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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm: New Screenshot Shows Off Water Effects
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
New screenshots of World of Warcraft's upcoming Cataclysm expansion are appearing every day in the game's official Screenshot of the Day gallery. A recently uploaded image featuring a bit of a darker more realistic art style and some snazzy water effects is of particular note today, check it out below:
The official WoW Screenshot of the Day gallery can be found here.
[Thanks thg7f for the tip!]
Comments
Less Cartoon like. Looks much better.........
Yes, it's more realistic, but... it looks more like Warhammer Online than WoW, now. Curious.
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Hopefully they will refine the characters looks too...
RIP Orc Choppa
ya, looks like it's gonna be a realistic watery area, then a few miles up the road we'll get back to the cartoonish trees and mountains, but enjoy the realistic watery area that looks like a photo with your cartoon characters walking on it
That looks very impressive, if the rest of the game gets the same sort of overhaul it could well continue to beat off the new MMO's that are coming out.
Is this supposed to be released sometime this month?
Now all they need to do is fix the rest of the game. This is by far the only screen shot I have ever seen that caught my eye for more than a few seconds. Any idea when they will do a graphical overhaul on the rest of the game?
hahahahhahahahahahahahaah so true...
Are they nott redoing the entire world? Thought that was the whole point of the "Cataclysm" ?
Was bored, so I opened up Paint.NET and did a fast demonstration about the new graphics, muhaha. The picture is quite small so dont know if you get the idea but, here it is:
the only thing i see that looks "realistic" is the water, the rest of it still looks cartoonish which is why i like playing wow in the 1st place.
This makes me laugh. I recall an old article in Computer Gaming World when they made fun of the fact that whenever developers came to demo their new games to them they'd invariably show off their terrific new 'water' effects.
They felt this was a fairly ridiculous thing to highlight versus improvements to the important aspects such as combat, storyline, etc.
I'm mean really, what the hell does the water effect really matter, who cares.
Oh well, they're Blizzard and they can do as they wish.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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Yes, or better yet, kandy-kolored Gnomes in mechano-chickens zooming around and jumping on mailboxes.
WoW has a lot of different moods and looks already over its many areas. so a little new grimness is fine, but it still has to run fast on all computers and the content still has to be fun.
Looks interesting. I hope they plan to redo the entire world in the same style, otherwise, you'll get the kind of weird shock I got back in the EQ1 days, when you'd go from one of the "newer" zones like the Vah Shir starting areas (the fact these were "new" zones when I was playing tells you how long ago it was) and the go to the older zones, like Butcherblock, where the models had about a third as many polygons.
It will be interesting to see what it looks like in play. Screenshots for MMORPGs are often deceptive, because how an environment looks when you're moving through it, how it interacts with mobs and PCs, etc, is often very different from how it looks in a static, staged, shot. A lot of games which promise "high realism" fail in actual play due to texture blending issues, when it looks as if different elements of the game fit poorly with each other, looking like an amateur film student's first attempt at green screening.
More like some time this year... I'd say in the Nov-Dec time frame.
Maybe if you both read more about Cata you would know the whole game engine's water effect is being revamped, meaning the water EVERYWHERE in the game will look like that.
yep this is true the game is still going to look cartoonish but the water will looks like this everywhere you go.
This screenshot looks good, the others looked pretty much the same as 'old' WoW - dont know if this was the only one of CATA, btw. When's the beta for CATA, any news coming from that? I'd like to know how the redesigned zones are and the gameplay changes.
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The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Same point could be made about shadows that were added with WotLK, but you can clearly see how much of a difference they can make in atmosfere and immersion when they're turned on, let alone on MAX details. It's just one of those "next gen" wonders and WoW is somewhat late to the party, bringing it at least somewhat on-par with modern MMOs, at least from a technical standpoint if not from an artistic one (although, I swear to God that Blizzard undoubtebly already has plans for some kind of models update down the road).
And the reflective water is still one of first things you turn down when you need to up your pcs performance ...
Fix the character models/buildings instead, bother to make a mesh that actulally has proper face and hand topology. Add combat animations that look like combat not bashing eachothers with nerf bats :P
Living in the UK, I'm able to go to the sea and see real water. So I find it hard to get excited about water in a game, even though I appreciate the complexity of coding it to look nice. However I can understand that maybe people living a very long way from water, such as in the middle of the U.S. may get excited about the oh so lovely water. That is understandable and is one of the nicer points of gaming. The ability to semi experience something that normally we couldn't experience. So, it is nice to see them going to the effort to make water look nice, if for no other reason than to make the fishing skill less boring
The combination of the reflective water with the very low-polgyon trees looks very weird.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
I think the new water effects are great. They finally bring world of warcraft graphics up to par with 3 year old free to play games.
It's to bad you have to shell out more money to get the new water. Maybe it's worth it considering all the effort they put into making a new shader to apply to the 2d surfaces.
It might seem like I don't like the game but that isn't true, I just don't like the sneaky psychological money grabbing games the company plays with it's players. If all the wow players would simply tell the company they already deserve the engine upgrades since they've been paying the subscription costs and expansion pack costs for years then it would be so. Pretty much what happened to Allods. They tried to make things overly expensive in the item shop and the customers went crazy, and rightfully so. You shouldn't roll over and play sheep just because Blizzard says so. People also shouldn't be offended when someone is trying to make them wake up and defend themselves from an injustice.
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What gave you that idea? As far as I know, it's just a shader update that's gonna become available to everyone once the global events of Cataclysm hit Azeroth... and you won't need the actual expansion. Azeroth will be changed for everyone... massive patch imminent.
Water effects?...Seriously?....effing water effects?!
I'll think of picking up WoW again if they ever add more facial & body customization. Or bring the characters up to par to the rest of the revamped areas. It's the least they can do.