So my understanding is WoW used WarCraft III as a base when it was first made

[Verdugo]

Blizzard never promised anything. People need to stop using that word. Also, they weren't like they were presented because when they actually got working on it they realized it would take far more time and resources to get what they wanted than they had.

Boy am I glad all those resources were instead put into... nothing!

[RobertMugabe]

It's called WOD Garrisons, they did try, and they flopped hard. Once they try something and 90% of the playerbase hates it, the chances of them reworking it and bringing it back is really slim.

You must of started in BFA.

Player Housing is basically just all about customising a certain private space/house to look how you like it, similar to transmog. Garrisons were only really player housing in the most basic way, like you could select a few buildings and place them around as you liked, but that's about it. Overall, the garrison was something very different.

[Kuntantee]

A good portion of the code base is likely to be worlds apart from the original release.

[Trinkie]

It's called WOD Garrisons, they did try, and they flopped hard. Once they try something and 90% of the playerbase hates it, the chances of them reworking it and bringing it back is really slim.

You must of started in BFA.

And you know what they promised? Different zones for your garrison, custom decoration your interior etc. They fucked up the execution and that's why people hated it.

[Kuntantee]

Like everyone says, what OP suggest is very well doable with the current engine.
However, it would look shit - as usual.

I guess for people who play WoW and only WoW, this ghetto style doesn't look that bad, because they don't know anything better, but play any AAA game from past 10 years and tell me WoW doesn't look like shit.

Yeah, the artists can whip up some beautiful designs, but then you see the characters waving their hands in the air instead of actually performing the action, or being bent in some weird way, because instead of animating the thing, they just use a frame of some other animation or combine different ones - the ingame cutscenes show that the most, and you can only laugh or shake your head wondering how this passes in current year.
They just make the game look like a mod, not something that's made by this big company that likes to flex its bigness.

Or the total lack of physics - basically gravity being the only thing that could be called physics, but games in 1980 have that.
They slowly (very very very slowly) started adding softbody physics to some armor pieces and NPCs (no player models so far), but imagine if objects actually colided, ragdolled and so on.

What is "ghetto style"?

[rrayy]

Boy am I glad all those resources were instead put into... nothing!

They put them into a lot of others things. You not liking them doesn't = they put it into nothing.

[Kathranis]

@Louz I'm all for adding cloth and hair physics to models and improving the graphical fidelity, especially for older content, but WoW leans more toward arcadey game design than realistic, and if you start building in collision detection, physics based animations, momentum, etc., it'll fundamentally change the way the game feels to play, generally making it feel less responsive than it does now.

And frankly, it sounds like your issue is that you don't want to play WoW, but rather something more "realistic," like Shenmue or RDR2.

[Belloc]

Who says I'm talking about art style?
I specifically said that the designs are great.

What I meant looks like shit is how nothing is done "properly".
For example - you have to carry some object over and put it on ground.
Instead of proper "pick up" animation, your character does the usual "rubbing hands", then bends over using "loot".
Then they use frames from other animation to make your character point arms forward so it looks like it's carrying it, but with the upper body being frozen and only lower body being animated by walking animation, it looks absolutely ridiculous.
Finally when you put the object down, it just disappears from your character hands and fades in on the spot where it's supposed to be - sometimes they mask it by adding some dust particles or something.

That's what I mean looks like shit.
Plus that there's no physics.

Funny how whenever someone mentions WoW looks outdated, people like you immediately think it's the art style.
And to the poster above - the "toaster" meme does not apply on the things I said neither - again someone thinking only the size of textures and number of polygons matter.

I'm not sure what your focus on physics is. What parts of the game do you think would benefit from improved physics? I don't see a bunch of debris that could get blown around realistically and I don't see any other parts of the game that would obviously benefit from it. Further, you seem to forget that, as an MMO, this game is already overloaded on calculations. Adding realistic physics calculations would have a very bad impact on our ability to play the game smoothly. Do you really want to deal with collision on players and NPCs? Because, if you say yes, I've got a secret for you: No, you really don't. It would break the game from a gameplay standpoint.

Beyond that, why do I give a shit if they reuse animations? Are you really playing so zoomed in that you can see that a character's hands aren't connected to the object they're holding? Does it really bother you that items just disappear from your hands and reappear on the ground? I've literally never seen anyone else complain about these things, which is why I'm so flabbergasted that it's such a sticking point for you.

I suggest reading the room, so to speak. You're complaining about a lack of realistic details in a game that is intentionally unrealistic.

[BlackDruid96]

...Or rather its source code to be more specific.

I've always wondered why Blizzard never just remade the game's source code and more so almost 10 expansions later. I feel like at this point it's time for that big a change. I get the whole "Don't fix what isn't broken" point but what if the fact that WoW uses the WCIII's source code is limiting how much and what kinds of changes to the game that could be made? This is something I've thought about ever since I heard a few years ago that WoW uses WCIII's source code as a base and still does now as far as I'm aware.

If Blizzard decided to remake the game's source code and stopped using WCIII's, I think it could lead even more possabilities. I think the real reason we are so limited in a sense is because WoW is using WCIII's Source Code. I know it won't be easy or worth the likely years worth of time that would need to be undertaken to make new code for a 16-year old game from scratch.

You remake the source code, you need to also remake the code for all content and that would be quite a massive undertaking to do unless they figured out a way to streamline the process. Of course they probably would have done it a long time ago if they actually did feel that way. Cataclysm, WoD and BFA were the three best times to have done something that groundbreaking IMO. All I can do is imagine the possabilities if Blizzard felt it was worth it.

Since I'm going into pure speculation at this point, here's my short list of stuff I think would be possible if Blizzard redid the game's source code from scratch:

• MUCH Bigger Azeroth: I'm just gonna put it like that. I mean in the sense the world is much closer to Lore in size and scope. Imagine Jade Forest 4 times bigger than it currently is for example. Player Housing could also actually be much easier to justify adding to the game since Azeroth will be much, much bigger than it currently is.
• Player-Made Outposts, Villages and Towns: I feel like Cata and BFA would have been the the two expansions to introduce this though it is true we got an outpost in WoD. How about being able to build an Outpost and Village (Horde) or Town (Alliance)? Outposts would be single-player controlled while Villages and Towns would be controlled by a Guild or a group of players. Both types would have NPC Guards and be fully customizable.
• New Professions - Logging and Quarry: You can now make use of the world's natural resources by harvesting and processing resources to make building materials. More can also now be done with all existing professions as well.
• New Profession - Farming: With your own land, you can now manage a farm! Hunters, Shaman and Druids will have a few additional options available to them.
• Create Spell or Skill: What if you could create your own abilities? Imagine a Protection Warrior being able to equip two Shields and suffer very little damage. A Warlock can Summon and Control ALL of their Minions at once. Shaman can literally terraform the world itself. These are just a few of the many possabilities!
• Multi-Casting: What's better than casting one spell? Several! Imagine to either cast the same spell several times at once or a few abilities at the same time. A Mage can open Portals to several places. A Priest can cast Resurrection or 2 or more party/raid Members. Hunter's Mark can be applied to several targets at once. Just a few ideas.
• Spell or Skill Save: This would come in real handy against bosses and in PvP: You que a Spell or Skill to use it a little later.
• Skill or Spell Upgrading: The more you use your skills, the more powerful and potent they become. Not just in numbers but they actually evolve and become more powerful. For example a Mage's Fireball can be upgraded to take longer to cast but exchange it will do more damage and stun the opponent. A Death Knight's Raise Undead can be upgraded so they can summon and control several types of Undead. A Priest's Smite Spell can be upgraded so it does splash damage with a knockback effect to the main target. Stuff like that.

Just a few things I literally just thought of just now. LOL. Of course, I know most of these would never actually happen even with new Source Code.

I read it has been rewritten, that the reason you couldn't fly in the old world was because of how it was programed but since the cataclysm expansion they redid the old world and that's why you can fly there now.

[Lodreh]

...

• MUCH Bigger Azeroth: I'm just gonna put it like that. I mean in the sense the world is much closer to Lore in size and scope. Imagine Jade Forest 4 times bigger than it currently is for example. Player Housing could also actually be much easier to justify adding to the game since Azeroth will be much, much bigger than it currently is.
• Player-Made Outposts, Villages and Towns: I feel like Cata and BFA would have been the the two expansions to introduce this though it is true we got an outpost in WoD. How about being able to build an Outpost and Village (Horde) or Town (Alliance)? Outposts would be single-player controlled while Villages and Towns would be controlled by a Guild or a group of players. Both types would have NPC Guards and be fully customizable.
• New Professions - Logging and Quarry: You can now make use of the world's natural resources by harvesting and processing resources to make building materials. More can also now be done with all existing professions as well.
• New Profession - Farming: With your own land, you can now manage a farm! Hunters, Shaman and Druids will have a few additional options available to them.
• Create Spell or Skill: What if you could create your own abilities? Imagine a Protection Warrior being able to equip two Shields and suffer very little damage. A Warlock can Summon and Control ALL of their Minions at once. Shaman can literally terraform the world itself. These are just a few of the many possabilities!
• Multi-Casting: What's better than casting one spell? Several! Imagine to either cast the same spell several times at once or a few abilities at the same time. A Mage can open Portals to several places. A Priest can cast Resurrection or 2 or more party/raid Members. Hunter's Mark can be applied to several targets at once. Just a few ideas.
• Spell or Skill Save: This would come in real handy against bosses and in PvP: You que a Spell or Skill to use it a little later.
• Skill or Spell Upgrading: The more you use your skills, the more powerful and potent they become. Not just in numbers but they actually evolve and become more powerful. For example a Mage's Fireball can be upgraded to take longer to cast but exchange it will do more damage and stun the opponent. A Death Knight's Raise Undead can be upgraded so they can summon and control several types of Undead. A Priest's Smite Spell can be upgraded so it does splash damage with a knockback effect to the main target. Stuff like that.

Just a few things I literally just thought of just now. LOL. Of course, I know most of these would never actually happen even with new Source Code.

Sounds like you just want a new game.

[Locruid]

Multi-Casting: What's better than casting one spell? Several! Imagine to either cast the same spell several times at once or a few abilities at the same time. A Mage can open Portals to several places. A Priest can cast Resurrection or 2 or more party/raid Members. Hunter's Mark can be applied to several targets at once. Just a few ideas.


Dark Age of Camelot has a Warlock class like this. Cast a Nuke AND a heal at the same time. Cast 2 nukes at the same time. Basically you had 4ish choice of a main spell with 4ish choices of a secondary spell to cast with it. It's been a LONG time since I played DAOC but I do remember it was new and different and worked surprisingly well

[Chonar]

...and the memories come flooding back.

This was so utterly mesmerizing to watch back in the day, after experiencing Warcraft 3. God, it still gives me chills, thinking just how much of an impression this made. And looking back at it now, it's so simple! Ambient sounds and human/orc/tauren models!
And that human footman(?) used purge(?) somehow(!?).

Man oh man. :')

[Ielenia]

...Or rather its source code to be more specific.

I've always wondered why Blizzard never just remade the game's source code and more so almost 10 expansions later.

Remaking the source code of a game is no easy task.

Because, if you make big changes to a game's source code, you'll have to also change almost everything else about the game, if just outright everything, to fit the new code. It's like changing a car's chassis. You'll have to change a lot more about the car, because the new chassis won't fit the rest of the car.

That said, Blizzard has been making improvements to the game's engine. But remaking the source code is almost like designing a whole new game.

[Louz]

@Louz I'm all for adding cloth and hair physics to models and improving the graphical fidelity, especially for older content, but WoW leans more toward arcadey game design than realistic, and if you start building in collision detection, physics based animations, momentum, etc., it'll fundamentally change the way the game feels to play, generally making it feel less responsive than it does now.

And frankly, it sounds like your issue is that you don't want to play WoW, but rather something more "realistic," like Shenmue or RDR2.

"Arcadey game design"? You mean stylized art style? Or you mean that it literally has - like I said - only """gravity""" when it comes to physics? And that most of the time, you're slashing empty air as a melee spec and all that?
Either way, that doesn't have any influence on whether certain parts of character model have soft body physics or not.
Ever played Dark Souls/Bloodborne/any other of these games? They have responsiveness WoW can only dream about, yet they have soft body physics quite alright.
Also having ragdolls and momentum would add whole new layer to the gameplay - be it player vs player, player vs npc, or player vs environment.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not sure what your focus on physics is. What parts of the game do you think would benefit from improved physics? I don't see a bunch of debris that could get blown around realistically and I don't see any other parts of the game that would obviously benefit from it. Further, you seem to forget that, as an MMO, this game is already overloaded on calculations. Adding realistic physics calculations would have a very bad impact on our ability to play the game smoothly. Do you really want to deal with collision on players and NPCs? Because, if you say yes, I've got a secret for you: No, you really don't. It would break the game from a gameplay standpoint.

Beyond that, why do I give a shit if they reuse animations? Are you really playing so zoomed in that you can see that a character's hands aren't connected to the object they're holding? Does it really bother you that items just disappear from your hands and reappear on the ground? I've literally never seen anyone else complain about these things, which is why I'm so flabbergasted that it's such a sticking point for you.

I suggest reading the room, so to speak. You're complaining about a lack of realistic details in a game that is intentionally unrealistic.

Yeah I sure love being told what I would like or not, because you so see inside my head and know what I do and what games I've played, yaddy yadda...

My "focus on physics" is that it's the most common thing in current year, and I'm not talking about some precise calculation of particles where each and every one of them has physical presence.
I mean more common stuff, like I said above.

Yeah, you play "zoomed out, don't care, blah blah". But you're so great at telling me what I'd like or wouldn't like to have, huh?
Tell you what, I play games for more than "challenge" or autistic spread sheets. I like to enjoy the visuals too, and when I see these beautiful designs ruined by the jury rigged animations, I can only be amazed how can they get away with this and some (like being this big company that anyone working in games industry wants to have on their resumé).

Which was kinda the main point of my first post - that they could absolutely add the stuff OP wanted. But - again, like I said - it would look like shit. Again - like I said - not because of the ART STYLE, but because of the shitty old engine.

[Belloc]

So, again, you would like it if you had to deal with collision detection? You'd like to get cornered in a dungeon or out in the world and be stuck in the middle of 10s of mobs, just holding you in place and hitting you in the back? You'd like to be unable to move until you killed every last one of them (or until you died and respawned)? You'd like it if you had to wait your turn to get to the auctioneers (assuming, of course, that players actually behaved appropriately -- get a few AFKs and no one gets to use the auction house!).

Sure, if that's what you'd like, then that's what you'd like. It'd be terrible game design, but people ask for terrible changes all the time, so you do you.

You can want whatever you want and like whatever you like, but you clearly can't see the big picture when it comes to designing a game as big as WoW. You're asking for things (small, insignificant animations) that would cost way too many resources (which is why they aren't doing them in the first place) and for things (physics/collision detection) that would literally break the game (hundreds of players around you = you can't go anywhere, tons of NPCs around you = almost every encounter in the game is instantly broken), and you're not thinking of what the consequences and costs of these changes would be... just like every other MMO-Champion poster that has their own pet ideas and desires.

When I say that you wouldn't actually like such changes, I'm assuming you wouldn't enjoy a broken game. Clearly I was mistaken.

...because of the shitty old engine.

Nah. See, you're sitting here telling me about your pet issues of reused animations and physics. Those aren't engine limitations -- those are development-resource limitations (not enough dev-time to work on the animations) and PC/Server limitations (applying physics calculations in a calculation-heavy game = servers/PCs become too taxed and the game becomes unplayable).

You use Dark Souls as an example: Tell me, when was the last time you saw a full raid-group full of active enemies on your screen in Dark Souls? Trick question: Dark Souls is my favorite series -- that situation never happens (outside of maybe very specific situations with very plainly detailed enemies, like rats or skeletons). The reason it never happens is because it would drop your frames to single digits, rendering the game unplayable. Now, add in everything else that WoW has going on behind the scenes and it should be obvious why such physics would never be possible... and I'm talking specifically about player-limited situations, like dungeons and raids. Now picture Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Yeah, hundreds of players with soft-body physics? The fact that you didn't even consider the technical demands of such physics being applied to such large amounts of players confirms that you really aren't putting any thought into your post other than "I want this."

So, again, want what you want and like what you like, but don't talk shit about WoW not having these features when having those features is not feasible with current hardware. Oh, and don't take your examples from games with a max player count of 6 and a normal player count of 1 or 2 when we're talking about a game with 20 to hundreds on screen at once.

[Louz]

So, again, you would like it if you had to deal with collision detection? You'd like to get cornered in a dungeon or out in the world and be stuck in the middle of 10s of mobs, just holding you in place and hitting you in the back? You'd like to be unable to move until you killed every last one of them (or until you died and respawned)? You'd like it if you had to wait your turn to get to the auctioneers (assuming, of course, that players actually behaved appropriately -- get a few AFKs and no one gets to use the auction house!).

Sure, if that's what you'd like, then that's what you'd like. It'd be terrible game design, but people ask for terrible changes all the time, so you do you.

You can want whatever you want and like whatever you like, but you clearly can't see the big picture when it comes to designing a game as big as WoW. You're asking for things (small, insignificant animations) that would cost way too many resources (which is why they aren't doing them in the first place) and for things (physics/collision detection) that would literally break the game (hundreds of players around you = you can't go anywhere, tons of NPCs around you = almost every encounter in the game is instantly broken), and you're not thinking of what the consequences and costs of these changes would be... just like every other MMO-Champion poster that has their own pet ideas and desires.

When I say that you wouldn't actually like such changes, I'm assuming you wouldn't enjoy a broken game. Clearly I was mistaken.

Nah. See, you're sitting here telling me about your pet issues of reused animations and physics. Those aren't engine limitations -- those are development-resource limitations (not enough dev-time to work on the animations) and PC/Server limitations (applying physics calculations in a calculation-heavy game = servers/PCs become too taxed and the game becomes unplayable).

You use Dark Souls as an example: Tell me, when was the last time you saw a full raid-group full of active enemies on your screen in Dark Souls? Trick question: Dark Souls is my favorite series -- that situation never happens (outside of maybe very specific situations with very plainly detailed enemies, like rats or skeletons). The reason it never happens is because it would drop your frames to single digits, rendering the game unplayable. Now, add in everything else that WoW has going on behind the scenes and it should be obvious why such physics would never be possible... and I'm talking specifically about player-limited situations, like dungeons and raids. Now picture Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Yeah, hundreds of players with soft-body physics? The fact that you didn't even consider the technical demands of such physics being applied to such large amounts of players confirms that you really aren't putting any thought into your post other than "I want this."

So, again, want what you want and like what you like, but don't talk shit about WoW not having these features when having those features is not feasible with current hardware. Oh, and don't take your examples from games with a max player count of 6 and a normal player count of 1 or 2 when we're talking about a game with 20 to hundreds on screen at once.

Amazing how much can you go on about something I didn't even mention, that is player v player/npc collision. Nor did I ever said I would want, but you somehow think I do, because you know best what I want

And yes, these janky animations ARE engine problem - they would need to adapt the engine to have contextual animations, but it would make the game look much more... AAA. They could start with proper feet placement.

The game already has soft body on some armor - so yeah, you can already get into situation where your shitbucket of a PC must calculate all that, but Blizz was smart in this and added the option to turn it off, you can see for yourself, it's a checkbox in the settings.
So again, your argument really boils down to textures and polycounts - which again, is nothing I said I wanted, that's just you reaching. I said DS games have nice soft body physics, yet they control beautifully - as an argument to the other poster's argument that physics = unresponsive gameplay.

WoW engine is severly outdated and cripples the game, simple as that.

[Accendor]

Why change what already functions?

Because it does not function correctly.

[Tradu]

Garbage, to an extent. And then if even. Is it really?

None of the examples you provided were a problem for me, outside of actual lag on my end or the server, ever.

What I would recommend is try and swap your TCP congestion algorithm to CTCP. It changes the way the game feels, a lot. Try it out. And perhaps do some QoS, AQM on your outbound WAN if you know the terms. That also helps, a lot.

These examples you provided are proof of poor overall network performance on your end more or less.

The lag you're probably referring to is the server lag in the outside open world and that is because of their anticheat system. Also, at times, because a World Boss is up and overloading the servers CPU/reaching allocated pods limits.

It's not just on my end. I'm sure there's things I could do to mitigate it, and I might look into the stuff you suggested, but claiming the issues aren't real is dishonest.

Blink being broken is just a fact.
3D position detection being awful is also a fact.
Movement detection being awful is a fact. There's a reason you get hit by things you're not in on your screen, because the server hasn't updated your position yet, because it doesn't properly do so until you stop moving. That's why jumping out of mechanics is a bad idea, because your position isn't properly updated until you land. It's also why mechanics like the "control your movement" decree on Queen's Court or the hot foot vision affix are so bad at detecting when you actually move.

And yes, the world lag during Battle for Nazjatar/world bosses is pretty bad as well, but that's more an issue of hardware limitations(to some extent caused by poor software)

[Nobleshield]

It's always been speculated that deep down in the guts of the WoW code the "kernel" is a modified WC3 engine. However there's a part in John Staats' book where he mentions that code being redone, so we don't know. I know at one point Blizzard did say the fact the deep internals is a modified WC3 engine is the reason why we couldn't have larger backpack slots (that it wasn't just a matter of changing a variable somewhere) but who knows.

It's clear that over the years they've redone more and more of the game's code. So it's possible that there is nothing left of the original engine.

[Nnyco]

Spoken like someone who clearly has zero understanding of programming.