Which MMO has the best looking graphics on the market?

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tybert7

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free, paid, it does not matter, which one has the most stunning graphics out there?

People often said age of conan looked amazing, but I thought the character models in aion looked much better, especially the way the light shone off the hair.

Here was one of my masterpieces, a sorcerer.

http://imageshack.us/a/img14/1323/divine2n.jpg

nb4 people bash it for being an emo looking waife and you post your juggernaut sized character models with scars across their face to make sure they are not too "pretty" looking.



I thought gw2 has pretty good graphics, is TERA better?


Who makes best use of directx 11 effects?

how does the new ffxiv compare?
 
The new FFXIV looks fantastic on max settings. The one thing I didn't like about Aion (aesthetically) was the scale of your character. I felt like a miniature in a large world. FFXIV you actually feel proportional to your surroundings.

Tera looks good as well, but not nearly as good as FFXIV. Guild Wars 2? Eh, it looked ok. The art direction was excellent, but if your question was textures, polygons, etc. it wouldn't be in my top 5. I personally think EQ2 is still one of the best looking MMO's out there. It's a shame the game can only utilize one CPU core though.
 
tybert7 said:
http://imageshack.us/a/img14/1323/divine2n.jpg

nb4 people bash it for being an emo looking waife and you post your juggernaut sized character models with scars across their face to make sure they are not too "pretty" looking.
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I am not going to bash that for looking emo or feminine or anything like that. I am going to bash it for ridiculous over-use of bloom and reflection that serve to cover up a washed-out color pallet.
 
I'm currently playing Rift, and I think it looks better than AION. AION always had the look of a free mmo, even when I was paying a monthly fee. I still enjoyed it for about a year. I like Rift better. One thing that really stood out in Rift.. I was just "exploring the world" and climbing mountains, which I was really surprised to find you could do, and I came across puzzles up there with rewards, and "An Ancient Cairn" with loot. Rift actually rewards just exploration, which I thought was really cool.
 
Planetside 2 with max settings... although I'm not really sold on all the particle stuff.
 
sinclair-zx81 said:
I'm currently playing Rift, and I think it looks better than AION. AION always had the look of a free mmo, even when I was paying a monthly fee. I still enjoyed it for about a year. I like Rift better. One thing that really stood out in Rift.. I was just "exploring the world" and climbing mountains, which I was really surprised to find you could do, and I came across puzzles up there with rewards, and "An Ancient Cairn" with loot. Rift actually rewards just exploration, which I thought was really cool.
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I too think rift looks very good
 
Rift for sure. FFXIV ARR might be a close second. Rift with SuperSampling is just badass period. You just need a beasty PC for that.
 
Since you said MMO, I'll throw Firefall in there. It has very good looking environments and the character models are 'unique' looking.
 
The secret world on dx11 maxed looks great with newer txaa versions from newer nvidia drivers. Rift also has good graphics, though is a bit older.
 
while i think FFXIV looks hella good, i dont think it can be the best as it still has a few low res textures and no dx11 support (yet).

havent seen many others that i thought were super amazing looking. suprised people are saying rift.. maybe i shouldve tried the super sampling option
 
dremic said:
suprised people are saying rift.. maybe i shouldve tried the super sampling option
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WIth enough horsepower to drive it, Rift can look amazing with all the settings maxed out.

I've got a few shots from the character select screen at max settings and the armor detailing is just crazy good.

I'm slowly losing a fight with diabetic retinopathy in real life, so I dont see quite as well as I used to, and with one eye getting a lovely cataract now, visuals are more of a "if its got it great but if not thats ok as long as the gameplay is good".

Put a dress on a pig and it's still a pig after all. :p
 
Limahl said:
WIth enough horsepower to drive it, Rift can look amazing with all the settings maxed out.

I've got a few shots from the character select screen at max settings and the armor detailing is just crazy good.

I'm slowly losing a fight with diabetic retinopathy in real life, so I dont see quite as well as I used to, and with one eye getting a lovely cataract now, visuals are more of a "if its got it great but if not thats ok as long as the gameplay is good".

Put a dress on a pig and it's still a pig after all. :p
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gameplay > everythang.

thats why wow was so successful for so long, that games looks like a pile of shit
 
teletran8 said:
lol a rotating pile of shit...millions of people r so gullible.
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i think you missed my point, WoW had incredible gameplay. especially early and the first couple expansions. extremely well built engine, fluid gameplay, good amount of content etc. the engine worked really well. it only looked good for about a year though.
 
dremic said:
i think you missed my point, WoW had incredible gameplay. especially early and the first couple expansions. extremely well built engine, fluid gameplay, good amount of content etc. the engine worked really well. it only looked good for about a year though.
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To be fair to WoW, they have done a pretty good job over the years tweaking the graphics with the new expansions. MoP looks a lot different than Vanilla. The textures haven't improved much, but the lighting, shadows, etc all are far better than they were originally. They also have much better water than they used to since they came up with a whole new system for it.

FF14: ARR is already a beautiful game. I can't wait until the DX11 support gets added in a few months. It should put it over the top in terms of MMO graphics.
 
bpizzle1 said:
To be fair to WoW, they have done a pretty good job over the years tweaking the graphics with the new expansions. MoP looks a lot different than Vanilla. The textures haven't improved much, but the lighting, shadows, etc all are far better than they were originally. They also have much better water than they used to since they came up with a whole new system for it.

FF14: ARR is already a beautiful game. I can't wait until the DX11 support gets added in a few months. It should put it over the top in terms of MMO graphics.
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I agree once DX11 hits they will really be on top.. it already looks good.

the armor was the biggest deal for me.. very low texture on WoW armor, and the leg and chest pieces are painted on they arent even worn.
 
dremic said:
i think you missed my point, WoW had incredible gameplay. especially early and the first couple expansions. extremely well built engine, fluid gameplay, good amount of content etc. the engine worked really well. it only looked good for about a year though.
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I dunno.... I beg to differ. I played WoW from release until right before the first expansion came out. I was in a top raiding guild that either had server 1sts or 2nds; there was another guild that we would always try to beat and vice versa for server firsts. I quit playing after I realized that the "incredible" gameplay consisted of me tab targetting and pressing hotkeys in a certain order to maximize DPS without getting killed. I don't call that gameplay at all. I call that a snoozefest. This sort of gameplay made me realize I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate tab targetting. Where's the fun in not having to manually aim to get a spell or attack off?

This is why I love Planetside 2 so much, even though my computer can't handle it right now. Defiance is a close second. It has the manual targetting, but the instancing drives me nuts some times. Darkfall was great when I betaed it, but I don't have the time these days to devote myself to an mmo with a monthly fee; I'm a grad student. I pick up a game in short bursts. I want fun, not numbing hotkey combo pressing.

Unfortunately, I don't think tab targetting/hotkey gameplay will ever disappear.

Elder Scrolls Online looks interesting, but I can't tell from gameplay vids exactly what kind of combat system they have. Portions look to be real time, but other portions look to be hotkey style.

Back to the original question: Planetside 2 looks fantastic if you have the horsepower to run it.
 
Limahl said:
I'm slowly losing a fight with diabetic retinopathy in real life, so I dont see quite as well as I used to, and with one eye getting a lovely cataract now, visuals are more of a "if its got it great but if not thats ok as long as the gameplay is good".

Put a dress on a pig and it's still a pig after all. :p
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I'm sorry to hear that. I've lost many family members due to complications from diabetes so I know how that goes. :(

With that out of the way, EVE gets my vote. Saw it over at a co-worker's place on a high end rig and I was surprised it was actually an MMO...
 
Surprising to me TSW doesn't have more votes ;) :

http://imageshack.us/a/img40/7915/tswdx11maxfxaahq.jpg Absolutely great for an MMO, including good use of tesselation even :eek: .

Harkamus said:
This sort of gameplay made me realize I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate tab targetting. Where's the fun in not having to manually aim to get a spell or attack off?
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It's called strategy or realtime turn-based-esque RPG combat systems. RTS doesn't require it either, nor do a large number of other games. Not every game needs to be twitch-based action-packed keyboard-mashing ;). Still, the trend in MMO's is definitely towards not having hard-locked targets, and ESO doesn't have them either. :)


All this WOW chatter reminded me of this:
offthehooktc0.jpg
 
I should clarify on best looking graphics, I am not just talking about best looking in a technical sense, but also in terms of art style and lighting as well. I still think that 2d scroller I found mentioned on these forums looks stunning - trine 2



PC_1080p_003.png



I saw black desert mentioned, I checked it out and it looks technically fantastic.. but there is a spark and flair missing from the visuals. Think those scenes of neo seoul from cloud atlas:

original.jpg


See how inspired the backdrops looks? I play this stuff for an escapist adventure, and seeing technically well done but mundane scenes just seems like missing the potential of these games.

Age of conans backdrops seemed kind of washed out to me, and dull.
 
Star Trek online had some decent graphics..maybe not the best but it was decent.
 
Harkamus said:
Unfortunately, I don't think tab targetting/hotkey gameplay will ever disappear.
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Tera and Neverwinter both have mouse targeting, for those who don't know. And both are rather fun. Tera is super-newby at low levels, so don't let that get to you.

Age of Conan is... weird. It's like it has great detail and sharpness, at times, but then the rest of the time I look at it and either shrug or even worse say to myself, "That does not look good." I'd have to think about it more to really explain it. Part of it is as if they added good textures to certain things but then skipped other things.

Tera looks great overall. Screenshots often aren't really adequate since it has an "aliveness" about it. I guess I could say the same for AOC's character fluidity (though not necessarily for the environment).

I think AOC's character movement is a great example of 30-ish fps being terrible compared to 60+fps. When I had a lesser video card and was playing AOC around 35fps, it looked... fine. But with a better card and doing 60+fps, the characters just move so much better and lifelike. Maybe such a thing stands out more due to AOC's "realistic" art style.

Also, I guess it's good that both games' looks match their realities. AOC is more "gritty reality," while Tera is more high fantasy.

I played Rift for 15 minutes and thought it looked pretty rough. I thought I had all the graphic settings cranked up, but perhaps not. So I'll reserve judgement on that one. Though I don't know if any settings would help how I thought all the characters look too tall and weirdly proportioned.

I haven't touched WoW in a long time, but I did watch a stream of it the other week, and it looks better than it used to.

Aion looks good, but I think Tera looks better. I guess this gives me an excuse to play Aion for a bit and refresh my memory to be sure. I'm thinking Aion has more "stuff," though. Tera at times can have cool stuff like a castle or something separated by big large areas of not much going on.

What's really nice is none of these free/mostly-free MMOs look bad, and that we're just debating which ones look less good than the other ones.
 
@tybert7, yeah... my shot of TSW there is pretty bland, but some areas of the game have incredible ambience and overall art style in addition to being technically good. I definitely agree that "good graphics" doesn't just boil down to having all of the post-processing known to man, but rather takes composition, color usage, style, etc. still for games :). Trine 2 in that shot is absolutely beautiful.

Here's an example (TSW) showing some character ;) :

w2nm.jpg


Remember, it's meant as a Lovecraftian horror setting.
 
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Actually, World of Tanks has pretty awesome graphics too, though I wouldn't call it an MMO per se.
 
I thought TSW had some of the best atmosphere/graphics for an mmo. While it might not be pushing the limits "technically" I thought it's mood and art were top notch, at least in the first two big area's you get access to. Had a very "Lovecraft/Stephen King" vibe to it all.


The upcoming Archeage looks decent, but not sure when it'll be out.
 
That looks totally awesome, GoldenTiger. :) Great use of parallax mapping and lighting!

GoldenTiger said:
@tybert7, yeah... my shot of TSW there is pretty bland, but some areas of the game have incredible ambience and overall art style in addition to being technically good. I definitely agree that "good graphics" doesn't just boil down to having all of the post-processing known to man, but rather takes composition, color usage, style, etc. still for games :). Trine 2 in that shot is absolutely beautiful.

Here's an example (TSW) showing some character ;) :

w2nm.jpg


Remember, it's meant as a Lovecraftian horror setting.
Click to expand...
 
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