I am watching the pax videos of wildstar, I was pretty amped for it in the past. As I watched the video though, I just felt like meh, I've seen it before. It made me think though about how the pool of 5 plus year mmorpg vets sees a game and how a developer creates a game. I have determined that developers deem developing for the experienced crowd is to risky. I think thats why EqNext and Wildsfar are cartoonish.
Comments
It's a discussion that has no real answer. To some it might seem to be them trying to appeal to the masses. To others like me, I feel like it can still look amazing with graphics like that, and I think the real reason tends to be it's easier to develop something with graphics like that, that can run on a lot of machines and still look half way decent, as opposed to a team that dumps 4 years of work into purely graphics, and a whole 5 people can run the game.
I think its all about....the money.
WOW proved even older adults would accept child like graphics.Parts of the world have heavy console users(lower graphics capabilities). Game developers want to maximize their ROI (return on investment) by maximizing the potential user base(pc AND console users).
So far PC users have not indicated they would stand up and not accept playing a cartoon character in a cartoon world
As for me... I tried to play WOW and couldn't take the graphics.
I remember *strokes snowy-white, beard* before WOW came out and, "It is known, Khaleesi" to it's future tbh. But for me the cartoon graphics were an abomination of fantasy. Yet it was the right decision for Blizzard many times over.
So, you have to hand it to EQ:N and Wildstar it's the "right" decision for them whatever their dev budgets are (high). The distinction however looks like:
1) Wildstar: Aimed for kids in tone and look. Probably targetting that market which is growing. It really is an impressive job at a sort of disney looney toons space adventure.
2) EQ:N Are broadening the appeal of the avatars. Eg we already have a disney lion and an avatar elf. There will be huge diversity across all looks so that the appeal is very broad. Sounds successful if not very strict high fantasy. More like LoL.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
The way i see it.
I rather have a game with cartoonish visuals that i know will look cartoonish 10-15 years down the road then a game with "realistic" visuals that i know will look like crap 10-15 years down the road.
Now the EQ:N devs explained it as a choice done to give them as much freedom as they can get when doing animations and expressions as the cartoony visual style lends it self better to "larger" or slightly over the top animations and expressions.
It is a matter of taste if you like it or not, but i do not think it has all that much to do with "experience"...
This have been a good conversation
Personally i think i've grown too old to be interested in the cartoony games anymore, i just see them as being increasingly aimed at kids, or at least people a lot younger than i am. Maybe thats also a reason why i no longer have any real interest in WoW, sure it was a great game, but, there are better games out there now, and im playing them. Perhaps this is also why EQN and Wildstar are not even on my 'radar'.. pretty sure they will find their own 'niche' but as an older gamer im probably the wrong demographic for them anyway.
I truly have no problems with cartoony graphics. It's the execution of the overall game. If cartoony makes the ingame world feel "game-wise" alive then cartoony or stylished have a much better change on creating a such a world.
I really dont like Wildstar art design, its even worse then wow imo.
With that art direction it as to be a amazing game to find me there playing it, and i dont think Wildstar is a amazing game, a good one maybe, not amazing.
Seams they wanted to make a funny game and choose that art design, wasnt necessary to be soooo cartoon
But i love the promotional movies
I don't see graphics past 20 or so minutes of play time. Unless the developers purposefully put some eye porn in there during quite moments.
Seriously something like wind waker is still completely playable today and probably will be for another decade. Where as if you look the older tomb raider games, they become somewhat painful to start.
_____________
Lets be honest it makes sense for MMOs to drift towards idealized/simplified/cartoony/whatever because they're supposed to last forever.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Cartoon style is not outdate graphics, its just a art design.
Maybe I'm getting old, maybe I'm just too accepting, but I think people are talking crazy talk in many cases when they say certain games are "dated" looking. I cringe so many times reading that in official reviews, forum posts, etc.. Dated looking to me is what Morrowind looks like today, I think plenty of games from the 2007-2009 era look great still, I've played PS2 era games recently that still look passable in terms of graphics.
A good example of my point is TOR or ESO. Many call these games dated in the graphics department. To me that's somewhat obsessive. I've seen it said about AOC, FFXIV, and many others. All four of those games look good to me; the latter two look great, yet many would say they look "old" or "older".
I don't remember this type of reaction to games after Donkey Kong Country back in the SNES days. Games still scored well in the graphics department that weren't up to a certain standard. As long as they did what they were trying to do well, again maybe it's my age, maybe I have low standards, I don't know. It's rare for me to get that feeling that this or that games looks dated.
I'm not saying there aren't games that look bad today that aren't that old, I'm not saying there are no games that look terrible. I guess what I'm saying is, the industry, the media, and even some players, are just getting to OCD in the GFX department, as well as art department. Not to mention animations.
I understand it's all subjective, all my non-gaming hobbies are in the art or music realm, so I fully understand the subjective nature of this discussion. Yet at the same time I think too much emphasis is put on the extras, rather than looking at them as what they are. Bells and whistles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
We'll have none of that logic stuff around here, sir!
I wonder if true MMO gamers also only read Apartment 3G in the comics section of the newspaper.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
what mmog has a significant player base after 10 -15 years ! ?
Who wants a cartoon character to represent them.... that looks like it should be on the box of a kids sugar coated cereal ?
It's the quality of the art direction that matters, not some stylistic label.
I realy need to split that topic into 2 parts:lacking better words i call them engine and style.Both can have very different designs. Its possible to have a cartoonish engine and realistic style(characters, buildings). Just take a look at older 2d-art. There are alot images with a cartoon-color-palette but very realistic character designs. At the same time its possible to make a very realistic looking enginge and create characters that look cartoonish all the way(easiest example aere some big-head mods).
Now to get back to the quote:
Style -> Using the same enginge but different styles does not make any significant difference. Cartoonish style does offer the potential of better performance if the cartoonish means less detail. Both age at the same rate. The real difference are the players. Thoose looking for realistic graphics tend to value graphics more.
Engine -> In this case i would say your statement is only partly true. Cartoonish graphics used to age better because 3d was still in early stages and especially old 2d-art with a rather unrealistic color-palette looked much better. Similar for earlier more castoonish engines. For most engines this situation changed a few years ago. Unless you realy go back to 2d(or 2d/3d hybrid) the cartoonish engines age just as fast as the quality realistic ones. If both engines come with a high detail oriented style the cartoonih might even age faster because the realisc one has more lighting/shadow-options for compensation. Its a different story for low qualty engines. Its much easier to make a cartoonish one for a low budget than the realstic one.
I think people make too big of a deal out of the graphics. At a certain point it seems players just want to something to complain about sometimes. Considering performance of having a bunch of other players in on screen I say go ahead. I will say that I would prefer an art style not like WoW just because the UI and quest setups are already so similar it just adds to WoW clone feel.
There are graphics card salesmen amongst us, blasphemer.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
We don't know if there is "great combat" and "content with depth".We do know what the graphics are and are not.
Hello
Graphics only mean so much, or only go so far as a deciding factor if i am interested in a game. That being said I tend to be a bit more critical of realist graphics. Possibly due to the fact that flaws stand out, and have a greater dissociative effect.
In regards to Wildstar, from the limited information i have, cartoon graphics fit the over all theme of the game. The game does not take it self so seriously and the graphics mimic that feel.
In regards to EQ:N besides the armor on Simba it does not particularly both me. The majority of the time i am exploring or fighting, so as long as the monsters and the mountains look inviting i am game.
I have the distinct impression that some people feel that the type of graphics denotes the type of player. This is a pretty stupid assumption. I am not sure if I am an experienced mmorpg player, but after 10+ years I am one who is looks at a game as a sum of its parts.
Welcome Home
Rev.