Why are WoW's graphics so sub-par?

[hrugner]

The reason is * variation*.

Look at games with * good * graphics, they can display what? 5 nearly the same characters on the screen before the lag starts?
There's a reason all the battlefield soliders look the same, big reason in so many games why all the people look so similar.
Same models, same animations, same this same that.

Were as wow can do hundreds of people in different gear, different sprites, textures, models and animations.

Its a trade off between being different or being clones.

That simply isn't the case, games that are handling higher quality models and textures are also handling more of them much better than WoW can handle half a dozen chunkbunnies. There isn't a trade off, even WoW's style is done a disservice by the low quality engine they use.

Look at their concept art sometime and set it next to their actual output.

[Phraun]

That has nothing to do with their engine. Any stuttering or fps issues can be fixed by adjusting voltage for your gpu. This works not only in wow but other games as well.

Please refrain from making comments like this if you don't know what you're talking about. Some poor guy is gonna see this and immediately start dicking around with his GPU voltage in ignorance, then come crying when he fries his video card.

GPU voltage in and of itself has no bearing whatsoever on framerates, but instead on system stability. If you're overclocking your GPU, raising the voltage can help stabilize more ambitious clockspeeds at the expense of increased heat and power draw. Touting it as a framerate panacea is both wrong and irresponsible.

[Nekosom]

Except I'm asking for a more efficient engine ... which can only increase the number of people capable of running it without it looking like utter crap.

That requires essentially creating a brand new game. All of WoWs components are designed to work with its current engine. Redesign it and you have to redesign everything, ie make a new game. It is an utterly wasted effort with limited benefit. I don't think you fully grasp what your request would entail.

[Noomz]

Fair setting ... can't even maintain 30 fps on a 2 year old laptop.

Water doesn't' even have specular highlights - seriously what kind of water is this, anyone who has lived knows water is shiny.

Then we have things like GTA V ... a bloody miracle on aging console systems on their last legs.

Both multi-billion dollar companies. What gives?

Because the engine is 8 years old.
They've said this themselves, that the engine has a lot of limitations. What they've managed in Cata and MoP with it is pretty amazing, considering how bad the engine is.

[Deleted]

1. It's an old engine, there are a lot of textures and models that are still relics of Vanilla. It took enough work creating Vanilla, and it will take a long while to make sure everything is brought up to modern standards.

2. WoW does have a unique look. I can't get into many MMOs because everything looks "Soooo reaals" and it's fucking difficult to distinguish things when you're zoomed out half a mile. With WoW every model, every texture is big, vibrant and almost cartoonish. It makes it easy to distinguish between different things witch is needed in a game where you're zoomed out very far and where we have a lot going on. MMOs with "GTA 5 Graphics" would suck so hard, especially if they're following the fame style of MMO as WoW.

[Dazzy]

Fair setting ...

There's your answer. Try it maxed on a good monitor. Looks great to me.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Can't really fix what isn't broken...graphics are great the way they are.

As said earlier, it's next to impossible to completely overhaul a ten year old engine upon which ten years of content has been created, in which case you'd basically be creating remake.

[tangers58]

Sounds like your laptop is a pile of crap bro

[Belize]

Isn't the game like, almost 10 years old now? Oblivion is the same age and looks 1000x worse

[mickybrighteyes]

Isn't the game like, almost 10 years old now? Oblivion is the same age and looks 1000x worse

Sure if you're going by the console graphics instead of max. NPC's will look fugly... but then WoW doesn't win any bonus points on any of the original eight races either.

[Chirri]

I'm not asking for new features. I'm asking for an engine that doesn't suck - which WoW's engine by any objective measure does.

Seriously? Water that is non-shiny? Even Mario Sunshine a GameCube game has better water! And the GameCube is over 10 years old!!

I don't know how water looks non-shiny to you. I actually adjust the direction I'm facing because of the "reflection" if I'm originally facing the direction the sun's glaring at me from. They put a ton of work into the water texture when it got updated. It's not constantly twinkling with lights, but neither does pool water, nor pond water. Even lake and ocean water doesn't have particularly bright flashes of light unless the weather's working for you.

Water's looked pretty damn impressive since Cata. It doesn't look exactly like real water, but neither do human males look like real human males. I like the waves effect they added on IoT (no, that's not perfect either, but when you're 30 yards in from the water line it's neat to watch it come in after nearly a decade of pretty tame oceans).

Water aside, I'd say WoW's graphics do what Blizzard wants them to do. They're distinct enough that when you're looking at a screenshot, you know which game it's from. For the majority of more recent, "super realistic" games, it can be hard to tell them apart at a glance. "Oh, it's one of those games with realistic graphics," "Oh, it's an FPS," "Oh, it's ... what is that? I can't see. Everything's grey and brown and beige," "Oh, this is a brightly colored fantasy game of some sort..."

Everyone knows Blizz wants WoW playable on as many crappy rigs as possible. Everyone knows that a complete overhaul of the game engine would basically mean absolutely nothing else gets done with the game (just the update to the Vanilla world, not even a huge change to the engine, meant a bunch of other content simply didn't manage to make it into the game - imagine what a complete engine change would mean). Well, that is a slight exaggeration. But really, why overhaul and seriously slow down WoW (and would guaranteed lose subs because lots of people's systems would no longer be able to handle the game any longer - likely far more people than "prettying up" would gain them), when that effort and money would more easily go toward a brand new MMO instead? Which probably wouldn't even be TITAN, but something that comes even later.

[Cobaltius]

Because the engine is 8 years old.
They've said this themselves, that the engine has a lot of limitations. What they've managed in Cata and MoP with it is pretty amazing, considering how bad the engine is.

Also takes a huge performance toll for that little graphic enhancement; I have a pair of 3.33 ghz quad processors and two HIS 6950 Tubo Radeons in a crossfire configuration I get 60+fps in WoW until I port to Pandaira then it drops to 15-24 fps which is a pretty sad.

[Deleted]

The graphics are actually pretty awesome and have a high definition and pixel count. Just because the style is cartoony doesn't mean that the graphics are bad.

[Alandalus]

One issue is that until very recently (post-5.4) the dev team was highly focused on making sure that the highest and lowest graphical settings still had the same look and feel. They've said that in the future they'll be doing things you'll only see on higher graphical settings.

[Xisa]

If you don't know a game runs the way it does, you don't have the right to complain about it.

Read and learn how things work. Complaining doesn't accomplish anything.

[kynthrus]

Play it on the highest settings, it looks good to me, also if you can't play it on a 2 year old laptop, you got the wrong laptop.

[melodramocracy]

Fair setting ... can't even maintain 30 fps on a 2 year old laptop.

Water doesn't' even have specular highlights - seriously what kind of water is this, anyone who has lived knows water is shiny.

Then we have things like GTA V ... a bloody miracle on aging console systems on their last legs.

Both multi-billion dollar companies. What gives?

<--generally around 40fps on max / ultra settings except shadows on a 3+ year old laptop. Perhaps the game isn't the problem here?

There's nothing wrong with WoW's graphics.

[CosmicGuitars]

GTA:V is not running on an engine from 2003. It's just on low hardware specs. These are two entirely different things.

[atrixx]

I LOVE blizzard graphics. They look awesome. And I don't know about anyone else, but the water looks pretty freaking real when I play...

The water looks real, but the rest is a bad cartoon. At the very least they could work on better skins to try to improve things a bit.

[Alandalus]

Play it on the highest settings, it looks good to me, also if you can't play it on a 2 year old laptop, you got the wrong laptop.

Laptops could very easily have a problem because of how WoW (and most games, really) uses a CPU. Laptops generally have low clocked CPUs, even if they are multicore. If you have something <3.0ghz then you're probably going to get <30fps in cities and 25m raids.