Difference of Graphics Discussion

Yes to the high resolution and level of detail of L2 armor.

But a definitive no to their anime style. I know some of you love it, but I am an older player and find this exaggerated style with oversized swords and boobs annoying.

GW has a good mixture of european looks and anime influences. Not too extreme, which is nice.

Does not mean they could not make use of a better engine (GW2) or make some better weapon skins, agreed.

GW2 should offer more options and choices for high-end hardware, not just limit the design to average systems.

Shiny, but the anime style doesn't do it for me really.

I recently upgraded to a quad core with an Nvidia 8800 370meg card and having played various MMOs including WoW, Archlord & RF Online I can say that Guild Wars knocks all three of those into a cocked hat for environment graphics. It did even when I had my old card but now.... wow. EoTN's terrain is just gorgeous, no contest IMO.

I guess it's a case of priorities but I'd far rather be wandering a beautiful landscape than dragging a sword the length of my own body which I couldn't possibly lift and have my female characters look like they actually have room for their internal organs.

As long as GW2 at least matches the current GW standard of graphics, I don't care what other fancy-looking games are out there.

Too many games rely on fancy graphics as their main selling point. That's why Microsoft and Sony focused on specs, graphics/processing power etc for their latest consoles - so we could play "new" versions of the *yawn* same old games and franchises on them... just with fancier graphics. Nintendo is trouncing them both with the Wii - because instead of joining the graphics arms race, they added something NEW and FUN to the GAMEPLAY. I think there's a lesson to be learned there - graphics quality isn't so important after all.

Anyway - even if they aren't the most jaw-dropping, GW graphics are still great and atmospheric... the gameplay is great... and it works on low spec PC's. Better graphics would be cool, but not if it's at the expense of gameplay, development time, and supporting people who don't have the latest and greatest PC technology, or internet connection.

Gameplay first, graphics second!

And whoever thinks GW graphics are cartoonish, it's not that bad... take a look at WoW - now THAT's cartoonish, childishly so, straight out of Disney...

OP, run L2 on your PC, and take some screenshots. Compare that to the hi-res pic and see what you think.

Going overboard for next-gen graphics would probably have been a little silly for a game that is aimed at people who don't want to pay subscription fees. I suspect many of us are also not willing to overhaul our PC's each year - I know I'm not.

Do we really want a GW that requires multiple cores, 2 gigs of ram (minimum) and premium video card, no older than 6 months? Then find the game takes 5 minutes to load each map, with pre-rendering and what not?

That's the nightmare direction of PC games, AFAIC. They never even turn out to be worth the investment - with all the time/money going into eye-candy, you end up with a vapid, pale imitation of something you were playing last year.

Multicore is the future, why should it not be widely supported by 2009? 2GB of RAM is so cheap, you could kill people with it right now. Do you think the competetion sleeps? GW2 HAS to go beyond the current graphical capabilities of GW1.

It's not like GW2 would require you to have the latest hardware to be decently playable. They definitely know that GWs rather low requirements are an attractive "feature".. It just might offer more options for those who have more.

If you run a P4 with 1GB Ram in 2009, you should overthink if you're really a gamer, even when it's casual.

Of course I'm not saying that GW2 shouldn't go beyond GW1 - I mean't that I think ANet got GW1 completely right, in terms of the hardware demands it makes (or rather, *doesn't* make), and I hope GW2 doesn't end up going completely the other way.

It may seem odd, but I think one of the reasons I still play GW is because it fires up so damn quickly. All other games I play suffer from tedious loading times. It's also nice that I can run it on any of my systems and not just the most powerful.

I'd say multicore is already on us really. I bought a chip yesterday (for my second machine) and the online store I bought it from had core 2 duo chips from 1.8 to 2.13 for £60 - £100. That's peanuts compared to what they were six months ago. Most new machines already ship with core 2 duo as a base standard.

Offtopic - I'm disappointed that GW has no multicore support already. I have to reset the affinity in the task manager if I want to guarantee I don't crash while playing, every time I fire it up. Annoying really, I buy a bunch of components that make the game look beautiful and it crashes because of it.

I want that 2 handed sword (second pictures there) !!! Why can't we have 2H-swords.....

I think that most of the graphics look better than the GW graphics. It would be cool to have more skins and better looking armor, but they will focus on gw2(making money) than on an older game (We have your money already).

Maybe the so-so graphics in gw1 will make the graphics of gw2 look that much more awsome(eye candy) that they will sell more copies of the game. Who knows they think...

^ oh that look nice, Faer. How is it when compare to this? Gotta give it a try, I think.

L2 looks great on screenshots, but their animations are pathetic.

The run cycles are awful, theres no weight to their step. Their attacks are all about particle effects and flashy showboating.

I much prefer the nitty gritty hack and slash animations of Guild Wars. My personal favorite is the Dervish and Assasin attack animation sets. Beautiful and elegant and realistic (well...in comparison).

I fail to see how L2 is at all 'anime' style.

Nail on the head there, as usual.

I'd say if anything the game Guild Wars 2 needs to compete with in terms of environments and gritty realism will be Age of Conan. It's closer in style at least, and what's been shown so far is impressive but I haven't seen much of the characters or their animations.

WoW is looking tired graphically, but it's animations are very fluid although there's a fair amount of showboating and unecessarily large weaponry in that as well.

Soul Calibur? Devil May Cry?

The proportions of the face, body and style of the posture and hair falls into the realm of "realistic" anime style.

Guild Wars faces do not fall into "anime style", although they do use the long torso proportion (measure the length of your character's neck, its not realistic at all)

Click this link, and tell me you don't see anything 'anime' about it. I've watched my friend play it for a while, it's definitely anime-style.

Now, not that I have a problem with anime, in fact, I watch many different ones on a regular basis, I just prefer my RPG to be a little more realistic-looking. The realistic art of GW was one of the major factors that pulled me to it. Of course, the lack of any real sense of role play is kind of a drag, and one of the things I hope is enhanced in GW2.

i've played both L2 and GW. GW, while lacking the flashy graphics of L2, is a much more refined game than L2.

as many have already said, L2 is a very primitive game beneath the flashy graphics. the animations are very poor and repetitive. the landscape is essentially one dimensional with changes in elevation only. it functions on click to move, but lacking pretty much all pathing. combat is very clumsy, because it lacks a real targetting system.

essentially, L2 is a game to look pretty in, while GW is a game that can be played.

I think Guild Wars can easily look much more amazing with a better lighting system, and normal mapping (as optional, high end features), maybe some displacement baking in the terrain to smooth it out (by that i mean make it more rough).