WYP
News Guru
DXR Raytraced Shadows and Variable Rate Shading.
Read more about World of Warcraft Shadowlands supporting VRS and DXR raytracing.
Read more about World of Warcraft Shadowlands supporting VRS and DXR raytracing.
World of Warcraft's Shadowlands Alpha hints at raytracing and VRS support
- Thread starter WYP
- Start date
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
While I'm always pleased to see graphical updates, RT shadows is pretty damn boring, You have to do side by side screenshots to tell the difference, RT reflections would've been good to see.
What would be welcome is if they moved over to Vulkan, While DX12 gave a little performance boost, Vulkan would do so much more as we've seen with various games lately.
What would be welcome is if they moved over to Vulkan, While DX12 gave a little performance boost, Vulkan would do so much more as we've seen with various games lately.
NeverBackDown
AMD Enthusiast
The problem is they can use RT but the graphics of the game won't improve much considering how old the graphics are to begin with. A polished turd is still a turd.
Avet
Active member
DX12 wasn't a little performance boost. I saw 30+ FPS improvement in Boralus. Wile new zones look stunning the older ones are seriously showing their age. What would really completely remodel the game is RT global illumination. OMG I really want it.
Apart from WoW Classic, Blizzard is really doing a great job on the game.
Apart from WoW Classic, Blizzard is really doing a great job on the game.
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
Some parts of the game do look very pretty, What they need to do though is give the textures a little overhaul which I read somewhere last year is in the pipeline but RT is a fair bit easier to do so it's understandable they'd do that first.
WYP
News Guru
Yeah, DX12 focused on CPU gains, and that was a huge deal in areas like Boralus. Raids were also said to see huge performance boost with high player counts.
I agree that global illumination would be great. Could even upgrade some of the older areas, and it provides its own type of shadows and ambient occlusion. Something like what Control has would be great.
TBH, it is nice to see Blizzard working on the engine like this, but there is still a long way to go. Maintaining backwards compatibility seems to be a huge problem for Blizzard.
Greenback
Active member
That's part why FFxiv dropped ps3 compatibility because it was holding the game back.
Just watched BellularGaming on the new leveling, seems interesting a starting area with proper tutorials to learn your class and it takes you at level 10 to BFA to level so you get a better continuation in the story
Dicehunter
Resident Newb
The "power" you gain from levels in SL will be a lot more meaningful than ever before, Level 60 will be comparable to being level 144 in terms of strength, Stamina etc... I'm quite looking forward to it, Plus I can finally solo legion mythics then for the transmogs XD
I might return for SL. When is it released?
Greenback
Active member
I'd honestly wait for a patch or 2 and see where it goes, blizz are promising a lot but let's be honest this isn't old Blizz, and their promise isn't worth the paper it's written on.
They've just started the Alpha testing so for release I'd guess september or november, depending how the plague effects them, and they've said they will be listening properly to feedback unlike they did in BFA, and not rush release.
Greenback
Active member
Ion said in an interview that there's no more Titan forge,warforged etc, so there will be BIS gear again, and he mentioned the possibility of tier gear coming back, he also said no more AP grind, everything they are saying sounds a good move but I just don't trust Blizz anymore
I liked legions legendary items actually, bring that back and remove TF/WF gear or at least make it fixed.
I hated doing a +19 Dungeon to get 930 gear, and a guild member did a normal run and got 985 TF...
They could have increased the item level by 5 for every 2 levels of a dungeon. That way it rewarded those who played well, and gradually helped those who struggled on a +14.
Sounds good, but they usually don't deliver. Corruption on gear has been an absolute cluster. I still have yet to get any gear with Infinite Stars on my raiding toon or an alt. Feels bad.
I don't enjoy dungeons so I don't do Mythic+ often, but I agree. I also think that WF and TF should have always been +5 and +10 max. Having LFR gear scale to Mythic raid gear was always a joke. A little boost can be fun though, especially later in a raid cycle when you have all the gear already non-wf or non-tf.
Avet
Active member
A game like WoW is massive and redoing old areas is a huge undertaking. Reworking all those textures, then redoing all the lights and effects would be something that even a company like Blizzard would think twice before starting.
Here is the ultimate example of Ray Tracing being so much better than the old "cheat" techniques even though it might look exactly the same. And also a reason I and very few others were so exciting that RT is finally alive while many judged it harshly. Enabling RT global illumination would drastically improve visuals in the old areas just like that. Puff better. I shiver for quoting Jensen Huang but if Ray Tracing is implemented properly "It just works." The amount of time and money that it would save for coding the visuals to look stunning is mind-boggling.
With proper implementation of Ray Tracing, they can just plug and play reworked textures that they have in the pipeline, effects and pretty much everything else and the RT part of the GPU will just sort everything out perfectly. With consoles now properly supporting DX12 and RT they can easily branch out into console space.
About retaining backward compatibility, Blizzard already dropped DX9 support. Now they have DX11 and DX12 as an option. I expect them to drop DX11 soon and have only DX12 and then DXR (Ultimate) as an option.
It is of course not that straight forward as I have said it and needs to be done in multiple stages. With RT becoming mainstream I believe that Blizzard has talent, manpower, and resources to pull it off. RT brings the possibility to take Frankenstein's Monster that is made from various old, barely working and some new parts and transform it beyond recognition. It makes it significantly easier than doing it the old fashioned, manual way.
I am so excited that giants of the industry like Blizzard are jumping on RT wagon. I am definitely saving money for RTX 3080Ti. With hints of RT implementation popping up everywhere it might actually be worth the small fortune you need to pay for it.
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WYP
News Guru
What I meant by backwards compatibility is the need for Blizzard to support their older content and not break the game with a new expansion. IE, support the older unupdated zones etc.
Removing DX9 support was a good move, at it take away one thing to maintain. The problem is that they simply can't do that with old content. TBH, this is possibly a reason behind WOW classic servers, as all the zones, quests ETC need to be maintained anyway (albeit to a lesser degree).
Raytracing could be a big deal here, especially for things like Global Illumination. I agree that it would up WOW's graphics without the need for huge zone reworks.
To be completely honest, I've never played WOW. I know starting wouldn't be good for me. I do watch some streamers and keep up with the lore though.
Another though of mine is how long will Blizzard maintain DX11 support for. CPU-wise, DX12 is way better, and not many PC gamers are using systems that don't support DX12 to at least some degree.
Avet
Active member
I know what you mean. The old zones, even the recent ones (Legion), become just a place through were you grind as fast as possible with heirlooms to get to the newest.
I completely agree. It is one of my favorite games of all time. When I level-up new characters I don't use heirlooms. I enjoy proper PVE experience every time. And with WoW being so big you can choose a different combination of zones and quests almost every time. Having RT everywhere to boost graphics... oh... it would be amazing. And if you find good a Guild for raids and dungeons. OMG, it becomes something unique. The amount of help I've got from guild members to improve my Mage skills still escapes my comprehension. The only other place where I find the same level of cooperation is from the Motley crew :crazy: on this forum.
I presume they will drop it very, very soon. The only reason for DX11 in WoW was Windows 7. ~50% of users have it. Now, Win7 is EOL and has also received DX12 support. The moment Win7 gained DX12 pretty much all new AAA releases were DX12 x64 only.
looz
Active member
That's very nice, but pessimist in me sees this as a confirmation that they're not going to port into Vulkan.
I don't see them dropping Dx11 though, since even if not officially supported, quite a few play with Wine and they do test against it and also revert Warden band caused by Wine.
Looking forward to seeing how this runs. WoW is one of those games I want to run at near refresh rate when possible, so I doubt I can afford the RTX effects without an upgrade to a 3xxx series. VRS on the other hand helps with that goal, so that's awesome. But I doubt it's going to be ported to consoles, unless they'll implement separate realms for that. Knowing the community, people would likely implement an addon to check your platform and then kick any console players, who'd likely be unable to install addons.
I don't see them dropping Dx11 though, since even if not officially supported, quite a few play with Wine and they do test against it and also revert Warden band caused by Wine.
Looking forward to seeing how this runs. WoW is one of those games I want to run at near refresh rate when possible, so I doubt I can afford the RTX effects without an upgrade to a 3xxx series. VRS on the other hand helps with that goal, so that's awesome. But I doubt it's going to be ported to consoles, unless they'll implement separate realms for that. Knowing the community, people would likely implement an addon to check your platform and then kick any console players, who'd likely be unable to install addons.
Avet
Active member
DX12 should perform at a similar level as Vulkan. The thing is there are pretty much no pure DX12 games. Most of them are DX11 with DX12 features added. As I have mentioned before companies didn't want to lose ~50% of the players that were on Win7. I wasn't profitable to make DX12 only engine and loose half of the market. That is why most games perform better on the DX11 option and crap out at DX12.
I didn't test it myself although I am on Fedora Workstation 31 atm. but DX12 should be supported through DXVK. I have just read about it briefly on Reddit. So DX11 can easily go. If they want to implement RT then DX11 is just obsolete. So I think it will be DX12/DXR only in the near future. They have started with RT shadows first probably for a test because if they don't work properly it won't be as impacting as global illumination not working.
Consoles are a possibility but probably not a reality.
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