We can all agree that vanilla has a great art style and Classic should offer it in its pure original form. But most people seem unoffended by the new vegetation options and others say they'd like a toggle for Retail character models. Why stop there?


Personally I'd kill for some real lighting. A few ray tracing demos have come out showing what the technology is capable of and the results are stunning even in the ancient games it's been applied to. Notably there's been the Quake demo and even a Minecraft mod. Just look at that water, the cast shadows, the slick tiles during rain — all of this with assets that were never designed to support such good rendering. You need a good machine to run it of course.

Just imagining this kind of lighting in WoW gets me excited. Picture the kind of atmosphere that would come from hunter flares casting long flickering shadows, fireballs and holy spells acting as mobile light sources, the moon reflecting off quiet pools of water in Ashenvale, lava in Blackrock Mountain setting walls and players aglow with red.

I know, I know — it'll never happen. But people said the same thing about Classic. If mere modders can make Quake and Minecraft use these techniques without touching most of the game's assets it can't be such a stretch for Blizzard.

I just watched the Minecraft one - that is some chillingly beautiful stuff man (omg the music for that game is so good). Especially liked the rain puddles on top of the blocks, wow.

Not sure Blizz would really go for this to be honest after all the work it's taken for them to make an ancient game. Perhaps a private server exists out there where people have been doing this.

I mean @Nenski has made some Unreal engine animations etc. already so that's possible with game models and renders but not sure about actually running it in a game client.

I'm down for a full remaster with toggleable options for Classic graphics. This isn't what were getting, but its what I would have preferred. As nostalgic as the old graphics are, new graphics would have been great, and we could have had both. If community is the PRIMARY reason we want to revisit Classic, new graphics would have appealed to a larger demographic and thus increased the longevity of the game, consequently strengthening the community (in my opinion). I have friends who did not play retail vanilla and were VERY interested in Classic, but simply cant get around the old graphics and for that reason they wont be playing, which is really unfortunate. I'd hate for people to miss out on the great core gameplay philosophies of Classic and the experience that we will all have because they judge the book by its cover, but that will be the case.

Stfuppercut wrote: ↑

5 years ago

If community is the PRIMARY reason we want to revisit Classic, new graphics would have appealed to a larger demographic and thus increased the longevity of the game, consequently strengthening the community (in my opinion).

Well said. That alone should be reason enough for Blizzard to pursue improved optional graphics.

It would be nice but I think old graphics has its charm. I don't really like the trend nowadays when every game must outshine every game before it in terms of graphics. I mean, what matters isn't the graphics - it's the gameplay. I'm sure you all agree on this though, so yeah, if they added some improved graphics I wouldn't mind - but I don't really care either.

High end shaders and reflections (even RTX) would be awesome. They should open the graphics portion of the client to modders.

acrmojt wrote: ↑

5 years ago

High end shaders and reflections (even RTX) would be awesome. They should open the graphics portion of the client to modders.

I doubt it would happen but an RTX mod would be a quick route to official development. Netherrealms recently lifted 30fps caps in Mortal Kombat 11 on PC only a few weeks after a user fixed them himself. Once people got a taste of real performance it was inevitable.

As long as the options are optional I don't really care how crazy they get. New models and everything, it's all fine by me. Just keep it client-side and optional and who can be against it?

I agree with more advanced graphics settings. As long as things don't change in the sense of like... new models/textures. I'm all for sprucing up how original content is displayed and that's it.

Guest wrote: ↑

5 years ago

As long as the options are optional

If I can get spell effects set to 1 billion percent that would be cool. I kid, because I don't want the entire game to run like the Elegon fight, but I do miss using console commands to turn the spell effects up so high that casting blizzard was like summoning an actual goram blizzard.

VR Support