High Graphics RUINS MMORPG's (and how to fix it) 

One thing left out was production cost. The higher the graphics, the more it costs to produce the game. The more the developer spends on graphical production, the less resources it has to focus on gameplay, music, story, testing, etc.

"Large shoulder pads. Big hands. Blocky, chunky scenery" "Oh yes, Warhammer" "NO!"

As long as everything isn't blurry and I can understand what I'm seeing, I am perfectly fine with "bad" graphics. The game just also has to have good gameplay and maybe a good story.

There's a lot of conflation in point one, AnorLondo isn't stylistic because of less graphics, an art style and fidelity aren't mutually exclusive.

I can at least say I've grown tired of everyone pushing the graphics during marketing. They act like that's all you need to make a game good.

GW2 is extremely stylish in my opinion. And the artstyle is very memorable, an amalgamation of "Eastern" and "Western" graphical styles. The realistic proportions are from the "West". The wide range of beautiful colours and a wealth of surface detail are from the "East". I agree that Black Desert Online takes photorealism a bit too far, though Also, the term "WoW Clone" always refers to Gameplay, much more than to Graphics.

I'm kind of in the middle on this issue. I felt like the semi-realistic look of Elder Scrolls Online was refreshing. I got so sick of the blizzard style of graphics for so many years. But I can also see how Black Desert online takes it a bit too far.

I have to disagree. A photorealistic approach is not incompatible with a visual style. Elder Scrolls Online is a great example of this. The zones have very distinctive architecture, creature design, vegetation, landscapes, , armor and weapon styles -- yes, all presented photorealistically, but I'd never mistake a scene or character from BDO or Tera or (especially) GW2 for one from ESO. And while a good argument can be made about accessibility for those with lower-end systems, there's no case to be made that the graphics "ruin" MMORPGs -- if that were true, BDO, ESO, GW2, etc., would never have risen to the top 10 and stayed there for so many years. Finally, as others have pointed out, not everyone can build better pictures in their heads than a graphics designer can build on screen. I play TTRPGs as well, but I have no idea what the environment looks like, what my characters or my allies or my enemies look like. On the other hand, I have starkly vivid memories of the Pale Tree and Zhaitan and Eir and the Black Citadel in GW2, of Elden Root and King Jorunn and Coldharbour and Lord Vivec in ESO--far superior to anything I could have envisioned myself.

i agree for the most part, but gw2 definitely has it's own style, and it is amazing. I don't like super cartoony graphics, but i also hate hyper realistic graphics in rpg's. gw2 strikes a perfect balance and it up there with wow in terms of style.

This is the reason I like the MMORPG Wakfu so much. It's got it's problems like most games, and it's incredibly niche due to being a turn-based tactical combat system, but the thing that I always appreciate is that it very clearly at any point in time has a hand drawn art style that no game outside of the company's own looks like. As an isometric game that uses 2D artwork to make up both it's environments and character models, there's always a charm that keeps me coming back because the personality it has is so unique in the MMO space.

Good thing games with graphics are a thing since I have aphantasia. It's pretty much impossible for me to picture things in my mind😭

Gw2 definitely has a distinct style with it's water colored background

There are actually text based MMOs called MUDs that use text commands. Can't remember the name, but there was one that was extremely thorough, allowing you to interact with almost anything within the world.

I would say Guild Wars 2 hhas style for sure - it looks like an oil painting.

I think a distinction has to be made here between something that looks good and something that is realistic. Good graphics =/ realism, realistic would be something like Black Desert Online where the scenery and monsters all have some sort of realistic proportion and high end textures. This makes the graphics and scenery look very real, but also very uninspired and it does not give you the sense of wonder that, let's say, World of Warcraft has. WoW has this huge landscape with oversized buildings, foliage, creatures and this all helps in giving you a sense of wonder and amazement while running through cities, villages and the general environment without having exceptionally good or realistic graphics. That does not mean that WoW would be worse or would be any less inspiring if you would up the amount of polygons or increase the detail in the textures. What would hurt the graphics is if you would make them realistic and closer to the real world which brings me to my point. I DON'T WANT A WORLD THAT LOOKS REALISTIC. I can look out of my window and see a realistic tree, look at the ground and see Ultra HD 4K grass. I don't want to play in the same world as which I live. The sense of adventure comes from being somewhere else and exploring a world that is foreign, has secrets and something to marvel at when you traverse it. Striving for photo-realism won't help this in any shape or form. That does not mean the game has to look bad to let your mind do the work, good looking games can also feel very immersive when done the right way (of course). Take for example games like, ABZU, Ori and the Blind forest, Celeste etc.... All very good looking games but not realistic and this is what we should be striving for IMO. This brings me to a very personal opinion that some may agree with or disagree with. I personally feel disconnected from a game that looks like it is 20 years old. I have never played Everquest, Runescape, Morrowind and the like when they were just released. Heck I did not even play World of Warcraft till Legion came out. I am not old enough for that and would have loved to experience the golden age of MMO's but sadly I did/could not. I have tried playing some of these games but I just could not get into it due to the way they played and looked (although I have played Metin 2 which does not look very impressive to say the least). In my opinion good graphics help giving you a sense of immersion while playing. The same reason that combat is better when it has some weight to it and it FEELS like you are actually doing something. Graphics can help giving you that feeling of immersion but it never should be realistic, that is one of the reasons I never really stopped to look at the world in BDO but I did in WoW and TERA despite BDO looking absolutely stunning. Make it to realistic and you still have immersion but no feelings of wonder and amazement at the world, but only at how it was made. One minor thing that is very much neglected is that the people that desire the so called "worse" graphics grew up with them. In my opinion the younger generations are not used to seeing and playing a "bad" looking game. This makes the barrier to entry very high for them and generally makes the game unappealing. This is something to consider since we need newer players to join the ranks of MMORPG players to keep the genre alive. All in all I think that while we should not be striving for realism, but I think the industry and the games as a whole can benefit from having good looking (possibly stylized) graphics. Not only might this help with immersion but also with player acquisition and possibly retention of those players which would benefit us all. Now apologies for the long comment and if you made it all the way through thanks for reading although I might have repeated myself several times. PS. I do not disagree with what is said in the video regarding hardware and imagination I think you were spot on but I felt like there needed to be some distinction. PPS. Also, can you do a video on combat? I am very interested to see what your stance is on that, since I personally love the way TERA and BDO do their combat for example but some people swear by TAB targeting like Wow, FFXIV and the like.

GW2 I think it has a graphic style of oil paintings, not only the scenarios but the cinematics and dialogues of the story, or loading screens look like pictures or paintings, it seems to me a great style. I don't know if other mmorpg use that style.

Another great video I have to agree with. I also don't like how the topic is typically discussed. For example, when someone says "stylized" graphics, everyone instantly assumes that means something is cartoonish.... which is not the case at all. It just means a distinct art style that makes your game stand out and is memorable.

While WoW's graphics are unique, they have improved substantially over the years. I think there's room for both.

Haven't finished the video yet but this is something I've been thinking a lot of about myself lately. I routinely go back and play old games I've not played before which naturally tend to be graphically not as impressive but somehow I find myself far more immersed. Another thing is that a lot of games nowadays choose the same stylistic approach (cartoony WoW-esque style/super flash korean-mmo style/grey+brown 'realistic' style) which results in most games looking.. samey. That's fine if you're into those styles but what if you're not? Personally I'm more into down-to-earth stylistic choice and it's really hard to find games with that style. In addition to that, a lot of the games ruin immersion and stylistic consistency with stupid items like school-girl outfits or 3-piece-suits in somewhat MEDIEVAL FANTASY games. This isn't limited to MMO's either, there's very few game worlds in the last decade I can honestly believe in. Dark Souls, Bloodborne, BoTW, Witcher 2/3 are the few games where I could really get immersed. Just a little rant, gonna continue watching the video now.

Okami was made in 2006 on the PS2. Its super stylized... but it still looks good today. Some of the background textures don't quite hold up in HD on a big enough screen, but overall it still looks just as good as it ever did. Style is important.

I'd rather play graphical MMO's compared to text-based MMO's. I just don't like the idea of having nothing to look at and I have to remember everything that's been said to me in text, which I can't. I tried one once but gave up in a few minutes just because I can't remember everything in the world and commands you could use were vague as well so I didn't know what could be done or how. Sometimes you entered a room which contained some item but the game didn't tell you. I don't want to use dozens of commands just to figure out if there was any object in the room by typing text commands over and over again. The problem I have with graphics in games today is that some games have really great and realistic graphics in them but boring content or hardly any content at all, because the developers just want to make a beautiful game, not a playable game. I would rather play a game with average graphics with lots of interesting content than play a truely beautiful game which is boring from start to finish and you get no satisfaction from playing it except the few oooh's and wow's from the graphics. But the FFXIV MMO I'm playing now has massive content and great visuals as well so I'm playing this one atm.

Which MMO's are doing this again? The top 10 MMOs on MMO population all have their own style.

Style is really important, but with some MMOs - specifically those based on existing visual media* - you can be very limited. Anything Star Wars, LotR or Warhammer - for just 3 examples - has an existing visual canon which can't be easily disregarded. * Or with an adaptation into a visual medium

Eso has its own style man. Graphics have their own elder scrolls twist, but more than anything, you can’t forget that music

A lot of the video was talking about imagination and how engaging that can be how the first MMOs were text based. Whenever people talk about this I always think about aphantasia and low functioning prophantasia which are huge barriers for some people into ttrpgs and imagination/text based games.

This really put into perspective why my favorite games are my favorite games.

I am gonna disagree with 1:40 to an extent. People seek something to relate too, so sometimes, physical visualization is important.

Its a bit odd that you praise WoW for its unique style when I immediately thought that it looks basically the same as runescape, minecraft, ff7, 8, and 9. But lumped GW2 in with "photo realism" when GW2's decision to *forgo* photo realism for a "painting" style was one of its primary lauded features. GW2 sets itself apart from the rest, while pretty much every other mmo basically looks like either a BDO clone or a WoW clone.

Wildstar had it's own, unique style and we all know how it turned out.

Shortly after Burning Legion came out for WoW, I can still recall being able to run it on Win 98SE, even though XP was considered the new minimum. A few patches later and I still had to drop it due to crashing every 20-30 minutes, but it was still fascinating that it worked for that long on my potato.

It's funny, with WoW as well, because they did very VERY few risky things other than their super unique art style, and they still captured imaginations. Being good isn't good if everything around you is just as good.

And then there's Babylon's Fall, a game which sought a distinctive style and suffers for it as a result. "Realistic" is also a style....and it has a market.

You ignored the fact that those early MMOs pushed the hardware of the players to the limit of the time as well. EQ and other early MMOs had to rely upon CPU cycles to push the polygons as 3D cards were relatively rare and expensive. They didn't become standard until 2001-2002.

Josh well i agree with you that imagination play big role but that something from the past , think about it this way...imagine someone eat beans all his life and he has no choice but to eat it he would't care about that ( food = graphic ) , but if that person taste pizza hut or current fast food the moment he will put beans again in his mouth he will ( throw out = immersion breaking ) , because we see alot of high graphic in our time the moment we see now days game with low rest it doesn't enchance your imagination but shatter your immersion , its monaliza and paint with crayon , but in case of games that shows messages and not showing much then yes imagination play big role for that , but i won't say same for low res game in 2019 , for me i agree with you but right now sadly even when they use style they either try to mimic unreal engine 4 looking realstic or they go cartoonish which again break immersion , PS: sorry english not my main language , LOL ALSO BTW when you say the city of anor londor in dark souls ( im actually right now playing dark souls 1 and farm souls in anor londor from giants while playing your video on background xD )

The Part about Style I don't agree: Style is more about how the game feels: If it has bright or dull colors, the theme and setting of the game, the music etc. The graphical quality is more technical: Texture resolution, render distance, how many shadows and reflections etc. For me Style isn't equivalent to graphic quality. Photorealism is a style. Comic look or anime look are also styles. But graphic quality is a complete different topic. You can have comic looks with high poligons, high res textures, expensive lighting etc. and you can have a shitty photorealistic style like older mainstream AAA shooter have poorer graphics than the newer ones, although they are stylistic the same. You could have as example the same oversized shoulderplates from WoW with better graphical quality like shown in their cinematics. The reason why WoW graphics differs compared to their cinematics is of technical nature. Because the game couldn't look like that back then and it would require a lot of work to upgrade the graphics to that level. If the graphical quality would be a stylistic choice, they wouldn't be doing such different cinematics, because cinematics shows us, how the universe of the game would look like. Take Team Fortess or Overwatch. Their cinematics are still of better graphical quality then ingame graphics, but the style matches, so do WoW. And I wouldn't say that BDO is photorealistic. If you compare to even a older Battlefield, like Battlefield 3, I would say that Battlefield is much more photorealism, not counting that BDO is fantasy. I doubt that the "blocky scenery" of WoW is a stylistic choice. Or are the many objects popping up if you come closer in BDO also a stylistic choice? No, that are technical issues to reduce the "performance barrier". But still, I like your content!

It's not just about PC players - get all MMOs ported onto consoles. This maximises playerbase.

You deserve more views

The sad part is, you can make a pretty game with a distinct style take DMC5 or Doom Eternal for example, they stand out despite having pretty and high graphics,because you can have artistic individuality if your art team has direction. Thats why as WoW gets better textures and more polygons Blizzard never removes the cartoony viduals art direction and high graphics can coexist if the team has a goal

I like using grids in d&d as they feel necessary for combat especially if you want positioning and movement to feel important.

I love mmo's so much, i want to play Tera, Black desert etc. but as you said: high graphics need high hardware. And I got a low-end pc. Rip

I wish anime-styled games would stick with a 2D/Cel shaded look. I really don't like how anime looking character look with a 3D shading/style in a photorealistic world.

I've been meaning to play EVE Online but, my computer would not allow me. As a child, I wanted to play WoW, but I knew my computer was a potato. Tried anyways, the game ran. I was astounded. Child me realized that was required in order to increase their player base.

I disagree...the expansion of the UI ruined games. MMOS should start with minimal UI...minimal information. Skills, classes, potions, poisons could give player information about combat or the world, but the player should not need a pop up to tell them damage...they could easily use a combat log for this. Critical hits, parry, dodge reactions, enemy skills can all be predicted with a visual effect which draws the player into the world...instead we have a box or a tooltip that tells us we are poisoned...I respect the math component of games and the ability to max/min but the sensory experience was completely skipped which has caused an inflation of mathematical information at the expense of immersion and experience. Imagine a game where you detected critical hits with sound, poison, disease, bleeds with screen or model effects...you only knew the power of your opponent if you had a special class in your group...only knew their weakness if you knew their lore...and the weakness only existed if you had that knowledge. Instead we know everything about everything...games come down to the ability to invest thousands of hours instead of enjoying a dynamic, immersive experience. Playing with a UI forces the player relate to their keyboard or text, or numbers...minimizes UI forces the player to pay attention to the details of the world. This makes the MMO more difficult but not because of a grind or arbitrary gate, instead it is hard because the only way to improve is to experience the world more.

every map and town in Wow, still in my mind after all those years.

Graphics serve aesthetic. This is why even classic wow with modern graphics still looks good. It's not real, but it holds up no matter if you are at the lowest graphic setting or the highest.

A design and a technical execution are different things. What you are talking about in 1 is the lack of innovation, which has happened in the Atari age, which was the time when 3D was considered nearly science-fiction levels of tech and everyone was doing ye olde pixels. Yet everyone was doing the same game over and over again. As for 2, that is the price of progress, literally. There was a time when 32 MB of RAM cost a kidney and a half. And the "blocky" style of WoW is the legacy of the early 3D games, which was as much of a graphical craze in the late 90s - early 2000s as photorealism is today. Those games were a product of their time, not inherently "better" The problems you have with the genre are valid, yet the reason there are problems is quite far from what some old-school players who grew up on the first version of Runescape think. Given the cyclical nature of industry stagnation and nostalgia, I believe we will see how people in 20 years will complain that their games have no soul, unlike BDO, the OG masterpiece

Look, I enjoy playing old-school roguelikes, one of my favourites being _Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup_ , which is a continuation of another game. I gotta say, if I have the option, I play the tile version rather than the ASCII version. ASCII may use more imagination, but it'll take longer to play since, in addition to remembering everything else, you also have to remember what characters correspond to what monsters. And there are a lot of monsters. Also, I tried playing _Zork_ once. Uh, I appreciate the game's craftsmanship and contribution to history, but text-based games are something I am glad aren't really a thing anymore. Yes, I could have given it more of a chance, and I'll likely come back to it someday because I find history very interesting. But when basic navigatio n is _that_ annoying, that be a 'no' on casual Tuesday night play from me. My point is, having _some_ graphics is good. And I'm coming from the other side of this topic relative to Josh; if you're making a new MMORPG, a MUD might not be the best idea for commercial purposes.

Graphic engines are also guilty of similar limitations. I was running World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Online with a CoreDuo laptop. Then both decided to switch to DirectX 10 or higher. My machine couldn't run DirectX 10. It eventually got to the point where the only game I could play was Wizard101. I had to buy a gaming rig once I saved up enough money to get back to my games.

Personally I disagree that style makes up for crap graphics. The counter argument to your premise is the "style" of Old School Runescape is the exact reason I don't play it as if I'm doing something for hours (especially inherently grindy) I don't want blocky polygons. You also miss the point that "style" didn't make many classic games, but rather the stories, gameplay, and world building.

Massively multiplayer requires players to imagine the same object (s) the same way or interaction will vary in unrealistic unpredictable ways. One could use words, but here we have an example of a picture being worth a thousand words.

I actually come from a text based gaming background and will just add that even they could attempt some limited "graphical" stylization through ANSI code depictions and color pallet usage (not so much fonts and such as that was more individual client based on most of them). It was a minor thing over all but in the world of text games it could mean the difference between bland or way too busy color wise. Creativity is always a worthwhile pursuit when presenting the visual flair of your game.

League of Legends is guilty of this. What drew me to the game in 2014 was the cartoonish style, it had a really cool and unique charm to it. Over the time they’ve slowly changed this art style, trending towards a more ‘realistic’ style. It couldn’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t like the change, but your video puts it into words perfectly. You deserve WAY more views/subs man, your videos are great and you have a genuine passion for the genre which is lovely to see.

What you said about unseen horror reminded me of the small game "Duskers". ... Not an MMO, but using only the most basic graphics. Its plot and gameplay: "Something" killed everything and everyone you know, now you try to stay alive by scavenging derelic spaceships. You do not enter them yourself, you have drones you send in, but you only see the layout of rooms on your board computer, as well as interactable objects or things your drones caught with their sensors. You have to use your drones to hack the ship bit by bit to use systems like interior scanners, turrets or simply for opening and closing doors. Usually there is "something bad" in the ship, you only notice it when you use scanners of the ship or when it is already too late for one or all of your limited amount of drones. And with all drones gone you run out of supplies. So you have to be very tactical about every approach, combining the horror of the unknown with the pressure of having to scavenge but perhaps having to skip a wreckage with too much dangers inside.

Art direction will always trump sheer graphical fidelity. Some of the most beautiful games I have played are pixel-art

This reminds me of a video I watched from the channel "Mother's Basement" a while back about how horror anime generally don't seem to be scary. Just like how movies and tv shows are a passive medium, the story continues regardless of your desire. Being shown the monster immediately makes it less scary because humans have an innate fear of the unknown. It's instinctual because it was linked to early human survival. In a game, manga or book, the story moves at your pace and is an interactive medium. While the monster reveal still reduces the scare factor... the fact that having a reader or gamer be the one to control the pace of the story can allow someone's mind to fill in the gaps they don't see. As an example; I played Resident Evil 2 Remake a few months after it came out. I wasn't scared of the game thanks to having played RE7, RE6 and RE5... but little things that happened during the game made my pulse race. Hearing Mr. X stomping around but only being able to get his general direction and not his specific location made me constantly on edge about what actions might draw him to me. It's what made the police station section of the game more entertaining. But it was the original RE2 that terrified me as a child... blocky graphics, the sound of a city in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, and my inept child coordination making the dumb mistake of not avoiding the zombies meant that when Leon died during my very first playthrough of the game, I refused to play the game again until after one of my friends convinced me to play resident evil 5 with him.

Absolutely love your video essays that dissect MMORPGs, hope to see even more of them

A MUD, MOO, MUSH type engine. That has a great development team that includes authors and programmers working side by side. Server latency would still be minimal even with thousands of players. The systems and balance of gameplay is much easier to scale.

As soon as I saw title of vid what came to mind was that games that aren't graphically amazing and put a strain on your PC are less accessable to the average player black desert online etc. Games like wow can be played on an average PC/laptop making more accessible which will mean higher player base one of the many reasons people love wow

I don't know if it's only me, but I also hate the trend that modern games use very dark color/hue/contrast since it tires my eyes so much. I don't also feel much motivation playing these dark-hued games since I only see the battle, not the environment. More so, I think the art style of these games are becoming similar and converging towards dragon/demon-looking monsters and these look unoriginal when all of them have the same.

Awesome awesome channel that I just discovered and immediately subscribed and turned notifications on. Keep going bro, you are going to be the best MMO channel and will have a positive effect on the developments of future MMO games.

Hi, Josh! Thank you for a video! I have to admit, this is the first your opinion which I personally find partly mistaken. I can agree that the situation, when every game has a realistic look, every game lose it's uniqueness. But, there are two big PROS for realism: - First, while I personally have an ability to imagine unexisting things well, I know many people who just can't. They state, that they also can't do an RP just because their imagination is poor and it's too hard for their brains. - And the second, realism in games actually helps improve the reality. In pursuit of bizzare shapes and designs of realistic-looking, but yet unexisting things (like magic waves or complex armor pieces or spaceships), we push boundaries of our reality even closer to fantasy/sci-fi/cyberpunk/apocaliptic settings, because such things look real even if there is no single piece of it in the real world. So, my solution for stylizing game's graphics is in one word - atmosphere. Lights and colours, ambient and music - these are a core things.

Not an mmao player here, but what I've been wanting for pretty much my entire adult life is the games that I played on the gamecube but with more content. So just like new maps and new missions for Tony Hawk's Underground and metroid prime I don't even need the graphics to be as good as soulcalibur II which I can still remember being blown away by.

GW2 is unique because of its races, You can play a big kitty, a plant person, and whatever the Asura are supposed to be compared to the overused Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, etc. Also, the sub-races such as the Quaggan and Tengu really make it stand out.

Hi, games dev 3d guy here with 14 years exp. Major components of the lack of style you speak about is the 3d model marketplace and asset generation tools, as well as toxic management in the dev space. Buying assets on a marketplace is cheap or often even free. Many of them are "good", but none of them have style, and this is for obvious reason. To make them compatible with other assets. Far too many indy devs think it is acceptable to just buy assets, rather than recruit artists. Asset generation tools suffer from the same problems. Modelling a great character takes a huge amount of time. Sculpting great textures takes a huge amount of time. programmatically or procedurally generating assets is cheap on time and money, and often produce very functional results. But they are bland, of course. Now, you can round this all out with a major problem that affects both the smallest Indy-crew to the largest triple-A crew. The management. The Indy world is infested with middle aged game players who mistake the view through their nostalgia glasses as "design vision", and they railroad the few actual artists and designers either completely out of games dev, or into submission. The triple A end of things replaces the inept gamer management with inept money-guy management, but essentially the same attitude. Anyway, I post this not to flame anyone, but to simply point out some areas of specificity which relate to the above video which I have personally experienced, for the purpose of of raising awareness in the hopes of positive change in the future. In the immortal words of Melania Trump - Be Best! Haha

I swear I find a piece of DDO in every of your videos (I know you already said you'll cover it). Ofc the game having old graphics is not really a plus but still, between having its own style and low requirements...add no level scaling, no real "meta", optional endgame, being highly F2P friendly despite microtransactions and having insane customization and great quests with verticality, puzzles, no chosen one... I've watched a few of your videos now, and I find myself to agree with you about 90% of the time. I'm a fan of ESO and GW2 myself and I couldnt get into original Runescape just because I didn't have the time back in the day but I loved it for what little I could play...that makes me think DDO would be a nearly perfect game for you. The only issues I see are a low-ish playerbase (it is very solo friendly) and a steep learning curve for new players, at least if they want to play on higher difficulties. It would require more than 1 hour in other words. I gotta stop advocating for it, but most times you mention a MMORPG flaw feels like DDO handled it well.

Can you make one on how ":Metas" ruin MMORPGs? What drives a user to leave the game and do calculations on excel sheets and only select and enforce a specific type of gear instead of actually enjoying a game? at that point why even allow gear choice, the game should just auto-equip you with the meta at the time of completion of a task. Then queue in the incessant "karens" of MMORPGs who want to call the developers(manager) on balancing issues because apparently being a game designer is more important to them than actually playing and enjoying the game. I hope you get what I mean.

Your absolutely right about style makes me realise what it is that I'm really missing when it comes to rpgs. I need to think about this video more when I look at gaming. Thank you Strife

The biggest problem is readability. MMOs need to be highly readable for their (usually) complex rule sets to give proper feedback. If you look at World of Warcraft's vanilla days, for example, one of the things that was most effective about it? The visuals were distinctive, the visual effects were attractive but minimal, and every single ability or enemy type was immediately identifiable even in the midst of battle. in Guild Wars 2 - which I'm currently playing and enjoying - any time more than one player is present, your ability to even remotely read what the game is (or should be) telling you is exponentially reduced. By the time you have just 5 players in a dungeon situation, for example, it will be almost physically impossible to reliably assess what AOEs are active, what buffs and debuffs are active (without staring at the little icons at the bottom of the screen), and what the enemy is about to do. Only the biggest, most heavily-signposted attacks from giant enemies are even remotely visible, and they're not exactly clear when the floor is a mass of red circles. Simply put, the best MMO design understands that the visuals are not just set dressing, not just something to make the game "pretty"; they are a central part of the rule set, a central part of the gameplay. And whether the MMO is pushing highly detailed, GPU-intensive visuals, or going for a simpler aesthetic, it needs to understand that its visuals - more than anything else - are supposed to be conveying information. If you want to really understand why this is such a big deal, look at the GDC talk "The Importance of Nothing" here on youtube, in which the classic Unreal Tournament map CTF-Face is discussed in terms of why it was visually effective, and why all subsequent attempts at remastering/remaking it failed (simply put; too much visual noise rendering subsequent maps less readable).

This whole argument falls apart when you realize that no, most games are NOT going for a 100% realistic art style. Every game out there has it's own style. You can improve on an art style in terms of resolution, polygon count, etc without going for photorealism. Each of the games you mentioned do have their own style. Of course someone who's unfamiliar with the games couldn't tell which is which, but that could be said about ANY game. Nobody who's never seen WoW will be able to tell it apart from other games with cartoony graphics. But you could show me screenshots of ESO, WoW, Runescape, Tera, Guild Wars 2, and most other MMOs side by side and i could 100% tell you which was which. I'd put money on it.

I was about to type an essay in disagreement while watching the video, until you said the word Style. And then I agreed with some of your thoughts.

Another bit I'd add to the "running at reduced settings" thing; if I am forced to run a photo realistic game at lower settings, it is no longer stylish. The realism gets lost the lower you crank the settings down. Games with distinct styles, and characterisation of their environments will scale their graphics better because their style remains intact. WoW isn't super pretty at low settings, but it keeps the charm and cartoon-inspired style at any settings.

Speaking as a 3D artist, I think stylised graphics not only look much better, but they're also a lot more fun to make. Although I do think that MMORPGs who do lean more towards realistic graphics, a lot of them still do have some level of stylisation in them. Even the Korean ones although those all pretty much look the same to me and in all honesty I'm not that impressed by them even though those graphics took a lot of skill to make. I just don't find them impressive because they look very generic and visually uninteresting to me, but then I look at for example Dark Siders and especially character sculpts before they're actually made usable for games are very impressive and whenever I see that kinda stuff on Art station I'm just in awe of the amazing stuff some people out there can make.

i LOVE neverwinter graphical style!

In my opinion The Elder scrolls Online does not comnpletely fit into the category of photorealistic games. It has big similarities to Skyrims style of graphik which does a great job at tieing it into the Elder Scrolls Games. One suggestion for future videos about graphiks - it yould be great if you showed examples of what you are talking about - I do know most games you mentioned and so I could easyly follow. Others might have an easier time following your explanation if they see what you are talking about.

MMORPG's have several weaknesses. One of them is the lack of a story you can tell, due to the mass of players online and the unchangeable environment. So the only thing, that is left is the combat style. Most mmorpg's suffer from a boring grind to win gameplay style, where you have to use the same skills over and over again in order to achieve something and it barely matters when you use which skill. And so most people will either quit the game or they are so addicted to the reward system, that they will just play for the reward, which is ofcourse a pain in the a**. So instead of having a boring and tideous grinding system, where you have to use the same skills over and over again, you should have a more action orientated combat style, where the timing of your skills actually matters and you have to evade enemy's attacks or stun/ counter them.

Thank you for giving me something to think about for my own game! I was initially going for near photorealism, because the work of a concept artist I admire is precisely that. I had already planned decided to cater for both lower-end PC's and higher-end PC's, but near photorealism and lower end pc's don't really go hand-in-hand. Looking at your video, I've decided to think it all over again. Going for quality that's not near photorealism and at the same time being able to create a style that will say this is Never Ending Realms, that's a good thing! I never really thought about it that way. Thank you for giving me this to think about! I do have a question left: What do you consider an old/lower-end PC? Is it 5 years old, or maybe 10? I think the current "live expectancy" of computers is not even 5 years anymore, but at the same time I'm writing this on an AiO desktop that's about 10 years old :D Thanks again! I thoroughly enjoy your videos!

I think this concerns every game, not just mmo's eventhough mmo's are usually highly fantasy and rp driven which enhances the effect even more. I totally agree I had more fun having to make my own picture of the low polygon characters I was playing with rather then being forced to see how it actually looks when the graphics get sharp. It is similar to reading a book opposed to watching a movie.

@Josh Strife Hayes What about semi-photorealistic games or mixed style. Some scenes being stylized, while some being photorealistic. Or giving a distinct style to highpoly graphics.

My current favorite mmo is Caravan Stories has beautiful stylized artwork.

It's not even just MMOs that suffered from chasing graphics. Most games have. These days the games with the most fun gameplay tend to have average if not mediocre graphics, at least by 'realism' standards. And the example of comparing Tera and BDO screenshots without the hud is very true, most games I tell apart by their UI, not their style, because there's barely any (among similar games obviously).

Another important point: Budget spent into high graphics, is budget NOT spent on gameplay, level design, balance or lore

The most memorable games I have played usually have the most distinct graphics in the holistic sense. Kenshi, Warcraft 3, The Sims, and Mad Max to name a few. Art direction trumps polygon count every time IMO. Besides, if I wanted photorealism, I could've just walked outside my house, Jeffr- Oh, you're not Jeffrey!

The topic is spot on. However, you kept talking about RuneScape and the differences. Perhaps instead of putting a bunch of boss fights in the background, maybe some example pics on the topic your talking about. Yeah I could google it, but this is a RU-vid vid, not talk radio.

i remember with gen 7 games everyone was getting hype for photorealism in every game, i immediately knew two things would happen: 1. realism would be the new standard and would become a major if not primary factor on whether a game is worth playing 2. or if you could play it at all because it requires stronger computers to run to look decent, so people couldnt play certain games 2. becoming the standard meant everything would look the same, which as someone who loves stylized games, really sucks

I think that emphasis on graphics has taken away from actual gameplay due to resources being taken away from the fun and playability itself

This made me think of a Nintendo incident over a mobile game where the developers continuously locknoutnmore & more of their players with every major update. Only the newest phones & tablets.with the most expensive & gimicky cameras can run Animal Crossing Pocket Vamp these days. & to add insult to injury, they added code to block the app from running on phone emulartors, even though they could still have made money through Google Play on Bluestacks.

Speaking of stylistic mmorpgs, I was curious if you had ever heard of a title by the name of Spiral Knights. I've certainly had my share of fun playing it, and still play on occasion. Though I have to say, when compared to the "standard" mmorpg experience, SK has a different spin on it. It feels/plays more like a top-down dungeon crawler. The graphics aren't going to break anyone's PC, yet it still looks good for a ten year old game. I'd also highly recommend giving the game's ost a listen; it was composed by Harry Mack (and there's an easter egg/dedication to Harry in the game's main hub, the town square).

Stylistic and realistic graphics can go together - take for example first Crysis, with its very characteristic over-the-top way of handling lighting and shadows, making it instantly recognizable even if it's hard to describe in few words (other than "Crysis lighting"). And with the game also being quite taxing on any hardware you run it on (to the point of "will it run Crysis" becoming a meme) - it's a tradeoff, between accessibility to wider audiences and visual quality, every game picks a point on this scale. BDO you mentioned is also a good example of using high-quality graphics for its own advantage - combined with a great character editor it puts heavy focus on character visuals and how they present themselves in the world with everything else being just a background. Defining visual style of BDO would then be "supermodel player characters" - and the game is known for it.

Hey Josh - I been binging your videos and watched this one recently, on the topic of style... I assume you've heard about the XIII Remastered Backlash recently - It does very much prove your point!

I think with GW2 it comes down to the size and scale of the world it self and whats going on. while i do agree that side by side an image of bdo and gw2 kinda look the same, for gw2 the difference comes into play when you are actually in the world. the vistas and scale and "poainterly" feel it has it what sets its apart. but like you said a quick still image of them next to each outher they dont stand out that much.

there are some places in TERA (I play it since 2015) that I like more and all of then has this fantasy style on them. one that I can recall easly is Sylvanoth region, and every region that is affected with the argon war story arc. they look very unique and I wish all the regions were more like it, and all games too (in the sense of being something unique, that only this game has). pora elinu is also a early game place you can see that is more fantasy like, and the new archipelago of Exodor (although I dislike this patch for strong reasons) is very beautiful and unique.

I would argue that the architectural style of the Asura in GW2 is amazingly cool and Stylistic. I also think that the update to DX11 will make it run better on lower machines.

I wish I could create images in my head. I envy people that can do that.

I personally feel more attached to pixel sprite characters from games like Stardew Valley than realistic looking characters from modern games of which I can't think of a good example that I play atm.

Why graphics ruin mmo's. >Tera on the screen >my old pc in the basement cries

Ninetendo has mastered great gameplay with only “solid” graphics

I'm a high-quality graphics bigot, though I do agree to that we should support low end hardware whenever possible. It's the artistic choices that matter more. Even though WoW had a superior graphics engine to EQ and DAOC, I wouldn't play it because of the cartoony artistic style. Witnessing a cartoon in peril isn't viceral, so WoW is a case of where I agree that my imagination alone would be better because I imagine something that looks more real and thus immersive. For artistic style, Age of Conan is still my favorite.

A good example is Everquest 1 luclin models,A lot of people prefer the older models. at least they let you choose which you want to look at.

I think photorealistic graphics can easily co-exist with maintaining own unique style. At least I'm sure that I'd be able to distinguish Tera Next screenshot from many others just from the way characters looks like. Their armor design is unique in their own way. I'd likely have a problem without characters on screen, though. Actually, it might be easier to lose own style in attempt to mimic anime. Don't get me wrong, I actually like the style, but games using it end up similar looking since despite lack of detailed graphics and heavy reliance on cell-shading techniques style itself creates specific expectations to be met. So, instead of being unique it becomes just generic anime or chibi anime in some cases (characters with small bodies and large heads). As for example, look at screenshots of upcoming Blue Protocol and already popular Genshin Impact and point at something that distinguishes them from other "anime" games in general (and Zelda: BotW in particular). Optimization and support of low-end systems is a nobraner, though.

This video is mostly nonsense. Quality of graphics has nothing to do with quality of the game. A game made by people who care, like Morrowind, is loved because of the substance and mythology but that graphics detail was 100% dictated by gaming computers of that time. The devs even talked about how hard it was to limit their realistic vision due to hardware constraints. I never once heard someone say, when the game came out, 'you know, Morrowind is awesome but would have been so much better if it just had 50% the polygon count'. There's a reason why videos of older games remade in something like the new unreal engine get millions of views with people ready to rebuy and play a game they loved just with modern graphics. Two entirely different aspects that have nothing to do with one another when looked at individually but absolutely add significant value to each other when combined together. It's the reason why Call of Duty puts out mostly the same game, every single year, just with updated graphics and still makes a Billion dollars a year. It's the reason a lot of people are still patiently waiting for Camelot Unchained and will gladly throw money at it when it comes out.