WoW in Unreal 4 engine

[nalle]

Would rather keep it as it is right now.

If they ever did make it more realistic looking, I would say, at most, halfway between cartoonish and realistic.

[SirCowdog]

... No thanks.

Many zones in WoW are in need of a HD facelift, but they'd still look best retaining the cartoony, timeless style.
Unreal Engine was always prone to giving me a headache.

What if they used the Wildstar Engine?

I think a lot of people(not necessarily you Rorcanna) are missing the distinction between the graphics engine and the art style. It's entirely possible to use a more modern game engine while still maintaining WoW's unique art-style and presentation.

[Palizangetsu]

Don't think people realize that changing game engines not only changes visuals but affects gameplay and would change combat, movement, etc changing the whole feel of a game it wouldn't be just prettier it would be a whole new game.

[Deleted]

Grizzly hills one have some Skyrim vibes

[videotape]

While these do look pretty amazing, I have to agree that WoW would not be nearly as appealing if its art style were less cartoonish.

I do think it could look a lot better, but it's not an issue of realism so much as one of lighting and geometry resolution. WoW has major issues with flat and janky looking lighting, depth effects which make depth perception quite difficult especially when flying, and with things still appearing quite blocky. They could absolutely preserve the Blizzard style without all of this garbage. See for example Overwatch.

[Mitobunny]

Would rather keep it as it is right now.

If they ever did make it more realistic looking, I would say, at most, halfway between cartoonish and realistic.

Ironically style has a lot of influence in game design, even when choosing between realistic and not.

For instance in the BfA cinematic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJr3dXZfcg

Realistic sure, but also not when you look at the special effects, physics, and smooth/cleaner surfaces. Rendering as well in general has a huge hand to the way things look, as we have things highly illuminated but not purely in a realistic fashion. The BfA cinematic ends up looking like a weird lifelike toys instead of real creatures.

In general I think the most noticeable comparison is that objects/textures aren't "busy", so they aren't quite hitting that full realism. A lot of modellers like using crazy textures with tons of details but ironically it can look better on the eyes with less to focus on.

[Nnyco]

durotar one looks horrible, grizzly hills is nice tho

[Maudib]

Nice work.

[SirCowdog]

. See for example Overwatch.

WoW2 or whatever should be made using the overwatch engine.

[FelPlague]

Look nice, but ruins wows artstyle, also to play this would be impossible.

nice look but people like "wish wow lookedl ike this" no, no you dont, you would need a top of the line TOP, TOP PC to play this.

[Zka]

Nice artwork, but... Characters would have to be changed drastically and the whole thing would no longer look and feel WoW. Then it would fall into uncanny valley and die.

[WowIsDead64]

Funny fact about cartoony graphics - is that Blizzard use it not because it's better or because it distinguishes Wow from other "generic" MMOs. Blizzard actually use it to hide simple fact, that graphics in their game is very weak from technical point of view - it's Half-Life era level of graphics and some games, that were released before Vanilla, had even better graphics back then. But I don't want to tell, that it's bad thing. Lower hardware requirements - is very important thing for MMO, so keeping graphics as simple, as possible, while making game look as good, as possible - is actually very hard task.

[Alvito]

One of the reasons WoW has lasted as long as it has and aged as well as a 14 year old game can is it's cartoonish graphics. Engines like that show their age very quickly and look fake as hell on new systems as time passes. With the art style WoW has it ages better, while it never looks like a real city or anything else it isn't meant to and you can get caught up in the game. Imagine how bad WoW would look if it went with whatever art style like this that was around in 2004.

[Deleted]

The “cartoony” graphics are a huge defining factor for WoW. All MMORPGs out there look exactly the same, WoW stands out. I think everything looks much better with the regular WoW graphics.

It’s nice to see what it looks like if it has the realistic graphics all these new MMOs have gone for but I prefer it the way it is.

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Probably not because it makes WoW very unique. It would still be popular since WoW is a very polished game with new systems being added constantly, however you’d probably see a ton of people upset about it and quite a few would quit over it. Graphics are important and WoW has its own unique style.

I disagree. Wildstar has its own very unique style aswell and it was hyped extremely much.

Wow mechanicly and latency wide is the best out there. Imo ofc

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Look nice, but ruins wows artstyle, also to play this would be impossible.

nice look but people like "wish wow lookedl ike this" no, no you dont, you would need a top of the line TOP, TOP PC to play this.

Mine is 4 years old and would run that with np

[FelPlague]

I disagree. Wildstar has its own very unique style aswell and it was hyped extremely much.

Wow mechanicly and latency wide is the best out there. Imo ofc

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Mine is 4 years old and would run that with np

really it would run that with 100+ people running around fighting mobs?
can you show me you playing the newest crisis game but spawn about 200 mobs?

[Prawnapple]

We need an MMORPG that looks like this from Blizzard TBH. The game would be completely different though.

[WowIsDead64]

I wouldn't call them weak but yeah, the part I bold out is mostly correct.

Wow uses ZERO bump maps, normal maps, displacement maps, progressive meshes and any tesselation.

See?

It's Half-Life 1 level of graphics, just with higher quality of textues.

And this game was released back in 2006:

And this one in 2005:

Another 2005 game, with cartoonish graphics too, but with much higher quality of graphics:

And of course everybody knows this 2007 game, whose engine is still used in many games now. Just 3 years since release of Wow...

[somebodyz]

Funny fact about cartoony graphics

This.

Back in the days (2004), WOW has one of the best graphics on the MMO market. But it kept this way essentially the same over 10+ years (yes there are models with higher polygon counts in recent expansions, but technically they are the same old.)

Not improving the grpahics is mostly a decision from a business standpoint that allows the game to run on dated hardware.

But some of us just got a little bit unsatisfied with those paper trees, paper armor and dated lightning.

I am not asking for Crisis-level graphics, but something like GW2 looks good to me.

[Deleted]

Makes you realise how outdated WoW's graphics are, yet still don't look that bad.

[Hugnomo]

Looks ok but I prefer the comic/cartoon distinct wacraft style over washed out graphics that'll look bad in 5 years.
I hope wow continues to push better graphics while maintaining their visual identity.