Shocker

[KiriA500]

The only place it's inferior is in the character models and armor.

Aside from LOL GIRL BUTTS, I see no difference in character model or armor quality (they weren't that great in 1.0 anyway). We lost some animations, but we also gained some, so it's an even trade.

[Jocko]

Sorry, but 1.0 was far, far superior in the armor model and texturing departments, and completely blows ARR away with it's weighty and motion captured animations. Just look at the armor and movement here:

http://youtu.be/gYKmJQoWJew?t=48s

God I miss it. ARR feels like lifeless in comparison

[Gilraen]

I'll be honest, the graphics in 1.# were better than now. So much so that my laptop couldn't go past 'Normal' settings without loss of framerate, and it's an Asus G53SX. One of the better gaming laptops of last year. March forward to 2.0 and same laptop is running the game on max settings like a boss. Things I noticed is more than just a reduction in graphical quality, they also reduced the size of everything (not data size, literal size). It was immediately obvious in the early Beta that every model was scaled down to fit a scaled down world (elezen got the worst in the scaling with their smaller-than-proportional heads, something they gladly fixed). And the user interface wasn't bad, I prefered it's style over the new style though I am so glad they didn't use the style from the early 2.0 promotional shots, but it was saved server side so sometimes your interface would have to be rebuilt if you made any changes.

Still, despite all that, I don't miss it one bit.

[Illya]

Texture detail had to be reduced to make the game fit on PS3. There was no way 1.0 ever had any hope of running on PS3, whereas ARR actually runs and is even not awful on PS3.

The dramatic improvement in ARR's lighting and shadowing system more than makes up for it IMO.

[Drakzen1]

Also the graphic were cut back by a long shot. To be honest that not even up for debate check any of the past letters from the producers or any review of the game. Its one of the points they mentioned over and over again.

[Drakzen1]

Wait till direct x 11

[Fenwick]

Graphics were improved in some areas, such as lighting and overall area design. They were cut back in other areas, most notable is textures. I'd still take ARR over 1.0 though, the game still looks gorgeous and overall I consider the changes to be an improvement despite the few steps they have taken backwards in some areas.

[Baneus]

ARR has managed to do what several other MMOs have failed to do - combined decent, non-cartoony (not the "absolute best") graphics with a usable framerate. Don't get me wrong, WoW with the settings right can look amazing, but it's incredibly dated. SWTOR looks fancy, but Ultra/High settings in an open world (Alderaan, Hoth etc) will bring a high-end gaming PC to under 10fps.


Also: you can improve the graphics in this game slightly over what you can see normally - set up a profile on your video card that over-rides all the game settings. That's if your PC can handle it, al lot of people find that their "awesome" PC isn't really all that good when put to the test

[viion]

Textures were high, so i guess you could say graphics were higher, but everything was copy/pasted throughout the enitre zone, once you stepped out of Uldah, you'd of seen the terrain for the entire region without having to move, it was no different.

But what does it matter, no one could play, i mean look how poop it looked on "low settings"

.......... compare that to 2.0 low settings.

[Andrien]

Textures were high, so i guess you could say graphics were higher, but everything was copy/pasted throughout the enitre zone, once you stepped out of Uldah, you'd of seen the terrain for the entire region without having to move, it was no different.

But what does it matter, no one could play, i mean look how poop it looked on "low settings"

.......... compare that to 2.0 low settings.

I wont be surprised if this is how a good chunk of players had to play. I know I was able to play on medium, and I was still afraid my laptop might caught fire lol.