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Whelp, I'll never do this again

kingcomrade

Kingcomrade
Edgy
Joined
Oct 16, 2005
Messages
26,884
Location
Cognitive Elite HQ
450 gold at the auction house for turn-in-able items and 3 cumulative hours of repeatable quest grinding over 2 days just so I could have a tiny sporebat pet and a tabard with a mushroom in it. Only time I'm ever going to do one of these reputation grinds.

finally.jpg
 

Ahzaruuk

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 15, 2006
Messages
1,184
Location
Just a city called Sirius.
Darth Roxor said:
kingcomrade said:
I've got the graphics turned down, that area is actually pretty neat looking.

The art direction makes me throw up, because of how 'candy coated' it is. Current graphics level doesn't mean anything.

Like, compare that screenshot with these two from Guild Wars:

http://i44.tinypic.com/27zlyfr.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/24axu6g.jpg
That's because it was in outlands, the place where the art team basically went nuts.


Here's Northrend:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshots.xml#58


http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshots.xml#1

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/screenshots.xml#60
 

Kron

Arcane
Joined
Apr 18, 2009
Messages
642
Location
The dark throne in Algalord
I don't get it...
How did you manage to put your weapon away on your back and get a monster henchman?
And why are there health bars, and a mini map, and so many quickslots? This looks like a fucking mmorpg.

Oh, wait...
I thought that was a screenshot from Diablo 3.
 

DriacKin

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 9, 2008
Messages
2,588
Location
Inanescape
Are you trying to say that WoW is nothing but grinding?
That's a complete surprise to me. Nobody's ever made that observation before.
/sarcasm
 

Rosh

Erudite
Joined
Oct 22, 2002
Messages
1,775
It is known as Farm of Factioncrap for a reason.
 

Ahzaruuk

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 15, 2006
Messages
1,184
Location
Just a city called Sirius.
DriacKin said:
Are you trying to say that WoW is nothing but grinding?
That's a complete surprise to me. Nobody's ever made that observation before.
/sarcasm
This is true.

There are also degrees of Grinds, from the stupidly long to the so passive you never-even-knew-it-was-a-grind"

Sporregar is the former.
 

Jasede

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
24,793
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
WoW has really good art direction/design, if you disagree you are wrong. You may not like it (and I don't either), but it's amazingly good-looking for its low system requirements. Compare other games with higher requirements and much better graphics that end up far less aesthetic.
 
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
6,207
Location
The island of misfit mascots
(a) WoW is ugly, but
(b) it has good graphical design.


How do those two statements go together? Blizz deliberately designed it so that you could run WoW on some of the shittiest machines around. Criticisng WoW's graphics is a bit silly for us, of all people - it is Blizz aggreeing with us, saying that graphics don't mean shit to a dedicated player base.

For evidence, see the beta graphics - much higher quality all round. The cartoon look was brought in late beta as a means of massively lowering the graphical requirements to run the game without stuttering. And mmorpgs generally are tougher on the computer - and the eye - than single player games, due to the number of player characters on screen at once all being highly active (and the netcode interactive aspect). Look at any other mmorpg and most of them are equally ugly and yet have massively higher graphical requirments - the basic reason why WoW beat EQ2 when the games were so similar is that EQ2 looked great, but WoW ran on everyone's computer. And blizz correctly predicted that even those with gaming rigs would play WoW if they're friends with shit rigs couldn't run EQ2.

I wouldn't be surprised if - very very fucking quietly - Blizz realises that the anime look of SC2 is shite, but that like the cartoon-look of WC3/WoW the anime look can be run with very low graphical requirements. Those koreans - and most PC gamers who will buy SC2 (many of whom are older gamers) - will grumble about shitty anime graphics, but ultimately won't care so long as the game can be played without upgrading their rig, runs smoothely, they can clearly see the difference between types of units and the framerate is smooth enough for e-sports.

I'd love to see SC2 get fried by reviews for having awful graphics, and then sell a truckload anyway - it might make developers rethink their priorities.
 

Xi

Arcane
Joined
Jan 28, 2006
Messages
6,101
Location
Twilight Zone
Azrael the cat said:
I'd love to see SC2 get fried by reviews for having awful graphics, and then sell a truckload anyway - it might make developers rethink their priorities.

Functional graphics Vs. Extreme Realism.

Functional > Extreme Realism , IMHO. You have to give to get, and Extreme Realism does a lot of giving in terms of game-play. Not that you cannot achieve both Realism and Game-play, you can, but the budget, time requirement, and difficulty make it less likely than functional graphics achieving a solid balance between both immersive graphics and game-play.

Also, you're fighting against the Vicious cycle when you develop a game to have high end graphics. The more time you spend, the less likely those graphics are going to be attention catchingly amazing to your average tard-gamer. Result? Release a game with less game-play! I know it sounds stupid, and maybe developers don't aim for it to happen, but it does. Look at the amount of people in gaming studio art departments. It dwarfs all other compartments combined. Including management, QA, Sound, design, etc.

Seriously though, are you being serious about that statement? You think developers, Blizzard in general, should waste more development time/money on graphics over game-play?
 

Data4

Arcane
Joined
Sep 11, 2005
Messages
5,529
Location
Over there.
Xi said:
Seriously though, are you being serious about that statement? You think developers, Blizzard in general, should waste more development time/money on graphics over game-play?

Why not? Instead of chasing the graphical bleeding edge, why not take current-gen, or even last gen graphics levels and perfect them? I know there's a majority here who thinks that shinybloomyphotofuckingrealism should work with gameplay, not despite it.

Blizzard has proven that you can take low poly models and make them look fantastic. Utgarde Keep in Wrath looks amazing artistically, but technically it's probably still below Oblivion levels.

Utgarde_Keep_Large.jpg


Video:

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/categ ... 17qwyz9CfE
 

Talby

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 15, 2008
Messages
5,507
Codex USB, 2014
I really like the art design in WoW, it's almost worth playing just to explore all the different places and see cool stuff.
 

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