World of Warcraft

WOW graphics are excellent.  However, lots of people do find the cartoonish art style disagreeble, much like some people dislike Anime in other games.

Originally posted by Swiftblade13

wow's graphics are very low tech, but outstanding art and textures more then makes up for it.... to the point where it is one of the absolute best MMO game environments out there...

This.

It is precisely the care and detail that goes into the art direction and enviroments that makes up for what is lacking technologically. People complain that it looks like Disneyland but forget that Disney has some of the best artists and designers in the media industry.

The Blizz art team are easily up there with the best of them.

Originally posted by coffee

 

Blizzard work just as hard if not harder on their graphic than say AoC, It take far more skills and man hours to produce hand made textures and obscure architechure than realisitc stuff, how hard is it to motion capture a human or to take a photo of a brick wall?

 

 

AoC textures ( and a lot of "realistic" testures covered with shaders these days ) are not made with photos, they are made in a similar way to EQ2 textures.

AoC, The Witcher or even Oblivion have a more realistic look, but they are like a realistic illustration not like a photo... well of course, photos of landscapes usually are used to inspire, but this happens even with stylized games.

Some old FPS games are made with "photo" textures, but the result is pretty bad.

Motion capture is more complex to work than ring animation to tell the truth, (Im not talking only about AoC, but EQ2, The Witcher, Hitman etc).

Im not here to reply to your opinion about WoW or artstyle, only to tell your technical arguments are not accurate.

...

It's not the environmental graphics in WoW which have always bothered me, it's the character models. I'm fine with the cartoonish art style, but just because it's like that, doesn't mean it has to look awful. Blocky, deformed character models with painted-on spandex armor never looked good to begin with and hasn't aged well over the years.

Some might think different, but for me, character models looking good is important for me in MMO's. If I'm going to have an avatar that represents who I am in the Warcraft universe, it better be something I find appealing. On the Alliance side, there's no male race that fits my tastes, so I always got stuck playing a female character. Though I'll admit, I like Blood Elves, but I hate the Horde so that's a no.

Some may call it Art others may call it style, I call it crappy cartoony looking graphics.

I simply do not like them at all. A good 1/3 of the reason I quit was the graphics and music aspect of WoW both which are terrible.

Game is ok Its fun and enjoyable , enough for me to have gotten 2 lvl 70s back  last year anyways. I quit and don't plan to come back unless blizzard makes a very large graphic over hault or the game changes back to a casual game  like it started..able to spend 1 hour or 2 a day and get  a lot of things done... Now you can't do that anymore unless you are level 1-60.

Originally posted by Calintz333

I simply do not like them at all. A good 1/3 of the reason I quit was the graphics and music aspect of WoW both which are terrible.

I can understand why people don't like the graphics... but the music?! WoW has some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game.

And for the guy above - I would agree with you on the character models. They look pretty awful. The new models they've used for the Vrykul are much better.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

Originally posted by Calintz333

I simply do not like them at all. A good 1/3 of the reason I quit was the graphics and music aspect of WoW both which are terrible.

I can understand why people don't like the graphics... but the music?! WoW has some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game.

And for the guy above - I would agree with you on the character models. They look pretty awful. The new models they've used for the Vrykul are much better.

Ewww that's about the last example I would use ^^

I really think it's just a difference in taste. I thought AoC characters looked "decent" I really don't like the way WAR characters look (scenery is nice though), I never liked the way EQ2 characters looked either. It's hard to say why but for me WoW character models appeal a lot more. 

The difference that a lot of people describe is probably those who look at technical and those who look at style/art. Technically WoW models aren't that special (though movement is very well done in my opinion but that's a slightly different argument), but style/art wise they make up for that completely (For ME!). It's just going to be very subjective. EQ's characters and armors were clearly miles above WoW technically yet I never thought they *looked* better.  It actually more than half the time made the characters not seem part of the world at all.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

I can understand why people don't like the graphics... but the music?! WoW has some of the best music I've ever heard in a computer game.

I was just thinking the same thing!  I could run around Ashenvale all day just to listen to the music; infact sometimes I would leave my character logged in there while doing other stuff on the computer.