Forgive me if this runs long, but I hope I can help some people understand the reason WoW runs so well, and how it can be improved graphically.

First, about me. Until the middle of last year, I worked as a 3d graphical designer for a company who I won't mention, but did produce their own MMO. Sadly, that one died rather early on, with the servers vanishing less than a year after the game was produced. (The game was PvP based in a fantasy world. If you know the name, then you know the company.) Now, when it comes to producing character models and locations, I'm something of an expert. I've been doing this for years both in the public and private sectors, with some work done for just myself, with others done for companies I've worked for.

I want to touch first on WoW as it is and why it looks that way.

When WoW came out, about five years ago, the average computer was running a mid range DirectX, I think 5 or 6 being the average, and typically had around 1gig of RAM. That's on a good system. Most had maybe 256, or 512. Software wise, pixelshader wasn't out yet, at least not in a stable format, and rendering capacity was considerably lower.

It's because of this, the WoW models look somewhat blocky, as well as the old world content not having "aerial" views. Meaning that if you were to get above most buildings, like Stormwind, you'd find that there's nothing up there. Just empty space where the roof should be. This is an indicator of a design style called "minimalist." Basically the idea being that if there's a location that the player shouldn't get to, then you don't need to render it. This also speaks of the software of the time. Up until a few years ago, rendering software, well it wasn't too bright. You see, currently, most software (I say most as there are exceptions) figures out where your character is looking, extrapolates what your character can and can not see, and then figures out what to render. Meaning that if you can't see it, it doesn't render the triangles (more on that term later). You can kinda see this in action by dialing down the view distance.

Back in the day when WoW came out, this wasn't the case. The software would try to render EVERYTHING. That's why it's not uncommon to have major lag in cities (I think Dalaran is still rendered this way) and then be fine once you get outside. The reasoning being that the more populated the room is, the more triangles that need to be drawn, and the more details that have to be rendered. Makes for messy work, but it's done well so far.

Now by now I bet you're wondering "What does Shads mean by "triangles?" Well, a triangle, sometimes called a poly, is a unit of measurement in rendering software. Your average character model, even the low grade current ones, has between two and three hundred thousand triangles. In fact, in some cases, when you add armor and gear, there's probably five times as many triangles. You see, in rendering, a true curve is impossible. Rather, the designer will use a polygon that though called a cylinder, has "sides". The more "sides" you place on the poly, the more round it looks. However this brings with it a problem, because the more sides you have, the more polys it takes to draw those sides, and the higher the poly count goes.

As a general rule, the lower the polys, the faster a game runs.

So, how can WoW Hope to improve this? First things first it'll take work. Remember, most of their gamers are using older computers. Even if you've updated in the past few years, it's highly unlikely that you've got the top end Alien system, built only for gaming. Because of this, WoW is going to have to...well, cheat.

The first step is better graphics. However, you don't have to make your texture (graphic) overly detailed to make things better. In fact, it's possible for a skilled texture designer (which I am not, no matter how many times I try) to take a photo realistic texture and "skin" a simple box polygon, and make the thing look like it has brick texture, and definition.

If WoW updates the skins on the models, then that's your first step. It doesn't require a total rebuild of the model frames, which would push polys up and push any timeline back months, or even years.

The second step is something relatively new. "Bump Mapping".

By using normals and bump mapping (which can be disabled on lower systems) It's possible to make a perfectly flat texture look like it has definition. As in the case of the brick box I mentioned earlier, you can make a surface look like it has shadows, edges, and definition, even when there's nothing there but a flat two triangle surface.

The third method would be to refine the current models. This doesn't mean scrap them and head back to the drawing board, but rather as in the case of the new druid forms, to "refine" what you already have. I can't tell you how many times I've found myself doing this. Creating a character model for a game so the testers have something, anything, to work with; only to go back weeks or even months later and rebuild or refine the model. Rounding the edges here, smoothing things there, any little bit of work that helps.

Well, that ran longer than I hoped. There's much more that I could tell you, but as it's rather late I think I'll leave it there.

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