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"wowhammer"
fugue14
Member Posts: 59
"Screw WoWHammer and any other MMO that looks like it belongs on Cartoon Network between Flapjack and Chowder." - AoC forums
Why all the hate for cartoony graphics, cartoons are fun. Apparently there are a lot of 'grown men' who spend '6 hours a day' playing online 'video games ' that find cartoonish graphics immature, and playing one of these games would compromise their status as an e-badass. Secondly, why is anything that is somewhat stylized immediately branded as a "WoW clone". Don't even say it's the game mechanics either, If Warhammer had AoC graphics it wouldn't happen. Seriously how many variations on graphics can be done. What other paths are there outside of realism that can be taken without being labeled a WoW clone, cel-shading? take a surrealistic approach to the game and resurrect the spirit of salvador dali to lead the graphics department?
Comments
WAR is not too cartoony really.
The whole cartoony comments usually mean:
a) High fantasy. While low fantasy and sci-fi aren't cartoony, high fantasy "seems to be for some people" since you can throw bombs filled with knives who speak and stuff that can only happen in cartoons.
b) Vivid colors. Unless you add shadows and brown into them, some people will consider those graphics cartoonish.
c) Deformed anatomy. In WoW, and also in WAR, some "knights in armors" look small and fat, instead of stilized like they would be IRL.
d) JRPG style. While this style is incredibly popular in consoles (devil may cry, certain characters in MGS, beat em ups and fighting games) many people will consider a game cartoony as soon as they wear something more than what they are meant to wear, some nasty hairstyles or some clothes with attention to the detail.
However, these comments are usually from clueless people who have no idea about art. The key is in getting away from reality as much as you can, while keeping it practical.
The problem with WAr's graphics is they arn't stylized enough to look great with a low tech engine and the tech graphics arn't good enough to get over the blandness so your jaw drops like Crysis. So I end up looking at WAR and thinking "ew look at these dated graphics" where I pick up AOC and think "these graphics are techincally nice" and WOW "I love the art style of this game they've done an amazing job with it".
The female Dark elves and the Orcs look really good but the rest of the races are abit "meh" specially the chosen which is ugly. Some parts of the world are really nice but most of it just looks like your generic fantasy mmorpg with dated graphics and zones like the chaos PVP zone outside the city is just a Barren bore.
WAR is a bad example or cartoon graphics. WOW is better here.
There are like a ZILLION of artistic styles, so game developpers can chose betwen... TWO, because people is soo ignorant, than will reject anything else. Maybe 3 styles, if you accept Darwinia retro 8 bits style as another one.
Realistic graphics is like EPIC FAIL, because to have these graphics, the game result on a empty shell.. and most people play these games (at release) at 30 FPS.
I say, lets accept a borad palette of styles. Lets see what artist can create. Don't have stupid preconceptions against style X, or style Y.
Even Realistic somewhat worked for AoC.
The ironic thing in this post is Warhammer is a 20+ year old franchise. WoW "borrowed" their entire style and look, and a whole lot of lore from it all the way back in the Warcraft days.
Games Workshop has spent literally decades developing a certain look, style and IP for Warhammer. To say it's a clone of WoW is putting the cart before the horse. The Warhammer IP just never had been pushed into an MMO directly before.
Personally, I think WAR really nails the look and feel of Warhammer. It's exaggerated, but not to much so, and has a sort of dismalness to it that drives home that it really is a world on the verge of falling into darkness.
drtuba, I've seen Warhammer artworks and they look nothing like WoW. Mythic could have approached a completely different style while staying true to the franchise.
WAR looks like WoW graphically speaking, in terms of color usage, body proportions and shadowing type.
Looking at both of their concept arts and CGI videos I think Warcraft and Warhammer look nothing alike and I think Blizzard have taken more from asia than Warhammer in terms of looks.
Most definately they aren't exact, that would probably have resulted in a lawsuit in the past 15 years or so.
However, the basic tenants are there. Exaggerated proportions, overwrought armor, heavy jowled greenskins and dwarves that look like barrels with legs wielding weapons bigger than their heads... Now this isn't to say WoW hasn't advanced their own take on it, especially as more, higher level content made it's way into the MMO, as they've taken a decidedly more elaborate and (for lack of a better term) fantastical bent.
But the general style itself was built upon the foundations that GW laid. Of course this isn't a "bad" thing persay. It's hard to find fantasy at all that doesn't borrow from it's predecessors, most notably Tolkien. However, if you look at the history of fantasy artwork in general... let's use for example miniatures since GW got it's legs there... Ral Partha developed art styles that were more "conventional" in appearance, while GW's Citadel art was the exaggerated, almost humorous looking stuff that appealed to a different audience.
When Warcraft was released, it wasn't in the same vein as the artwork they used in, say, Diablo's franchise, so much as a departure into that style that GW for all intents and purposes, created. I'll maintain that Blizzard did borrow heavily from it, and then added their own twists as they were wont to do, but I think their core style was inherited from the Warhammer IP.
As far as color and shadows and such that was mentioned, the Warcraft franchise was never built to be as "dark" as the Warhammer one. Of course there will be differences applied in the rendering and color pallettes chosen, but the overall effect from proportionality to architecture is in most cases heavily borrowed, then lightened to fit the vision of the world Blizzard had in mind.
Again, if it was a direct clone, yeah the lawsuits woulda happened years ago. I perhaps mis-spoke in that I meant the WoW franchise is more clearly derivative, not implying it was somehow "stolen".
People hating cartoony graphics already have THEIR game, its called Age of Conan. People have a choice.
QFT!
this
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Warhammer IP may not be a ripoff of WoW, but the mmo is. Honestly I think warhammer is a better game for most people, because in wow only 5% actually do the high end raiding.
I did the high end raiding in wow, and I would rather never do that bs again. Pve raids are fun the first time, but after about a month it gets pretty lame. Now i havent done the RvR in war, but it has to be more entertaining than the afk fights in alteric valley. I dont think this is the best endgame though, I think owning the stuff your fighting for is via guild or yourself is, not the faction.
Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7
Im sorry but to those who think WoW and War looks the same. You are either
Look at this following pics and you tell me if they look the same. The WAR pic is my toon:
Hell I even showed a picture of a "similiar axe." Now tell me....do they look similiar? Hmm?
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
I totally agree agree with Enigma , you guys are smoking some good stuff .
Some of you haved played way too much warcraft and have never seen anything else but wow , first mmo maybe ??
I for myself been playing these game since dawn of everquest and dont understand all these reference to wow , anything that come out that new compared again to wow .
i get these posts about classes what do they compared them too ? , guess what wow again lol.
i used to play warhammer on PNP for years even before warcraft even existed so usiing wow as a reference is just plain dumb.
Those two screenshots alone disprove this whole "wowhammer" thing. Its a crying shame people give WoW credit for everything they can. I wish theyd stop, its very irritating.
seeing as wow was an (intentional) ripoff of everything before it, and "borrows" from a ton of current/past movies/events/celebrities... your point is completely moot, even if it was accurate.
seeing as world of warcraft is based off of warcraft 1/2/3 and THOSE games are totally based off of the warhammer ip... perhaps you should be complaining about why did wow rip off so much from the warhammer ip, PLUS all the things they ripped off from the plethora of mmos which came before wow?
hmmmm?
it's a good thing that wow pve raids and wow battlegrounds are not what rvr is about, nor what war is about.
i think making comparisons based upon stuffpresentedasfact, instead of factual information isn't the best way to bring home your opinion as an overly 'good' opinion.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
doesnt matter who ripped off who, we have a 2008 mmo doing the same as WoW did upon release, pretty much the same skin just "tarted" up.
cartoons can be fun, but they are also associated with children. I know that all the ten year old boys in my sons class will be playing. I also read the statistics for warhammer website give that majority of visitors are under 16 yrs old. WAR will be a breeding ground for the playground types, eg those still in school.
warhammer is 25yrs old or so, those people that played tabletop 15 yrs ago will still have the kid in them today.
more like failhammer than wowhammer
Typical a uninformend Troll, that only looked at alpha screenshots wanting to bash a game he knows nothing abouth.
Gratz.
do yourself a favor and look up 5 posts above yours. Also, since you state you have a 10 year old son, you should act more like an adult than the 10 year old. Come on, you even have a failhammer avatar. Sheesh man.
Actually, nevermind. There is no debating with you. All 243 of your posts were bashing Warhammer and half of them were edited by the moderators due to trolling, flaming, and disrespecting other posters. Wow. Here's a blog I wrote that you may be interested in reading: www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Enigma/082008/2467_What-is-a-Fanboi-and-what-is-a-hater
I have to say. I never seen a person devoting their entire mmorpg.com forum posts to one mission: hate one specific game.
Wow.
That's scarey and really really sad lol.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Again.....where do u get all this n00b stuff? failhammer......omg.
Is this just not a perfect display of how age does not equal brains. This man/woman has kids, what a hoot!
Maybe it's sarcasm.
do yourself a favor and look up 5 posts above yours. Also, since you state you have a 10 year old son, you should act more like an adult than the 10 year old. Come on, you even have a failhammer avatar. Sheesh man.
Actually, nevermind. There is no debating with you. All 243 of your posts were bashing Warhammer and half of them were edited by the moderators due to trolling, flaming, and disrespecting other posters. Wow. Here's a blog I wrote that you may be interested in reading: www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Enigma/082008/2467_What-is-a-Fanboi-and-what-is-a-hater
I have to say. I never seen a person devoting their entire mmorpg.com forum posts to one mission: hate one specific game.
Wow.
That's scarey and really really sad lol.
Ive come across lots of people like this, people with literally hundreds upon hundreds of posts flaming the same game over and over. Whats even scarier is the people who have 5000 posts on an account created mere months ago. Can you imagine 20+ trolling posts a day?
To be honest.. I am up in arms still as to the warhammer graphics.
However i should add that while the graphics arent as insane as some would like, these same people might also not enjoy huge battles with much higher scaling than AoC or the like. That the graphics might make sense when people are confronted by huge RvR battles. I played AoC. My 4870 Crossfire chewed it up. However I wonder how many people would be able to handle huge RvR in the high texture cities. Even WoW presented alot of issues when ironforge was raided.
I have a nice system but everyone dosent. If I plan to play a game that focuses on RvR then i want good people beside me. If someone who is very able and experienced cant play the big RvR, and is limited to smaller scale, then the loss is yours as well. I am not talking about trying to keep 6+ year old systems going. I am talking about humble modern systems that arent going to be able to handle insane RvR with high texture cities combined with top of the line graphics.
That is just my opinion. Some seem to think hardcore is in how something looks. It is not. It is about getting the most out of the task presented. If Warhammer needs to have slightly lesser graphics in order to make their RvR better than so be it. No one worth a damn should say otherwise. I am not seeing warhammer with Everquest 1999 quality graphics, with all due respect since I LOVE eq from 1999, and some comments lately do seem over the top as far as perspective and reality.
Now warhammer might suck. It might not do RvR very well, or limit it's potential due to stupid mistakes. However that isnt part of the foundation really, but of what they make of what they laid down as a base. They can always upgrade the engine as time goes on. No one here would be able to stomach them downgrading graphics however, as it would just feel out of principle and taste. So if they found a balance on graphics and gameplay, then props to them if they succeed.
We need to give the game time to see if the decision was right or wrong. Assumptions from people playing AoC, with all of the absolute horrid mistakes in their patching process that has slowly made the game run worse as time goes on compared to launch, do not need to point fingers down as they right now need to be pointing up. I gave AoC three months so my perspective does not come from reading, but first hand experience during LIVE and not beta.
the only fail thing around here is ur avatar... well and ur logic... and ur multiple lvl 70 1337 raiding skills....
and most likely ur parenting...