# DX11 in World of Warcraft Cataclysm?



## v12dock (Jun 5, 2010)

A new build of the World of Warcraft Cataclysm beta has been released along with some patch notes to go with it.  http://wowleaks.com/topic68.html

* Experimental support for DX11 (can be enabled by passing -d3d11 on the command line or SET gxApi "d3d11" to the Config.WTF file).


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## RoutedScripter (Jun 7, 2010)

Expected it but never was sure , Im not MMORPG geek actually but i tried it and it's actually cool game , but it's a time killer , and that they are improving on graphics , i should say IT'S ABOUT FREAKING TIME!

Seriously the game should have much better graphics we are in 2010 and they didn't seem to update them much (i don't know actually how was in 2004), i have evertything full and still , well playable , but it deserves more.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 8, 2010)

RuskiSnajper said:


> Seriously the game should have much better graphics we are in 2010 and they didn't seem to update them much (i don't know actually how was in 2004), i have evertything full and still , well playable , but it deserves more.




This game has an immense amount of detail. 

You have to keep in mind, 99% of the wow population plays between 5 and 60 FPS. Not the 300 some of us are used to.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 8, 2010)

75% of the WoW community is probably on integrated graphics.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 8, 2010)

JUDOHAWK said:


> 75% of the WoW community is probably on *intell integrated graphics*.



Fixed


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## kuroikenshi (Jun 8, 2010)

RuskiSnajper said:


> Expected it but never was sure , Im not MMORPG geek actually but i tried it and it's actually cool game , but it's a time killer , and that they are improving on graphics , i should say IT'S ABOUT FREAKING TIME!
> 
> *Seriously the game should have much better graphics we are in 2010 and they didn't seem to update them much (i don't know actually how was in 2004), i have evertything full and still , well playable , but it deserves more.*



Thats one of their main selling points. A game that can run on a huge array of machines is a much more profitable one that can only play on high end ones. Granted, i think they should do it like EVE and offer a super highres pack that can be enabled if you have a machine that can run it.


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## JUDOHAWK (Jun 8, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> Fixed



So true, I see so many people(same with all of you guys) that go on about how their PC can't play games when all it needs is a cheap GPU.

Hell I was able to play games on an old PC the second I put in an HD3450  However that computer was horrible and since then I've donated the guts to my sister as an internet/daily task box.  But a 30 dollar dedicated GPU makes one hell of a difference.  At low res of course 


But there are plenty of GPUs in the 60 dollar range that can turn a modest dual core prebuilt into something that'll handle much more than people think.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 8, 2010)

JUDOHAWK said:


> So true, I see so many people(same with all of you guys) that go on about how their PC can't play games when all it needs is a cheap GPU.
> 
> Hell I was able to play games on an old PC the second I put in an HD3450  However that computer was horrible and since then I've donated the guts to my sister as an internet/daily task box.  But a 30 dollar dedicated GPU makes one hell of a difference.  At low res of course
> 
> ...



Definetly 
+1

adding a cheap offboard graphics card is the best option you can do for light gaming /heavy wow


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## Easo (Jun 8, 2010)

Wow will have sunshafts (yes, the same that are used in Risen and Crysis), and water reflections (at last lol), and now dx 11, plus most textures have been updated in alpha builds to higher res. Game looks realy good now, but its artistic style is what realy pwns...


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 8, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> This game has an immense amount of detail.
> 
> You have to keep in mind, 99% of the wow population plays between 5 and 60 FPS. Not the 300 some of us are used to.



Add me to that 99%, when I had my 4870x2 Any high pop zone or area with lots of casting and crap FPS, horrible optimization, the only difference between a 4650 and a 4870x2 is that when you are out in the middle of no where the 4870x2 hits huge FPS, but when it comes down to crunch time, they both get hammered to shit. Partially because no CF.

The game is too straight edged, thats my only real gripe, there is no curves in WoW, everything was made with a straight edge, even circles.


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## Zubasa (Jun 8, 2010)

About damn time really.
They need to actually optimize the engine so that it doesn't run like shit.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 8, 2010)

Yep, if the actually optimize it to run decently on high end stuff also it wouldn't be that bad, and added support for multiple videocards.


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## Zubasa (Jun 8, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Yep, if the actually optimize it to run decently on high end stuff also it wouldn't be that bad, and added support for multiple videocards.


I know your pain, a close friend of mine is running a 4870X2.
My 5870 slaughtered his 4870X2 simply because of the outdated game engine.

The game also favors nVidia cards since it is so ROP intensive....
The original WoW back in 2004 is basically an early DX9 game (DX8.1-ish quality graphics), and even now it still uses the old DX9.0 rendering methods.
They added some level of HDR lighting and shadows in WotLK, but it is poorly done and just slaughters performance when enabled.

Simply put, this game runs like a console port because its engine is older than even the Wii's GPU.


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## RoutedScripter (Jun 8, 2010)

Yes it has detail but as which level , the texture resolution is like Super mario 64 , and still it runs me like 75 FPS , which is really unoptimized , yes there are vast distances of land , and I have maxed out everything, when i ramped up everything it looked better and I say it's still way playable but when you look closely those textures really are to cry for.

You see wow like a big game but i bet they don't put any effort to the GPU department anyways because of clear fact that a lot of players can't even have those graphics.


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## a_ump (Jun 8, 2010)

yea, i gotta say i agree with ruskiSnajper, their engine isn't very efficient for what it delivers. Look at games like Just Cause 2, Far Cry 2, L4d, and RE5 all have much better graphics and perform just as good as WoW. 

 I mean honestly if WoW doesn't pick it up with this dx11 graphically, then runescape is gonna outdo it.


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## DannibusX (Jun 8, 2010)

For all it's shortcomings, WoW is still an excellent game.  I give Blizzard props for keeping the game playable by a lot of people who can't afford to upgrade their machines.  Obviously, this is a computer enthusiast forum and we may have higher standards for the games we enjoy, but a large chunk of the population isn't much like that.

If Blizzard does improve the graphics is the game, I hope it's not so drastic that it asses out a chunk of their playerbase, since 70% (number out of my arse) of the game's population won't have a DX11 card until 2013 or so.


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## shevanel (Jun 8, 2010)

now that all the WOW people are addicted why dont they release a crysis like version (hard on hardware) to make all those people upgrade and then prices/competition may be reflective. lol


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## Flak (Jun 8, 2010)

They can't upgrade their machines because they are too busy botting 40 accounts...  I kid I kid..... or not.


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## shevanel (Jun 8, 2010)

lol my old roomate was big into wow. he played on a old pc with an 8400gs. his native res was 1920x1080 but he played the game on minimum res possible and loved it.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

Itll be interesting to see updated graphics, i doubt it will look that much different, but probably a little bit.

I get about 50 fps on my 4870x2 at 1920x1200. 30 fps in dal, and some fights are 25-30. Those damn particle clouds in UP on the 3rd boss fight occasionally cripple to 10.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 8, 2010)

maybe its becouse its the GAMEPLAY that makes wow so great and not the graphics ^^?. compare wow to crysis, perfect example.



you really only need mid range hardware to max out wow.  anything thing over a 86/96 or even 250/260gts is just not needed.


of course wow seems to run a bit better on nvidia then ati but a 4770 or 4850 would be more then enough. 5750/5770 being your best bet.




Hybrid_theory said:


> Itll be interesting to see updated graphics, i doubt it will look that much different, but probably a little bit.
> 
> I get about 50 fps on my 4870x2 at 1920x1200. 30 fps in dal, and some fights are 25-30. Those damn particle clouds in UP on the 3rd boss fight occasionally cripple to 10.




add more ram and i bet you nearly double your FPS. (have you tried it without crossfire turned on?)


with that in mind, to play at mid level graphics  really dosnt take much power. a GTX240 would be overkill for mediam.

Side note, crossfire or sli really dosnt work very well with wow unless its configured perfectly under optimal conditions.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

Nah i usually just keep it on. 40/50 fps is fine for me really and thats in raids. if im questing/farming its more 80-100


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## RoutedScripter (Jun 8, 2010)

DannibusX said:


> For all it's shortcomings, WoW is still an excellent game.  I give Blizzard props for keeping the game playable by a lot of people who can't afford to upgrade their machines.  Obviously, this is a computer enthusiast forum and we may have higher standards for the games we enjoy, but a large chunk of the population isn't much like that.
> 
> If Blizzard does improve the graphics is the game, I hope it's not so drastic that it asses out a chunk of their playerbase, since 70% (number out of my arse) of the game's population won't have a DX11 card until 2013 or so.



I understand your point , but that's when the word "settings" comes to blessed worth.


Games need to be flexible , configurable , a spot where most companies fail.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 8, 2010)

shevanel said:


> now that all the WOW people are addicted why dont they release a crysis like version (hard on hardware) to make all those people upgrade and then prices/competition may be reflective. lol



Because they don't need to, people who are subbed will stay subbed, why spend money producing something when you don't have to produce anything and can keep that money. Thats my gripe, I know it takes money to keep the servers up and such, but I don't want to hear some BS on how Blizz is not profiting truck loads of money each month. Eve did this a long time ago, they came out with 2 game clients, 1 for people with low end hardware and one for those that are looking to push the game. 

It shows that they don't want to push that envelope, the games been out for 6 years and has only got 1 race on each side new, and 1 new class to the game. I mean that just makes me sad. Now they will be adding another race to each side which is great, but there should be another new class, or another 2 classes with each of them being specific to each faction ala Vanilla sham/pally.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 8, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Because they don't need to, people who are subbed will stay subbed, why spend money producing something when you don't have to produce anything and can keep that money. Thats my gripe, I know it takes money to keep the servers up and such, but I don't want to hear some BS on how Blizz is not profiting truck loads of money each month. Eve did this a long time ago, they came out with 2 game clients, 1 for people with low end hardware and one for those that are looking to push the game.
> 
> It shows that they don't want to push that envelope, the games been out for 6 years and has only got 1 race on each side new, and 1 new class to the game. I mean that just makes me sad. Now they will be adding another race to each side which is great, but there should be another new class, or another 2 classes with each of them being specific to each faction ala Vanilla sham/pally.



yeah thats really lame, there should have been etleast 2 - 3 new class's by now and a good 4 new races.




wow does very well with the settings options, IIRC there are 9 slider bars for various details, resolution, vsync and few other settings as well.
as a bonus there are also a number of graphic details that can be changed via commands, 
2 off the top of my head are DX11 now and Shadow detail you can incress the shadow detail beyond what the slider will let you.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 8, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> wow does very well with the settings options, IIRC there are 9 slider bars for various details, resolution, vsync and few other settings as well.
> as a bonus there are also a number of graphic details that can be changed via commands,
> 2 off the top of my head are DX11 now and Shadow detail you can incress the shadow detail beyond what the slider will let you.




They limit the slider, because shadow detail gets very costly on the video card. (It may be OK alone, but when you have 100 people on screen, you will cry)

Also, Blizzard cannot just throw out a new engine and call it a day, with 11 million clients, even a slight spell coeffecient change is not only a hassle, but capable of causing some weird bugs. (Plus they keep an OS X client at the exact same level at all times)

Blizzard has to keep a balance between detail, performance, and bugs.

Bugs are the biggie TBH. With that many users, people find the dumbest things that will bug out, but they always find a way to abuse it afterwards.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

It does kinda suck that they havent introduced much for new classes. But from a creative stand point im not sure what else they could make that would be different. It makes more sense to focus on new dungeons, and pvp development over another class to level. As shown when DKs came out, it was a lot of work to balance them with all the other classes.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 8, 2010)

Hybrid_theory said:


> It does kinda suck that they havent introduced much for new classes. .



No room for more classes. at all  Its hard enough to balance what they have now 

As for graphics, 







They really aren't that bad, considering each class has unique armor sets, and each piece has a decent chunk of detail. It's not "jaw droppingly glow filled" like some games are, but they have a much higher demand at times where other engines simply would crumble on even the fastest hardware.

http://img.techpowerup.org/100608/Capture272.jpg
http://img.techpowerup.org/100608/Capture273.jpg

More examples for those that aren't level capped and/or don't play wow.


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## Tartaros (Jun 8, 2010)

DX11 on wow. I think they should fix first the huge performance of shadows set at max having the game in window mode. In raid and dalaran is quite unplayable.

Also they should make the body armors more detailed. It's a shame, you see shoulder armors and head quite well detailed but the rest is a low res texture.

DX11 is fine, but they have more graphica problems to solve first. Also It wouldn't be bad If they retexture all content of the original wow and bc. That would make the game more beautiful.


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

Dalaran is just unplayable when there's lots of people, and i think its more NIC/CPU intensive than anything. It has to encorporate where so many people are, what models of gear they have on, etc.


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## Kreij (Jun 8, 2010)

The gameplay and graphics must be pretty darn good ...


> A NORWEGIAN boy, 12, reportedly saved himself and his sister from a moose attack using skills he picked up playing the online role-playing game World of Warcraft.
> 
> Hans Jørgen Olsen, 12, and his sister encountered a moose during a walk in the forest near their home in the central Norwegian town of Leksvik, said the Norwegian online newspaper Nettavisen.
> 
> ...


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## DannibusX (Jun 8, 2010)

Kreij said:


> The gameplay and graphics must be pretty darn good ...



Level 12 Hunter with taunt AND feign death.

Nice


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

LOL what!! Thats crazy wow. Though what class is he, hunters can't taunt, they use distracting shot. He'd have to throw a rock


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## DannibusX (Jun 8, 2010)

Misdirect?


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## Kreij (Jun 8, 2010)

Heh ... that story is a little old (2007). Here is the original news story (untranslated, of course).


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## Hybrid_theory (Jun 8, 2010)

For misdirect to work, the girl would be the hunter, and boy the warrior with taunt.


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## wiak (Jun 8, 2010)

lulz @ DX11 in WoW, you can get away with DX8 in WoW, looks the same as DX9


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 8, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> They limit the slider, because shadow detail gets very costly on the video card. (It may be OK alone, but when you have 100 people on screen, you will cry)
> 
> Also, Blizzard cannot just throw out a new engine and call it a day, with 11 million clients, even a slight spell coeffecient change is not only a hassle, but capable of causing some weird bugs. (Plus they keep an OS X client at the exact same level at all times)
> 
> ...



I agree, it does become taxing, but thats because of the horrible optimization, the shadows are pretty worthless when it crushes top end cards in raid settings. And of course they can't just throw out a different client for people with better hardware, but they have had about the same amount of accounts for a while now, if they ever intended to actually make a better optimized client then they should have started it a long time ago, back in BC, the subs haven't changed much since then. 

But it's easier to rake that money in and not make one.



Dippyskoodlez said:


> No room for more classes. at all  Its hard enough to balance what they have now
> 
> As for graphics,
> 
> ...



The classes haven't ever been balanced, and they never will be, mmo's aren't balanced for 1v1 or even 2v2, they are almost always balanced towards what the class is intended to do in PvE, then balanced to PvP secondly. The mechanic of Resilience is a horrible bandage also for scaling they should have fixed instead of just moving towards that horrible stat.

The game doesn't look bad for being released in 04, but it hasnt gotten much better. And I doubt it will, the optimization is just geared so lowly though it's sad. With my dual 3870's and my 4870x2 I got better FPS in Age of Conan completely maxed out on DX9. Which is kind of sad. The cartoonyness of it isn't that bad, what they need to fix is this






You can pretty much draw everything in wow with a straight edge. I made the one line in blue to show what that shape should be. It's surprising that the circle sign in the background actually has a real circle in the center don't see that very often. I played wow for a long time and might even play Cata again, but just the fact that everything in the entire game is straight bugs the crap out of me, they should at least fix that, but seeing the screens I already seen, looks like it's still there.


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## RoutedScripter (Jun 8, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> They limit the slider, because shadow detail gets very costly on the video card. (It may be OK alone, but when you have 100 people on screen, you will cry)
> 
> Also, Blizzard cannot just throw out a new engine and call it a day, with 11 million clients, even a slight spell coeffecient change is not only a hassle, but capable of causing some weird bugs. (Plus they keep an OS X client at the exact same level at all times)
> 
> ...



With 1.600 employees , assuming about 500-600 of working on WOW alone , I don't think that it's not possible to come up with something redesigned or overhauled , but in turn , there won't be content patches for the time they make new engine, would be a worth it in the end , and they seem to be constantly working not only patches but expansions too.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 9, 2010)

why are you guys running crossfire with WoW? this is the reson you guys get such low FPS...... a single slightly faster card will net a lot more performance.

in order of most affective way to incress FPS with wow is
More Ram.
Faster cpu.
higher speed HDD.
Video card.

wow really requiers 4gb to run on high GFX with a decent resolution. a fairly decent speed CPU, 3.0ghz Core 2 or faster. a recent Hard drive of etleast 250GB "Density", not total size, hard drive and a mid range or better video card, somthing like a 9600-9800GT.


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

People over at wowleaks have been tearing apart the mpq's and found files for tessellation  
Also someone tested the DX11 and said they noticed a large FPS drop and more reflection in the water.




Underwater


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 9, 2010)

looking good  are there any more shots?


dam this makes me want to go back to play wow


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

I can get you hundreds


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 9, 2010)

Start posting lol 


or if you can save them into a .rar and upload it somewhere?


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

slyfox2151 said:


> why are you guys running crossfire with WoW? this is the reson you guys get such low FPS...... a single slightly faster card will net a lot more performance.
> 
> in order of most affective way to incress FPS with wow is
> More Ram.
> ...



Because we play games other than WoW, games that are optimized for good hardware. I'm not going to keep a shitty computer just so I can play WoW fine, I'm on the other end of the spectrum that Blizz could careless about, and it's part of the reason I no longer play. And either way, I had a quad core, 4gb ram, and wow doesnt run CF so technically a 4870, which is far more powerful than most WoW players and I still got utterly destroyed when playing maxed, and that comp was enough to play any other game on the market maxed, games that look far better than WoW, and enough to play other MMO's with tons of people on the screen maxed out that also look far better than WoW. 



v12dock said:


> People over at wowleaks have been tearing apart the mpq's and found files for tessellation
> Also someone tested the DX11 and said they noticed a large FPS drop and more reflection in the water.



Sounds about right, so just like the improvements added in WotLK, DX11 will now be availible, but anyone with the hardware to actually use it won't be able to because the optimization will be so shitty, because they will want your everyday user to be able to use DX11.... oh wait they can't because DX11 cards all just released... guess that makes no sense then  Here's to hoping that since they are actually adding to the games engine that they actually give it a real tuneup and make multi card setups work and optimize it way better so a massive card doesn't play as good as a mid range card.


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

Some Screenshots for you (DX9)




















BP?




































The new Wintergrasp less stressful severside









I remember a interview I read with a blizzard employee. They said that there going to try eliminate events that are very stressful on the clients computer and server side. Such as wintergrasp


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

That last bit of info makes me sad, one of my best MMO expirences ever was the opening of the AQ gates. Even with 5,000 server crashes (actually 6 or 7), I started my flight from Orgrimmar to Tanaris, it crashed 4 times during that flight, always right when I was going to land in Tanaris, then the server would come back up and I would just be leaving Org, had to take that damn flight 4 times. But once I made it there, it was just epic, an amazing night, had so much fun. More events like that from any MMO and they would have me hooked.


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## DannibusX (Jun 9, 2010)

Those events were awesome, like the Dark Portal event just before the release of BC and the zombie event before the release of Wrath of the Lich King.

Of course, my personal favorite was the undead invasion that came with Naxxramas 40

The Gates was epic as well though.


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

Yeah I don't think they will cancel events like that, but I play on a absolute crap server lags/crashes everyday. Prime time WG lags the entire server so it makes raiding nearly impossible. The launch of major patch such as 3.0 was a absolute mess, my server was one of the last to get online. And when it did the server must of crashed 20 times before it was playable and it was still very laggy.


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## a_ump (Jun 9, 2010)

does anyone know the hardware specs of WoW servers? you'd think with their income they'd be able to buy xeon versions of the i7 980X with like 48gb of ram or something lol.


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## Papahyooie (Jun 9, 2010)

Whoops, looks like theramore got pwned.

I just want them to optimize everything, and get rid of those damn polygonal shapes like someone was talking about earlier. really, how hard is it to render a circle? THAT alone would make wow look 100 times better.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Yeah I don't think they will cancel events like that, but I play on a absolute crap server lags/crashes everyday. Prime time WG lags the entire server so it makes raiding nearly impossible. The launch of major patch such as 3.0 was a absolute mess, my server was one of the last to get online. And when it did the server must of crashed 20 times before it was playable and it was still very laggy.



Eh, I know they do a lot of world events yet like Danni mentioned, and a lot of them are cool. But they haven't ever gone back to AQ scale. The other events were fun, but lasted a long time, and didnt ever give me the feeling like I needed to be there at that exact time. People did whatever they had to to be at AQ, the other events were seasonal and cool, but just lacked that epic feeling. 



a_ump said:


> does anyone know the hardware specs of WoW servers? you'd think with their income they'd be able to buy xeon versions of the i7 980X with like 48gb of ram or something lol.



Thats wishful thinking, their servers are stable now, but if it's anything like the game client they have it optimized to run on Juicy Fruit and Rubber Bands.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 9, 2010)

a_ump said:


> does anyone know the hardware specs of WoW servers? you'd think with their income they'd be able to buy xeon versions of the i7 980X with like 48gb of ram or something lol.



lol um..... no


blizzard server are more like 1000 Core clusters with 256 GB ram ect..... they way beyound your average server 

they have many many many CPU's clusterd together for just one Battle group.


so say 1500 CPU's per battle group and there are 8 ^^ now your getting closer to the real numbers.\



here you go,
in 2006 Blizzard bought 1500 MORE servers, each server could contain 1 or more CPU's.
http://kotaku.com/152780/blizzard-buys-1500-new-servers


im going to say that WoW server is very ram intencive wile being very light on the CPU side, in total i can see them reading into the Terabytes of ram, not gigabytes ^^

1500 servers @ 12GB of ram each is over 1.8 Terabyte of ram :O, (note im assuming they are using 12gb of ram per server... it could be more or less.)


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Papahyooie said:


> Whoops, looks like theramore got pwned.
> 
> I just want them to optimize everything, and get rid of those damn polygonal shapes like someone was talking about earlier. really, how hard is it to render a circle? THAT alone would make wow look 100 times better.



Thats the Wetlands, Theramores docks face to the left side if you were looking at it that way. And yep, that was me talking about it, if they just did that it would make the game look so much better, not ground breaking, but at least I could say "hey cavemen chiseled these circles out of stone."


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## Papahyooie (Jun 9, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Thats the Wetlands, Theramores docks face to the left side if you were looking at it that way. And yep, that was me talking about it, if they just did that it would make the game look so much better, not ground breaking, but at least I could say "hey cavemen chiseled these circles out of stone."





Papahyooie said:


> Whoops, looks like *Menithil Harbor * got pwned.
> 
> I just want them to optimize everything, and get rid of those damn polygonal shapes like someone was talking about earlier. really, how hard is it to render a circle? THAT alone would make wow look 100 times better.



Fixed.


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

They are overhauling everything... Quest in all, The new westfall quest line got leaked... I cant believe how much they changed it.... O and World of Warcraft is now officially 20GB big! And I did read somewhere that there servers are opteron based


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Yeah, all of the quests in Azeroth will be significantly different, since it's going through a huge revamp, the Deadmines will have a Heroic mode (finally).


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

Loch Modan


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Interesting that red ridge looks like it's almost exactly the same, figures though, never was much there.


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## Marineborn (Jun 9, 2010)

LOLZ! AOC makes this game look like it belongs on ninetendo, if they implement dx11...maybe they should try 10.....or just anything UGH! jsut plain ugly but if they were to make it look good it would become unplayable for people on most computers and then they would lose customer base


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

Umm DX11 would have to be enabled so no changes with DX9


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 9, 2010)

is there a specified date for the release yet?


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

This year, I would say fall


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

I havent looked into it any, but a friend was saying he heard before Blizzcon.


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

Public beta starts very soon and people think the NDA will be lifted very soon also


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## DannibusX (Jun 9, 2010)

Redridge with a completed bridge.  BLASPHEMY!

I may have to pick up the x-pac just to dick around with the new content.  I think I'm done raiding though.  That shit sucked the life out of me.


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## a_ump (Jun 9, 2010)

i wish we could get a real good preview of the so called dx11 WoW, cause i doubt it's going to be anything spectacular, at least not tesselation to the level of unigine where you can actually tell its there.


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## DannibusX (Jun 9, 2010)

Following Blizzards tradition, everything to do with the expansion will be put into the game in the final patch of the current game.  I can't guarantee anything, but those options should be available a month or two before cataclysm goes live.  The new talents and professions have been included into the final patch before, as well as any engine upgrades.

You should get your preview.


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## ctrain (Jun 9, 2010)

I got higher fps in Crysis maxed out than I did in dalaran. The engine is obviously held together with string and chewing gum at this point. The game definitely does not perform like it looks like it should. The only thing that saves it is the good artwork.

You'd think for the most popular game on the planet (that basically shits money) they would have reworked a lot of the engine to be more scalable at this point, but I guess:
1. they are worried about breaking something
2. if it ain't broke...
3. simply not worth it to them

DX11 can be a pretty clean break for more modern rendering approaches, but it's probably just designed to inherit the same featureset as the old renderer so it'll just directly plug in and work... and we've seen in the past that naive ports to DX10+ work so well...


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## v12dock (Jun 9, 2010)

The engine heavily relies on the cpu, I go into dalaran with a q9550 @ 3.6 and I get 50-60FPS vs a athlon 64 x2 @ 3.2 getting 10-15FPS with the same video card. And it almost makes sense that they do that considering that 75% of wow players run on onboard video and a processor that much more powerful than there video....


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## a_ump (Jun 9, 2010)

i suppose, i don't see how people play with onboard video....I mean starcraft is one thing but an actualy 3d game. I had an FX 5500 that ran CSS at 1280x1024 just fine on medium, but it barely ran WoW on medium at 1024x768. I can see current integrated doing okay at low-medium. sounds like torture to me tho.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

v12dock said:


> The engine heavily relies on the cpu, I go into dalaran with a q9550 @ 3.6 and I get 50-60FPS vs a athlon 64 x2 @ 3.2 getting 10-15FPS with the same video card. And it almost makes sense that they do that considering that 75% of wow players run on onboard video and a processor that much more powerful than there video....



The problem with that is most home users dont have a 3.6ghz quad core, most of them would have a equivalent that that Athlon you got, or maybe even worse. Either way you slice it, they need to optimize it far better. I got around 15 in dala with a PII 720BE @ 3.6ghz and a 4870x2.


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## Frick (Jun 9, 2010)

I for one looks forward to this game. Not that I'm a huge fan of WoW (I take the Casual Gaming thing to the extremes ), but it is kinda enjoyable sometimes. Cozy in a way.

It'll be interesting what they've done with the lore.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 9, 2010)

Marineborn said:


> LOLZ! AOC makes this game look like it belongs on ninetendo, if they implement dx11...maybe they should try 10.....




Thats OK.

WoW gameplay makes age of conan look like it was made by retarded monkeys in bear suits.

And its the gameplay that makes a game enjoyable.


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## Delta6326 (Jun 9, 2010)

I hope its not hard to upgrade my private server   i mean i don't have a private server

edit: dont forget that chart up there that 11.5million isn't including the private servers so then think how many people are out there


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Thats OK.
> 
> WoW gameplay makes age of conan look like it was made by retarded monkeys in bear suits.
> 
> And its the gameplay that makes a game enjoyable.



I got to disagree, I played both games and a lot. WoW plays great, but is a bit on the easy side, AoC plays great also, but it's not as easy to play, and thats where people step back and say "this game plays like crap because I can't play it well".



Delta6326 said:


> dont forget that chart up there that 11.5million isn't including the private servers so then think how many people are out there



Private servers don't matter, because they get no revenue out of it. Also people will just put in some command to move 10x faster than normal or spawn random bosses where they want. They are fun to mess around on, but to login to and actually play on, not really fun at all to do over and over again.


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## Easo (Jun 9, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Also people will just put in some command to move 10x faster than normal or spawn random bosses where they want. They are fun to mess around on, but to login to and actually play on, not really fun at all to do over and over again.



Mangos says otherwise , but its still far away from retail.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Easo said:


> Mangos says otherwise , but its still far away from retail.



Whats Mangos?


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 9, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> I got to disagree, I played both games and a lot. WoW plays great, but is a bit on the easy side, AoC plays great also, but it's not as easy to play, and thats where people step back and say "this game plays like crap because I can't play it well".



Gameplay is personal preference.

11 Million think WoW > AoC


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Gameplay is personal preference.
> 
> 11 Million think WoW > AoC



Half of that 11 million are from China where the style of Conan hasn't ever been popular, so that rules out half the population of WoW from basically even considering it. And most of the others have lower end systems and started WoW after the game was up and running. Most didn't play at launch, they don't remember the servers being down for days at a time. So when AoC came out, they were use to a game that everything worked perfectly on, they never played previous MMO's, they never knew what an MMO launch was like (mostly ugly). AoC had a great launch by comparison to most other MMO's I played, but it obviously at launch couldn't compete with a game that had 4 years of polish. 

Either way, basically 5 - 6 million mostly have lower end hardware and didn't consider AoC. I played both, and sadly I got better FPS in AoC maxed out that I did in WoW, and thats pathetic. Both are great games, but their playstyle is drastically different, also AoC I think has the best healing classes out of any MMO on the market. I flat out hate healing, but in that game I prefer it, it's much more indepth, much more fun. In the end it comes down to a 4 year head start, half your gaming pop being in a place that likes it, lower end systems, and players being happy with what works. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, most the people I know were too afraid to even try anything else, and sadly they still are, most of them have only played WoW and never played another MMO, just sad.


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## v12dock (Jun 10, 2010)

I have played with several people in wow and the only video game they play is wow. A lot of people play because there friend plays. I really couldn't see wow players switching over to another MMO, simply because without it they wouldn't play any video games.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Half of that 11 million are from China where the style of Conan hasn't ever been popular, so that rules out half the population of WoW from basically even considering it. And most of the others have lower end systems and started WoW after the game was up and running. Most didn't play at launch, they don't remember the servers being down for days at a time. So when AoC came out, they were use to a game that everything worked perfectly on, they never played previous MMO's, they never knew what an MMO launch was like (mostly ugly). AoC had a great launch by comparison to most other MMO's I played, but it obviously at launch couldn't compete with a game that had 4 years of polish.
> 
> Either way, basically 5 - 6 million mostly have lower end hardware and didn't consider AoC. I played both, and sadly I got better FPS in AoC maxed out that I did in WoW, and thats pathetic. Both are great games, but their playstyle is drastically different, also AoC I think has the best healing classes out of any MMO on the market. I flat out hate healing, but in that game I prefer it, it's much more indepth, much more fun. In the end it comes down to a 4 year head start, half your gaming pop being in a place that likes it, lower end systems, and players being happy with what works. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, most the people I know were too afraid to even try anything else, and sadly they still are, most of them have only played WoW and never played another MMO, just sad.



So you're trying to say aoc is better, yet blizzard makes way more money, because they're making an inferior product.



If a product is good enough, it will catch on. iPhones. ipods. WoW. Netbooks. Pen Drives.

We've degraded into a community(PC Gamers as a whole) that gasps and orgasms at the sight of a game with good graphics and lackluster story/gameplay. Crysis? Lol. Look at why people bash the wii; one reason is ALWAYS inferior graphics. My Wii is used far more than my Xbox 360.

hell, people still play Diablo II. I do. It's just such an amazing game. I have a library of steam games, but nothing else I own has ever seen more game time than D2 did.


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## Papahyooie (Jun 10, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> Half of that 11 million are from China where the style of Conan hasn't ever been popular, so that rules out half the population of WoW from basically even considering it. And most of the others have lower end systems and started WoW after the game was up and running. Most didn't play at launch, they don't remember the servers being down for days at a time. So when AoC came out, they were use to a game that everything worked perfectly on, they never played previous MMO's, they never knew what an MMO launch was like (mostly ugly). AoC had a great launch by comparison to most other MMO's I played, but it obviously at launch couldn't compete with a game that had 4 years of polish.
> 
> Either way, basically 5 - 6 million mostly have lower end hardware and didn't consider AoC. I played both, and sadly I got better FPS in AoC maxed out that I did in WoW, and thats pathetic. Both are great games, but their playstyle is drastically different, also AoC I think has the best healing classes out of any MMO on the market. I flat out hate healing, but in that game I prefer it, it's much more indepth, much more fun. In the end it comes down to a 4 year head start, half your gaming pop being in a place that likes it, lower end systems, and players being happy with what works. As the saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, most the people I know were too afraid to even try anything else, and sadly they still are, most of them have only played WoW and never played another MMO, just sad.



When wow came out if was competing with everquest that had been out for years. Wow kicked everquest's ass, so don't use that argument. If it was a better game, it would eventually win.

That being said, wow has stupidly bad optimization, as I have said before. Guild wars runs at 40 fps on lots of integrated graphics and looks ten times better than wow.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2010)

Papahyooie said:


> That being said, wow has stupidly bad optimization, as I have said before. Guild wars runs at 40 fps on lots of integrated graphics and looks ten times better than wow.



A game engine is more than just graphics and details on the screen.

The WoW engine has to keep track of a crap ton of information at the same time; achievements, progress on such things, positioning, other players positioning, gear on those other players, enemy NPC's, friendly NPC's, loot generation, RNG for skills, and then basic combat mechanics of swinging, spell casting, combat controls such as polymorph, cyclone, all having complex diminishing return mechanics, threat, and then scripted NPC mechanics.

All of this not only has to be effecient on a low end system, but it has to scale to upwards of over 100 people at the same time, in the same area, in the same combat lock.

What other game supports 100 people beating on 1 target(Or eachother!), and plays on one of the widest arrays of hardware in the market?


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## v12dock (Jun 10, 2010)

Addons also have a impact on FPS


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> So you're trying to say aoc is better, yet blizzard makes way more money, because they're making an inferior product.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



You can't read very well can you? I know you want to get the point across that WoW is a great game, and the most popular MMO on the market, but guess what, thats already been proven over and over again, I know how many subs the game has, I only played it for 4.5 years.

AoC was never a game even meant to compete with WoW, it wasn't targeted at the same age groups, or maturity levels. And it also wasn't targeted at the same geographic audience, that European realistic gritty style was never ever popular in Asia, they like Anime crap and other crazy things, they don't believe in a badass with an axe chopping away, they believe in martial arts more style than crazyness. But, yes if you want to break it down to solely being an MMO so they are the same, then thats like saying a tire and a headlight both belong in the car so they are the same, so when your tires wear out next time, replace them with headlights. 

Graphics obviously isn't the most important thing out there, and we were talking about gameplay, so I'm not sure why any of that matters. I don't think you have played AoC at all, which would be amazing, because you would fit in with most other blind MMO players, judging things you haven't tried. AoC has an great storyline, and the tortage area is about the best MMO zone out of all MMO's out there, if you haven't tried that, then you shouldn't be judging and you are missing out.

I don't really agree with the Wii comparison at all though, I don't own a 360, but I got a PS3, look at Wii games, played my friends Wii's, just not enough to hold my attention long enough. Those games (here comes target audience again) are mostly aimed at people who don't play games. Nintendo didn't want to do another PS2 vs Xbox vs Gamecube, they seen what happened to Sega. They got smart, targeted the people that don't play games, and it worked, they found a whole different audience people that just want simple to understand, interactive, fun games. Something you can play for 15 min then be done and not feel like you need to sit for another hour to finish up that next quest or your time was wasted. But hey you can just forget about audience, or gameplay, or graphics, it's all in the numbers right? More subs means it's a better. And Mcdonalds sells more doubel cheeseburgers than WoW has subs, so leaving out the audience, the price point, the market it's in, makes the double cheeseburger superior to WoW in all of your categories, it also requires less hardware to run! 




Papahyooie said:


> When wow came out if was competing with everquest that had been out for years. Wow kicked everquest's ass, so don't use that argument. If it was a better game, it would eventually win.
> 
> That being said, wow has stupidly bad optimization, as I have said before. Guild wars runs at 40 fps on lots of integrated graphics and looks ten times better than wow.



Everquest had 700,000 subs at max, 700,000 subs is not a big market. AoC and Warhammer instantly hit like 700,000 subs when they released. WoW learned from EQ, it was much easier to level, it was newer, Blizzard is an extremely well known company. WoW didn't start peaking in players till right before BC came out, by that time it was polished, and read my post about, target audience is just drastically different. Remember over half of the subs for WoW are in Asia. I'm not arguing about subs here, I'm not argueing about what has more fans, I'm arguing about gameplay, skippy just deciding it was a good time to say something about gameplay then completely ignore that in his next post after I talked about it in response to him. 

And yeah, GW does look great, I been tempted to play a few times, but just never got into it.


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## DannibusX (Jun 10, 2010)

UO>WoW>AoC>Ham Sandwiches

Everyone will have their preferences when it comes to games.  It doesn't matter what genre.  Some people prefer WoW to AoC and vice versa because of playability or graphics or any other issue.  It's the same as the folks that prefer CoD MW2 to BFBC2, L4D to L4D2 or nVidia to ATi.

It will be argued on the internet until the end of time, just like Intel v AMD or the ability of an airplane to take off from a conveyor belt (Myth Confirmed!)

I laugh at people that try a new MMO when it launches and immediately come back to WoW because of the technical issues that plagued this game or that game.  Apparently they didn't play WoW when it launched because that game was ATROCIOUS for the first year and half.  Super lag, crashing servers, frequent disconnects and login servers taking a crap didn't make me quit.  I'll wait a while before I try a new MMO just because of growing pains now.

The important thing about these screenshots is that it appears Blizzard is looking at seriously attempting to upgrade the graphics for WoW.  I fully support it.  I think the game looks great, despite its visual shortcomings.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 10, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Addons also have a impact on FPS



Indeed. EXTREMELY few games have an elaborate, full featured, customizable LANGUAGE for their interface. I've noticed the biggest impact on Add-ons is either transparency, or just system ram in general. 8Gb, and I never even flinch with even a large amount of add-ons. I used to run ~138mb of them.


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## Papahyooie (Jun 10, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> A game engine is more than just graphics and details on the screen.
> 
> The WoW engine has to keep track of a crap ton of information at the same time; achievements, progress on such things, positioning, other players positioning, gear on those other players, enemy NPC's, friendly NPC's, loot generation, RNG for skills, and then basic combat mechanics of swinging, spell casting, combat controls such as polymorph, cyclone, all having complex diminishing return mechanics, threat, and then scripted NPC mechanics.
> 
> ...



Obviously you've never played guild wars factions. The story events where a bunch of parties go in together (at launch anyway... im sure they're dead now) had upwards of 100 players going in at one time. It was absolutely insane because the amount of enemies scaled to how many people were in the raid. And wow has never supported more than 40 people in a raid. Hell, they even killed the 40 man, now its just 25. Get more than 80 people together to go raid a city boss and see what happens... not pretty. GW looks better, and dealt with network issues MUCH better.



DannibusX said:


> The important thing about these screenshots is that it appears Blizzard is looking at seriously attempting to upgrade the graphics for WoW.  I fully support it.  I think the game looks great, despite its visual shortcomings.



I do however agree with this. I just wish they'd do it more. Thank GOD they are fixing the fugly checkerboard water though... it was bad... But you'd think if they could make nice shaders for water, they could make circles actually round.


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## DannibusX (Jun 10, 2010)

Papahyooie said:


> I do however agree with this. I just wish they'd do it more. Thank GOD they are fixing the fugly checkerboard water though... it was bad... But you'd think if they could make nice shaders for water, they could make circles actually round.



I remember reading an interview with a dev for Ultima Online a little while before WoW was released.  It was interesting because he talked out the code in the game.  He said he would be looking through the code and see that it was so mish-mashed with patches, hotfixes and other bits of code that it made it really difficult to optimize.  Blizzard is probably either going to run into these problems or already working around them.  EAMythic eventually put out a new client to work with the game, but I don't know if it was made from the ground up or a modified version of the original with slightly improved visuals.


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## Zubasa (Jun 10, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> A game engine is more than just graphics and details on the screen.
> 
> The WoW engine has to keep track of a crap ton of information at the same time; achievements, progress on such things, positioning, other players positioning, gear on those other players, enemy NPC's, friendly NPC's, loot generation, RNG for skills, and then basic combat mechanics of swinging, spell casting, combat controls such as polymorph, cyclone, all having complex diminishing return mechanics, threat, and then scripted NPC mechanics.
> 
> ...


You are getting mess up between client, server, and the actual game engine.

*In fact *"achievements, progress on such things, positioning, other players positioning, gear on those other players, enemy NPC's, friendly NPC's, loot generation, RNG for skills, and then basic combat mechanics of swinging, spell casting, combat controls such as polymorph, cyclone, all having complex diminishing return mechanics, threat, and then scripted NPC mechanics." *are done on the server side.*
*If these are done on the client side, you will see 10 million bots/ speed hacks/ item hacks / random shit happening by now.*

*So no, WoW indeed has an poorly coded client and badly optimized graphic engine.
The game don't even run more than 2 main threads, meaning it is only good for dual-core.
It might be fine for 2004, but certainly not for 2010.

Also, making a game un-optimized on high-end systems does-not make it anymore efficient on low-end machines.
It just means that the client runs like crap for everybody. :shadedshu*

As of which games' clients are done better than WoW?
Pretty much all of NC's games Aion/Lineage II you name it.
All these games looks and *runs better than WoW on my Notebook with HD 3200 onboard and k8(base) Turion Ultra.*
Oh yeah, for Lineage II make that 200 vs 1 instead of 100, and for Aion make that 200+ vs 200+.

*The most popular game with good game play does not mean good engine.*


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## animal007uk (Jun 10, 2010)

I play wow because i like the game not because it looks crap or good, also when you have a lot of REAL friends on there it makes it even more fun. It's one of them games you either like or hate, i used to say i would never play it because it looked boring but once i tryed it for myself i enjoyed it.


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## Zubasa (Jun 10, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> I play wow because i like the game not because it looks crap or good, also when you have a lot of REAL friends on there it makes it even more fun. It's one of them games you either like or hate, i used to say i would never play it because it looked boring but once i tryed it for myself i enjoyed it.


I agree with you, and a few close friends of mine plays WoW with me.
If we don't like the game we wouldn't bother posting in this thread


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## animal007uk (Jun 10, 2010)

just canceled my sub till new addon is out and due to lack of funds atm, weather is crap so not much work .

Anyone on EU servers and on dreanor?

Will check back later gonna try work today in this rain, need moneyyyy

P.S Be nice to see what this DX11 adds to the game if anything. Then again i personly dont have many probs with FPS or anything even when dalaran is full.


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## Frick (Jun 10, 2010)

Zubasa said:


> Also, making a game un-optimized on high-end systems does-not make it anymore efficient on low-end machines.
> It just means that the client runs like crap for everybody. :shadedshu[/B]



So not true. It runs bad on very high settings for everybody. It runs great for everybody if you keep the sliders one step from max.


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## animal007uk (Jun 10, 2010)

Runs fine for me on this system as long as i keep shadows down, but after messing with the setting it dont realy seem to make any diffrence to the graphics once u go past half way on the slider. it just kills FPS.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

Frick said:


> So not true. It runs bad on very high settings for everybody. It runs great for everybody if you keep the sliders one step from max.



It's mostly shadows, if you want decent shadows, you won't have FPS, so kind of a pointless slider.


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## v12dock (Jun 10, 2010)

animal007uk said:


> P.S Be nice to see what this DX11 adds to the game if anything. Then again i personly dont have many probs with FPS or anything even when dalaran is full.



I am assured that Blizzard will address FPS problems such as dalaran and WG. I am sure there well aware of the issue, just think of the people who are still running on Pentium 4s and 9800XTs

Some addons such as recount, pull there data from the users combat log. And other addons such as Omen use to pull there data from the clients end until a threat meter was built into the game.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

v12dock said:


> I am assured that Blizzard will address FPS problems such as dalaran and WG. I am sure there well aware of the issue, just think of the people who are still running on Pentium 4s and 9800XTs
> 
> Some addons such as recount, pull there data from the users combat log. And other addons such as Omen use to pull there data from the clients end until a threat meter was built into the game.



The FPS issues have been there really since BC. When the game released I had high end cards for the time (9800 Pro, then x850 Pro, then x1950 Pro) and I don't ever remember FPS issues. But the sweet thing about the game then was, that my friend with a craptastic single core and a MX400 could play just fine. That was true optimization, game ran great for everyone. But when BC came out, by that time hardware was much better, and they just never kept up o nthe optimization, instead you get the "we are optimized for lower end systems", no your not, your optimized for 2004 and you have just gotten too lazy to change anything. Back in 2004 the high end systems had no issues. But now they keep stacking on new shiny things and saying "Look what I can do!", but they don't optimize it for crap, they just tout that crap computers can play the game, and that high end comps can turn on shadows, but don't forget to mention that it destroys FPS. 

So now if you have a high end system that can run the best looking games on the market maxed out, if you try that with WoW you get bad FPS in Raids and in Dala, and if you have a low end system you run low settings and get bad FPS in Raids and in Dala.... so it don't matter what system you have, you basically will be lagging. They put horrible bandages on somethings, just like resilience. Everything in the game scaled wrong, they couldn't keep PvE damage and PvP damage right, so they put an arbitrary garbage stat out there to fix the boo boo. Instead of going back to the drawing board and fixing the numbers for real.


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## AlienIsGOD (Jun 10, 2010)

As long as they keep the raids fresh and different, i will continue to play.  I got my 25m Kingslayer title last week and my guild is 8/12 HM for ICC.  And the only time I usually get low FPS is in Dalaran and it drops to the mid 30s.  I could care less about DX11,  I want more challenging gameplay and less catering to the newbs and casual players.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

AlienIsGOD said:


> I want more challenging gameplay and less catering to the newbs and casual players.



And thats the other issue  I know aiming for the best isn't what everyone wants to do and thats fine, but some people are just simply lost. They won't know their abilities, or how to play in a group, which is fine if they want to solo, but if they cause wipes, it's just wasting other peoples time.


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## AlienIsGOD (Jun 10, 2010)

@ Kurgan, agreed.   I dont pug groups for 10m and quickie raids anymore as more often than not ppl dont understand thier roles, especially when its a tank or a healer.


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## Frick (Jun 10, 2010)

How do you move from being a noob without other players advice and support? You have to annoy some people sometimes if you want to advance as a player.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

Frick said:


> How do you move from being a noob without other players advice and support? You have to annoy some people sometimes if you want to advance as a player.



You shouldn't be completely lost after level 60, you should have a decent idea of how to play your character by then. And if you don't, look it up, people don't make instances groups as a training class, they usually are there for something and want to get done in a timely manner, the last thing they want to do is waste a lot of money on repair bills and time just so someone they don't know can learn how to play, which if they haven't learned the basics by a higher level they most likely just aren't going to get it anyways.


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## Frick (Jun 10, 2010)

1Kurgan1 said:


> You shouldn't be completely lost after level 60, you should have a decent idea of how to play your character by then. And if you don't, look it up, people don't make instances groups as a training class, they usually are there for something and want to get done in a timely manner, the last thing they want to do is waste a lot of money on repair bills and time just so someone they don't know can learn how to play, which if they haven't learned the basics by a higher level they most likely just aren't going to get it anyways.



That's true. I've never even been in a group before (with my level 80 hunter ), so I don't really know how to behave, but at least I know what I can and can't do with the character.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

Frick said:


> That's true. I've never even been in a group before (with my level 80 hunter ), so I don't really know how to behave, but at least I know what I can and can't do with the character.



Yeah, I mean I know some people aren't going to be the greatest, and they aren't competitive, everyones playing to have fun. But it's not fun to wipe over and over again and have people that don't know their class at all. I'm willing to help out friends and such learn how to play, but can't help everyone I don't know, it would make the game not fun for me.


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## Zubasa (Jun 10, 2010)

Frick said:


> So not true. It runs bad on very high settings for everybody. It runs great for everybody if you keep the sliders one step from max.


That does not prove your point.
That fact is many mmo games have much better FPS when running higher quality graphics than WoW.
Out-dated engine is out-dated.
The dynamic shadow slider pretty much needs to be off at all times for anything less than a mid-range system.


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## Papahyooie (Jun 10, 2010)

Everyone is arguing semantics here... whether it runs better on low end systems or high end systems or the same amount is irrelevant. What matters is that many games look WAY better, but run better as well. For the amount of eye candy we get in wow, (which is very little) the fps should be through the roof... a high end system should be able to run it on the highest settings at 200+ fps. (source engine games look way better, and they run at 100+ on my laptop) A low end computer should be able to play it at at least 30 fps, because the graphics simply aren't very complex. Hell, Morrowind looks about the same visual quality, and it plays on modern computers on integrated graphics, and it's notorious for being badly optimized. (discounting the higher rez textures on the newer armor. Those look alot better.)


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## v12dock (Jun 10, 2010)

The interface takes a tax, because running without it loaded I was getting 10FPS higher than with. And with cataclysm I read and have saw some major changes to the interface, hopefully that can squeeze a few more FPS out


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 10, 2010)

v12dock said:


> The interface takes a tax, because running without it loaded I was getting 10FPS higher than with. And with cataclysm I read and have saw some major changes to the interface, hopefully that can squeeze a few more FPS out



I just hope they went back to the drawing boards and overhauled the entire engine rather than tacking on new features it can't handle, the last thing it needs is DX11 when it can't handle all the additional doodads that have been tacked on so far.


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## v12dock (Jun 11, 2010)

Lemme get you some screenshots of what it looks like


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## v12dock (Jun 11, 2010)

I was not able to get a screenshot of the new talent tree and glyph interface on account that the interface is broken


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## Frick (Jun 11, 2010)

Ooo, archeology looks interesting.


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## v12dock (Jun 11, 2010)

http://www.wowtal.com/# Has talent builds for cataclysm for Priest ,Druid ,Rogue and Shaman.

Also fresh off MMO-Champion Continent-Wide Battlegrounds in Cataclysm!
- We're currently expecting both normal and rated battlegrounds to be cross-battlegroup (within a region) for the launch of Cataclysm. So, players queueing from anywhere in north america could play vs players on any north american battlegroup, etc.


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## 1Kurgan1 (Jun 12, 2010)

They have the talent trees up on mmo champion and wowhead also, and you can spec them and such.


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## Dippyskoodlez (Jun 12, 2010)

v12dock said:


> http://www.wowtal.com/# Has talent builds for cataclysm for Priest ,Druid ,Rogue and Shaman.
> 
> Also fresh off MMO-Champion Continent-Wide Battlegrounds in Cataclysm!
> - We're currently expecting both normal and rated battlegrounds to be cross-battlegroup (within a region) for the launch of Cataclysm. So, players queueing from anywhere in north america could play vs players on any north american battlegroup, etc.



Which also hopefully means cross realm whispers?

I can finally chat with my friends!


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## Papahyooie (Jun 12, 2010)

v12dock said:


> Also fresh off MMO-Champion Continent-Wide Battlegrounds in Cataclysm!




Damn, I was hoping for kalimdor vs eastern kingdoms BGs....


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## DannibusX (Jun 12, 2010)

Dippyskoodlez said:


> Which also hopefully means cross realm whispers?
> 
> I can finally chat with my friends!



With the upgrades to battle.net you're supposed to be able to whisper anyone playing any Blizzard game, so it's more than possible.


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## v12dock (Jun 12, 2010)

The new Battle.net commutations system is going to be implemented in patch 3.3.5 . The system works by entering your friends email ,then they approve and they will show up on your friends list by there real life name. And it syncs your real life friends across all your characters. Also the pre-cataclysm events are also coming with 3.3.5 but they will be switched on when the time is appropriate


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