One thing I’ve learned in like the past five years or so is how my expectations have risen, and that it’s probably not a good thing. When I played Vanilla I was a kid and I thought my undead with his long cloak (most of the cloak were short) and SFK robes was really cool.
Now the textures just look so low-res and the colors really stand out to me as kind of clownish. I know it’s basically just me having slowly been exposed to better and better graphics. I feel the same way when I play like Battlefront 2 which seemed like it had such good graphics at the time.
But then it’s like some retro games I can really appreciate the aesthetic of no matter what, like pixel art. I think the difference is that pixel art games are trying to work with very little fidelity as an art form, wheras most 3D games are trying to fight their limitations. WoW falls into the catagory for me
Got to play in the Stress test and saw the water between Darkspear Strand & the Echo Isles. All I could think was, “I don’t remember it being this way”. Someone called it “jello water” & that’s pretty close - it looks partially frozen. It also doesn’t move, not at all, but yet you hear the sound of waves lapping on the beach. I don’t remember it being so still before either. It wasn’t crystal clear in Vanilla, but it certainly wasn’t solid grey sludge.
I don’t see a different art style, I simply see improved graphics. The old models were very flat, whereas the new ones are more 3D.
I think that is a misconception on most players’ part. I don’t recall the nights being darker, but I recall the night SKY being darker. There were some areas where it seemed as though the night ambiance was darker, such as that strip of road in Arathi Highlands between where the Forsaken Messenger came out of the road from Hammerfell to a bit just west of the entrance to Refuge Point but for the most part I don’t think the overall night ambiance was actually darker. I do think that it SEEMED that way to us at the time due simply to the limitations of our computer systems at that time - we’ve come a LOOOONG way since 2004-05 (when I started playing) as far as computing & graphics capabilities are concerned.
So. Much. This. Everyone had quite different computer setups back then - the “Gaming Rig” was still in its babyhood & was pretty limited in exactly how much better it could be than the average rig. I had a spouse that kept draining the checking account every time he saw money in it (even though he KNEW that checks had been written for that money) so I was always running in the negative. When my monitor took a crap, I went to GoodWill & bought one for $5 - apparently it had gone to there because the contrast was broken. I never even knew what the floor looked like or that there were statues up near the roof holding the chains in BRD until recently (yes, I replaced the monitor long ago, I just never looked at the roof until recently LOL); the only way I made it up to the balcony for L/UBRS was to follow my groupmates’ nameplates. EXACTLY follow them. The jumping puzzle in BFD? Well, I still can’t do that so I guess I can’t blame it on poor components - I’m just a pasty white girl that can’t jump LOL! But yes, the differences in each player’s components would have made a HUGE difference & with my monitor having that contrast issue, of course everything seemed darker. Having just been able to get into the Stress Test though, I DID look up at the sky. The sky itself seemed to be darker than it is in Expanded WoW and I think that’s accurate to what it was. Night ambiance in general though felt as I’d remembered it to be.
I didn’t fall in love with WoW because of the graphics, at least not the quality of the graphics anyway. I loved the environments, the interactions between myself & NPCs as well as between random NPCs - it was like the world was alive. I enjoyed randomly grouping with people & then when I had a dedicated group to do stuff with… I could not WAIT to play. I’ve appreciated all of the graphical upgrades and I don’t think that having the old world/quests/mechanics with the new graphics will affect my ability to enjoy Classic AT ALL. It was NEVER about the oversaturated, overexaggerated, flat 2D character models - it was ALWAYS about the world, the quests, being with friends, taking down bosses, crafting items that others WANTED to purchase, tracking down trainers (Goofy enchanting trainer chick in the middle of Uldaman, I’m looking at YOU)… literally just immersing myself in this wonderful world with problems that I could actually help solve. I can’t wait for launch & I’ve already made a new BNet friend! I’m sure I’d have more but since merely having an active account since 2005 with NO LAPSES EVER as well as purchasing ALL expansion Collector’s Editions isn’t special enough for a Beta invite, I’ve only been able to play through one stress test for about 12 total hours.
This is the guy blizzard pay pal’d 5$ to make a forum post about how it wasn’t lazy to not remaster the game and how it’s not lazy to add a bunch of BS mechanics like sharding, then renaming it layering (like were retarded), and then just being really dishonest. Stupid post.
When WoW launched people were turned off by its cartoon like Disney graphics. I am an older player and prefer retail graphics. I like Vanilla graphics, but prefer retail.
I think it’s a matter of arrangement. The new graphics are great, they are just so packed in that everything looks crowded. If they slapped the new textures on the existing layout, I think it would be much nicer. I’m all for Classic servers having the newer graphics as long as the game mechanics stay the same. In fact that might be a cool new kind of server! Either way, my two cents.
Huh.
Three years gone on this thread and meanwhile we got 1.14 to put Classic on the same infrastructure as retail that came with graphical changes.
This poor horse.
rip
I know it’s all purely subjective but I prefer the old graphics over the new. That’s not to say that the new graphics are bad, or that the new graphics aren’t better by certain metrics.
My absolute favorite graphics are in pre-searing Ascalon in Guild Wars 1. They are very basic, the geometry is simple, the textures are sometimes stretched, the bloom is out of control, and it would probably net you a D- in a current game graphics course. Still, absolutely the best lol.
Blizz: downgrade WoW to look like GW1 and I’ll be happy. Do it.
By use of very clever NLP techniques and quantum numerology, I have already changed your mind without you knowing it, or being consciously aware that your mind has been changed.
I was in the beta for Guild Wars 1 and one thing that impressed me from the beginning was the lighting. I thought it was very well done, compared to other games that I had played.
WoW lighting was absolutely horrible in the beginning, the only cool thing was reflective surfaces like a sword blade had a bit of a shine on it that changed as you moved the blade. Not a true reflection, of course, but it did make it look a bit shiny, I guess. There were additional light sources that players could equip, (Torch of Austen may have been the only one in Vanilla) but the way they interacted with the surroundings was quite laughable, and useful if you wanted to count how many polygons were on the floor.
Catas improvement to the lighting was monumental, imo, and, thankfully, that has carried over to Classic. I only hope that the foundational graphics engine can handle continued improvements to the Lighting, because there is certainly more that could be done.
I don’t like the eyes and hair lip on my female Tauren, but the worst has got to be how Blizz “improved” the female NE. They went from looking feral and aloof to a freakin’ Botox Barbie
The art style of classic wow is ageless and it shows when comparing to so many other MMOs that have come and gone while claiming to have better graphics.
I disliked when they changed the art for Stormwind slightly back in Wraith, switching to much larger stone blocks in the buildings. I outright hated the revamped character models and animations when they released those. They looked so goofy and made my priest look like she was passing a pineapple any time she casted a spell.
I like the new graphics much better, and most of the newer character models. The only thing I’d change is I’d “unpretty” some of the races that definitely got facelifts. (orcs, trolls, Night elf females all getting a :3 smile.)
