Because your PC would explode in 20-man raids on full Ultra.
They are? Try comparing vanilla to Legion.
Tbh I don't think I'd enjoy WoW as much if it was "realistic" like every other MMO game out there. I really really really love the art style of WoW and Wildstar, to some extent League as well. I tried getting into Rift, ESO etc and had to drop them because the aesthetics didn't flow with me
Why? Money is a very important factor. We sometimes ditch plans for various improvements for a product because it's too time- and money-consuming to implement them. Same goes for bug fixes, there always is a priority, low prio stuff can be in the list for decades w/o being fixed simply because it won't make us as much money as high prio stuff or we may even lose money.
The more time you spend working on low prio bugs/features the less time you have to work on more important things.
That would cost them a raid tear. (C)Why don't blizz improve the graphics of WoW?
Blizz is slow as fuck at making games.
Updating all of wow to an entire new engine like unreal would take Blizz like 10-15 years.
By that time unreal will look dated and honestly the time and money investment just would not be worth it at that point.
The cartoonish style is what makes it timeless.
I assume you mean 'why don't they make it look realistic' because they have massively updated models and textures over the years.
That Unreal engine recreation looks so bland and generic. Nothing in that video screams "World of Warcraft", it looks like any other medieval fantasy setting because it lacks everything that adds character to WoW.
That video is a prime example of why unique art style trumps photorealistic graphics.
When we looked at the relics of the precursors, we saw the height civilization can attain.
When we looked at their ruins, we marked the danger of that height.
- Keeper Annals
I wish they would be serious about updating the animations and I wish they would add more flavor to the classes.
The emotes, animations and toys all feel watered down as hell to me.
Having the ground become frozen over or flower pedals appear when you go idle was a step in the direction I'm talking about. Class specific emotes would be really nice too.
Go look at a vanilla screenshot man, the game looks way better now. It just retains the same aesthetic style. Especially in terms of water effects.
WoW is fine as it is. Graphics aren't everything and the cartoony art style of the game is just how WoW is supposed to look. We don't need WoW to be looking like Final Fantasy or LotR. Blizzard has already done a great job of improving the visuals. It's colorful, smooth, and very pleasing to my eyes at least.
Also those Unreal engine videos make WoW look worse. It looks grayer and plain. I prefer WoW as it is now much more.
Last edited by Pony Soldier; 2018-02-23 at 05:05 PM.
They do update the graphics a lot between expansions. They haven't messed with the art style though which is why the game ages so well.