The High-Res Screenshot Thread!

[Margaret]

WoW runs off an engine that is 7 years or so old, if you include the days of the Alpha/Beta testing.

I don't understand why you children slate it so bad, it has aged better than a hell of a lot of other games thanks to the visual style.

 

[Cavallino]

Are those Shift shots taken with any special mods? Could you tell me what settings you used pleased? Cheers

 

[arknor]

just standard shift on those screenies

32xAA 16Xaf maxed ingame settings.

i did try some mods once but you need to unpack your shift files which takes hours and then for me the game stuttered a lot and took ages to load so i went back to basic shift with no mods

 

[Edrof]

WoW runs off an engine that is 7 years or so old, if you include the days of the Alpha/Beta testing.

I don't understand why you children slate it so bad, it has aged better than a hell of a lot of other games thanks to the visual style.

Yeah that's true. It's a venerable beast that doesn't pretend to be Metro 233333333.

 

[jonneymendoza]

WoW runs off an engine that is 7 years or so old, if you include the days of the Alpha/Beta testing.

I don't understand why you children slate it so bad, it has aged better than a hell of a lot of other games thanks to the visual style.

no it was **** back then. source engine is MUCH MUCH better than WOW

 

[BlitzPigHam]

no it was **** back then. source engine is MUCH MUCH better than WOW

Based on what? Did it ever occur to you that WoW was designed to look stylised?

Anyone can do photorealism or semi realistic graphics. What is nice is to have games pushing the art department to come up with something new that doesn't conform to ideas that game MUST be realistic looking!

For me personally having played Eve, AoC, WAR, and more MMO's it's nice to see each one is different in it's art and design philosophy. If every game was photo realistic the gaming world would be much poorer for it.

 

[Tummy]

World of Warcraft has been out since late 2004.

I personally, think that the visual style that Blizzard developed for the game works well even if it's running on an older engine. The recent updates give it a much needed boost in looks but I can't say I find Warcraft "ugly" or "unpleasant" I think it's credit to Blizzard that they are still managing to get every last bit out of this engine.

The source engine was released later then the Warcraft engine.

Lot's of other games have boasted about their graphics and haven't aged as well as Warcraft or for that matter Half Life.

Credit to the developers.

You're all welcome to your opinions, but come up with a better arguement that "it looks ****", you sound like a child

 

[Margaret]

no it was **** back then. source engine is MUCH MUCH better than WOW

Right okay, you seem to be missing a few key points:

- WoW was specifically designed to scale back to older machines
- The Source engine was the Crysis of 2004, it didn't run great back then on older hardware
- MMOs typically have inferior graphics to <insert X FPS here> because of the gigantic scale and need to work on a massive amount of hardware (they need lots of subs in order to continue running)

So really, your entire post was pretty much "WOW SUCKS HURRR DURRR"

 

[jonneymendoza]

TF2 has a much better style. even guild wars which was released around the same time as wow looked MILES better than WOW.

WOW looks god awful in terms of artistic design and actual graphics. it just looks poor to me

 

[Robbo]

WOW looks god awful in terms of artistic design and actual graphics. it just looks poor to me

Exactly. To you it does.

WoW is not trying to be anything special, it has cartoon-esque graphics that are extremely stable and run on a huge range of hardware.

With everything cranked up, it looks decent. Nothing special, it's not trying to be. It doesn't need to be.

Its artistic design is fantastic, saying you think its 'god awful' just makes you look stupid, at least stand back and appreciate not all games have to have Crysis style graphics to succeed.

 

[Relentless81]

Comparing an MMO engine to an FPS engine is for the LOL's

 

[BlitzPigHam]

TF2 has a much better style. even guild wars which was released around the same time as wow looked MILES better than WOW.

WOW looks god awful in terms of artistic design and actual graphics. it just looks poor to me

You are totally entitled to your opinion.

I still don't see the correlation in comparing TF2 and GW to WoW in terms of style and looking miles better? I can understand it if they were using the same level of graphics and design but they are not. They are each doing something different.

I haven't played WoW in years but for me a lot of games a fews years back were trying to push the realism boundaries. These date very quickly as the next level of realism overtakes them. Games such as TF2, WoW, WAR and many more don't age as they are not attempting to define realism.

For me WoW has great artistic design. The colour pallete is well used and each race is well defined and distinctive. It may not be as cutting edge as say Eve or pushing the DX boundaries as say AoC but then it doesn't boast to.

For me I just hope more games move away a little from realism and look more at being a little bit more art. Borderlands may not be the greatest game ever made...It may even mechanics wise be a little samey but the risk Gearbox took changing from realism to the cel-shading near completion was massive but I think paid off. It's far from a great game in my opinion mechanics wise. Just as I am not much a fan of TF2 but there is little denying that Borderland (and TF2) push the boundaries of game design.

 

[arknor]

Right okay, you seem to be missing a few key points:
- The Source engine was the Crysis of 2004, it didn't run great back then on older hardware

erm amd64 3200 , 1gb of memory and an x800 wasnt exactly state of the art in 2004 and i ran hl2 at something like 80fps

 

[shipinabottle]

Right okay, you seem to be missing a few key points:

- WoW was specifically designed to scale back to older machines
- The Source engine was the Crysis of 2004, it didn't run great back then on older hardware
- MMOs typically have inferior graphics to <insert X FPS here> because of the gigantic scale and need to work on a massive amount of hardware (they need lots of subs in order to continue running)

So really, your entire post was pretty much "WOW SUCKS HURRR DURRR"

Pretty sure the source engine was build on scalability as well, that was one of the big appeals.

Source Engine was not the CryEngine of 2004... The Source engine has always been massively optimised and did not require the latest hardware to get a 'reasonable' frame rate.

The WoW engine is Dated now, its aged well, but to compare it to to the Source Engine is stupidity, the Source Engine still manages to pull off good looks now, over 6 years down the line.

I'm one who thinks WoW whilst it looks old, its game style is something that works, and does not have me thinking its 'ugly' where as say the new FFXIII MMO doesn't look that good to me. It's very much like comparing Apples and Steak. 2 Different Purposes in reality.

 

[Soya]

Enjoy these FSX shots, a few of the shots have some minor editing work done:

Hope you enjoyed the view, thanks for taking a look.

 

[arknor]

sick of flight sim pics tbh , theres another thread for them anyway?

 

[Edrof]

Some of those flight sim shots look real if I squint a bit.

 

[jonneymendoza]

Exactly. To you it does.

WoW is not trying to be anything special, it has cartoon-esque graphics that are extremely stable and run on a huge range of hardware.

With everything cranked up, it looks decent. Nothing special, it's not trying to be. It doesn't need to be.

Its artistic design is fantastic, saying you think its 'god awful' just makes you look stupid, at least stand back and appreciate not all games have to have Crysis style graphics to succeed.

even with everything cranked up it looks like crap to me. sorry i dont like the graphics style. its utter crap imo. like i said and many of you WOW fanboys ignoring, guild wars, yes guild wars a semi mmo style game has much better graphics in terms of actual raw graphics textures and in terms of graphics art design. the levels and game worlds in GW is stunning and some of the best art designs i have seen in a game that total blows WOW.

Comparing an MMO engine to an FPS engine is for the LOL's

Again take your freaking wow blinkers off and read ALL of my post. i was comparing Guild wars too but of course you chose to ignore that.

You are totally entitled to your opinion.

I still don't see the correlation in comparing TF2 and GW to WoW in terms of style and looking miles better? I can understand it if they were using the same level of graphics and design but they are not. They are each doing something different.

I haven't played WoW in years but for me a lot of games a fews years back were trying to push the realism boundaries. These date very quickly as the next level of realism overtakes them. Games such as TF2, WoW, WAR and many more don't age as they are not attempting to define realism.

For me WoW has great artistic design. The colour pallete is well used and each race is well defined and distinctive. It may not be as cutting edge as say Eve or pushing the DX boundaries as say AoC but then it doesn't boast to.

For me I just hope more games move away a little from realism and look more at being a little bit more art. Borderlands may not be the greatest game ever made...It may even mechanics wise be a little samey but the risk Gearbox took changing from realism to the cel-shading near completion was massive but I think paid off. It's far from a great game in my opinion mechanics wise. Just as I am not much a fan of TF2 but there is little denying that Borderland (and TF2) push the boundaries of game design.

check out guild wars 2. that is shaping up to be what exactly you have described above and like guild wars one, will blow away wow in terms of graphics.

 

[jonneymendoza]

erm amd64 3200 , 1gb of memory and an x800 wasnt exactly state of the art in 2004 and i ran hl2 at something like 80fps

exactly. you go tell the wow fanboys that in thinking you needed a state of the atrt gaming rig to play hl2. you diddnt. the source engine scaled MUCH better than wow and still looks pretty decent till this day in terms or realism or art style(TF2.)

 

[Robbo]

Ah, you've resorted to calling people fanboys now.

You are clueless and dont know what you are talking about, I'm not going to waste my time trying to educate you.

If you dont like it, dont play it. Simple. There are enough idiots on WoW already so I guess the graphics are doing us a favour keeping you away