WoW really need a new engine

[SoulSoBreezy]

As for me, it's completely not about graphics, its about overall look & feel. Thats why it needs a new engine. Don't need to change artstyle of WoW. Maybe OP wants it but my opinion is simple - look & feel is important, graphics, doesn't matter much. I would be fine with both.

You're calling "overall look & feel" simple, but I haven't a clue what you're getting at.

[kaminaris]

You're calling "overall look & feel" simple, but I haven't a clue what you're getting at.

Camera movement, combat system, combat log system, position detection, movement, animation interactions, whole user interface, interactions with npcs, interactions with physical objects on map, targeting system, resource system, combat detection system (which still sucks).

[SoulSoBreezy]

You might not have a loading screen between Elwynn and Westfall but you absolutely are in a seperate server(shard).

WoW is about as instanced as a Korean MMO at this point.

I think you missed the point. This's a comparison between different world design philosophies (WoW's continent philosophy vs. other MMOs). That said I liked Argus' use of skyboxes to give that world a greater scope - too bad the planet was built of only 3 sub zones.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You might not have a loading screen between Elwynn and Westfall but you absolutely are in a seperate server(shard).

WoW is about as instanced as a Korean MMO at this point.

Nah you'd still have one. I'm not talking player stress relief, I'm talking if they tried to render an entire continent at UE4 quality your computer, the server blade, and your ISP would all melt.

[ifrah]

Sounds like a hefty load of work to me. Would it yield an adequate increase in subs and/or slow down the bleeding to return the investment? I fail to see that.

[Bullerick]

@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.

This exactly. Unreal Engine isn't exactly new anymore either. It's a modified version of the first UE.

[The Butt Witch]

You do understand if they change enginge they have to redo entire World of warcraft from scratch, every single animation, texture and mesh in every zone, dungeon and raid.

And we arent runing the 2005 engine, they update it and add to it every expansion.

And yet the sky in Stormwind still looks like it's 2005.

[Splenda]

OK, so I can't argue about how efficiently WoW runs on the current engine, however I utterly disagree with the REST of OP. WoW has it's own style and charm, and doing it with that much detail and "realistically" ruins the "WoW feel" we know and love.

Also, so much of it just didn't translate. Like the orc towns. Those looked just awful. And I don't think player characters would remotely translate whatsoever.

Adding: also, dude. People having great rigs is not as common as you think. WoW should remain accessible. Even my computer would not run that. And my computer is pretty damn nice.

[ls-]

Engine doesn't really dictate the artstyle, you could make WoW in UE4 look exactly the same way it looks now on its current engine, like 99% identical.

However, significantly improved or even a brand new engine would help a lot w/ the performance. WoW's current engine is fairly resource hungry, but results of its work are subpar, esp in the FX department, fog, lightning, etc. IMHO, if Blizz ever chose to migrate WoW onto another engine, they'd probably use their own OW engine, since they already have all the tools they need and it works well w/ their infrastructure.

But I don't see them doing, it's too time and money consuming to do that, but they'll keep updating the current one. They've already done a lot to improve it, but I wish they paid more attention to optimisation and resource management/utilisation.

[Morgaith]

Wow does NOT need a new engine, it could however benefit from one for sure.

Right now the game runs very well and it doesn't look bad by any stretch of the imagination. What ruins the game performance is how the shading/layering system lags the servers down to a crawl if more than 5 people fight each other or 5 mobs in the open world.

[Zuben]

At this point I'd be alright with losing all the stuff and achievements I've accumulated over the years for WoW 2.

[Accendor]

I understand how big of a task this is and i am not saying it should be done, but all the people who say "think about the guys with old hardware" underestimate how bad the current engine is in regards to performance. BfA upped the hardware requierements so much, its not even funny anymore. Yes, the game runs on old hardware, but just because you can technically play with 20 FPS on MIN settings does not mean its fun in any way.
As is currently stands crap PCs would benefit from an engine update way more than strong ones.

[Wangming]

I want to follow up on this by also saying FFXIV, and most modern graphics MMOs, get away with it by having each individual zone on a seperate world server.

Do you want to have a loading screen between Elwynn and Westfall so WoW can look like a bad ripoff of Skyrim and then look horribly outdated by the following expansion?

Nah. They want Witcher 3 graphics, no lag, draw distance. no loading screen and low system requirements.

Make no mistake, WoW DOES need an engine update. But that engine needs to be very carefully picked.

[D3athsting]

That won't work, on my high end rig (2080TI) i get 80-70 fps in boralus (less than ac odissey anthem and td2 maxed out) at 2560x1440p and 117% scaling without anything maxed, view distance and raids would be a nightmare not to mention that ppl with crap rigs that can play wow well now would run it at 20 fps

[Cosmic Janitor]

The shit cartoon look is ratehr deliberate imho.. so no. It doesn't "need" a new engine. Besides, if you look at the other stuff Blizzard releases these days, be glad WoW doesn't look like overquatsch.

[kaminaris]

That won't work, on my high end rig (2080TI) i get 80-70 fps in boralus (less than ac odissey anthem and td2 maxed out) at 2560x1440p and 117% scaling without anything maxed, view distance and raids would be a nightmare not to mention that ppl with crap rigs that can play wow well now would run it at 20 fps

You do realize wow engine is not the best one right? riiiiight?

Cause honestly I see this argument that completely contradicts itself. You have low FPS in WoW because of 2 reasons = 1. WoW engine is not optimized like other engines. 2. WoW is CPU hungry

So switching to something better could result in better performance, not the other way around.

[kaminaris]

They can, but that isn't the point I am making.

As of right now, WoWs minimum specs, are there to get it running on average settings with a good frame rate. You can play it well below minimum specs (and a heckuva lot do), and that is with very few issues whatsoever.

My wife was playing BfA and raiding on a PC on Medium settings at 90fps average, with some of fancier stuff off (god rays and such), and she was well below minimum specs.
Minimum specs with an engine such as the one the OP is putting forward, cannot do this to the same extent. WoWs engine may look like shit and be cluggy, but it is good for what it is, and what it does. Just destroying that for the sake of a new graphics engine would be utterly insane on Blizzards behalf.

Wrong, modern engines can perform better with the same assets as wow has.

Modern games has simply higher texture resolutions, higher polygon count, thats why you might think WoW engine is decent. But use WoW models/textures/map on modern engine and you will get higher performance.

[kaminaris]

Except if that were the case, why didn't WoW convert over to it years ago? It mot likely cold have been FAR cheaper than just updating what they have each and every year. They have probably done a lot of cost analysis checking this, yet they keep choosing to update their engine, rather than start again from scratch, and there is a very good reason for this, and it isn't just saving money (as a new engine would be cheaper in the long term by far)
As I said, Blizzard is a smart company, they know what they are doing, more so than people on these forums (despite what they might like to think otherwise).

Because years ago, good engines were either expensive or weren't polished enough. The main reason they don't want to switch now is one of those:
1. They think about remaking wow from scratch - or thinking about ending wow.
2. Their developers would need to learn new engine which itself generates cost.

You give them too much credit, I've been working as developer for good couple of years and there is one issue every time "if it works, don't touch it". Which just generates costs by itself. So nobody wan't to refactor old inefficient code even if it would be cheaper long term.

Ever wondered why Hearthstone uses Unity? Why didn't they use their own engines? The answer is simple, because at the time HS was introduced, was a point in development history, where making proprietary engines is just not profitable.

And even now, making proprietary engines usually results to reusing ready-to-go components. Take a look at Witcher games engines:
https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/REDengine

Havok for physics, Scaleform for UI and FMOD for audio

With choosing unity you basically have access to good amount of tools written for it, there is just no way to write something custom that will come close to company with 2k developers working solely on engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5WY2qf600

[D3athsting]

I want to follow up on this by also saying FFXIV, and most modern graphics MMOs, get away with it by having each individual zone on a seperate world server.

Do you want to have a loading screen between Elwynn and Westfall so WoW can look like a bad ripoff of Skyrim and then look horribly outdated by the following expansion?

Wow and wildstar (rip) are the only 2 mmos with seamless world without loading screen between zones on a single continent and that's one of the biggest factor for immersion, i can fly freely from stv to epl without a single loading screen...

[huth]

Because years ago, good engines were either expensive or weren't polished enough. The main reason they don't want to switch now is one of those:
1. They think about remaking wow from scratch - or thinking about ending wow.
2. Their developers would need to learn new engine which itself generates cost.

3. They'd have to make major adaptations to the engine so it can do what they need, which would negate any benefit of switching.

Hearthstone is a much simpler game than WoW.