Over the years, gamers have learned that performance is what really matters. Who cares about super graphics, if you need to tune them down to run the game, or if they’ll make the game laggy?
With that said, I am really surprised how Classic performs. Apart from several graphical bugs (moonwells, portals, warlock summons) - it has the perfect balance between quality and quantity (of frames), for 2019. Graphics are still much better than many of today’s popular games, such as Minecraft or Fortnite.
Modern graphics is crap due to uncanny valley effect among others. The more they try, the worse it becomes. It’s less believable and more artificial hence less immersive. Also there is something about exercising imagination, which is impossible when you are served very detailed graphics. Playing old WoW is somewhat like reading books, you don’t see letters (“bad” graphics), but “real” action.
Last but not least graphics in WoW up until WotLK is a true work of art. It’s timeless. And obviously it’s good. Saying that WoW has bad graphics is blasphemy. Astonishing balance between cartoony and real look. Sadly they lost it after Cataclysm and went full cartoony which is shame.
The real problem is that most games make the graphics baiscally higher quality than photorealistic.
That’s because, instead of focusing on realism, they focus on making the graphics “look developed” and “more sexy”. Come on, RL graphics are ugly. Maybe not if you look at the pre-urban landscapes of Iceland, but look at the pre-urban characters. Have you ever tried comparing a today’s medieval game to, let’s say, historical festival IRL? Yeah, game looks much more “modern graphics”, doesn’t it? Then imagine that those historical reenactors have just shampooed their hair, soaped and creamed their sensitive skin, and trimmed their beard with electric trimemr. This is something that didn’t exist back then. It was a lot more uglier.
This means increasing the intensity of reflection (“metal skin”), bloom effects, HDR, motion blur, and such - eventually going full anime - instead of just hiring more artists to make more realistic eyebrow textures, which would also cost more.
Landscapes in Classic are amazing. STV still looks beautiful even today. Only thing that bugs me is that for whatever reason each zone in Classic is bordered by a ring of mountains, maybe because they didnt have the “tech” to make seamless transitions between biomes?
But Character models, armor textures and “doodad” textures, such as the gnoll tents are awful. They dont hold up to modern standards at all. Its okay to have low fidelity textures, but its not ok to be able to count pixels.
That’s just one. There are indeed new games that release with better graphics, but their “monetization” or “lotboxes” make them sitll worse than minecraft.
Well, yeah, but there is also dissonance between what you see and what you experience. I mean controls, overlooked physics, kind of “dead” feeling, artificial faces, all is scripted, idk, maybe I’m just not into modern games, I quited that stuff after WotLK so that might be the case.
This is more related to gameplay and exploration, rather than tech. They didn’t want the entire world to be one big “barrens”. They separated zone chats, and zone themselves, and wanted to make zone-crossing a more significant experience. Zones are the “levels” of this game. It is a zone-segmented game, not a fully-fledged seamless open-world game. If they made it so, then they’d have to deal with the same issues that retail deals with, thanks to flying mounts. Dead world, basically.
This doesn’T seem to be just about games. All that modern algorithms are quite annoying to me. Google search, youtube suggestions, facebook post priorities, and such, only make it harder for me to find the real thing I’m looking for - since it’s not popular, they assume I’m not looking for it.
The comparison with Minecraft doesn’t work. Minecraft was intentionally designed to look retro, Vanilla WoW was not.
Also I think you’re getting aesthetic mixed up with graphical quality. Fortnite’s graphical quality is far better (higher polygon count, better textures, etc) but the aesthetic (the style; whether it’s cartoony, realistic, etc) of Classic WoW is more appealing to some people.
and it does not.
Minecraft was designed to look retro, because it was cost-efficient.
I just don’t consider polygon count or texture resolution as the definition of “good”. Indeed, it is more technologically advanced, but turns out the advancement isn’t needed at all.
QED. Thats literally Boomer talk. I enjoy playing my ancient games as well, to which WoW Classic looks like a 2019 game in comparison (Like Jedi Knight Dark Forces II), but I also enjoy bleeding edge game technology.
From a technical standpoint higher poly count, etc, can count as good as long as performance is also stable. Whether you like the style or not is another matter.
It’s like appreciating the technical skill of a musician. You can be aware that they are very talented without enjoying the music.
So? It doesn’t matter why it was designed to look retro. The point is that it intentionally looks that way. Vanilla WoW did not have a retro look for its time. So yea, that comparison does not work.
