Honestly, Vanilla WoW is beautiful when played on modern hardware at modern resolutions (here is an album I’ve thrown together from my adventures on a pserver over the last year: https : //imgur . com/a/TwRTvt4 ). The original game has a vibrant, catoony aesthetic that IMO has aged very well over time.
I have to ask: What does “updated graphics” mean to you, besides merely new water, new models? Things like increasing view distance or clutter density aren’t really “updates”, because they could already be brute-force increased via console commands.
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I think they should make an “hd” version that is fully updated to current wow standards and an “sd” version in all its bloby, chunky, 4:3 glory.
Regardless of whether it’s an impossible task, it doesn’t appear to be a very fruitful one. The people who genuinely want Vanilla WoW tend to prefer (or at least not mind) the original graphics. The good vanilla pservers that are popular also run the original graphics. Besides, the Classic team is probably overwhelmed enough as it is just merely trying to recreate authentic 1.12 gameplay mechanics.
You can already play Vanilla WoW at 1440p widescreen res (that’s how I play on a Vanilla private server). Besides the water and character models, what improvement is really left to make the original Vanilla world “hd” vs “sd”?
This is why people need to specifically define what “updated graphics” actually means.
I did.
The “HD” client would use updated visuals and character models available on the “retail” client.
The “SD” client would use the original graphics available in 1.12.
This isn’t an original idea. Lots of games have done this since greater commonality of higher hardware has come out.
And this wouldnt affect anyone else playing in any way, because all of the rendering is done client-side. So a player running the SD client would see your HD character in SD, and you would see their SD character model in HD.
I doubt they’ll ever do it, with a small team and time frame for testing out the game will be just getting it all to work.
You said
But the original Vanilla WoW can already be played at modern widescreen 16:9 resolutions, and this is how people are playing on Vanilla private servers. The difference in Vanilla zone environment graphics between the 1.12 client maxed out on modern hardware and the modern client really won’t be that much.
This is why I keep repeating: outside of the player models and water graphics, what really is left to update?
All I’m trying to say is, in these “update Vanilla graphics please” threads people seem to be remembering Vanilla WoW as this 4:3 pixelated monstrosity, when that was really just a visual artifact of us playing on commodity hardware in 2007.
When Vanilla WoW is played on modern hardware at modern resolutions, the differences between it and modern WoW practically vanish (excepting new player models and water graphics).*
*Things like draw distance and clutter density could be arbitrarily scaled with console commands at practically any point in WoW history.
I’d rather it be just like Classic graphics. I’m not looking for a perfect game, a new game, or the “best of WoW”. I’m wanting to go back to a very specific point in the game’s development. New graphics would completely remove the immersion of that. We’d still never really see the same game as it was back then. To me it’s all about what is was like back then.
BUT even if there were new graphics, I’m sure I’d still try it out. I wouldn’t be optimistic, but it wouldn’t be an instant dealbreaker.
It definitely couldn’t be called Vanilla, and in my opinion shouldn’t be called Classic, if what we see is all modern tech.
I like what I saw in the demo. As for the BfA graphics, nah I’ll pass on that. They look “good” just not in a Classic way. More like a Jar-Jar-Binks kind of way haha.
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If we’re being real, Vanilla honestly wasn’t THAT great, it was just new for it’s time and had hardly any competition.
Now people revere it because it was just fun regardless of whether or not it would work now, and it’s unclear whether the hindsight and nostalgia will be enough to convince grown adults with kids and jobs to go back to the sluggish grind and “111111111” rotations.
My guess is people will log in thinking
their lives are going to be fixed by Classic (exaggerating), and having to either force themselves to play or come on here and demand Classic to be updated even further, including graphically.
New models look goofy. No thanks
So long as old is the default and new models get to deal with all the bugs
What’s the point in putting newer models when literally everything else will be a pixelated mess in comparison? It contrasts with every other model in the game and the face alone probably has more pixels than anyone’s weapons would.
Would you only change the player models or also change the NPC models? If you answered yes, would you limit the changes to playable races or change as many NPC models as possible?
Let’s look at Molten Core for an example:
- Ragnaros and Flamewaker (the humanoid snake mobs) were never updated (2004).
- Molten giants models were updated in Cata (2011).
- Core Hounds and Imp models were updated in Legion (2016).
- Fire and Earth elemental models were updated in BFA (2018).
Some models would be completely outdated while some others would have more pixels than half the trash packs in the raid together. Where would the updated model stops and what is even the point of putting in updated models if half the models in the game were never even updated?
I don’t mind the updated environmental graphics like water/grass/etc. too much but NPCs and player models are a big no-no for me.
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Fully agree. Classic is all about gameplay and characters for me, so improved graphics would make it just that much better.