Could WoW's graphics be updated?

If the gameplay went from the cinematics we watch to the same thing in gameplay… I don’t know if that’s possible but I’d die for that.

The funniest excuse I see for wow not having better graphics is it would require more expensive hardware, so loss of subs… YET these kids ALL play warzone and fort nite…

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I like WoW’s cartoon design and it’s better on the laptop. I don’t want a crappy “hyper realistic” game where the graphics look like crap after 1 year. The unreal world doesn’t even look that good.

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Yeah I agree. I actually like the graphics on current WoW. I was just saying that excuse for better graphics is total crap. But I honestly can’t wait till like 20 yrs from now how good their own graphic type will be. WoW runs great and looks good rn imo.

Wows engine won’t run it. I believe they even addressed it quite a few years ago (sorry memory fade on it, but I remember it was well before those unreal vids surfaced).

If I remember right it was something about the current engine basically being the same one they used for the rts, and it can’t go much further.

As for the current graphics, at this point I’d call them retro rather than stylised. There is very little polish and the innovations are merely poor cousins to what other companies do. For the age of this game though and given what it has under the hood it’s doing ok. You also got to remember it doesn’t have the following now that it once had, so what would justify a whole new engine?

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OP wants 4 hour load screens and zero FPS in BGs…

/Remembers Legion LFG WQs with 300 players trying to tag a boss

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Could, yes. Will it happen? No.

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What are your expectations of a game that’s 17yrs old…? You have to consider the engine and tools that Blizzard used when it was originally created XD.

Updated graphics like that video or one similar, would be awesome. Imagine what all the character models would look like. Imagine what SL zones would look like. Imagine what all of our abilities, pets, mounts and forms would look like.

A cow can dream.

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Obviously it looks amazing but that isn’t Blizzard art style for WoW and would not change it. Not only that, one of the reasons why WoW has had so many players is because you can play WoW on a potato so it has a lot broader of a reach to its player base.

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I don’t know too much about the inner workings of a gaming engine, but I still don’t know why people continue to think UE4 = photorealistic graphics. I have two “cartoony” mobile games on a three-year-old phone running on seven-year-old UE4. Who knows how many more are out there…

I think the real reason why Blizz doesn’t bother with another engine isn’t because of hardware specs or graphics, but a few other reasons:

  • Having to convert everything to another engine
  • The benefits of using your own in-house engine: no royalties to pay, the freedom to edit the engine as you please
  • Even if they upgrade their own engine to that level, the overall state of the game and company, it is not exactly a priority.

If anyone debates the graphics, I want them to see the amount of detail in a MoP textured dungeon to a vanilla one.

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The graphics are already updated.

They’re already amazing.

Run it on modern hardware and there’s all sort of stuff floating about, shadows, shimmer effects, etc.

When you see those in game cinematics with your toon walking along, or raising their sword, that shows you the true detail of what’s going on with the textures and model. The cinematic with Sylvanus and Anduin from BfA where goes all Banshee on them, that’s the in game engine. That’s what it can do without a gazillion toons running around and bouncing and dancing on mailboxes. And that’s with in game models.

The graphics are already there, it’s the art style people are yakking about. (And I find WoW art style timeless, “photo realistic” ages quickly.)

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Please no. I don’t want to have to upgrade my computer. It currently runs WoW pretty good.

I like the cartoony-ness of wow as it is.

Given that UE4 has a potato mode build in, performance wouldn’t really be that bad given Fortnite runs on it and can run on a potato

they are updated every expansion, look at MoP or Cata to now, major upgrades everywhere

Now if we want talk about engine upgrades… Lets talk about how D4 looks worse than D3

There isn’t much in the way of expectations. The game is old and dated. The minimal changes they make that impact appearance do not do so significantly. Certainly not enough to justify the increased overhead they put on player systems. At least in my opinion. Slight improvements at significant performance costs.

The graphics don’t bother me, just don’t try to present these minor changes from xpac to xpac as something fantastic.

There’s a lot of retro remakes that have the option to run the original graphics. You could port the game to the Overwatch engine or something and give players the option of running the original graphics or the updated ones. Heck, you could even give players the options to mod their own graphics if you wanted to, let them make whatever visuals they want.

The question is, would that be worth the investment. Converting all of WoW, every model and texture and animation made in fifteen years of development to work up to a modern standard would be… a lot of work. Probably less expensive to just make a new game at that point, so the question is, would a graphical update of WoW make more than a new AAA game? Probably not, would be my guess.