Originally Posted by
Yig
The thing is, if a WOW 2 was made with exponentially better graphics, it still would look like a cartoon world. Just a much better cartoon world with the same simple and elegant forms and colors, but it would feel more and more like a cross between the Sons of the Storm's concept art and the art team's and a Pixar or Dreamworks movie. Like Brave, or Up, or How to Train Your Dragon.
To open the door to what WOW 2 would be, would need to be, could be, I could go write a brain numbing wall of philosophical text. But when "better graphics" are mentioned, it doesn't mean "more realistic". It means a sphere will look more like a sphere than an approximation using tiny anglular planes. It means something like possibly real time wind FX and flora that interacts with the weather and a world your character effects.
Look at what Everquest Next is doing, it's just amazing how ambitious they are.
Now look at what Blizzard does by rote. They look at he best gaming has to offer, and as gamers wonder "How would I make this cooler if I got to make the game I wanted to play?"
This is how WOW was created. The first MMO with a visually compelling painterly world evoking illustration principals oozing with atmosphere in every zone, every tree and boulder placed by the eye of an artist, that was totally unprecedented in 2004. And the movement mechanics felt fun and addictive, something you were more used to seeing in a Nintendo game or action RPG. Simple but smooth, fun to just run to the left and right and hop around. MMOs at the time had atrocious animations and a sense of movement, graphics were all basically made by people who weren't what I would call artists first, everything was kind of a token representation hinting at what the place looked like in your imagination.
WOW came along and looked more like a charming diorama than a random terrain generator some programmers automated with fancy lighting shaders and the same tree model used 100 times back to back.
The better the graphics get, the more they will look like a hand sculpted stylized puppet or living cartoon character. Equating the graphics with console generations is something people need to stop doing.