WoW Forever Graphics Modes and Updates

In World of Warcraft: Forever, players will be able to customize their Graphics setting like never before. When players first enter the game, they will be prompted to choose between SD (Classic) and HD (Retail) character models. This option will affect the way that players see all characters in the world, including their character, NPCs, and other player-characters.

In addition to being able to toggle SD and HD character models at any time, players will also be able to preview what their characters looks like in each of these options during Character Creation.

Finally, while all players will get to choose whether they see characters in either the HD or SD models, Blizzard has gone back and applied Classic character animations to both SD and HD models.

With the introduction of this new era of WoW, Blizzard wanted to re-create the world as players remember it. With this in mind they reworked several graphical aspects of the world, including render distance, dynamic lighting, and enhanced water visuals.

Previously, fog was used in World of Warcraft to create a sense of ambiance or dread. Functionally fog was also used to obscure areas in the distance, as a result of the limitations on view-distance and draw-distance in original WoW. Artists and Engineers at Blizzard have worked together to create a new Volumetric Fog system, which allows for varying densities of particles and creates the ability for light to shine through fog and fog to cast shadows. These new details create a much more immersive experience for the player.

Using a process called "Scattering", environmental engineers are able to bounce light off of the fog or dust particles to create "God rays" which shine down from the canopies of dense forests, like in Ashenvale.

In WoW Classic shadows were stagnant. This means that, even though the sun and moon would rise and set, the direction that objects cast shadows remained the same. Now, in WoW: Forever, the environmental team has created dynamic lighting which allows objects to cast shadows in the appropriate directions.

With indirect or global illumination, the shadows and lighting in Azeroth are more appropriately placed. Now, light can bounce of off structures to slightly illuminate or darken specific areas depending on the amount of light available. This global illumination technique allows the team to create much more immersive settings.

To further increase immersion, the team focused on enhancing specific characteristics of water in the game, including:

• Movement from waves, wind, and water flow.
• Color, light absorption, and transparency.
• How water reflects light and how objects are reflected by water.

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