I’ve recently started to mess around with WoW which lead me to the realization that seemingly outdated graphics can have their advantages.
Aside from obvious things like a silky smooth, constant framerate no matter what, older graphics are also miles away from the uncanny valley and if done well invoke an almost comic-like atmosphere.
In Star Trek Online for example you almost expect voiceovers and cut-scenes but in WoW your imagination is already much more engaged by filling in the gaps of low polygon models and low resolution textures. So if you just read that a Gnome looks at an Orcish letter, folds it in half, takes a smell at it and proclaims that it could be toilet-paper it is not breaking the immersion. Continue Reading…
Tag Archive - STO
The advantages of unrealistic graphics
I got the green glow under my ship
One of the mission rewards of this week’s featured episode Coliseum is a Reman Prototype Covariant Shield. It changes the look of your ship (which can be disabled in the right-click menu) to have this dark, shiny almost chrome-like texture. Additionally it changes the traditional red and blue of the warp nacelles to teal and even adds some fancy textures to the pylons.
A brief overview of the MMOs I’ve played over the years.
Anarchy Online: I started when the Shadowlands expansion came out, joined an RP guild, played a Nano-something (basically a mage class) and a martial artist. It was fun for a while but eventually I quit playing because grinding randomly generated missions became tiresome. And let’s not even talk about non-instanced dungeons with seemingly hundreds of people spawn-camping the bosses.
EVE Online: I started my spacefaring career as a miner (Doesn’t everyone?). Then I started doing missions. Then I mined in a bigger ship. Then I did missions in a bigger ship. I did this until I was in a Hulk for mining and a Battleship for doing missions. Continue Reading…
