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Blizzard Evaluating WoW Graphics Overhaul
by Nick Breckon, May 16, 2008 11:40am PDTBlizzard producer J. Allen Brack has said that World of Warcraft will "probably" undergo a major graphical upgrade at some point in its lifespan.
"Will we need a graphical update from the ground up at some point? Yep, probably," said Brack to Eurogamer.
"That's actually something we talk about every expansion. I'm positive we'll talk about it next expansion."
The WoW game client has seen minor graphical changes in updates and expansions, but no major additions to the renderer have been implemented since the game's release in 2004.
Brack also noted that MMO developers which have done graphical updates in the past have not necessarily benefited from the effort.
"A lot of people continued to play with the original client, because it was faster, or they preferred it, or were just used to it or whatever," he continued. "And so for me as a game developer, the idea that we would spend so much time and energy on something and have people go, 'meh, that's not really for me,' that's not very exciting."
Comments
Think about how much work we're talking about: every little piece of shit armor model is going to need new textures and new models. That's an intense amount of assets.
Instead, a seriously awesome lighting model would do wonders for the game. I'd say that would be the most significant improvement, and it wouldn't require a huge amount of manpower devoted to asset rebuilds.
Of course, I'd also argue for lots of bump-mapping. At least you'd just be adding textures instead of wasting time re-creating them. Also: the sooner I can get non-craptacular water, the better.
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Surprising considering how many ventrilo and teamspeak users the WoW playerbase has, people complained it had a bad codec.
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Also I'm sure the fact that is will run on lower end hardware is part of the reason they have so many subscribers. I seriously doubt even 50% of WoW players have high end video cards.
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Note: The addition of rep grinds (Shattered Sun Offensive) isn't "content."
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Some seriously outstanding art direction going on over there.
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Projected shadows, some bump mapping and/or vertex mapping here and there, and (everyone's favorite) motion blur and you've got a next-gen game right?
Seems like they could add that to the game engine without changing too much else. Hell, even add some higher res textures in there. At least that shouldn't require a complete rewrite of the engine.
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I really like the cartoony watercolor texture look, and ya they aren't the highest poly models, but honestly they could probably keep the artwork exactly the same, maybe with a bit higher res textures but simply invest in some more sophisticated lighting that was realtime shadows, some radiosity and ambient scattering maybe a few more HDR sun effects and then just up the shaders on a few choice materials like metals and the game would look pretty fine. That way they don't have to invest years in redoing art but instantly the game will look that much prettier. Maybe a new water shader/system ala crysis too.
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But since this game will be around until its unprofitable (which means forever), It will need continuous updates.