I just realized World Of Warcraft has truly become the Madden football of MMO's. They really haven't changed much over the years or had any real motivation or competition to do so . Its just the same thing year after year with more features added that no one asked for.
I think people always conflate the game engine with the graphics. Out of the box Unreal will get you nice graphics, but it's not a good engine for MMOs. It has the same problem as Unity and Crytek. It's difficult to add new content once a game is released. A company will need to spend alot of time adjusting the engine to work for an mmo. This has been the Achilles heel of many companies adopting the Unreal Engine for mmos and has lead to cost overruns. It's much better to design your game engine from the ground up, or adjust the graphics on an engine that makes it easy to add new content to. You can always code new PBR shaders and make your game pretty. This is what makes the Hero Engine the most ideal starting point for an engine if you are not making your own. It handles versioning and allows for collaborative editing out of the box. It's much easier to add new content or edit existing content.
I think people always conflate the game engine with the graphics. Out of the box Unreal will get you nice graphics, but it's not a good engine for MMOs. It has the same problem as Unity and Crytek. It's difficult to add new content once a game is released. A company will need to spend alot of time adjusting the engine to work for an mmo. This has been the Achilles heel of many companies adopting the Unreal Engine for mmos and has lead to cost overruns. It's much better to design your game engine from the ground up, or adjust the graphics on an engine that makes it easy to add new content to. You can always code new PBR shaders and make your game pretty. This is what makes the Hero Engine the most ideal starting point for an engine if you are not making your own. It handles versioning and allows for collaborative editing out of the box. It's much easier to add new content or edit existing content.
What you think about Godot? One of the open free and open source engine.
Awesome graphics. Unfortunately, Blizzard can't afford awesome graphics. It cuts into their profit margin and the new company beach house with scented tp...
Unfortunately, creating a flyby movie is not the same thing as creating an in-game environment capable of sustaining numerous concurrent players at an acceptable frame-rate/ping.
If you look closely, the artist has replaced almost all the assets with higher resolution models... which will always look better even with horrible lighting and texturing.
You create this level of detail in the backdrop, you have to apply it to everything. That all adds up... often to the detriment of actual gameplay.
Remember, there is an overhead to games... this video is not limited by any such restrictions. Much like Blizzards' own cinematic movies... a far far cry from actual gameplay footage and completely undoable in an actual game.
Awesome graphics. Unfortunately, Blizzard can't afford awesome graphics. It cuts into their profit margin and the new company beach house with scented tp...
They can make it Epic Game Store exclusive and let Tim Sweeney fund the engine transfer
They would lose millions of players who don't have massive gaming rigs who can run that with decent performance. That is one of the biggest reasons why WoW quickly ran away from EQ2 and won that race, back in the day.
The effort is commendable; however the allure of WoW lies in the cartoony graphics and not in photorealism.
WRONG,cartoon graphics turn me off be cause it looks lazy and cheap.Photorealism is a bad terminology to use because we are not talking about simply taking a picture,we are talking about ART,people spending time to show off their art skills,cartoony graphics in rpg's does NOT look good.
If you want to talk about Pixar quality cartoony that is a whole different ballgame,that is EFFORT and quality,Wow graphics are neither. The Lure of Wow imo since i was there day 1 was a mass influx of NEW DSL people that just wanted a game to play.Not any game but something heavily marketed,a Warcraft title that was already known,a developer already known and the now ever popular mmorpg crave that was hitting mainstream.
NOBODY was playing Wow for the game,how would they since they did not know a single thing about the game and for 65% of the players they never even played a mmorpg before.
What is the lure of WOW right now,simply EASY to play,easily recognized.Personally Wow has zero appeal because as already mentioned,terrible graphics,low quality work both in models and textures and armor/gear.Linear game play imo does not belong in a MMO so yeah there is zero appeal for me there.
The simple thread is simply about the visual,it is not even trying to compare Wow as a GAME in unreal to one not in Unreal.As a visual difference,way above and beyond better,would that be good enough,of course not,i still need the game design.
It's not just an RPG. It's an MMORPG. Realistic graphics look nice, but perform awfully. This is why many MMORPGs do not go that route. Doing so severely limits your potential market reach, as a lot of MMORPG players are not hardcore gaming running cutting edge equipment.
WoW's graphics style, and its performance as a result of it, was a major reason why it was able to basically win by default over EverQuest II back when the "new generation" of MMORPGs hit the market (in 2004/5).
The realistic graphics look nice until you have 50 characters on the screen using all manner of skills... then the performance is so awful that you basically have to force the game to look even worse than WoW to perform well.
The effort is commendable; however the allure of WoW lies in the cartoony graphics and not in photorealism.
<snip>
If you want to talk about Pixar quality cartoony that is a whole different ballgame,that is EFFORT and quality,Wow graphics are neither. <snip>n.
As a matter of historical information WoW's graphics took a huge amount of effort.
Blizzard initially produced fully realised, concept artwork. They then turned that into detailed graphics. The style was the same but the detail of the graphics was akin to e.g. EQ2 or DAoC.
Then the effort part. They reworked the graphics - essentially scene by scene - combining similar shades. A process they called "big pixels". This reduced the amount of data that had to be processed, sent etc.
Someone actually asked why DAoC couldn't do this and the then CRM stated quite frankly that they didn't have the money / team size / time to do what Blizzard had done. Big graphics team was mentioned (from memory high 70s).
Cyan had previously used a scene by scene approach with Myst - different palette for each scene - to overcome the 256 limitations of the time.
As a result WoW graphics were not "Sam & Max" cartoony. Things changed scene by scene and - since it was taken from a non-cartoon template it had a richer look from day 1.
Which is not to say it appealed to everyone or that it was considered "cartoony". I preferred Myst for example. It did involve serious effort though.
And the pay-off, of course, is that it could run on the cpu in a modern toaster (OK slight exaggeration but you get the drift).
That's not to forget the fact that WoW's graphics are totally in line with the Warcraft games that the MMORPG is based on... so asking for anything different is kind of missing the point entirely.
FFXIV, for example, isn't necessarily any more or less cartoony than WoW. It's just a different aesthetic/art style.
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It's much better to design your game engine from the ground up, or adjust the graphics on an engine that makes it easy to add new content to. You can always code new PBR shaders and make your game pretty. This is what makes the Hero Engine the most ideal starting point for an engine if you are not making your own. It handles versioning and allows for collaborative editing out of the box. It's much easier to add new content or edit existing content.
If you look closely, the artist has replaced almost all the assets with higher resolution models... which will always look better even with horrible lighting and texturing.
You create this level of detail in the backdrop, you have to apply it to everything. That all adds up... often to the detriment of actual gameplay.
Remember, there is an overhead to games... this video is not limited by any such restrictions. Much like Blizzards' own cinematic movies... a far far cry from actual gameplay footage and completely undoable in an actual game.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
but it was
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
It's not just an RPG. It's an MMORPG. Realistic graphics look nice, but perform awfully. This is why many MMORPGs do not go that route. Doing so severely limits your potential market reach, as a lot of MMORPG players are not hardcore gaming running cutting edge equipment.
WoW's graphics style, and its performance as a result of it, was a major reason why it was able to basically win by default over EverQuest II back when the "new generation" of MMORPGs hit the market (in 2004/5).
The realistic graphics look nice until you have 50 characters on the screen using all manner of skills... then the performance is so awful that you basically have to force the game to look even worse than WoW to perform well.
Blizzard initially produced fully realised, concept artwork. They then turned that into detailed graphics. The style was the same but the detail of the graphics was akin to e.g. EQ2 or DAoC.
Then the effort part. They reworked the graphics - essentially scene by scene - combining similar shades. A process they called "big pixels". This reduced the amount of data that had to be processed, sent etc.
Someone actually asked why DAoC couldn't do this and the then CRM stated quite frankly that they didn't have the money / team size / time to do what Blizzard had done. Big graphics team was mentioned (from memory high 70s).
Cyan had previously used a scene by scene approach with Myst - different palette for each scene - to overcome the 256 limitations of the time.
As a result WoW graphics were not "Sam & Max" cartoony. Things changed scene by scene and - since it was taken from a non-cartoon template it had a richer look from day 1.
Which is not to say it appealed to everyone or that it was considered "cartoony". I preferred Myst for example. It did involve serious effort though.
And the pay-off, of course, is that it could run on the cpu in a modern toaster (OK slight exaggeration but you get the drift).
FFXIV, for example, isn't necessarily any more or less cartoony than WoW. It's just a different aesthetic/art style.