WoW really need a new engine

[shise]

WoW graphics are pretty good now a days, remember that the aim of the game was never graphics, and none ever cared

That being said, we have come a LONG way in graphics.. and that being said too, I wouldn+t mind a revamp like this, except for the fact that it would completely, totally, kill WoW´s spirit.

It looks amazing, but that would only work if we had it form the beginning, such a massive change would change the game way too much.

[kaminaris]

I saw this Unreal Engine WoW video many times posted here and basically in every of those threads people agree that its just does not feel like WoW at all. I appreciate the hard work of the author but it looks like shiit, serioulsy. How can people want this to be WoW graphic?

And that is the reason why it needs to be done. Because current engine will make you feel the same every damn expansion, it will never feel "new" just "the same with more models, more raids, more quests".

[huth]

@op WoW's not on a 2005 engine LOL

It runs on a HEAVILY modified version of the WC3 engine, which was announced as in-development in 1998. WoW's engine is probably older than you are.

If nothing else, Blizzard and WoW should be remembered as an absolute miracle of computer engineering that they manage to get a game that looks and plays as good as WoW does to run on software architecture that's 25 years old.

Grandfather's axe style. As in, at this point, there's likely nothing of the original engine left.

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And that is the reason why it needs to be done. Because current engine will make you feel the same every damn expansion, it will never feel "new" just "the same with more models, more raids, more quests".

Because that video is made in a different style. Not just a different engine. It's not just possible, but likely, that you could use that engine to make something that looks almost exactly like live WoW.

[stresskiller]

People with older hardware who can't afford new hardware are most likely playing F2P games.

WOW is f2p for me for 2 years now i think , it's not that hard to grind gold and buy tokens

[MoanaLisa]

Engines are much more than graphic quality.

[Cracked]

Hobby game dev here

Smeared textures that have not aged well at all.

Not an engine issue. This is how the engines are mapped onto the objects, this is the art direction / art setup, as this is done manually.

Nonexistent lip sync (not even close, you can see this far back, like Warcraft 3).

Theoretically an engine feature, but one that is extremelly easy to retrofit. 100% not a high priority because of how camera behaves in WoW.

Collision boxes are horrible. You get stuck on everything. From chairs to tiny roots.

Not an engine issue. Colliders are either automatically generated from objects (common objects) or manually created (BGs, arenas). As to how they interact with players, there simply is no easy way to deal with it.

For its visuals, the game is extremely demanding and I believe it's because of the grass which Blizzard went batshit crazy on so the game can still look good.

WoW is extremelly easy on GPU. The fact that is CPU hungry is unfortunately a design issue, not an engine issue. All addons are designed to be able to interact with any other UX elements, so they cannot run in parallel. Disable addons and WoW is really not resource intensive. It's rather elegantly minimalistic.

On the positive sides, the style has aged well, but the game is so old that it should change. 2020 is around the corner, why are we still on 2005 engine?

Imagine something like this (I believe this would be as demanding as current WoW considering the current engine is outdated)
Although don't get me wrong, I do prefer WoW cartoonish style.

What exactly do you mean by "engine" then?

[kaminaris]

All addons are designed to be able to interact with any other UX elements, so they cannot run in parallel. Disable addons and WoW is really not resource intensive. It's rather elegantly minimalistic.

As addon dev, this is completely false. Wow Lua had coroutines support in patch 2.11 so it can run in parallel.
Moreover it vastly depends on how addons were written plus how many events they are listening to.

Also you can measure how much CPU are addons using with addon called "Addon CPU Usage".

For example addons like Damage Meters will be almost always cpu intense (well, compared to other addons at least) because they listen to COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED which happens pretty often

Good addons can relinquish events after finishing tasks so it just sit in memory.

Blizzard Interface code are addons too. And fun fact, they are not really fast, their code is mediocre and runs fast simply because they offer little functionality.

Overall addons are not really an issue.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ts-your-result

Considering usual test time in CPU Addon Usage is around 120s, taking 0.2s of that time means this partical addon slows your WoW by around 0.16% (around one promile, not even a percent)

[Gorgodeus]

It is the same engine. Updating it doesn't make it a new engine. It never changed.

The current WoW engine is nothing like it was in Vanilla. It is a custom engine written by Blizzard, and is much more powerful now than it was then.

[Cracked]

As addon dev, this is completely false. Wow Lua had coroutines support in patch 2.11 so it can run in parallel.
Moreover it vastly depends on how addons were written plus how many events they are listening to.

Also you can measure how much CPU are addons using with addon called "Addon CPU Usage".

For example addons like Damage Meters will be almost always cpu intense (well, compared to other addons at least) because they listen to COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED which happens pretty often

Good addons can relinquish events after finishing tasks so it just sit in memory.

Blizzard Interface code are addons too. And fun fact, they are not really fast, their code is mediocre and runs fast simply because they offer little functionality.

Overall addons are not really an issue.
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ts-your-result

Considering usual test time in CPU Addon Usage is around 120s, taking 0.2s of that time means this partical addon slows your WoW by around 0.16% (around one promile, not even a percent)

I've also developed several addons, so I'm mostly aware. My point is that the vast majority of addons are not written to use coroutines (well actually I've never seen usage of them and this is the first time I hear coroutines are even included in the WoW lua version) and as such run in sequence.

The problem isn't really in the average CPU usage per frame but rather the tail performance, you can have a frame where 2+ addons decide to do some long task reacting to event and that's how you get the famous FPS drops. I'm pretty certain that's what people talk about when they say potato performance, since average FPS is in the hundreds with even middle tier hardware.

And yeah, blizzard interface is not extremely optimized, but it also doesn't often perform hot tasks. It's mostly only noticeable as an FPS drop when opening a UX element.

[ablib]

This thread again....

I don't know how it's so hard to understand, that the world in the video, is just not WoW.

[Echeyakee]

It's a case of don't fix what's not broken. Even as is the game is super CPU intensive any time you have more than 10-15 people in the same place, and adding a massive GPU requirements to it does not seem like a wise idea. And you have to admit that wow aged extremely well, even if you're comparing it to "new" mmos. Sure, the SFX are nothing to write home about. But I've played ffxiv, that judges it's spell animations based on epilepsy risk rating, and it really does not add much to the game. There are nice "OMG" moments, but it mostly gets in the way when you're wiping on a boss for a 50th time.

[Powerogue]

I don't even know what a "smeared texture" is.

The lip sync is fine when they bother with it. I do think they could do better on the half-cutscenes like Baine being arrested. I don't have a problem with the not-even-trying of world quests and the like, that's a stylistic choice like in WC3. The proper cutscenes lipsync perfectly and look fantastic. The model update bump of late MOP-WOD made a massive difference.

Haven't had collision box problems in quite a while.

What's so special about the grass? It's not like I looked at Suramar and went "hot damn, that is some good grass!" It's a whole environment+musical experience coming together.



Honestly I think WoW's environment WotLK onward still hold up fine, and WoW's models and facial rigs hold up fine since the late MOP bump. It doesn't have to look perfectly realistic to look good.

[Garymorilix]

Okay, so here is a very simple question:

Why would you want to turn WoW into some rip-off Witcher, when you can already play the Witcher 3?

If you don't like the mother lovin game, you don't have to come up with these BRAND NEW (10 years old) ideas to try to "improve" it. Play whatever you want, noone cares about it, don't try to force unnecessary change into something you can't even be bothered to play for 2 days.

[Mozu]

This looks like every other rpg that ages within a few years of it being released (and doesn't look that good to begin with). Pass. I'll take stylized any day over this.

[Frostyfire14]

The engine today on LIVE is no where near the engine they launched the game with in 2004.

Its like a car. What's under the hood has improved.

[--Code--]

I don't think WoW needs an engine change, but I certainly think that if Blizzard does another MMO in the future it needs a nice engine. BDO is an example of a somewhat modern MMO that looks fantastic and can run on a potato. Same with Warframe. It depends on how well your engine is optimized/built. I've never seen one as optimized as Warframe's.

[kaminaris]

I've also developed several addons, so I'm mostly aware. My point is that the vast majority of addons are not written to use coroutines (well actually I've never seen usage of them and this is the first time I hear coroutines are even included in the WoW lua version) and as such run in sequence.

The problem isn't really in the average CPU usage per frame but rather the tail performance, you can have a frame where 2+ addons decide to do some long task reacting to event and that's how you get the famous FPS drops. I'm pretty certain that's what people talk about when they say potato performance, since average FPS is in the hundreds with even middle tier hardware.

And yeah, blizzard interface is not extremely optimized, but it also doesn't often perform hot tasks. It's mostly only noticeable as an FPS drop when opening a UX element.

Because vast majority of addons doesn't need coroutines. And I am pretty sure you have seen it in game as WeakAuras2 is using it.

Addon CPU usage lets you check both average and peak usage. You also have a chart you can look at.

And if that is not enough, you have LUA profilers which can measure exactly how many specific functions were executed, how long they take on average and peak.
For example my most popular addon (don't want to advertise) most expensive function that in peak takes 0.8ms while low is 2.9us. Not even close to having impact on WoW performance.

From my experience the most common issue about FPS drops are badly written weakauras that runs on "every frame". And having some expensive functions enabled on ElvUI such as unitframes frequent health updates. Or frequent updates in damage meters. All issues can be identified and resolved.

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The engine today on LIVE is no where near the engine they launched the game with in 2004.

Its like a car. What's under the hood has improved.

Its like a Golf 3 with 300HP engine under the hood. Still far from cutting edge technology, still looking pretty bad, still feeling the same after all these years you been driving it. Even if it's faster, it's still the same car. That is the problem because people wants something new.

[Khaza-R]

I don't even know what a "smeared texture" is.

The lip sync is fine when they bother with it. I do think they could do better on the half-cutscenes like Baine being arrested. I don't have a problem with the not-even-trying of world quests and the like, that's a stylistic choice like in WC3. The proper cutscenes lipsync perfectly and look fantastic. The model update bump of late MOP-WOD made a massive difference.

Haven't had collision box problems in quite a while.

What's so special about the grass? It's not like I looked at Suramar and went "hot damn, that is some good grass!" It's a whole environment+musical experience coming together.

Honestly I think WoW's environment WotLK onward still hold up fine, and WoW's models and facial rigs hold up fine since the late MOP bump. It doesn't have to look perfectly realistic to look good.

Honestly everything from WoD -> BfA looks amazing. They just need to level squish and revamp the 1-60 content. Make everything old expansion legacy content. Then there's really no need for WoW 2.

[Kaleredar]

WoW's style is not conducive to an engine like Unreal Engine 4.

Those "HD fan updates" are snazzy and all, but the strict, shall we say, "realism" of the models sucks the life away in a lot of ways.

[Cracked]

Because vast majority of addons doesn't need coroutines. And I am pretty sure you have seen it in game as WeakAuras2 is using it.

Addon CPU usage lets you check both average and peak usage. You also have a chart you can look at.

And if that is not enough, you have LUA profilers which can measure exactly how many specific functions were executed, how long they take on average and peak.
For example my most popular addon (don't want to advertise) most expensive function that in peak takes 0.8ms while low is 2.9us. Not even close to having impact on WoW performance.

From my experience the most common issue about FPS drops are badly written weakauras that runs on "every frame". And having some expensive functions enabled on ElvUI such as unitframes frequent health updates. Or frequent updates in damage meters. All issues can be identified and resolved.

Well that's my point. Of course all performance problems are identifiable and resolvable, but the original point is that addons ARE in fact the big reason people have poor performance. And yes, weakauras didn't help this state a big deal, with people frequently running dozens of weakauras that use onupdate. Also, if your hardware is pretty good and your function has tail performance of 0.8ms, that's quite a big deal if it runs sufficiently often. That's 5% of frame time allocation for a frame (target 60 FPS) JUST to run your addon function. Imagine someone having 3 such addons that decide to coincide such functions and bam, that's how you get a stutter.