EVERYONE likes nice looking,nobody goes out in real life and says "I want the ugliest chick or guy on the planet" or" i want a car that looks god awful" or i want the ugliest looking pants money can buy,it doesn't happen.
While everyone would like to wear Armani suits, date super model looking women, and drive a Ferrari most people also learn that there are other important factors that come into play in each of these and usually end up being realistic and settling for something less than the ideal.
Same thing with MMORPG graphics, for a number of good reasons developers either can't or intentionally don't chose to focus on delivering the best possible, and other factors such as game play really are more important at the end of the day.
WOW taught the industry one big lesson, if you want to make the most money, make sure your graphics will run on the broadest, lowest common denominator of hardware out there currently.
I recall in 2004 when WOW launched, it would play on my work laptop and it's built in, cheap as possible graphic adaptor. Contrast that with Vanguard or almost any of the earlier titles where I had to purchase a fairly expensive video card just to play them. (DAOC in the early days would only promise to run on about 10 tested video cards, and I went out and had to buy one in order to play it properly)
At the end of the day, you really can't have it all, no matter how much you want it to be that way. Always compromises that need to be made and a decision on whether or not they were worth it or not.
I could always lend you an Armani suit or my Ferrari for the night. Fixing you up with a super model would depend on how convincingly you can say "Because your worth it."
The reason that there are no HD remakes is simple, the companies don't want to invest any money in a product that they already making money on. If they aren't making money they'd rather shut down servers and create silly gimmicks like "F2P" then reinvent themselves.
EQ taught us many lessons about MMO's, and those lessons were incredibly crucial in the success that we saw from Vanilla WoW. Graphics, while important, turn out more often than not to be a barrier to entry for many people. People don't want to necessarily have to buy a new computer every time an expansion comes out. Gameplay and community trump all, and until developers re-learn that lesson, we will continue to see "clones" of present-day WoW (an abomination of itself) that will be boring, uninspired, and forgettable.
Originally posted by Haites The reason that there are no HD remakes is simple, the companies don't want to invest any money in a product that they already making money on. If they aren't making money they'd rather shut down servers and create silly gimmicks like "F2P" then reinvent themselves.EQ taught us many lessons about MMO's, and those lessons were incredibly crucial in the success that we saw from Vanilla WoW. Graphics, while important, turn out more often than not to be a barrier to entry for many people. People don't want to necessarily have to buy a new computer every time an expansion comes out. Gameplay and community trump all, and until developers re-learn that lesson, we will continue to see "clones" of present-day WoW (an abomination of itself) that will be boring, uninspired, and forgettable.
I would think it has as much to do with players wanting something new, and just adding new graphics isn't enough "new" to sell to players. Existing players would love a revamp, and some new people would try it out, but would they get enough people to justify the cost of writing a brand new engine that works with the existing game engine? Seems to me the answer is, "No".
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
For example, some years ago Anarchy Online graphics was dull but still playable. But it's interface was below playability. :-(
If they'll redesign interface to modern standards and update graphics somewhat - the game itself have a lot of content and will be quite playable both for old gamers and for newcomers.
Comments
I could always lend you an Armani suit or my Ferrari for the night. Fixing you up with a super model would depend on how convincingly you can say "Because your worth it."
The reason that there are no HD remakes is simple, the companies don't want to invest any money in a product that they already making money on. If they aren't making money they'd rather shut down servers and create silly gimmicks like "F2P" then reinvent themselves.
EQ taught us many lessons about MMO's, and those lessons were incredibly crucial in the success that we saw from Vanilla WoW. Graphics, while important, turn out more often than not to be a barrier to entry for many people. People don't want to necessarily have to buy a new computer every time an expansion comes out. Gameplay and community trump all, and until developers re-learn that lesson, we will continue to see "clones" of present-day WoW (an abomination of itself) that will be boring, uninspired, and forgettable.
I would think it has as much to do with players wanting something new, and just adding new graphics isn't enough "new" to sell to players. Existing players would love a revamp, and some new people would try it out, but would they get enough people to justify the cost of writing a brand new engine that works with the existing game engine? Seems to me the answer is, "No".
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Not only graphics but interface also need rework.
For example, some years ago Anarchy Online graphics was dull but still playable. But it's interface was below playability. :-(
If they'll redesign interface to modern standards and update graphics somewhat - the game itself have a lot of content and will be quite playable both for old gamers and for newcomers.
Kain_Dale