA V is like comparing the fidelity of a gramophone against a Blu-Ray. Things are what they are, and if graphical fidelity is important to your gaming then playing a 10 year old game is never going to yield the best results.
No, WoW looks fine. The problem is that the graphics they deliver is WAY more taxing on a computer system than it should be.
I think it has something to do with old code still being active in the background. Like they just pile new code over the heaps of ancient shit code since way back in the day. And spell visuals are the biggest villain in this game since KJ. Not even joking. It seems like every spell effect is it's own NPC with AI, directives and calculated travel paths. In a raid you have like 4000 actors just flying around..No wonder the fps drops. The spell effects in this game is too expensive for what it needs to be, for what the engine can handle. That is the only problems imo.
The graphics are so subpar because Activision won't invest in the game unless it is sold in the Blizzard Store.
If they find a way to sell upgraded graphics in the Blizzard Store, we will get some awesome graphics real fast, for a price.
Model-wise, WoW struggles, but other than that, WoW's graphics are fantastic for what they are based on. No qualms at all.
WoW graphics are amazing. Just look at the valley of four winds or kun lai summit. Does this look bad:
It looks awesome to me
is that picture suppose to look good?
the landscape is nice and inspired, but the graphics quality is quite poor. Low res texture, rough edges, limited view distance. it's not good looking, it's fonctional. WoW engine does not allow for sharp edges on the mountain, that's why you always have those roundish, curvy mountains.
as to why graphics are so poor? The answer is simple really, because it is enough.
wow is surfing on millions of subs and someone at blizzard decided that spending money in improving graphic would not increase subs that much. thus it is not a worthy investment to make. Simple really. As long as player will say they are satisfied with current graphical level by continuing their sub, blizzard will not improve it.
Last edited by Vankrys; 2013-09-29 at 10:18 PM.
Not really the case, they upgrade everything every expansion. I'm certain they've tweaked the engine itself along the years?
Water doesn't' even have specular highlights - seriously what kind of water is this, anyone who has lived knows water is shiny.
You running Dx9? You even said your running it on "fair" which is only marginally better than low? Wow scales to both ends of the GPU market, low settings are really really low (Almost anything can run wow on low. My friends PC runs it, she doesn't even have a GPU. She's running wow off Intel Integrated graphics and the PC is even older than wow is for god sake lol.) ultra is really demanding. Same as most games nowadays. If your laptops only 2 years old, then its your fault not WoW's. You should of bought a better laptop
GTAv only looks, relatively good, because it only renders things within about 10M of you fully. Everything distant is lower quality. Even on XboxOne/PS4 it wont be that great. Compare GTAv on 360 to the PC release when it comes out I grabbed GTAv and played through the missions last week, at first it looked just like the original Xbox looked when I got my 360. You know that, "wow this was actually that bad? I thought it was good back in the day" kinda thing that happens when you go back a generation after a while. Had the reverse problem a week later when I came back on the PC and played metro, It almost made my eyes melt it looked that damn good. And that's only because I was comparing it to GTA on the 360.
The style of graphics blizzard go with in wow look good to me, the only lacking department is the models themselves, And the only thing that needs a spruce up is Character models and Outland I believe, they've worked through the rest.
Last edited by thunterman; 2013-09-29 at 10:27 PM.
art is a subjective thing i suppose. glad you actually enjoy the game visuals, there is nothing wrong with that.
I personally found that second picture unattractive, both technically and artistically, but that's just me.
also you are posting only landscape picture, are you always looking at the game world from afar?
Do you spend most of the game time on your flying mount?
here is what you see when you play the game up close
Last edited by Vankrys; 2013-09-29 at 10:39 PM.
Water looks fine with the graphic improvement it received if you turn it up and have DX11.
The engine is old but oddly enough, the game still feels like it's more full of life than more modern MMOs. Our characters feel more like living breathing beings, motion in the game is top notch, and the cartooniness allows the game to be played on more machines.
Look at "newer" MMOs like FF14:ARR, Rift, Star Wars, Tera, etc. They look all pretty when it comes to the environment graphics but the characters lack the fluidity in motion we have in WoW. The characters feel more choppy and lifeless.
Pandaria looked pretty amazing as well.
What miracle? GTA 5 looks pretty much the same as GTA 4 graphics wise.
Anyway, I don't think WoW's graphics should be a problem for anyone but the engine is horribly outdated. You can keep tuning an old car, but unless you put in a brand new engine it won't matter that much. Yeah, I'm not a car expert but I think you get what I'm trying to say.
i don't have a problem, i don't mind bad graphics. I always found wow graphics average to bad, but that never prevent me to enjoy the game. Bad graphics does not bug me in any way. Same way i don't have a problem with hotline miami graphics the walking dead, or any older game, as long as i have fun.
New model will not be enough to make me come back to wow, i have changed, the whole "grind gear, clear dungeon, rinse and repeat every patch" does not amuse me anymore, i play other game. I like to keep in touch with the evolution of this game, and the MMO scene in general.
I'm pretty sure that the outdated graphics are one of the causes of the sub decline. That's why people demand new player models as well.
And no, even if Blizzard is losing subs due to graphics they won't simply create a whole new engine and lots of new models. That's for too much work, it would be WoW 2 basically. I think Blizzard is content with milking as much money out of WoW through microtransactions until Titan is ready, they don't care about losing subs that much.
No amount of new models will cause anything more than a small bump in subs. Its an old game, if you're tired of playing it, you're tired. Adding a few polygons to player models isn't going to change how you play the game, and the models will never look like next gen models in single player games.