SOUL

How did blizzard get so many of those little ability icons? They buy them or make them all?

There is like tens of thousands of them in wow, with only a few hundred being used, and the favorites being used over and over again for items and abilities while some obscure and cool icons stay as macros only

They made them all over the years. A lot of the icons are certainly just old versions of current ones

>not so fast blizzard

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kinda weird that undead was prioritized as a horde race before trolls

How do you like the game now guys?
I may have lost the battle, but I won the war.

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youtube.com/watch?v=WwhGBixG2_k

Insane how such a small team could create something that epic. Nowadays, everyone act like you need a team of fucking 400, or something, to create a wow-killer. Crazy. All you need is a small team of dedicated and merry men, the hobbit and the lord of the rings showed us that that was all you needed...

How DARE most of those people be white and male.

WC3 and early WoW had so much fucking soul. You HAD to be there.

Interesting how little changed from that time to when they finally released wow. Some things were barely changed at all.

The art design was always there and consistent because they had good direction, it was just a matter of being able to implement it in the engine.

the character creation screen is just oozing with soul

This kinda just makes me feel sad.

It's almost 100 percent of because of the demand for better looking photorealistic graphics and it all trickles down from there. If you're one of the retards who posts "GAWD THIS LOOKS LIKE A PS2 GAME!1!" when a new game has one visible seem on its model you are part of the problem.

The models and texturing were so easy. You can do the same quality of game easier with the tools available today honestly. Like way easier. But it’s immense work making something with todays graphical fidelity, sound quality etc. It just adds a huge level of complexity to everything

>dwarf description
you couldn't do that today huh.

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Right, but to be fair, it's easier than ever before to create nice looking characters and environments and stuff. I mean, unreal engine has a tool where you can just randomly generate a super realistic-looking person now. All that talk about how it takes weeks to create one random person and whatnot, doesn't exist anymore, it's all in the past. You just press a button and boop, you have an npc. And there are plenty of tools that you can use to modify said npc, so that isn't very time-consuming, either. Face it, making good-looking games these days, is easier than ever. Shit devs have no excuses anymore.

You pretty much just confirmed you are part of the problem.
>You just press a button and boop, you have an npc
Oh really nigger? Show me the program that models, rigs and animates a fresh new 3D model that wasn't bought from an asset store with one button press. That doesn't exist you fucking moron. You have literally no clue what you're talking about but you will continue to demand more from devs on the baseless claim that they are being lazy. No user, making new 3D models is VERY time consuming, then you need to rig them and then you need to animate them and then you need to make sure they work and look good with everything else going on like the lighting engine. You clearly have no fucking clue how much time and skill this takes to make something photorealistic that's actually new.

there are no roads back... there are no roads back

no diversity hires

based Thunderboltchad

a lot of them were from wc3 as well.

I don't think there's a genuine demand for photorealistic graphics, it's just what some incompetent devs and marketers push for. Artstyle has always been king.

the diversity department at blizzard is bigger than this team

It was a very different time.
These guys were burning out HARD, they did 60 to 100 hours of work a for months.
Did they get payed handsomely? Not really, they were paid 50'000$ per year, which was bellow average back in the days.

Were the heads of the company more friendly than now? Yes, they were gamers. Is Bobby Kotick a gamer?

People nowadays don't want to work for free, back in the days workers were way more easily exploited.
Was the game fun in the end and made with passion? Sure.
Were the devs really well compensated? Probalby not considering the amazing game they made.

Sources: The World of Warcraft Diary: A Journal of Computer Game Development

diversity dept, HR dept, marketing etc etc pretty much any department that does no work will be bigger

I think a lot of modern devs simply have no clue what they are doing. Lack of programming skills aside, if you watch old dev commentaries of games like TF2 they explain a lot of their design process, like how the classes needed to be very visually distinct in order for players to easily be able to tell them apart at a moment's glance even in a really chaotic fight. Things like consistent art design, visual clarity, replayability, pacing and all that stuff seems lost.

youtu.be/OVyzeZA5p7Q

>I don't think there's a genuine demand for photorealistic graphics
Then you are actually retarded. Have you ever seen a From soft game thread on this site? One of the biggest thing detractors of them always go to is how "shit" the graphics are even though their games usually have better artstyle and atmosphere than their contemporaries. Even on this site which probably places a much greater importance on artstyle over graphical fidelity than anywhere else you still get morons dismissing a game entirely based on the fact that it's not the newest and shiniest looking game. This only gets worse with normies. I actually don't know how you can be this out of touch. It's literally the only thing certain normies care about when they watch a trailer because they're too stupid or don't play enough video games to actually gauge how gameplay looks and whether or not they would like it. Again look at Dark Souls, not very popular when it came out except with video game enthusiasts but once enough enthusiast gave it attention normies tried it realized they liked the gameplay. Most of them were never going to consider it when it came out on the 360 though because it doesn't look as good as Skyrim or the newest Call of Duty so it must be shit!

if WC3 and WoW were made at the same time they might have put a higher emphasis on the scourge/plague and less on Thrall meeting the Darkspear and going to Kalimdor

Bruhh, unreal engine has a fucking tool that magically creates fucking npc's outta nowhere, it was a major league-feature for the fifth version of the engine, dude...

I have a pretty hard time believing you are still arguing in earnest.

My theory is the smart and talented game developers have left the industry and work at Facebook and Google, making more money for less hours worked.

These days the people who want to work for Blizzard are cal arts students who don't really like video games. They like the art or the characters in the games, but not the games themselves.

Those femtrolls had some nice tits.

It's pretty wild that in 2022 a journalist still looks like this

Yeh, that's admittedly not cool. When one thinks of the billions wow made in its' prime, the company could easily have given each of them a million bucks for their hard work. Or two, even, it would still literally just be a drop in blizzard's collective bucket. The world just ain't fair, broskies...

>One of the biggest thing detractors of them always go to is how "shit" the graphics are even though their games usually have better artstyle and atmosphere than their contemporaries.
thats because their games look like blurry plastic garbage that japs love, no one is asking for photo realism they just dont want it looking like shit you low effort low iq ape

In fromsoftware's case, it's kind of justified. Their games DO look pretty shitty. All brown or light-brown and muddy. That's the worst, they all look so blurry and muddy.

Well, I am, so..?

There was a WoW teaser trailer on the WC3 install disks.
youtube.com/watch?v=LZtzy80n8WI

I don't think that's a good example. Graphics barely changing from Dark Souls to Elden Ring would be fine if other things to priority but as a lot of people have pointed out From has been making the same game for at least a decade now. Adding an open world isn't an excuse since the Demon's remake on PS5 looks and plays amazing and the open world in ER is mostly copy pasted and empty. I'd rather take Dark Souls 4 with Demon's remake graphics. I expected ER to at least rival the remake in looks not because 'muh realism' but because it's newer and they're no strangers to this genre and they can make it look great for PC. There are prettier games than the Souls series and that's perfectly fine since that was never the focus of these games but just stagnating for no reason seems odd to me.

I actively avoid any discussion of souls games because all the fans and haters seem to be equally retarded. I don't particularly care much about graphics, the only thing I've noticed from soulswebms is that things seem a little blurry at times. Still, that doesn't explain how games like Minecraft, TF2 or Borderlands can be popular when their graphics are either dogshit or a unique artstyle.

>no one is asking for photo realism
The majority of the western video game market (aka the biggest one) is and you are exceedingly out of touch if you think that isn't true.

>In fromsoftware's case, it's kind of justified. Their games DO look pretty shitty.
I know, that was why I used them as an example. Especially earlier on with like DeS and DaS1. That was my entire point. Those games didn't sell well because they didn't grab people's attention visually. They we're however sleeper hits, meaning people SHOULD have bought them. They should have sold well but didn't at first until people found out they liked the gameplay.

Are there any MMOs today that have soul? FF14 seems like you have to already be invested in FF to fully enjoy, and I literally haven't looked at any other MMO besides guild wars 2 like 6 years ago.

Where are the women and black people?

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This is just a proof of concept build in warcraft 3, that's why it doesn't resemble wow at all.
this is an actual pre-alpha screenshot

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Well, they do say "those who do, do. Those who don't, teach". A lot of the journalists are probably guys who wish they were smart enough to be able to make games, but are only smart enough to critique them. Like roger ebert, or something. Legendary movie critic, terrible movie maker. What was that movie of his called? I remember reading how he tried making a movie when he was younger, but it completely fucking tanked and he then decided to be a nitpicky elitist movie critic, instead.

>fifty white guys, one mexican chad and an asian programmer

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>or a unique artstyle.
I literally never said you can't make a game with a unique artstyle and have it succeed. I said the majority of normies pass on a game without photorealistic graphics and they do. Even people who are into games on here do it though I think it's less frequent. I only used Dark Souls as an example because as someone else already agreed with me, they do genuinely look bad for the generation they are from. That was my point. A game that is now considered a modern classic by many people originally had trouble building an audience. DeS sold like absolute shit. You are crazy if you think tons of people didn't see the game and pass on it based on visuals alone.

DeS wasnt a looker but DS1 actually looked pretty alright for 2011, it had some insane textures for the time and it had good reflective metals and aesthetic and much better animation than something like Skyrim

Malbourn... forgive me...

You are part of the problem I was explaining before. You clearly know nothing about game development but still demand more thus we get more inflated budgets and bigger teams. This was my original argument and you are just proving that it is true. You demand more because it's a sequel even though at some point you cannot realistically give people more. There is a limit user and to break that limit you need to hire more people. Again, this is the only point I was trying to make originally, about why small dev teams are no longer a thing at big companies. It's because of people like you.

youtube.com/watch?v=hnM1q6lpOUY
iiirc the collector's edition of roc had actual gameplay footage

Vidya graphics have barely evolved from the 2010 era, and most of that was evolution in terms of lighting and making more things automatic and calculated real time.

Compare BF3 to BF2042, and BF3 just looks better. Like BF3 looks like a next-gen sequel to BF2042. The issue has nothing to do with customer demand and everything to do with less competent and less passionate people working on games, and publishers using wedge issues and low quality hires to keep salaries down.

This is also true, they can also survive making indie games these days

Blizzard soaked up a shit load of good talent back in the day and slowly like it slip away, mainly due to shit pay really.

I saw unprecedented growth in every area not just graphics throughout the 90s and early 00s in gaming and then it stopped. Sure everything has a limit and I'm not asking for photorealism just that they keep up with a game that came out 2 years ago, a game that is a remake of the same game they've been making for over a decade. What did we get in return? A huge empty copy pasted world? Every other feature like jumping, power stancing, quests, infusions, spells has been in previous titles (except the horse). Why can they realistically not give people more? Are you saying that the current From dev team is too small or incompetent to push the envelope? That they've reached their technological limit and should be allowed to stagnate?
>You demand more because it's a sequel even though at some point you cannot realistically give people more
Where is the limit and why?

>and everything to do with less competent and less passionate people working on games, and publishers using wedge issues and low quality hires to keep salaries down.
Almost like if you need to keep making teams bigger then you have to do these things. You really are just agreeing with me but placing the blame on the companies and the employees rather than the consumers who are demanding impossible shit. You are like so many other people I have replied to where you clearly don't understand making games on a visual level if you think that jumps can happen anymore like they were in the early 2000s. Not only that you are kind of ignoring how much the industry has started catering to video games. user, do you even understand how much money is put towards developing graphics cards than used to be? Video games literally drive that sector now, they didn't use to. Despite the fact that computer manufacturers are now creating separate special processing units specifically for graphics and you still are not satisfied with the progress shows how insanely unreasonable you are being. user you are never going to experience the graphical difference between the PS and PS2 again, we are reaching an upper limit on lots of things than can only be solved on a hardware level, and that's happening constantly everyday.

They worked on titan and overwatch, basically proto fortnite shit

>I said the majority of normies pass on a game without photorealistic graphics and they do.
Tons of normies play shit with terrible graphics like Minecraft or Among Us. Fortnite is fucking massive and it has cartoony graphics. I think you're confusing the CoD/Xbox gamer brah crowd for all of gaming. Shit like Demon Souls probably sold poorly because it was a niché market outside of Japan and few people even knew about Souls games until DS became infamous, and even then I don't the genre itself is what's popular, some people wanted to try it because they heard of it's 'legendary difficulty'