Lord of the Rings Online Gets Dramatic DirectX 10 Graphics Overhaul

LOTRO was a good-looking game before, but know the devlopers recently did a major DirectX10 graphics overhaul and it tunred out amazing. Despite never reading any LOTR books nor any of the movies LOTRO looks like a really good MMORPG. LOTRO isn't the first MMORPG to use DirectX 10, it's just the first to be released with DirectX 10 support (Age of Conan uses DirectX 10, but doesn't come out for a while). I wonder how much of a performance decrease enabling DirectX10 adds? The developers went all out with this update and it looks amazing. If only Blizzard would do more despite their $170+ million a month profit. Blizzard should give World of Warcraft a graphics overhaul...






EDIT: Opps, sorry for triple posting, was trying to edit the thread title. Mods can delete the first two posts.

 

Hmm, interesting.

 

WOW will not be getting any upgraded graphics any time soon. They want to include EVERYONE, even those running older hardware or IGPs. Upgrades to their graphics will come only when the lowest common denominator rises. Inclusion is one of their biggest reasons for success, and they won't ever break that!

 

Im sure its possible to raise the high-setting graphics on a game without changing the low-setting requirements or looks. Its just like adding an ultra high setting.

 

Isn't this somewhat old news? The dx10 patch for lotro came out last Nov...and from initial indications the performance penalty is pretty severe. Like most games that support DX10 it really isn't very feasible even on the fastest cards.
This is quoted from http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQxMywzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

So who in the right mind would give up 50-60% of performance for eye candy that's arguably marginally better? The only obvious improvement are in the shorelines where instead of an unnatural looking shoreline break, you see white rolling surf.

The positive thing about this is Lotro is a great looking game even before the DX10 patch. But I have yet to see DX10 being worthwhile in current games and this game is just another example why.

 

WoW actually does scale very well to high-end hardware, while maintaining compatability with even the worst of semi-modern GPUs. On my desktop it looks absolutely breathtaking. The graphics are not ultra-realistic, but then again that isn't the art style of the WarCraft franchise. It looks cartoon-y because it always has; because that's the way it's supposed to look. That said, WotLK is supposed to add new high-end graphics options in regards to lighting and shading effects - while leaving the minimum requirements unchanged.

As for what kind of hit enabling DirectX 10 will incur: Massive, I would imagine, just like in everything else (Crysis, Bioshock, CoH, and CoJ all see 40-60% performance drops with little noticeable gain in IQ). It's a poorly optimized API currently running on cards that are poorly optimized for it. What result could that have but disaster?

Edit: Beaten to the punch on the performance part and, well, it seems I was right.

Witty comment I had originally thought about posting instead of the above: Oh good, now they're ensuring no one can play LOTRO, instead of now, where just no one wants to.

 

Its just for the people who wanted more eye candy but won't affect those who run the game in dx9 + low settings. Its not like the 8800GTS wasn't running it at 150FPS before....I'm sure those users will take a 40-50% hit so the game can look like that! (i barely recognize it from the original)

 

WoW graphics are not even supposed to look "ultra-realistic". The cartoonish look is part of the game.. and I have to say that I like it really much.

About LotRo, I played in beta and it was pretty nice game at least back then. Dont know how much it has changed now. Those dx10 graphics look awesome, but I think the problem with the LotRo, at least how I see it, has always been lack of game content and small world, at least compared to wow.

Just my two cents.

 

There is a limit of scability that can be put on a game. One reason for WoW's less-than-state-of-the-art graphics is because yes, maybe they do want to look some what cartoonish. But I think the real reason is that unlike Crysis, its made so people can actually buy it and play it. Try running latest games at low settings, for example Crysis. It doesn't look too good, but you can notice that they still have the basic features of an extremely demanding game. Like the number of polygons may not change too much from lowest to highest settings.

The overall game engine(WoW) is made to be not demanding. Hell, some people still complained that its too demanding, and same was said for Warcraft III back in 2003. Compared to games that all it seems is to raise the technological limit, Blizzard's games are not demanding. Some reason for lag with high end graphics cards on WoW I believe is more of a less optimal code than anything else.

They seem to be good at making the overall world look beautiful anyways though. But in a technological sense, WoW blows. Close up to a char in any settings and the face looks more jagged than the chars in Q3A.

 

I'm a little confused. My laptop specs are below. I had planned on buying LOTR online in the next couple days. Even though it is now DX10 can I still change the settings to DX9? How will my laptop perform on DX10? Will it be playable. Thanks!

Specs:
Sager 5793
T9300 cpu
4 Gigs RAM
8800M GTX GPU

 

Hi, you will be able to max out everything with AA etc on your laptop with DX9
In DX10 you will also be able to max out many things or maybe even everything.

Dont worry it will be highly playable with those specs.

 

Thanks for the feedback....nice to hear