While I do agree that EQ2 had great models (better looking than other, newer MMOs) there is something to be said about how they blend into the world. Anytime I've gone back to WoW the graphics are only noticed for a short period of time because the world blends together so well.
If you haven't seen Rosie's twitter with the two YouTube videos I would watch then. They directly correlate with this thread and they are entertaining.
There's always the possibility of alternate models just like in EQ2. Not to fan the rumor flames but if you look at the still pictures at EQNexus about the latest black box video you'll come across a picture with Rosie in it. Just the right of her someone is working on what looks to be a human head model. The model does not look like the stylized faces we've seen so far.
Everquest II graphically is just not that good when it came out. Yes, technology was better but the end result was better in WoW because everything looks where it belongs to. The artstyle was there and soul was there. WoW uses this art style since Warcraft II and it works. It's perfect and it aged very well. You can look at the trailer below. Blizzard can support it's MMO for 5 more years and still it's going to look good to this day.
Everquest Next developers did absolutely right choosing the art style that can age better then realistic games. They used Forgelight engine + Cell shading with fantastic art style that has soul in the characters. Realistic games? They are freakin' everywhere and after 1-2 years they become outdated. That's a natural thing.
The most important part is that 8 years ago it looked like Warcraft and 8 years later it is still Warcraft and that is important. Soul is more important then hyper realistic POS that has a generic look to it.
SoE should have just said the two biggest things in favor of a system like this:
easier to run
easier to develop for
Indeed. These are honestly far more important than how it holds up or whatever.
If I can't run it, I won't play it. And, no, I am not going to play lots of money every year to upgrade my rig because developers think they're doing graphics research.
And you can make content so much faster when you don't need to worry about realism.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW Currently playing: GW2, EVE Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
Stylized graphics age just like realistic. I don't know why people keep repeating that stylized age so well....it is just not true. They are likely going the cartoon route as it is easier on the computer requirements.
I logged into swtor the other day to see how good I could get it to look with my new gfx card. It looks horrible on max as well. Not aging very gracefully is it?
Originally posted by Kiyoris I agree. WoW's graphics look so much worse than EQ2.
Yet to get EQ2 running a consistant 60+ FPS with a freakin 7990, you need to lower the settings to the point that it looks worse than EQ1...go figure
Well their engine is horrible and uses cpu mostly . They thought that in the future cpu clock speed would get higher and higher tho we have multicore nowadays.
Originally posted by Mardukk Stylized graphics age just like realistic. I don't know why people keep repeating that stylized age so well....it is just not true. They are likely going the cartoon route as it is easier on the computer requirements. I logged into swtor the other day to see how good I could get it to look with my new gfx card. It looks horrible on max as well. Not aging very gracefully is it?
That's Because SWTOR looks just BAD and GENERIC. You can't just slap "Cartoonish look" in to it without a decent group of designers that work not just hard but have a soul for it's product and call it a day.
The reason why WoW looks so good to this day is because designers created Warcraft 8 years ago and 8 years later it still looks like Warcraft. It's art style is superior to SWTOR in every major way and WoW will continue to have the biggest subscribers for 4-5 years.
It's like trying to compare Disney cartoons with third party POS. You know who will win the battle in art style.
Compare the aging of Morrowind to the aging of Fable..
Compare the aging of Oblivion to the aging of it's JRPG competition from 05-06 (which mostly use stylized visuals)
Essentially compare any old realistic game with any old cartoony game, in most cases the realistic game is the one which looks out of proportion, jagged, and muddy. On the other hand Cartoony mostly still looks smooth, colorful and clear.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There's always the possibility of alternate models just like in EQ2. Not to fan the rumor flames but if you look at the still pictures at EQNexus about the latest black box video you'll come across a picture with Rosie in it. Just the right of her someone is working on what looks to be a human head model. The model does not look like the stylized faces we've seen so far.
Personally, I don't mind what I've seen so far. It was a tech demo with a male Kerran warrior and a female Human wizard. That allowed them to show magic, melee, a humanoid race, an animal race, and how the facial expressions and emotes would work for each type of race.
Sure, the Kerran looked a bit too WOW-like for my tastes because of the armor and shoulder pads, but I'm not going to rage about a game that SOE hasn't even hinted at a release date for. There's no word on an Alpha testing stage going on or anything. The devs can take what's being said now and adjust things or tweak them while still keeping their idea for EQN in mind.
I'll make a decision on EQN once I can actually sit down and play it in a Beta. Until then, there's no reason to freak out.
Personally have no gripe with the new graphics, I think they're lovely. It's obvious Sony is trying to attract new gamers.
Art is very much a personal thing, and I agree that people should just agree to disagree.
Gamers are very diverse and have different tastes. It's pretty unlikely that realistic graphic fans will be able to convert fans of the new art style. The arguing is probably just polarizing the community more, and will in itself possibly create new problems for Sony. If Sony leans too far towards realistic graphics, they might alienate fans of the new style, and vise versa.
Question is, in the wider gaming population, are there more fans of the new style than of graphic realism? That answer can't be calculated on forums like this one.
Sony would have to do market research via emailed surveys or something like that, where players have less control over the poll conditions.
Either way it's mute, arguing hasn't affected my opinion that the new art is refreshing.
Originally posted by donpopuki I think the problem is people want first person shooter realistic graphics in a MMO. Not going to happen. Look at ESO's "realistic" graphics and notice how it doesn't even come close modern FPS fidelity. Why? Because mmos have huge environments and possibly a hundred players on the screen.
Besides EQ2 still runs like crap even to this day. I played the game for many years, struggled with the sh!t fps I always got. I went back a few months ago to try out my new rig hoping to finally see the game in ultra with at least 60 fps. I got about in 15 in Qeynos harbor. Wtf!
OP didn't get the memo, eq2's core engine is FLAWED from the jump. They can only do so much with it without changing it all together.
I hated WoW's graphics at launch, i STILL don't really like them till now but they have held up pretty well while eq2's is starting to look dated.
OMFG BEARKNIGHT What the F**k are you talking about, you make absolutely no-sense. just because a game developer chooses to make a game as you put it "cartoony" which sounds wrong. The correct way to describe WoW or EQN graphics is (stylized artistic rendition) of the game world and characters. The look of the game does not mean its out dated. How advanced a game is has more to do with number crunching net-code A.I. ect... The developers choose art style that will best represent the game environment for what they visualize of the story they want to tell. "Natural born killers" or the Kill Bill movies have Cartoon Animations in them does that mean those movies are "out dated". What bothers me most about your post and so many others, just like yours. Is the level of sheer STUPIDITY of what is being said has nothing to do with facts. You have no idea of what level of technology is in any of those games have. The games that fail when released are obviously out dated, and If you think that WoW was out dated when it was released, you have failed.
Personally I think it's just a BS excuse for having poor graphics that is given by developers and people just spit back out automatically as the defense. It's a cost saving feature and way to gain more potential players since it's easier on the machine hardware.
Cartoony graphics look like crap from day 1, so who cares how they "age". And it's funny because I see people cite EQ2 all the time as an example of realistic graphics not again well. Unfortunately for that argument, it's not 2004 anymore and the realistic graphics being made in many of today's mmos and ones coming soon will never look bad.
Personally I think it's just a BS excuse for having poor graphics that is given by developers and people just spit back out automatically as the defense. It's a cost saving feature and way to gain more potential players since it's easier on the machine hardware.
Cartoony graphics look like crap from day 1, so who cares how they "age". And it's funny because I see people cite EQ2 all the time as an example of realistic graphics not again well. Unfortunately for that argument, it's not 2004 anymore and the realistic graphics being made in many of today's mmos and ones coming soon will never look bad.
You say it's just BS, yet your argument why is solely based on personal taste (you dislike cartoon graphics). I don't really like them either, yet I feel that cartoon graphics do hold up better, and can still look good, they just don't typically offer the aesthetic I prefer.
When we look at old games one thing that is easily noticeable is how jagged and muddy realistic graphics become (yet they looked great at the time), and how much smoother and cleaner cartoon graphics remain. This is pretty much a fact. Not taste..
Graphics will eventually reach a point of infinite clarity, but it's hard to say when that will be. I doubt it's this next gen though, as we're still not really at Cinematic quality yet.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This myth that cartoony WOWesque graphics hold up better is often repeated and just doesn't function. Especially not for Everquest Next.
1) On a personal level, I never got into WOW *mainly* because the cartoony chars appalled me. So what't it good?
2) I felt the EQ2 visuals are even today much better than WOW. (Especially if you use the SOGA models.)
3) In 2004 when WOW was launched graphics was still advancing leaps every year. A MMO released in 2014+ will not be in that situation. We already are close to photorealism (The Division), so a high end graphics MMo today will not be aged in 5 or 10 years like it was 10 or 15 years ago with games.
So yes, this idea of "aging better" is just not valid, or no longer valid, given the development of graphics.
EDIT: I just dont get why they go so extremely cartoony. They could go on a GW2 level of "realism". GW2 graphics are lush and beautiful and still not "gritty photorealism" but a sort of balanced between realism and cartoon. I would like that much more that this OVERLY Pixar/Disney chars and environment. I just dont get it how people like that...
The HUGE risk with "stylized realism" is, as SWTOR shows, that it is all too easy to end looking bland and generic. SEE SWOTOR worlds and characters. Horrible. Just horrible.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" aimed for a realism style and was hit with hard reviews. Any predecessor with a more stylized, high-fantasy aesthetic was judged in a different manner and...
...well...to the point: When going for realism, the perspective of the viewer distorts over time and what was once the pinnacle falls harder the more 'realistic' it was trying to aim for. For its time Metal Gear Solid was impressive and now seems like a joke while Parasite Eve's artistic fidelity was not all that different and yet it's artistic direction and expectations (anime stylized) allowed it to age (for a time) more gracefully.
It's the difference as to why Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did so poorly (in the US) while FF:Advent Children did so much better. "Cartoony" style allows for deeper saturation of color, facial exaggerations that makes character's more expressive, and a high fantasy feel that one's imagination is one's only limit.
If you don't like it; afraid to inform you:You're not going to change the minds of those who fell in love with it while designing it and those who fell in love with the look on its reveal.
This myth that cartoony WOWesque graphics hold up better is often repeated and just doesn't function. Especially not for Everquest Next.
1) On a personal level, I never got into WOW *mainly* because the cartoony chars appalled me. So what't it good?
2) I felt the EQ2 visuals are even today much better than WOW. (Especially if you use the SOGA models.)
3) In 2004 when WOW was launched graphics was still advancing leaps every year. A MMO released in 2014+ will not be in that situation. We already are close to photorealism (The Division), so a high end graphics MMo today will not be aged in 5 or 10 years like it was 10 or 15 years ago with games.
So yes, this idea of "aging better" is just not valid, or no longer valid, given the development of graphics.
EDIT: I just dont get why they go so extremely cartoony. They could go on a GW2 level of "realism". GW2 graphics are lush and beautiful and still not "gritty photorealism" but a sort of balanced between realism and cartoon. I would like that much more that this OVERLY Pixar/Disney chars and environment. I just dont get it how people like that...
The HUGE risk with "stylized realism" is, as SWTOR shows, that it is all too easy to end looking bland and generic. SEE SWOTOR worlds and characters. Horrible. Just horrible.
So you're saying we're at the peak of graphical fidelity and clarity?
ANd you use a game that didn't pull off their stylized realism (which is what they went for) as a reason why the question here isn't true?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This myth that cartoony WOWesque graphics hold up better is often repeated and just doesn't function. Especially not for Everquest Next.
1) On a personal level, I never got into WOW *mainly* because the cartoony chars appalled me. So what't it good?
2) I felt the EQ2 visuals are even today much better than WOW. (Especially if you use the SOGA models.)
3) In 2004 when WOW was launched graphics was still advancing leaps every year. A MMO released in 2014+ will not be in that situation. We already are close to photorealism (The Division), so a high end graphics MMo today will not be aged in 5 or 10 years like it was 10 or 15 years ago with games.
So yes, this idea of "aging better" is just not valid, or no longer valid, given the development of graphics.
EDIT: I just dont get why they go so extremely cartoony. They could go on a GW2 level of "realism". GW2 graphics are lush and beautiful and still not "gritty photorealism" but a sort of balanced between realism and cartoon. I would like that much more that this OVERLY Pixar/Disney chars and environment. I just dont get it how people like that...
The HUGE risk with "stylized realism" is, as SWTOR shows, that it is all too easy to end looking bland and generic. SEE SWOTOR worlds and characters. Horrible. Just horrible.
So you're saying we're at the peak of graphical fidelity and clarity?
ANd you use a game that didn't pull of their stylized realism (which is what they went for) as a reason why the question here isn't true?
Look at the video for "The Division". You may or may not like the setting, but this game coming in 2014 or so, also a MMO, is the end of the line of realism. It can't get "more real". So yes I guess we are close to the apex. Already it is the case with all games. A game released 1990 or 2000 was aging MUCH faster in terms of visuals. Today, you can take 5 year old Age of Conan world graphics and it still does look pretty modern.
Sorry I didnt understand the 2nd question.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Look at the video for "The Division". You may or may not like the setting, but this game coming in 2014 or so, also a MMO, is the end of the line of realism. It can't get "more real". So yes I guess we are close to the apex. Already it is the case with all games. A game released 1990 or 2000 was aging MUCH faster in terms of visuals. Today, you can take 5 year old Age of Conan world graphics and it still does look pretty modern.
Sorry I didnt understand the 2nd question.
AOC paid dearly early on to still look good today, the same could be said for EQ2 in relation to it's first few years. I also disagree that we're close to any sort of peak, as the tech they're now using is nowhere near new. A greater amount of systems can run those graphic levels now so we're seeing more of it.
The division looks great, yet it's also designed more like APB than an actual open world MMO.
Lets keep in mind that SOE's graphical choice goes beyond long lasting quality, a lot of it ties into the world destruction and SOEEmote.
The last question was asking if you're using TOR as an example that says the topic here is not true, topic being cartoony graphics have a longer lifespan? TOR didn't do a very good job at adding a stylized look to begin with, everything is too muddy and jagged.
One last note. The second something comes out with higher polycounts and straighter crisper lines than the division, it will become very noticeable where it's lacking. As has been the case for many gaming generations.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This myth that cartoony WOWesque graphics hold up better is often repeated and just doesn't function. Especially not for Everquest Next.
1) On a personal level, I never got into WOW *mainly* because the cartoony chars appalled me. So what't it good?
2) I felt the EQ2 visuals are even today much better than WOW. (Especially if you use the SOGA models.)
3) In 2004 when WOW was launched graphics was still advancing leaps every year. A MMO released in 2014+ will not be in that situation. We already are close to photorealism (The Division), so a high end graphics MMo today will not be aged in 5 or 10 years like it was 10 or 15 years ago with games.
So yes, this idea of "aging better" is just not valid, or no longer valid, given the development of graphics.
EDIT: I just dont get why they go so extremely cartoony. They could go on a GW2 level of "realism". GW2 graphics are lush and beautiful and still not "gritty photorealism" but a sort of balanced between realism and cartoon. I would like that much more that this OVERLY Pixar/Disney chars and environment. I just dont get it how people like that...
The HUGE risk with "stylized realism" is, as SWTOR shows, that it is all too easy to end looking bland and generic. SEE SWOTOR worlds and characters. Horrible. Just horrible.
So you're saying we're at the peak of graphical fidelity and clarity?
ANd you use a game that didn't pull of their stylized realism (which is what they went for) as a reason why the question here isn't true?
Look at the video for "The Division". You may or may not like the setting, but this game coming in 2014 or so, also a MMO, is the end of the line of realism. It can't get "more real". So yes I guess we are close to the apex. Already it is the case with all games. A game released 1990 or 2000 was aging MUCH faster in terms of visuals. Today, you can take 5 year old Age of Conan world graphics and it still does look pretty modern.
Sorry I didnt understand the 2nd question.
As much as I want this to be a true, realistic design open world MMO, it is not.
“We wanted a lighter game than [World of Warcraft]. I’m not calling [The Division] an MMO,” although he’s aware of the similarities. -David Polfeldt, managing director at Massive
It is of course being marketed as Open World RPG so its constantly being confused as an MMO it seems. think it is as Open World as Skyrim can be said to be, and most definitely a multiplayer game, but the fact he explicitly states they do not want to call it an MMO is very telling of their direction.
Even in its seemingly limited MMO Scope this game will be a beast on our PCs, the minimum viable spec would have to be equivalent to the new generation PS4 and XBOX One...which will surely be very competitive/higher end even by PC standards...of course excluding the ability to upgrade ala carte.
Unfortunately it seems we are not 100% there yet for true MMO capable realism aesthetic games. I mean I am sure all the devs want to make realism based aesthetics but there are too many problems for it in the MMO genre with too much risk involved compared to making stylized design while focusing more on the game itself.
WoW's graphics have looked aged since the day it released. WoW's graphics was simply released at a point where it couldn't get any worse so how could it have aged any more than it already was at release? That's no excuse whatsoever for EQ:N to go the cartoony kindergarten route by any means whatsoever.
When you release a game at its worst, and make minor shader improvements (WoW) you're not going to age anymore than you did when you released.
However, when you release in an unoptimized mess, but then make major improvements over the years you age VERY WELL regardless of the fact that they tried a different graphical approach. EQ2 used more mipmapping and physical model graphics than they spent on textures themselves. This left a VERY VERY plastic looking game at launch.
Over the years the EQ2 dev team have made major strides in making the characters & game look less plastic looking. If i were home right now I'd boot up my old EQ2 account on Ultra graphics and show you what I mean. These google images are all I can give you for now, and many of them are on low-medium graphics with ZERO mimap, highest textures, etc.
For those of you claiming the "Cartoony" look ages better than a more realistic approach, I respectfully disagree. If i could disagree more than 100% I would !
-Bear
ps: Although fan-art, this is how I had hoped the Kerran would look in EQ:N [Link]
pss: please excuse the offensive wow comparison screenshot of the new EQ:N Kerran. It's the only clear screeny I could find detailing them.
People are still on this? Jeez, I didn't like the graphics myself but it's literally the single least important part of a game that there is. Don't give me that "it breaks immersion" crap either because the only people who care about immersion are Role Players and there's this thing called larping if that is what you want so bad.
I guess i'm not understanding why everyone is getting butt hurt about graphics. I thought that the purpose of a MMO was to meet people of like minds, party together, then enjoy the adventure. I hate this whole " OWWW SHIZZ, GRAFICS ARE WOWZZ!!!11!!1".. Doesn't make sense to me. As long as the game play is is good, the lore makes sense, and social aspect is there, what is the problem?
I remember playing WoW for the first time and going " Damn, this is what Orgrimmar looks like!". Same thing with EQ2. I remember thinking, "Hot DAMN, this is Qeynos after the moons shattered!". I didn't give a damn about the graphics, I still don't. It was about finding like minded people and moving forward with the adventure. I don't need instant gratification to get pleasure from a game. I like the long, slow journey and the people that I meet along the way. I realize that not all gamers are like that but ffs, play a single player game if you don't like people to play with. If you can't solo it, hey, get a new game. If the game isn't realistic, who gives a crap?
You are playing a damned VIDEO GAME! A Simulation of your imagination. The character you create should be a avatar that you control in a world that is fantastical. Don't make the game real life. If that was the case, I would pay my taxes and have the Final Fantasy end of battle music playing in my head. That doesn't happen. This is our hobby, our escape, our chance to be someone that we always dreamed of being when we read JRR Tolkien for the first time. Screw how the graphics are made and focus more on where it is gonna take us as a MMO community.
Before wow was released I was really skeptical about the cartoony graphics, later I realized that wow graphics really convey a lot of emotion and allow the characters to emulate a ton of character. I thought at the time I was going to go with EQ 2 but I never could get into the game. It turns out after a lot of years, I really think wow graphics are superior in so many ways. I don't even bother any more with games that go super realistic. I prefer stylized graphics in every way and so do my computers usually, ( I built a top of the line rig for EQ 2 and then lived with the whole SLI fiasco). But look on the bright side, eventually EQN will offer clippy wooden character graphic options as well as bobble head options. SO you can have the realistic graphics if you like too.
Comments
If you haven't seen Rosie's twitter with the two YouTube videos I would watch then. They directly correlate with this thread and they are entertaining.
There's always the possibility of alternate models just like in EQ2. Not to fan the rumor flames but if you look at the still pictures at EQNexus about the latest black box video you'll come across a picture with Rosie in it. Just the right of her someone is working on what looks to be a human head model. The model does not look like the stylized faces we've seen so far.
Are you nuts posting Screenshots from VANILLA WOW and Burning Crusade?
you compare Wow graphics? Then if you want to compare look at this! Gorgeous stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrCm5oUaEo
Everquest II graphically is just not that good when it came out. Yes, technology was better but the end result was better in WoW because everything looks where it belongs to. The artstyle was there and soul was there. WoW uses this art style since Warcraft II and it works. It's perfect and it aged very well. You can look at the trailer below. Blizzard can support it's MMO for 5 more years and still it's going to look good to this day.
Everquest Next developers did absolutely right choosing the art style that can age better then realistic games. They used Forgelight engine + Cell shading with fantastic art style that has soul in the characters. Realistic games? They are freakin' everywhere and after 1-2 years they become outdated. That's a natural thing.
The most important part is that 8 years ago it looked like Warcraft and 8 years later it is still Warcraft and that is important. Soul is more important then hyper realistic POS that has a generic look to it.
Indeed. These are honestly far more important than how it holds up or whatever.
If I can't run it, I won't play it. And, no, I am not going to play lots of money every year to upgrade my rig because developers think they're doing graphics research.
And you can make content so much faster when you don't need to worry about realism.
Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
Currently playing: GW2, EVE
Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?
I logged into swtor the other day to see how good I could get it to look with my new gfx card. It looks horrible on max as well. Not aging very gracefully is it?
That's because the EQ2 engine is based off your CPU not GPU. SOE bet on tech advancing in the wrong areas.
Well their engine is horrible and uses cpu mostly . They thought that in the future cpu clock speed would get higher and higher tho we have multicore nowadays.
That's Because SWTOR looks just BAD and GENERIC. You can't just slap "Cartoonish look" in to it without a decent group of designers that work not just hard but have a soul for it's product and call it a day.
The reason why WoW looks so good to this day is because designers created Warcraft 8 years ago and 8 years later it still looks like Warcraft. It's art style is superior to SWTOR in every major way and WoW will continue to have the biggest subscribers for 4-5 years.
It's like trying to compare Disney cartoons with third party POS. You know who will win the battle in art style.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrCm5oUaEo this is a fantastic trailer that shows how WoW aged. Blizzard did incredible job.
Compare the aging of Morrowind to the aging of Fable..
Compare the aging of Oblivion to the aging of it's JRPG competition from 05-06 (which mostly use stylized visuals)
Essentially compare any old realistic game with any old cartoony game, in most cases the realistic game is the one which looks out of proportion, jagged, and muddy. On the other hand Cartoony mostly still looks smooth, colorful and clear.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Personally, I don't mind what I've seen so far. It was a tech demo with a male Kerran warrior and a female Human wizard. That allowed them to show magic, melee, a humanoid race, an animal race, and how the facial expressions and emotes would work for each type of race.
Sure, the Kerran looked a bit too WOW-like for my tastes because of the armor and shoulder pads, but I'm not going to rage about a game that SOE hasn't even hinted at a release date for. There's no word on an Alpha testing stage going on or anything. The devs can take what's being said now and adjust things or tweak them while still keeping their idea for EQN in mind.
I'll make a decision on EQN once I can actually sit down and play it in a Beta. Until then, there's no reason to freak out.
Personally have no gripe with the new graphics, I think they're lovely. It's obvious Sony is trying to attract new gamers.
Art is very much a personal thing, and I agree that people should just agree to disagree.
Gamers are very diverse and have different tastes. It's pretty unlikely that realistic graphic fans will be able to convert fans of the new art style. The arguing is probably just polarizing the community more, and will in itself possibly create new problems for Sony. If Sony leans too far towards realistic graphics, they might alienate fans of the new style, and vise versa.
Question is, in the wider gaming population, are there more fans of the new style than of graphic realism? That answer can't be calculated on forums like this one.
Sony would have to do market research via emailed surveys or something like that, where players have less control over the poll conditions.
Either way it's mute, arguing hasn't affected my opinion that the new art is refreshing.
OP didn't get the memo, eq2's core engine is FLAWED from the jump. They can only do so much with it without changing it all together.
I hated WoW's graphics at launch, i STILL don't really like them till now but they have held up pretty well while eq2's is starting to look dated.
Personally I think it's just a BS excuse for having poor graphics that is given by developers and people just spit back out automatically as the defense. It's a cost saving feature and way to gain more potential players since it's easier on the machine hardware.
Cartoony graphics look like crap from day 1, so who cares how they "age". And it's funny because I see people cite EQ2 all the time as an example of realistic graphics not again well. Unfortunately for that argument, it's not 2004 anymore and the realistic graphics being made in many of today's mmos and ones coming soon will never look bad.
You say it's just BS, yet your argument why is solely based on personal taste (you dislike cartoon graphics). I don't really like them either, yet I feel that cartoon graphics do hold up better, and can still look good, they just don't typically offer the aesthetic I prefer.
When we look at old games one thing that is easily noticeable is how jagged and muddy realistic graphics become (yet they looked great at the time), and how much smoother and cleaner cartoon graphics remain. This is pretty much a fact. Not taste..
Graphics will eventually reach a point of infinite clarity, but it's hard to say when that will be. I doubt it's this next gen though, as we're still not really at Cinematic quality yet.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This myth that cartoony WOWesque graphics hold up better is often repeated and just doesn't function. Especially not for Everquest Next.
1) On a personal level, I never got into WOW *mainly* because the cartoony chars appalled me. So what't it good?
2) I felt the EQ2 visuals are even today much better than WOW. (Especially if you use the SOGA models.)
3) In 2004 when WOW was launched graphics was still advancing leaps every year. A MMO released in 2014+ will not be in that situation. We already are close to photorealism (The Division), so a high end graphics MMo today will not be aged in 5 or 10 years like it was 10 or 15 years ago with games.
So yes, this idea of "aging better" is just not valid, or no longer valid, given the development of graphics.
EDIT: I just dont get why they go so extremely cartoony. They could go on a GW2 level of "realism". GW2 graphics are lush and beautiful and still not "gritty photorealism" but a sort of balanced between realism and cartoon. I would like that much more that this OVERLY Pixar/Disney chars and environment. I just dont get it how people like that...
The HUGE risk with "stylized realism" is, as SWTOR shows, that it is all too easy to end looking bland and generic. SEE SWOTOR worlds and characters. Horrible. Just horrible.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" aimed for a realism style and was hit with hard reviews. Any predecessor with a more stylized, high-fantasy aesthetic was judged in a different manner and...
...well...to the point: When going for realism, the perspective of the viewer distorts over time and what was once the pinnacle falls harder the more 'realistic' it was trying to aim for. For its time Metal Gear Solid was impressive and now seems like a joke while Parasite Eve's artistic fidelity was not all that different and yet it's artistic direction and expectations (anime stylized) allowed it to age (for a time) more gracefully.
It's the difference as to why Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did so poorly (in the US) while FF:Advent Children did so much better. "Cartoony" style allows for deeper saturation of color, facial exaggerations that makes character's more expressive, and a high fantasy feel that one's imagination is one's only limit.
If you don't like it; afraid to inform you:You're not going to change the minds of those who fell in love with it while designing it and those who fell in love with the look on its reveal.
So you're saying we're at the peak of graphical fidelity and clarity?
ANd you use a game that didn't pull off their stylized realism (which is what they went for) as a reason why the question here isn't true?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Look at the video for "The Division". You may or may not like the setting, but this game coming in 2014 or so, also a MMO, is the end of the line of realism. It can't get "more real". So yes I guess we are close to the apex. Already it is the case with all games. A game released 1990 or 2000 was aging MUCH faster in terms of visuals. Today, you can take 5 year old Age of Conan world graphics and it still does look pretty modern.
Sorry I didnt understand the 2nd question.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
AOC paid dearly early on to still look good today, the same could be said for EQ2 in relation to it's first few years. I also disagree that we're close to any sort of peak, as the tech they're now using is nowhere near new. A greater amount of systems can run those graphic levels now so we're seeing more of it.
The division looks great, yet it's also designed more like APB than an actual open world MMO.
Lets keep in mind that SOE's graphical choice goes beyond long lasting quality, a lot of it ties into the world destruction and SOEEmote.
The last question was asking if you're using TOR as an example that says the topic here is not true, topic being cartoony graphics have a longer lifespan? TOR didn't do a very good job at adding a stylized look to begin with, everything is too muddy and jagged.
One last note. The second something comes out with higher polycounts and straighter crisper lines than the division, it will become very noticeable where it's lacking. As has been the case for many gaming generations.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
As much as I want this to be a true, realistic design open world MMO, it is not.
“We wanted a lighter game than [World of Warcraft]. I’m not calling [The Division] an MMO,” although he’s aware of the similarities. -David Polfeldt, managing director at Massive
Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/10/the-division-inside-the-tom-clancy-mmo-shooter
It is of course being marketed as Open World RPG so its constantly being confused as an MMO it seems. think it is as Open World as Skyrim can be said to be, and most definitely a multiplayer game, but the fact he explicitly states they do not want to call it an MMO is very telling of their direction.
Even in its seemingly limited MMO Scope this game will be a beast on our PCs, the minimum viable spec would have to be equivalent to the new generation PS4 and XBOX One...which will surely be very competitive/higher end even by PC standards...of course excluding the ability to upgrade ala carte.
Unfortunately it seems we are not 100% there yet for true MMO capable realism aesthetic games. I mean I am sure all the devs want to make realism based aesthetics but there are too many problems for it in the MMO genre with too much risk involved compared to making stylized design while focusing more on the game itself.
People are still on this? Jeez, I didn't like the graphics myself but it's literally the single least important part of a game that there is. Don't give me that "it breaks immersion" crap either because the only people who care about immersion are Role Players and there's this thing called larping if that is what you want so bad.
I guess i'm not understanding why everyone is getting butt hurt about graphics. I thought that the purpose of a MMO was to meet people of like minds, party together, then enjoy the adventure. I hate this whole " OWWW SHIZZ, GRAFICS ARE WOWZZ!!!11!!1".. Doesn't make sense to me. As long as the game play is is good, the lore makes sense, and social aspect is there, what is the problem?
I remember playing WoW for the first time and going " Damn, this is what Orgrimmar looks like!". Same thing with EQ2. I remember thinking, "Hot DAMN, this is Qeynos after the moons shattered!". I didn't give a damn about the graphics, I still don't. It was about finding like minded people and moving forward with the adventure. I don't need instant gratification to get pleasure from a game. I like the long, slow journey and the people that I meet along the way. I realize that not all gamers are like that but ffs, play a single player game if you don't like people to play with. If you can't solo it, hey, get a new game. If the game isn't realistic, who gives a crap?
You are playing a damned VIDEO GAME! A Simulation of your imagination. The character you create should be a avatar that you control in a world that is fantastical. Don't make the game real life. If that was the case, I would pay my taxes and have the Final Fantasy end of battle music playing in my head. That doesn't happen. This is our hobby, our escape, our chance to be someone that we always dreamed of being when we read JRR Tolkien for the first time. Screw how the graphics are made and focus more on where it is gonna take us as a MMO community.
Before wow was released I was really skeptical about the cartoony graphics, later I realized that wow graphics really convey a lot of emotion and allow the characters to emulate a ton of character. I thought at the time I was going to go with EQ 2 but I never could get into the game. It turns out after a lot of years, I really think wow graphics are superior in so many ways. I don't even bother any more with games that go super realistic. I prefer stylized graphics in every way and so do my computers usually, ( I built a top of the line rig for EQ 2 and then lived with the whole SLI fiasco). But look on the bright side, eventually EQN will offer clippy wooden character graphic options as well as bobble head options. SO you can have the realistic graphics if you like too.
Cheers