[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Factor of 16

[Michael Hartman]

Mike Rozak wrote:

> While Runescape's and WoW's choice of technology seems to have served them well, I don't think their solutions were particularly elegant: To use WoW as an example, players with retirement-age systems couldn't play WoW at all, and people with bleeding-edge systems didn't get any extra eye candy. 2/3 of the player base was unhappy, either because they couldn't play the game, or because they had just bought a Ferrari and were forced to drive it at 40 kmph.

I don't think 2/3rds of the people were unhappy at all. I bought two 
brand new gaming computers during the time I played WoW, and I was never 
unhappy with the graphics.

Something that is getting severely lost in the modern era of PC games is 
that "art" is a lot more important than "graphics."

EQII and Vanguard look bad. The character models are off. They animate 
oddly. Their artists just aren't that amazing. The same goes for Oblivion.

Who cares how many bazillion polygons are used to draw something, when 
that something has steam coming up from it and is mostly attractive to 
flies.

I think the wisest thing to do nowadays is go for average graphics 
technologically, and take that money savings and spend it on good artists.

-- 
Michael Hartman, J.D. (http://www.frogdice.com)
President & CEO, Frogdice, Inc.
University of Georgia School of Law, 1995-1998
Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, 1990-1994