Blizzard release schedule up to 2015

[Lakov_Sanite]

What does this have to do with kanye west? 

[Lantyssa]

Good is not what I would call WoW's art.  Consistent and extremely well animated, both of which are very important.

Good is Guild Wars, which does more with a texture or piece of landscape than WoW artists could ever dream of.

[Ginaz]

Good is not what I would call WoW's art.  Consistent and extremely well animated, both of which are very important.

Good is Guild Wars, which does more with a texture or piece of landscape than WoW artists could ever dream of.

Yeah, but GW doesn't have the same amount of MM in their MMO.  They can get away with having better graphics due to the heavy use of instances.  I much prefer the "cartoony" style of WoW over the "hyper realistic" style that many MMOs tried, and failed, to do (I'm looking at you in particular EQ2).

[Chimpy]

I love how people call stylized art direction "dated". They didn't make their game photo-realistic, big fucking deal, games that tried to look photo realistic all looked like or ran like shit. It was cartoony, but for the most part ALL Blizzard games look cartoony. It is the type of art direction they use.

[Lakov_Sanite]

photorealistic minecraft would suck.

[Paelos]

photorealistic minecraft would suck.

Yes it would.

[Mrbloodworth]

photorealistic minecraft would suck.

There is a mod for it, and charm is lost.


Photorealistic images or art has a shorter lifespan than stylized in just about all cases. In regards to "dated".

[Fordel]

GW's looks amazing, but it also "cheats" a whole shit load. When was the last time you went inside a house in guildwars? What's that? Never?  There are just so many restrictions on movement and interaction in guildwars, that your often looking at actual portraits, not game worlds.

The other thing about GuildWars, is it isn't photo-realistic either. It's stylizing is more subtle then WoW, but it still isn't trying to be 'real life' or whatever. It's using a real ENOUGH style.




Most games that really do go for the photo realism look, run at 5 FPS on anything but the most bleeding edge system and/or look like a 1990's cgi art project.

[Lantyssa]

I never said GW was realistic.  More realistic certainly, but it is stylized.  It's still what I would call Good when I would not with WoW.

[Simond]

Speaking of WoW graphics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L10g6JQLJFg
(Was anyone else expecting Metzenthrall to follow up "Behold" with "Corn!"?)

[Ginaz]

GW's looks amazing, but it also "cheats" a whole shit load. When was the last time you went inside a house in guildwars? What's that? Never?  There are just so many restrictions on movement and interaction in guildwars, that your often looking at actual portraits, not game worlds.

The other thing about GuildWars, is it isn't photo-realistic either. It's stylizing is more subtle then WoW, but it still isn't trying to be 'real life' or whatever. It's using a real ENOUGH style.




Most games that really do go for the photo realism look, run at 5 FPS on anything but the most bleeding edge system and/or look like a 1990's cgi art project.

The only photo realistic mmo that looks good is Age of Conan.  It has a great looking environment and good character models.  The rest look even more dated than WoW ever will.

[Malakili]

I like the look of Champions Online a lot actually, for what its worth, though I know there are a lot of people who didn't like it.  Stylized graphics can look good AND dated, I think by the way.  Watching that video a couple posts up, that looked very dated to me, but it also had a nice charm and consistency to it that made it perfectly fine anyway.

[Merusk]

I never said GW was realistic.  More realistic certainly, but it is stylized.  It's still what I would call Good when I would not with WoW.

Picasso, Degas and Van Gogh were all shitty artists for not painting like Bernardi or the realists that preceded them. 

[Lantyssa]

I don't like their works at all, so I'd agree with what you meant to say sarcastically.

[tazelbain]

Wake me up when the SC2 battlechest comes out.

[Simond]

I don't like their works at all, so I'd agree with what you meant to say sarcastically.

Ah, so if you don't subjectively like something it's objectively bad?

[Merusk]

More to the point; art is subjective, not objective, and just because you dislike it doesn't mean it's bad.  It only means that it doesn't suit your particular aesthetic tastes.

[Lantyssa]

Yes.

[Goreschach]

Since we're fully derailed now, I just have to say that although I like some of picasso's trippy surrealist stuff, I agree. And Van Gogh is one of the most overrated artists of all time.

[pxib]

I'm honestly surprised so few MMOs have gone for cartoon asthetics, especially after Blizzard left that particular door open. They make for lousy screenshots, but the gameplay and cinematic experiences survive largely unscathed. In the longer term it isn't important how realistic art appears, but how consistent it is. How well everything fits together, not how perfect any individual part appears. Where most of the more photorealistic MMOs have failed is in their inability to maintain that photorealism. One bad terrain texture in the background, one poorly modeled tree, whatever... it breaks the immersion.

"Bad" art like WoW's may turn some people off on first impressions. There are a small minority of people who won't play it because it looks "like crap". Those are the only people Blizzard loses for all they gain with their low-poly design, and they're only lost until their friends convince them to give the game a try. At that point the crappy art blends together into the not-so-crappy whole.

[Abelian75]

They make for lousy screenshots, but the gameplay and cinematic experiences survive largely unscathed. In the longer term it isn't important how realistic art appears, but how consistent it is.

It's interesting how true this is.  Often over the past few years I've seen a screenshot of WoW while not actively playing and thought, "Man, that looks old."  But pretty much consistently while I'm playing (some older character models aside), I'm generally thinking, "Good lord, this looks awesome."

[Lantyssa]

As I said above, consistency and animations do make a huge difference.  Despite considering most of WoW's art bad, I managed around two and a half years of playing in total.  I also wouldn't call Free Realm's (or Clone War's) art all that great, but it's consistent and the animations are good.  Both make it very easy to look past the art and enjoy playing the game.

[Sjofn]

The other thing about GuildWars, is it isn't photo-realistic either. It's stylizing is more subtle then WoW, but it still isn't trying to be 'real life' or whatever. It's using a real ENOUGH style.

That's why I like it, it's about as "real" as I find acceptable. It's also about as "real" as you can get without it looking like ass five years later.

[Rendakor]

"Bad" art like WoW's may turn some people off on first impressions. There are a small minority of people who won't play it because it looks "like crap". Those are the only people Blizzard loses for all they gain with their low-poly design, and they're only lost until their friends convince them to give the game a try. At that point the crappy art blends together into the not-so-crappy whole.

That describes me pretty well. Back when they were both launching, I chose EQ2 over WoW primarily because of graphics, and even when I was done with EQ2 (because it was a pile of ass at launch), it took some convincing to get me to give WoW a shot. Once I actually played it and got over the cartoony style, the graphics stopped bothering me and haven't since.

[Fordel]

I seriously don't understand you guys who thought EQ2 ever looked 'good'. We are from different planets or something.

[pxib]

I also wouldn't call Free Realm's (or Clone War's) art all that great, but it's consistent and the animations are good.  Both make it very easy to look past the art and enjoy playing the game.

Free Realms and There were the other cartoonish games I was thinking of when I write that post, and yes animations are absolutely as important to the illusion as number of polygons, if not more so. Many of the "more realistic" AAA titles have distressingly poor animation quality.

[Merusk]

I seriously don't understand you guys who thought EQ2 ever looked 'good'. We are from different planets or something.

It's the inverse of WoW.  EQ2's Screenshots look a lot better than the game looked while playing it.  I recall some pretty stunning EQ2 shots (so long as you never were zoomed in on the models and their plastic skin and crappy armor.)

[pxib]

...or had to watch them hobble and ski around.

[Goreschach]

I also wouldn't call Free Realm's (or Clone War's) art all that great, but it's consistent and the animations are good.  Both make it very easy to look past the art and enjoy playing the game.

Free Realms and There were the other cartoonish games I was thinking of when I write that post, and yes animations are absolutely as important to the illusion as number of polygons, if not more so. Many of the "more realistic" AAA titles have distressingly poor animation quality.

It's the same thing as the models, really. Realistic animations are more difficult to make look good than exaggerated, cartoony WoW style animation. WoW's animations are pretty much a textbook case of Disney's 12 principles of animation.

[Margalis]

I love how people call stylized art direction "dated".

That has nothing to do with it. Compare WoW to Wind Waker, which is more stylized and came out earlier. WW looks far less dated.

If anything stylized art direction should make something look less dated. But in the case of WoW they were aiming for very low specs and it was pretty apparent judging against the state of PC games at the time.

[K9]

Making a game to run on 95% of PCs at the time of release, rather than 20% seems like a pretty smart move

[Simond]

I love how people call stylized art direction "dated".

That has nothing to do with it. Compare WoW to Wind Waker, which is more stylized and came out earlier. WW looks far less dated.

If anything stylized art direction should make something look less dated. But in the case of WoW they were aiming for very low specs and it was pretty apparent judging against the state of PC games at the time.

And it was, and still is, the right decision. Also: WoW's models still have more character than, say, EQ2. Or Vanguard. Or whatever.

[Margalis]

Making a game to run on 95% of PCs at the time of release, rather than 20% seems like a pretty smart move

I don't disagree. But a game that runs on 95% of PCs is probably going to look dated to gaming enthusiasts.

[Ingmar]

I love how people call stylized art direction "dated".

That has nothing to do with it. Compare WoW to Wind Waker, which is more stylized and came out earlier. WW looks far less dated.

I can't agree with this, simply because of the resolution you're stuck with with WW. It looks like hell on any modern tv.

[Margalis]

I can't agree with this, simply because of the resolution you're stuck with with WW. It looks like hell on any modern tv.

Look up pictures of WW running under emulation at higher resolutions. The art and assets stand up very well.