New water effects in Catacysm - like or dislike?

[ComputerNerd]

Nice seeing some effort to improve graphics, as long as they do not push things even harder thean they currently are. My computer is fairly recent, and from what wow is apparantly able to run on it should be managing comfortably but most certainly is not. Updated graphics are what we got in each expansion so far and all they have done is make it even more demanding on the hardware instead of fixing fundamental issues.

[droozle]

Bisley said it all. Slow framerates of WoW are due to the enormous complexity of having to display a hundred different characters running around at the same time, with all their gear having different textures. It's very hard to optimize an engine for that.

About the water: I think it fits well with the graphical style of the game, albeit that it looks a bit too smooth for my taste. It's OK for puddles and even rivers, but the ocean could use more ripples and waves. Performance-wise you should not worry too much: the pixel shader technology to produce this water is available on 5-year old video cards. The more recent ones are just a bit more efficient in rendering it. This is not rocket science. See this old YouTube water demo (made by a single programmer in 2007) which shows basically the same quality water, apart from the fact it does not show the ebb and flow (surf zone) like in the Blizzard previews. And if your card can't handle it, well... you can buy a card that *can* for just a couple of tenners.

[Stalfomancer]

I like it. Though I definitely am hoping they have a little check box for it incase my computer cannot handle it.