It wouldn’t be classic. But wow 2 with those graphics? Sign me up. I don’t think the “warcraft” style of graphics has ever been what draws me to this game.
I would never ask for a change to a CLASSIC server, but there is a part of me that would love if they made vanilla and other content have better graphics and scale so we can play it at whatever level we wanted and give rewards that worked. But that is a pipe dream and I know it.
It looks amazing and I wouldn’t say make it optional because classic doesn’t need it. That being said, Blizz made it so you could mod your own client to run those graphics, I would be okay with trying it out for a bit. But I don’t see them ever allowing it to be modded in, because it would break their anti-cheating system, which checks for changed textures and what not.
Unreal 4 engine is really nice, but it’s not perfect. I play a couple games on it right now, and while its utterly amazing; the graphical art side of it is directly related to the studio that addapts their style and graphics to the game engine.
The graphics in that video are really nice, but you must consider that the videos they show are unlikely to run very well on lower end machines, and it’s questionable how optimized that would be.
For the uses of Classic WoW, the good ol WoW game engine that’s been around since before the dawn of the modern age is just fine…
Just because its old does not mean we need to replace it
The Client for WoW; regardless of version is the game engine for the lack of better words.
All your client does is talk to the server; it’s a rough loop kinda system that bounces information back and forth.
You pushing forward on your W key to move forward sends a message to the server saying I am going to move forward, and then the server sends a message back showing where your character should be, then the client says I am here, and then the server says eh kinda, and that goes back and forth constantly…
This is why in high latency conditions players can experience what’s called rubber banding or what looks like to others as if the player is Blinking all over the place.
Another example of what your client does, it not only communicates your movements, but also communicates the things you see, and what spells you either want to use or have ready to use. It also communicates the results of things too you from the server such as spell animations, sounds, etc.
So to use the Unreal 4 engine you would need an entirely new client.
Is that possible? Sure, but it would be a bit of work to get it compatable with the server and the Battle dot net system.
By modding it in, I don’t mean replacing the client. I mean modding all the textures to use what is shown in the unreal engine videos. Something that Blizzard’s anti-cheat system would ban you instantly for.
You’re probably right, though I don’t see it happening anytime soon. I mean, WoW is built on the engine they made for Warcraft 3. An engine that is like 20 years old at this point.
Yup, although it has been updated a whole lot since that point; this does not excuse the fact that it’s horribly outdated even with all those updates and re-builds.
Compare it to automobile for a moment… World of War-Craft’s game engine is like an old Flat-head ford… They sound great, were decent by the era they were made and affordable to build giving the power of a V8 to the masses…
However, things have evolved a lot since that point in time, and only so much can be done to modify and extract power from that core design. No matter what you do, it will never compare to a modern overhead valve V8; it’s not even remotely comparable because if you spend all the money in the world on it you’re only ever going to get the power of a lame tuned modern engine of equal displacement.
Spend the same $$$$$ on the modern engine and the power you can have is truly mental.
The same situation exists for World of WarCraft.
If Blizzard really wants modern WoW to be awesome again, they need a new game engine and new class designers and new content designers.
The team who developed BFA is failing at their job horribly.
Moving back to an MMORPG model instead of this single player nonsense would be a very good start.
That’s actually an urban legend.
When they first started building World of Warcraft, they tried using the Warcraft 3 engine as the base; however before they got very far in, they discovered that it was inherently limited for what they wanted to achieve, and that it was going to be easier to start over and build an engine from scratch. Which is exactly what they did.
There are screenshots out there from when they were doing their super-early pre-alpha work using that first W3-based engine and the game definitely looks weird, like a cross between W3 and WoW.
I have actually spoken to someone who’s been part of the “Blizzard Family” since vanilla. Not someone who works at Blizzard, but someone who’s part of the “Friends and Family” group. This person has spoken to and knows people who worked at Blizzard since vanilla and confirmed wow is built on the WC3 engine.
A pre-alpha build of wow that looks weird like it was a cross between WC3 and WoW? Like it was an early build of the game and not all the art assets were made into proper wow art assets yet? Almost like what you would expect if you were building a new game based on an old game using the same engine?
They actually talk about some of the code in WoW being as old as 1997. That strongly indicates that it very well could be a heavily modified WC3 engine. That actually makes some sense because game engine does not equal graphics presentation, but it does determine how efficient things are.
There are some models in old Vanilla that were very much older than the 1.xxx series, they appear to be early alpha by the style and appearance / low texture detail.