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Why have the graphics grown so old?
freston
Member UncommonPosts: 503
And before you answer me "because the game is nine years old", i already know that. I don't expect it to have last generation, cutting edge graphics. I was thinking more of a comparison with a game of similar age , Wow.
Granted, wow has its own problems now, but graphically there is an abyss between it an EQ2. I played both games at launch, and i dont remember the difference as being so significant.
What has happened? Did they just stop pouring money in the game? That seems too simple an answer for a company that puts out an expansion a year. Was there some structural design flaw in the game frome the start? Not trying to start a flame war here, i am genuinely curious.
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Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
I really like my Freeblood's animations, face, hair and such, even the toes.
The wings are okay, most armor is okay as are the mounts, weapons and the revamped Freeport (Did they even do Qeynos yet?)
What's REALLY horrible is animation smoothness (Frame dropping of some kind?) the engine itself and 99% of all terrain looks like something from 1990 with flat, two color textures smeared everywhere.
Well, first of all Everquest always had that artificial/plastic feel to the characters/world. Second, World of Warcraft has made many graphical improvements since the game originally launched. Everquest II hasn't made any effort to improve the engine or graphics and just continued adding new content/bug fixes.
I noticed the same thing when I tried to play EQ2 during their free maximum level character event a couple months ago. The graphics just looked outdated and the animations were horrible. Not even a maximum level character with a bunch of AA's is enough to keep me playing.
I personally thought the art style and feel within the game was horrible at launch let alone now. It was stiff, plastic and I could never feel like the world itself was alive.
I can only assume the current complaints against EQNext was based upon how the original EQ looked and played because EQ2 was always a complete mmo failure in my mind (based upon what I like in an mmo and how it compared to EQ just like AC2 was a complete disappointment to me from AC).
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This is exactly why EQNext will have "cartoony" graphics. It just weathers age so much better. I can't play any of these 10-year old "realistic graphics" games anymore, but I have no problem playing WoW (although the original character models are showing their age - hence they're updating them in the next expac).
Heck, even Age of Conan looks ugly today when comparing to modern "realistic" graphics.
The problem is, we are still nowhere near actually realistic graphics in games. Anyone watching movies with a lot of special effects, such as the LotR trilogy, can see immediately that we have still ways to go before we can start claiming our games look realistic.
That's why going for the "realistic" look in an MMO you hope to still be around in 10-15 years is a bad idea.
Comparing Wow to Eq2 graphics,you can't be serious?Blizzard has in some cases made decent looking textures but often they look far worse than amateur work.What makes Wow's textures look worse is the art style,it makes everything look like a cheap cartoon.
High quality cartoon graphics are quite noticeably better ,example Pixar work but again,i never expected blizzard to put that kind of money and effort into their game but i did expect something close to EQ2.I believe what happened is Blizzard's thought process was to make something look better than EQ1,Which Blizzard did accomplish.They however never realized how much better EQ2 was going to look than EQ1 so Wow was surpassed by leaps and bounds with EQ2 being far superior.
EQ2 w/o any argument what so ever was the 10/10 graphic leader for MMORPG's and Blizzard's Wow looked just bad,like a 3/10 in comparison.
The ONLY thing that would make EQ2 look dated is FFXIV or in some cases Vanguard's texture work along with lighting/shader work.
I know it is possible to make Wow look better with special settings but we accomplished the same thing in FFXI and those aged graphics made to work for the PS2 still look better than Wow's textures in most cases,especially early Wow.
I think if the OP wants to talk about out dating EQ2 graphics,had better use a game like FFXIV in comparison,definitely NOT Wow.
Perhaps the Blizzard fanbois can finally have something to brag about when Titan coems out,but so far ,judging from al lthe former and current Blizzard work,i see a trend to remain low end on the graphics to allow for lower cost design and running the game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Almost every game with "cutting edge" graphics at release looks dated four years later. That's one of the reasons some developers are turning toward stylized graphics. It's a much more sensible route to go than redoing the graphics engine every four years. Besides, the return can't possibly be that great for cutting edge, because anyone that played the game for the latest graphics already left for the next eye candy well before the graphics ever became dated.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
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I would be comfortable with EQ2's spotty at times graphics if the engine was smoother, and the model animations didn't feel so clipped. (As in, missing frames/steps. There is next to zero fluidity in movement for any of the models anywhere in the game, even at the rare times FPS is tolerable on good hardware.)
Did WoW re-color the game with brighter crayons or something? It still looks just as cartoony to me today as it did at launch.
EQ2's problem was they designed their graphics engine to take advantage of technology on GPU's that had yet to be released. Unfortunately, graphics card makers went in a different direction, basically orphaning part of the game's engine. It's crazy that high end machines now can still choke on the highest setting in the game. I also agree that the characters at launch looked like they came out of a wax museum and were just downright ugly.
It will never happen, but I wish they would put a new graphics engine under EQ2's hood. I would come back in a second if they did that.
No computer today, not even the supercomputers, could run Pixar quality graphics at real time, so that argument is out of the window for another 5-10 years at least.
You obviously prefer "realistic" graphics over "cartoony" graphics.
FFXIV will look just as ugly in 9 years as EQ2 looks today. WoW will still look just as good or bad as it does today, if it's still around.
EQ2 has always been ugly, and with terrible animations (like string puppets to me). I remember playing the beta and deciding to pass on the game because it just looked bad, even compared to SWG which I was still playing at the time. I came back to EQ2 in 2007 and enjoyed the content while learning to live with the ugliness.
SOE revamped Qeynos a year after Freeport - in summmer 2012
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/07/03/everquest-iis-qeynos-revamp-goes-live-july-24th/
EQ2 fan sites
I wouldn't say the graphics have grown old so much as the character models have.
Have you looked closely at a character without a helmet on? They look creepy as hell!
EQ2's graphics always looked bad. Realistic graphics age poorly. On top of that they tend to make your game play like you are walking through quicksand. It is hard to sell me on a MMORPG that goes with realistic graphics because they all stink.
I simply don't buy that.
for example I think AOC....IMO still blows away almost any game you can mention.
It has nothing to do with the art style, The IoR still looks great today and so do many of the areas around the main cities, though I guess all that has been taken out now.
The problem EQ2 has is SOE rushes all the content so none of the levels are jam packed with detail but the first few starter areas from when the game launched. Often you'll just have a single texture for grass with barely any foliage around. Lots of the newer content just felt like empty rooms with copied and pasted prefabs and like 2-3 mobs standing in there.
Then you have the horrible plastic looking character models and the stupid ugly looking Asian models which feel so out of place. For some weird reason SOE has never fixed the character models and that goes a long way to making the game look so dated.
I'd look at that E3 2004 trailer and think the game looks great, sadly though that level of detail doesn't exist any more. It didn't really at launch after a certain point because you could tell so much of it was rushed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voD7rEKGnZU