Spooncraft

The age of the game is starting to show in regards to visual effects and yet I don’t really have any complaints. I showed you folks a macro that can (pending strong enough hardware) really vamp up your graphics in game. This time around it’s something different. During the interviews with WoW developers, Eurogamer got some reaction as to the engine used in World of Warcraft and how it might be redone soon.

Honestly though I really hope they stay with the specific look of warcraft. Games that have that ultra realistic look to them (Conan and the gang) always seem bleak and washed out, they play shitty, and in the end are easily replaced by something shiny and with color. I played FFXI for a long while before I came to WoW and the first thing I remember thinking was “HOLY CRAP! There are colors!?”

Do you think WOW is ever going to need a complete overhaul of the engine?
(src)

That’s actually something we talk about every expansion. It’s interesting, two games have really tried that before, Ultima Online tried it and EverQuest tried it as well, and in each case it was only somewhat successful. In each case a lot of people continued to play with the original client, because it was faster, or they preferred it, or were just used to it or whatever. And so for me as a game developer, the idea that we would spend so much time and energy on something and have people go, “meh, that’s not really for me,” that’s not very exciting. So I don’t think there’s really a clear model as to how to do that successfully. The model we have with Wrath of the Lich King allows people with high-end machines some additional graphical effects, and then we’ll have some kind of fallback for the people who don’t. Will we need a graphical update from the ground up at some point? Yep, probably. And I’m positive we’ll talk about it next expansion.