I get it, if Blizzard EVER decides to go a new engine the amount of work it would take would be astronomical, but come on. It’s 2024, 20 years of Warcraft and we still have no physics in the game, hoods, helmets, hats, with no hair (if you aren’t a special NPC).
Gear is slowly being updated but there are mounts, weapons from 20 years ago that has never been updated. WOW is starting to run it’s course and Microsoft now owns Blizzard, atleast dump some money into this game and update the core engine to allow physics/hair to helments, gear, etc.
but it seems to me they barely utilize it, we finally have new models of our characters, but if I didn’t know any better, I remember gear being “painted” on your character. Look at a game called Throne and Liberty, it’s based on Unreal engine 4 (or 5?). The server is capable of holding thousands of players with no hiccups, gorgeous graphics, gorgeous armor, etc. I’m just saying, WOW is starting to show it’s age with no let ups in sight into the future, just updated warcraft engine. Maybe I’m just wishing for nothing. XD
I get it, but I’d hate to see WoW using that kind of graphics. It would completely disrupt the flavour of the game. For all its limitations, WoW’s cartoon style is one of the keys to its longevity.
When I lag in Throne and Liberty, I rubber band so badly that I repeatedly take fall damage and die using even the lowest grappling points.
The game may look better on the surface, but the character/gameplay stability in WoW is significantly better. Likely because it came from an era of conserving bandwidth that it didn’t trade too much. Now, the network is there, so you may as well use it all (at least, until it isn’t).
I would say that’s more a perception claim than an original design claim. Given the meathooks and gore, and questlines to “kill as many until the ground is soaked in blood”, it was closer to Heavy Metal “cartoon” than the gnome-infested anime it’s evolved towards.
I still can’t get over how Druid’s Travel Form cheetah is a significant visual downgrade over Classic’s travel form.
Questing this because it’s definitely a major factor in WoW staying power. This game can and often does look amazingly gorgeous in the newer zones. The engine does get updated every patch which is why the system requirements have crept up over the years.
Not every game needs or should look like photorealistic graphics. In 5yrs time Throne and Liberty is going to look horribly dated while WoW still continues it’s signature charm.
Art style is much more important than improved graphical fidelity, which is what several people are asking for.
Another factor to consider though is the sheer player base of the game. If the game suddenly used Unreal Engine 4/5 then how many thousands of players would that suddenly cut off from the game?
All those unreal engine WoW trailers on YouTube only do one thing, make the game look generic and forgettable.
The stupidest thing they could do would be to change the engine. The fact that it is still going strong after 20 years speaks volumes.
I’d rather have a stable and reliable game than some useless physics.
With a new engine, everyone starts from scratch. All their experience would be gone, too.
Hats with hair is possible with this engine, they just don’t feel like it.
WoW’s engine can already do all of that. Many npcs have hair physics, many armor pieces and weapons have physics (although usually relegated to just belts), and i even saw someone say that the DF model of Alexstrasza have “special physics”.
Even if Blizzard swapped engine it wouldn’t change WoW much. Blizzard have gone on record saying that they intentionally limit how detailed stuff can be to push out content faster.
WoW looking the way it does is not an engine problem, but an intentional design decision.
To be fair, new engine =/= change in art style, at least not necessarily. In theory, they could use a modern engine and keep up a similar cartoony art style that we’re all familiar with.
Just for the record, i’d love for it to happen, but i don’t think it ever will. It’s just too much work for too little gain (from a corporate publisher standpoint). People often talk about the improvements that Blizzard has made to the current engine, and it has had some, but it’s basically still the same foundation and all of the limitations are still there.
we have basic bugs and other problems all over this game and here this CLOWN is complaining about hair / physics… get out of your garrison once in a while and play the rest of the game.
I personally never lagged in it, and I played it day one, in WOW i lag sometimes, due to server lag.
and yet, no hair physics (hair looks like it’s painted on the head), no grass physics. Look at FF14 for example, major graphic update and the game still looks gorgeous. I love LOVE WoW for what it is, but it is lagging behind just like NIntendo lags behind Sony.
Switching to a new engine would be a lot work for very little gain, especially when a lot of the “limitations” are intentional.
They can and do work on the engine and continually update it with each expansion, which is generally how it works with engines. If they wanted something like grass physics, they would add it but it wouldn’t really do a lot for the game.
Funny you should bring this up because the Switch is one of the best selling consoles of all time.
Nintendo is pretty much the poster child for “graphics don’t matter if the game is fun”.
They create new models sometimes, but that’s a huge project to go back through and recreate them all. So we get some of the more popular ones as HD versions.
