Why do so many textures look like they are from a ps2 game?

[Edax]

No it doesn't

Art style and direction is different, i personally cannot stand it and is why i have never played it and probably never will. But texture budget of WoW is now higher than XIV. Their models have also increased over the years, in fact, WoW at its best settings is nothing short of good looking, at least for its universe is thematically fitting and it blends well with everything else. I cannot say the same of XIV, since in every cutscene that closes into Hien, i wonder if my GPU is actually artifacting. Or im reminded of early 2000s FPS enviromental graphics.

I agree the pixelation on some of the outfits is a bad problem. But WoW does not look fundamentally different to me now then when I played in back in Burning Crusade. It has the same wacky cartoon art style that was used by games that couldn't offer good graphics and that hasn't changed it seems. I grand you WoW's graphics isn't terribly pixelated, but it still looks low res, a consequence of being a 2004 game. Comparing screenshots from WoW today to screenshots from 2004, the game hasn't evolved that much in the graphics department. I've seen World of Tanks preform HD transformation that was practically night and day compared to WoW. Screenshots from 2010 and now look almost nothing alike.

FFXIV has a most realistic art style to it, but the resolutions are inconsistent. That makes it better in my opinion because they aren't cheating with cartoon art styles, but I agree the excessive pixelization is a problem. Even though the characters in SWTOR was cartoony and looked like they were made of clay, I don't really recall seeing that much pixelization in the outfits.