I just heard that there will most likely be RTX effects in WoW and I cannot wait to see it.
Even though my card does not support RTX I will probably build a new computer when the new NVIDIA series is released in September.
There seem to be a lot of graphical updates for Shadowlands. I’ve been playing every expansion and I feel like this is going to be the steepest step they have ever taken in the graphics department.
Is anyone else here who will be getting a new computer for WoW?
It is the software version of RGB. It is totally useless and people are drooling over it. Basically it improves reflections, but it is a rather minimal improvement of graphics. It is like a snob, I’m rich I’ve got an RTX card thing.
I’d wait on the RTX 3000 series, there will be improvements on that over the 2000 series. Which makes sense as each new generation will offer better performance over the last.
They will be ray tracing effects but not Nvidia RTX branded, They will be vendor agnostic based on everything I’ve read so they will be hardware accelerated but not locked to 1 GPU manufacturer, AMD are bringing their own ray tracing cards out in a few months and Blizzard will want to advertise this to all people not just the ones who have Nvidia cards.
Raytracing makes the lighting and shadows more realistic. Ignore the other grumpy guy. He clearly has no idea what he is talking about.
In games with top graphics turning on raytracing effects does not change the game very much but in games with crappy graphics like WoW it is definitely going to make a difference.
You can compare it to other graphics updates the game has received like when they implemented DX11 water effects or particle effects on the character’s hands when they cast spells. Both those things are very noticeable. It is extremely doubtful they would invest time in this if it made no change.
Right now the light in the game is fake. Light is basically “just there” which is why players often complain that they want darker areas. Since with raytracing they are going to need a real light source it means that the sun is going to cast the light on characters and buildings and those will then cast a realistic shadow.
The significant part here is not the character shadows but buildings and trees. Since the real light source will determine how bright it looks for you it means that this can potentially bring us more immersive shadowplay eg more immersive nights and darker areas like Duskwood that might become spooky again.
People have been asking for more immersive nights for a long time and you can find many topics if you just search so I can see them wanting to implement it. As soon it is turned on we will be able to see screenshots. You will however need a new graphics card released in September.
Minimal improvement? It greatly reduces performance overheard for rendering lights/shadows, not to mention that the realistic looks can even make minecraft look awesome.
You don’t need Raytracing to have darker nights, other games had them before raytracing was a thing. Since the current system of lighting has been used for decades, there are a lot of tools to make that fake light and fake shadows into something smooth and realistic.
Raytracing is more of a blessing for the developers, since it replaces an entire toolbox. If you put a lot of effort you can design an environment that’s probably indistinguishable from real light, however raytracing makes that effortless.
If you’re gonna play a lot of money for a video card and expect to get you mind blown in shadowlands, maybe lower your expectations.
Yes you are correct but like I said, this is going to give us darker nights potentially.
Yes you can have this effect without raytraying but we do not have it. I also assume that adding this effect without raytracing is also very time consuming whereas implementing it with raytracing should be easier for the devs. We are talking about a game that barely gets any attention so I am certain that this is going to make a visible change.
You do not need to spend a lot of money. RTX on the 2000 series was garbage and you needed the 2080 Ti to actually get these effects while still maintaining good fps but the new 3000 series and AMDs new cards will both render raytracing more efficiently which will cause less of a strain on the cards. Even budget cards of the new lineup will be able to render raytracing so it will not cost a lot of money. You’ll just need a new graphics card or a console, assuming they’re going to port WoW to the new gen consoles.
A useful link for those considering a graphics card update. Turns out my current RX 470 is a bottleneck for my Ryzen 5 2600X, and a new RX 5700-TX would be a much better match. Maybe for xmas…
Edit: Thanks to Ishayoe’s post, I see that current AMD graphics cards do not support RTX.
