WoW graphics engine and other games

[SL1200]

I grew up playing an atari 2600 and a commodore computer so wow graphics look just fine it's always been gameplay > graphics for me. I think the younger generations of gamers expect better though. If wow wants to keep their playerbase or even expand it they're going to have to upgrade their graphics sooner or later.

[Maniac2]

For years Blizz has somehow managed to convince people that their terrible, godawful graphics are a stylistic choice. They could keep the style without the low-res, pixellated, hard-edged, blocky graphics they have. I mean, for god's sake, there's barely a true round object in wow. Go into a house and look around. A skillet is an octagon. Barrells are octagonal. Cauldrons are octagonal.

The armors don't occupy different areas of space except for shoulders and helm. All the robes are identical with different colors drawn on to them. I mean, I'll use my favorite exalmple of character models and armor to contrast:

THAT, my friend, is astonishing. This:

...is NOT astonishing. In fact, it's pretty insulting. It's not "stylish," it's not "artistic," it's objectively bad. Even the updated models they've done with Thrall, Jaina, Vol'jin, etc are really too little too late. They're updating them to still look old. The original models looked old when they were first released.

I used word astonishing for look of the landscape, you know, mountains, rivers etc. not for character model you pulled out.

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I grew up playing an atari 2600 and a commodore computer so wow graphics look just fine it's always been gameplay > graphics for me. I think the younger generations of gamers expect better though. If wow wants to keep their playerbase or even expand it they're going to have to upgrade their graphics sooner or later.

I hear you. Zx spectrum and Doomdark's Revenge comes to my mind

[Karizee]

I tried gw2 up to lvl 20 and Rift up to lvl 15 and left them both just for this dull brownish style of the whole world.

It sounds like you never got out of an Ascalon starting area. It's just as ridiculous to state the whole GW2 world is brown as saying the whole WoW world is orange if I never left the barrens.

The Sylvari and Asura areas are very colorful jungles; Human areas are green fields, hills and mountain cliffs; Norn areas are icy, wintery wonderlands with glaciers; then there are areas like Mount Maelstrom - which ranges from volcanic to jungle and Southsun Cove which is this hot springs island setting and the underwater areas everywhere are amazingly colorful - the range of environments is truly fantastical.

The only area that can be considered drear is some parts of Orr (which was purposely designed to look as though it had been underwater for 250 years).

[Wildmoon]

It sounds like you never got out of an Ascalon starting area. It's just as ridiculous to state the whole GW2 world is brown as saying the whole WoW world is orange if I never left the barrens.

The Sylvari and Asura areas are very colorful jungles; Human areas are green fields, hills and mountain cliffs; Norn areas are icy, wintery wonderlands with glaciers; then there are areas like Mount Maelstrom - which ranges from volcanic to jungle and Southsun Cove which is this hot springs island setting and the underwater areas everywhere are amazingly colorful - the range of environments is truly fantastical.

The only area that can be considered drear is some parts of Orr (which was purposely designed to look as though it had been underwater for 250 years).

There's no point trying to explain. He didn't feel right when playing the games. That's it.

[Quenden]

The artists at Blizzard are incredibly talented. The cartoony-style art works well. But it's simply foolish to deny that the graphics need updated. I love the visual aesthetic of Warcraft, but it does seem the artists are limited more so by the lack of available polys on armor models. The new textures coming out in WoW are on par with textures in other new games. The new animations in WoW are even more fluid than other new games.

Likewise, the artists at Rift and Guild Wars 2 are incredibly talented. SW:TOR also has some great artists.

The area that WoW is falling behind with, in my opinion, is that there is simply too much that's showing its age. The new models are going to be a huge step in the right direction, especially coupled with the visual improvements in Pandaria, but it's not feasible or realistic to replace the whole thing.

[Meleti]

A lot of people in this thread seem to be confusing art direction with more technical details like texture quality, polygon count, etc. WoW can have a cartoon-ish style of art while still having poor textures, or even with good textures.

[Rhywolver]

Honestly, if WoW had Vrykul introduced as a playable race, it would have been a huge benefit to the game. The quality of the models is somewhere between Bloodelf/Draenei and Goblins.



Now GW2 has a similiar race, which has the special artistic touch that GW2 has. But if any models are comparable, those nordic models should be compared with each other, not some 9 year old human WoW model.



Sure, the Vrykul-models are still a few years older. But WoW could do better. I hope they do much better with updated character models.

[Deleted]

I'm agree to say WoW has needed a graphical upgrade....But good god! Keep this "Cartoonish" and "Colorfull" style! I find It's World of Warcraft identitty!
I mean when I see others games or MMos with "realistic" graphics & colors, I just find them....basics. Even if It has made by great artists, I don't fell the "spark of life".

I've played a Charr character in GW2 a moment and, even if I'm a Anthro fanboy, I just find them...."blocked".
In the opposite, I find that Pandarens are way more living and charming. And for cause, their facial expression have currently more animations than any WoW older race ones.
But if new look of old races is something like this, I'll be very happy.

[Milerks]

graphic doesnt make the game better, gw2 proves it (which is full of shit)
realistic graphic is getting old pretty fast and in many games like TERA, these ultra details were making my head hurt so i started playing on the lowest possible...

comic graphic makes the game young forever!

[Awe]

graphic doesnt make the game better, gw2 proves it (which is full of shit)
realistic graphic is getting old pretty fast and in many games like TERA, these ultra details were making my head hurt so i started playing on the lowest possible...

comic graphic makes the game young forever!

Graphics doesnt make the game better but if both games are comparable mechanics-wise (which is an entirely subjective matter), a game with better graphics wins hands down. And the only thing full of shit around here is your post. For me GW2 > WoW. For you WoW > GW2. That doesnt make any of them shit. Now go troll somewhere else please.

[Kerplank]

I like WoW's toony style. It has that certain appeal to it.

[OzoAndIndi]

Keep in mind that in terms of the 3D software there are things that are possible now that were not years ago. Hair in particular. (Heck, having first touched such software 14 or so years ago I've been impressed with how far it has come since then.) That side of the industry is always growing, so it's understandable that newer games are going to be more visually advanced and capable of more. I doubt an older game like WoW would ever get a total overhaul. Assuming they'd be best to start from scratch on much of it...yeah that would be like society deciding they like a particular style of architecture so we're going to rebuild everything in that style. That's a loooot of work.. lol

[Awe]

Keep in mind that in terms of the 3D software there are things that are possible now that were not years ago. Hair in particular. (Heck, having first touched such software 14 or so years ago I've been impressed with how far it has come since then.) That side of the industry is always growing, so it's understandable that newer games are going to be more visually advanced and capable of more. I doubt an older game like WoW would ever get a total overhaul. Assuming they'd be best to start from scratch on much of it...yeah that would be like society deciding they like a particular style of architecture so we're going to rebuild everything in that style. That's a loooot of work.. lol

It would be hard to make a total overhaul for WoW but it is possible. And if anyone has the resources to pull such big a project, its Blizzard. But they wont. Blizzard is not totally dependant from WoW like say CCP is from EVE Online. They will invest into something new and go with a Titan rather than trying to reinvent WoW. Which is bad for WoW in the long run but perhaps better for gamers. Too bad Titan got deleyed but there can be so many reasons behind this that is it pointless to speculate. And its a different topic anyway.

[Milerks]

if they made wow on cryengine with its dx11 dynamic tessellation, hair & cloth waving on wind/movement, time of the day, weather (seasons), these are the things MODERN MMOs are missing, however how many of players can afford PC that runs smoothly DX11
GW2 didnt even take a step into further, modern rendering and environmental technologies, if anything moves there, it was animated like that, all the particles, it is so 2004

[Flayrot]

it's cracking me up how one group is saying the engine and models need to be updated to higher fidelity and quality, and the second group just keeps going "ewww, no I don't like how dull and brown the other games look".

it's like complaining about how more technologically advanced cars are terrible because they aren't painted in your favorite color. colors have nothing to do with technology, whether it's a car or a game engine. you guys need to realize that's it is completely possible to replicate the stylistic qualities of world of Warcraft in an updated game engine (or any game engine). technological abilities is in no way synonymous with art direction, and you all need to quit pretending and assuming that it does.

disclosure: I am a game designer.

[Ferocity]

Ultima Online got a graphics overhaul...
Original Everquest got a graphics overhaul....
and both got them in a lot less time than the entire lifespan of WoW....
You'll just have to deal with the fact that Ultima Online and Everquest are old games... and that Blizzard will nickel and dime us for everything they do and not have enough time or staff for anything else.

We can't say how successful was new client in Ultima Online. Due to great inconsistency and dubiousness of design decisions, game lost it's popularity before KR.

Everquest - if you have actually played back in time, you'd know that it was mandatory to turn off new models outside of solo play (which was barely existing aspect in EQ back in the days anyway).

There is no need to do "graphic overhaul" just to greatly increase hardware requirements (which isn't really cheap for many countries) just to please people for whom graphics are on 1st place (because honestly, graphics in WoW are quite good as is).

To OP: fluidity of game engine was mostly because many parts of engine were made via Assembler. Currently, developers just use a lot of already available and non-optimized APIs, which results in bad compatibility and performance issues. Same EQ for me has a bit more than 10 thousands files (!) in directory (without any screenshots and things like that) and still runs quite bad. One of WoW's minor winning factors was that it had better looking graphics AND much-much better performance.

[Deleted]

I think the OP is confusing art style with graphics. While you may prefer the art style of WoW, and indeed many folks do, there is no question that the newer games such as Rift, GW2, Tera, TSW, etc have better graphics.

Absolutely correct.

Art Style and Graphics are completely different subjects.

Wow does have a great Art Design which is unique and easily recognised. However, Wows graphics r extremely poor compared to every other game out there.

[Chickat]

Dont look at the models look at the environment like a poster on the last page said. Heres 2 shots of similar angles in forests of gw2 and wow.

GW2


WoW


While up close technically gw2 is far ahead, i find that wow is just breathtaking while gw2 looks muddy and darker.

It just came to my attention that the gw2 image may be from gw1? Can anyone confirm or deny?

[stockishgsr]

If I am not mistake, isn't WoW ran off of the engine used in the RTS games?

I may be wrong but never hurts to make sure, considering I saw posts on the official forums saying stuff like that, but it is a troll cesspool there.

[Deleted]

If I am not mistake, isn't WoW ran off of the engine used in the RTS games?

I may be wrong but never hurts to make sure, considering I saw posts on the official forums saying stuff like that, but it is a troll cesspool there.

WoW is based on the WC3 engine, albeit heavily modified.