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yea i think its about time they upgraded the doom looking water effects im really glad they did this. altho i did watch this one video that had was showing cataclysm : Deepholm and it seemed the water reflexions were way off. it looked completly wrong. but then again it was the Beta so i could be wrong :) great vid ! 5 *
What's impressive about this change to me is the level of artistic maturity and restraint Blizzard continues to display.I bet the new water shaders went through a long artistic vetting process. Blizzard definitely seems to understand that the style palette they have created for WoW's environment is sort of walking that delicate arête of visual cohesiveness that's so easy to slip from.Adding parallax mapping to the cobblestones of Stormwind might be too garish. Adding physical waves to the ocean might fight too much with the fun, cartoonish appearance of the rest of the game world. Mixing just a glint of liquidity to the water is probably just enough to keep everyone interested, yet unostentatious enough to demonstrate respect for the game environment and the story it helps tell.
I dont understand why they can't improve the graphics and leave the old ones in the game, allowing people with lower end computers to keep playing. Hell, they could even make it an optional patch! So the lower-end comp argument is bull$%^&. Its just that they are too lazy to completely redo the game; might aswell call it WoW2.
Anyone that frequently plays FPS games such as myself will likely be dissapointed with new water. It's still about 6 years behind games such as Farcry (2004) which had much nicer looking water effects using only DX9.0bPerhaps the media i've seen recently doesn't show it properly, but this is what I was hoping to see: (detailed reflections and convincing 3D shader effects)http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/images/news/2009/december/cata_water_2.jpg
This isn't the complete water, the reflections are not running right. Here is a video of real new water: This is Blizzard running it on the real maximum graphics setting.
this just what wow needs a terrain overhaul for the lest cared about part of wow.stuff like ground textures ect needed this WAY more then water.
It gave me a headache watching that water flow by so quickly. Or maybe that was because that it was running at about 5 FPS and stuttering horribly.. I'll probably just stick with the old water.