NPC Textures Lower Res than Player Textures?

[The Boomking]

Hello all.

With the update to the character models I naturally spent a great deal of time inspecting the high-res deliciousness that is our races, but I noticed an odd discrepancy between mine and the NPCs' textures. The tauren I was running around with had a markedly better texture resolution than all the tauren NPCs I could find. This wasn't because the NPCs were larger, nor do I think it was because of any setting I have (texture resolution is on High).

On this image you can see clearly what I mean. Look particularly at the fur on the hooves.
http://i.imgur.com/hLx1Oqs.jpg

I'm still unsure whether or not this is only affecting tauren (and I also don't know if this has been the case even with the old models, or if it's a new change, or just a bug), but I did get a shot of my orc as well. It's not as clear as the tauren, mainly because orcs are smaller, but it does look as if it's affecting orcs too.

If you look at this image: http://i.imgur.com/E0SIPI3.jpg
I'm the orc on the right. On the NPC you can barely make out some pixellation and blurriness on the lips and forehead wrinkles, but I can't see that on my orc. Yes, I'm aware it's not the same face or color but I took one of the closest I could find. :P But I'll let you decide whether or not you think the orc has the same problem.

If anyone has any other races where the NPCs have a lower res texture than players, feel free to post them below, I know I'd be interested in seeing it. (I only checked tauren and orc)

What do you think about this? Surely our dutiful NPCs deserve to look as good as we do, right?

[annoyingmoose]

Maybe some sort of new optimization thing?(depending on the graphic option you selected)
'Only Me and my party member models at highest quality' something along that line.

[Maoli]

Yeah it looks like the texture quality might be scaled down on the npcs a bit. I bet there are some commands you can use to get it higher.

[The Boomking]

To clarify, it's not just my character either. I took that zeppelin to Orgrimmar and checked out other tauren players, all of them were at the same level of detail that I was.

[Rosstafa]

I'm pretty sure this is the case with current models too. If you compare player Pandaren to NPCs, the latter are of a slightly lower resolution. Same thing with all the other character models. It makes sense; you're going to be checking your character out close up more than NPCs. No point spending time rendering details people will not pay much notice to.

[Deleted]

It's same on live, just look at any Pandaren npc.

[Pivotal]

It has been like this since WotlK. Characters got a texture-resolution update, however npc's still had the old one. This isn't something new

[chaud]

NPCs use lower texture resolution to keep performance up.

[The Boomking]

It has been like this since WotlK. Characters got a texture-resolution update, however npc's still had the old one. This isn't something new

Oh, right, I seem to remember them talking about resolution improvements but I didn't know if they ever did it. On smaller races it's virtually undetectable too, I suppose it was just the size of the tauren model that made it stand out much more now that they've been outfitted with updated and better textures. Thanks for the info, all!

[snuzzle]

NPCs use lower texture resolution to keep performance up.

It would be nice if we could get the option to use the same high resolution on NPCs as well as players if we have a computer that can handle it. Now that the majority of the races are going to be using super high-quality models, it's really apparent that the NPCs take a resolution hit.

[Gimlix]

Only texture problem there is atm is that hats that have like a robe around them so you can't see their hat like the starting DK set, is that your face gets out of the dark and you see it's normal face halfly while other half is darken. Let's hope they fix that!