Every time I see a screenshot or video of Guild Wars 2 I'll either think it looks amazing or think it looks like a game made in 2005. Especially coming off of the TERA beta, a lot of the art in GW2 looks flat and plain in comparison. Am I to assume a lot of it is because the game isn't finished yet? While I can see validity in that argument I don't think it's as simple as that, I don't think they'll be able to update much besides the spells and abilities before the game ships.

I guess it's a limitation of the engine? TERA was using Unreal, which I guess would explain all the pretty curves and shading in everything. Guild Wars 2 on the other hand seems to use a lot of flat details mixed in with the 3D artwork, it's really easy to see the seams of the engine and where they were counting polygons.

TERA is a very nice looking game, it's not going to come close to that. However, I think GW2's art style gives it a huge advantage. It's much more artistic, consistent and has a really grand feeling to everything.

A lot of the screenshots we've seen at the moment are coming from the beta though, which has a lot of the effects turned off and is very badly optimised. It also doesn't support anything above DX9, so the finished game is definitely going to look better than what you're currently seeing.

I've heard it said by others, but I see a Warhamer Online AOR vibe to the characters and animations. That's not a compliment. Hope I'm wrong, guess I'll find out more this weekend.

It's largely a matter of personal taste, but when I look at Tera, what I see is exactly the "flat"ness you describe. The difference for me is between something that looks great technically versus something that looks great because it has a team of 90 incredibly talented artists behind it.

@WinterSnowblind said:

A lot of the screenshots we've seen at the moment are coming from the beta though, which has a lot of the effects turned off and is very badly optimised.

Ah, yes. I hadn't taken that into consideration. I've heard a lot of people were having trouble running the game at a good fps, so that would definitely explain why some screenshots look amazing while others not so much.

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

It's largely a matter of personal taste, but when I look at Tera, what I see is exactly the "flat"ness you describe. The difference for me is between something that looks great technically versus something that looks great because it has a team of 90 incredibly talented artists behind it.

I think it's the hard shadows. Aside from the clothing details, look at the tree in the background. Every little bump and scratch has shadows and highlights, it really adds some depth to the otherwise flat surfaces.

I think TERA has some outstanding environmental art, but then it also has the terrible eastern character designs which are a massive turn off.

Edit - I think the monster designs in some cases are really awesome too.

I hope Guild Wars has something to show for itself. I'd hate to know that the largest marketing for the more popular MMO would be tits and more tits.

@arch4non said:

TERA was using Unreal, which I guess would explain all the pretty curves and shading in everything. Guild Wars 2 on the other hand seems to use a lot of flat details mixed in with the 3D artwork, it's really easy to see the seams of the engine and where they were counting polygons.

Lawl, unreal is the spawn of satan.

@AlexW00d said:

Lawl, unreal is the spawn of satan.

Because Batman, Mass Effect, Borderlands, Bioshock, and Gears were all terrible games, right?

Watch gameplay footage and judge for yourself. Personally, graphics are secondary to gameplay mechanics for me. Will be fun to check it out this weekend and make a first-hand opinion, and see if my thoughts are justified. I just can't and won't, do another "holy trinity"-"quest hub"-"grindy" MMO, which is all there are out there right now. Give me something different, and I'll be happy.

@arch4non said:

@AlexW00d said:

Lawl, unreal is the spawn of satan.

Because Batman, Mass Effect, Borderlands, Bioshock, and Gears were all terrible games, right?

Engine =/= games dude. Don't be so silly.

TERA reminded me way too much of FFXIV which was an awful experience, but that is gameplay so that isn't what we're talking about. However, it does ooze the most asian feel/look which I've never been a fan of. I'm not going to deny that it looks pretty good. I spent a few hours over the weekend trying out their beta and the graphics are nothing to scoff at. I just don't like the Korean MMO vibe so the game isn't for me.

Edit: But the popori are amazing.

@AlexW00d said:

@arch4non said:

@AlexW00d said:

Lawl, unreal is the spawn of satan.

Because Batman, Mass Effect, Borderlands, Bioshock, and Gears were all terrible games, right?

Engine =/= games dude. Don't be so silly.

I'm not really interested in your trolling and I don't plan to reply to anything you say to this Alex, but don't flip flop your stance, you say unreal is satan then say the games made by it have nothing to do with it? If all you're trying to do is sound smart you're doing a horrible job, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Back on topic:

@Subjugation said:

TERA reminded me way too much of FFXIV which was an awful experience, but that is gameplay so that isn't what we're talking about. However, it does ooze the most asian feel/look which I've never been a fan of. I'm not going to deny that it looks pretty good. I spent a few hours over the weekend trying out their beta and the graphics are nothing to scoff at. I just don't like the Korean MMO vibe so the game isn't for me.

I was in the Tera beta and man that game is boring as hell. It looks amazing and the animations, etc are great. They put a ton of work into that game and it shows, graphically. It'll do well at launch and fizzle like 90% of the MMOs out.

I don't expect GW2 to be the savior that everyone thinks it's going to be, but I think it will be pretty good. I'm excited for it but also keeping my expectations in check. Too many MMOs with false promises.

I have played Diablo 3 beta also and my goodness that's a fun game, I expect I'll be playing that for a long while, maybe then GW2 will have the usual MMO bugs fixed :)

@Xeirus: Dude what are you even talking about? I hate the unreal engine. One of my favourite games is Mirror's Edge. Like I said engine =/= games. People hate Gamebryo, people love Oblivion. People liked IDtech 3, people dislike Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and 3 and Blackops etc. You see where this is going?

The engine may be weaker, but the art team, especially Daniel Dociu and Kekai Kotaki, are light years ahead of anyone working on Tera. Tera just looks too Japanese for my tastes, with all those women running around in impractically skimpy outfits.

Also, it is unfortunate that Googling "Tera" brings up a picture of Tera Patrick sucking a cock.

I'm quite sick of the "Asian MMO" textures, and TERA brought back horrible memories of Aion. In comparison to the graphics of other MMOs, TERA is impressive, but other factors convinced me to stay away.

The graphics in GW2 don't remind me of games from 2005, since GW1, a game released in 2005, pales in comparison to GW2. I mean, this was GW1 in 2005.

As someone who hates, and i mean HATES anime/asian styles, I was won over by the Tera beta. That game looks amazing technically (Best MMO technically on the market as far as I've seen), and artistically. Even though I hate the style as I just said, they actually did a really good job. The races look distinct and all have their own styles, the zones have good styles.. personally I don't see how anyone can say guild wars 2 is better "stylistically". Maybe I'm biased because I happen to think it completely lacks style and is simply generic fantasy style wise, but credit has to be given to Tera for this, they've crafted something unique and distinct.

Point being, I can't take anyone who says Tera lacks style and Guild Wars 2 has it seriously, because it just comes accross as a weak way to defend Guild Wars 2 when it clearly loses this battle. More to the point, it doesn't even matter. Graphics already aren't the end-all - as long as they reach a certain level of "I can easily tell what is going on" - but graphics in an MMO matter even less.

@Pinworm45: Bro. Bro. Subjectivity, bro. Come on.

I think Guild Wars 2 looks great. Maybe that's because I'm conditioned to accept WoW levels of graphics, but even compared to the more recent SWTOR, I think GW2 looks way better. TERA looks excellent for sure, probably better technically then GW2, but I think that the style has more of an appeal to me. The style for GW2 may be close to 'generic fantasy' (as @Pinworm45 said), but TERA looks like generic anime. At least GW2 has the benefit of having a cool painted kind of design and some cool flourishes.

Additionally, at the end of the day I think I'd rather play GW2, as coming off the TERA beta, I was turned off by that game. It just felt like WoW even more than SWTOR did. Sure the combat was different in an interesting way but it still boiled down to 'run to quest giver, take quest, kill x something, return quest, repeat' without any real context to your actions unless you read a massive block of text. At least in SWTOR (and GW2 from what I've seen) they give you context to your actions. Plus GW2 has the benefit of not having an entire race of lolis, which is just all kinds of creepy.

That being said I've never played GW2. So maybe by this time next week I will have been as turned off of that game as I was by TERA.

@Pinworm45:

While Tera is technically rather pretty, I found the world to lack believablity and cohesion. Environmental art didn't mesh with creature art. Mobs weren't placed with worldbuilding in mind, but rather to accommodate static grind quests. Respawning into the same 5 squarefeet, waiting with a blank stare to be killed by some passerby adventurer. How dull. Just because something looks unique, doesn't make it good. In another thread somebody mentioned a fitting word to describe what the creature/race art is... overdesigned and out of place.

That's exactly the area where Guild Wars 2 looks to shine the most. Creating a cohesive and alive -dynamic- world. From the various event mechanics replacing classic quests, to the general artstyle, as well as specific environmental/creature design combos. It all comes together exceptionally - together they create the illusion of a living breathing world better than anything before it in the MMORPG space.

Technically - many bells and whistles have not yet been turned on for GW2. Most footage out there is shot with medium textures (only the second press weekend had high textures enabled, and likely not all of them, nor the highest possible texture quality). The game has not yet been properly optimized. TERA has been out for over a year in Korea. Graphically, it's never been in beta in the West.

Overall TERA's presentation ain't as outstanding as the shiny graphics make it seem. The sounddesign for example is craptastic. Questdesign is overly grindy and completely uninspired. It may become a good sandbox game for PvP and player-driven politics, but everything but the graphics doesn't hold a candle to most western MMOs. Even the active combat system, which feels surprisingly solid for a massively multiplayer game of TERA's magnitude, suffers from the grindy nature of the game. Just because it's active combat, doesn't make it as exciting as playing Devil May Cry. Since most enemies are not even a challenge, yet each demand quite long time to kill, it's actually more dull than questing with a high-lvl WoW-character.

Either way, GW2 is fixing to become a great game, not just a great looking game. Presentation is more than shiny graphics. It's the quality of how everything comes together. GW2 certainly doesn't look shabby by MMO standards, and in many occassions, by any standards - and it has a whole lot more going for it. Most of which is above and beyond what other games do in the MMO space. I'm certain, anybody who'll play GW2 with an open mind, will find it to be a mighty gust of freshness, introducing all new qualities to the genre. I want to get high on GW2 and fly - for as long as it's awesome. Let's hope it plays as awesomely, as it reads on paper and looks on video. May it all come together for the next perfect MMO-storm.

TERA looks asian mmo bland, in the sense that i get zero vibe of creativity, artistry, or soul. Its like they all share the same asset pool, and all the modelers have died.

Watching all the beta footage, GW2 feels likes its full of creativity, and character. I get much more emotional feedback from GW2, when the person turns the corner ,and i go " Wow.. that's beautiful". All the major cities look mind mindbogglingly beautiful, and if you want polygons the conversation cut-scenes look fantastic with fantastic facial emotion.

While watching TERA, all i can say is, hmm ya that looks sharp, but i never really get an emotional response form anything in TERA. Other then being fucking creeped out by the pedophile identification race.

As someone who hates, and i mean HATES anime/asian styles, I was won over by the Tera beta. That game looks amazing technically (Best MMO technically on the market as far as I've seen), and artistically. Even though I hate the style as I just said, they actually did a really good job. The races look distinct and all have their own styles, the zones have good styles.. personally I don't see how anyone can say guild wars 2 is better "stylistically". Maybe I'm biased because I happen to think it completely lacks style and is simply generic fantasy style wise, but credit has to be given to Tera for this, they've crafted something unique and distinct.

Point being, I can't take anyone who says Tera lacks style and Guild Wars 2 has it seriously, because it just comes accross as a weak way to defend Guild Wars 2 when it clearly loses this battle. More to the point, it doesn't even matter. Graphics already aren't the end-all - as long as they reach a certain level of "I can easily tell what is going on" - but graphics in an MMO matter even less.

I find it odd people are so quick to bash TERA for looking asian then turn around and praise any western fantasy game for looking like every other western fantasy game. Different cultures, I guess. I don't think the argument really sticks, it's more or less entirely based on personal taste. I do understand where you're coming from, I happen to loathe Final Fantasy games. Though, it's not because they usually look silly, it's because they're simply bad games.

I will admit was the world design and mob layout was pretty terrible in TERA. All the quests were kill x and the whole world felt like a series of corridors. Even the main city, Velika, was built with map cells around every corner and was incredibly inconvenient to actually use for anything. The combat on the other hand blew me away. I was playing as a Mystic, a sort of combination of Mage, Priest, and Warlock from WoW. By the time I was level 20-30 I was having so much fun, they've got spells to do almost anything. I usually hate playing the role of a healer in groups, but the way you move around in this game and actually do things made it an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. I'm still just kinda stunned by how advanced the combat system was compared to something like Skyrim. Some parts of it were handled even better than Dark Souls.

I'd say TERA's biggest problem is they have this awesome combat system yet they hardly used it at all for the questing. You have all these tools which let you move around and be active, yet only a small portion of the creatures forced you to move around and have a dynamic fight. Most of them were the BAM's who took multiple people to fight anyway.

Tera isn't actually as nice as many people seem to think it is. I played it maxed out @1080p with a GTX 470 and it often looks kinda meh, especially the characters themselves. SUPER Korean and very bland. The environments vary from amazing to FF11 bland but the mobs always look great (with the strange exception of the fae who seem to lack detail). The combat system varies from being really good to kinda OK; there are times when you feel it gets a little repetitive. Tera has a lot going for it, but frankly, graphics are rather meaningless when the gameplay is less advanced than DDO or DCUO.

@Pinworm45: To put it bluntly, TERA is not a good game. Even ignoring the gameplay, the art style is wildly inconsistent. The world looks like something out of Final Fantasy, the humans and most other races are incredibly realistic.. but then you have the anime girl and raccoon people race, and totally bizarre enemy types. My problem isn't that it's an Asian game, but that parts of it were designed for an Asian audience, and other parts for the western. None of it meshes and overall it creates a really horrible (and generic) looking style.

Guild Wars 2 on the other hand, is one of the most artistically impressive games I've ever seen:

(I'm sure everyone has seen this by now, but it makes a very bold point.. particularly when the concept art of the city melts into the actual ingame engine).

@WinterSnowblind: I really do hope it turns out as well as what's in that video, I'm just itching to get into another MMO.

The beta footage you've seen so far has all been with the graphics scaled down. If you watch some of the stuff from Gamescom last year when the game was optimized you'll see that GW2 blows Tera out of the water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMTs74eWBJ4

vs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD4K0AGNpmY

There is no comparison. Tera has very primitive lighting effects (GW1 even did this better), and the artstyle is very plain and unimaginative. There isn't anything going on, it's just fields of bright (yuck) green grass, with a tree or two thrown in every now and then. The GW2 world is much more immersive and alive. Tera is the game that looks like it was released in 2005.

TERA might have a better engine, but the art style is a huge snore. I appreciate GW2 for prioritizing and pushing a non-conventional aesthetic.

@Xeirus said:

@AlexW00d said:

@arch4non said:

@AlexW00d said:

Lawl, unreal is the spawn of satan.

Because Batman, Mass Effect, Borderlands, Bioshock, and Gears were all terrible games, right?

Engine =/= games dude. Don't be so silly.

I'm not really interested in your trolling and I don't plan to reply to anything you say to this Alex, but don't flip flop your stance, you say unreal is satan then say the games made by it have nothing to do with it? If all you're trying to do is sound smart you're doing a horrible job, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Xeirus, are you implying that the stance "I love the Gallardo but hate Lamborghini." is invalid? Because if you are, you'd be way wrong.

Oh man, these graphics. This will be the last time I pre-order a game.

@arch4non: What settings are you running on? This demolishes TERA.

I'm at max settings. The frame rate isn't really something to complain about as the game is still in beta, but the graphics themselves...oh boy. The game looks old and it's not even out yet.

There seems to be a lot of flat details mixed in with the environment, similar to WoW. Railings and whatnot are completely flat.

The facial animations in the dialogue cut scenes are awesome I think.

@arch4non: No you're not, just look at the difference between what you posted and my screenshot, there's no detail on your character AT ALL. You've clearly bumped your settings down as low as they can go.

If what the graphics are the only thing you find important, you probably shouldn't be playing MMO's anyway. This is obviously a troll topic now.

It looks reasonably good, but the textures are a little lacking. Hope they give us a high res texture pack or something after release. 

@WinterSnowblind: I'm pretty sure this problem has something to do with the lighting. Just look at the two screenshots, you only see any of the detail if you nudge the camera in a perfect angle similar to the one you took in your screenshot.

Please don't go "omg ur a troll" while simply disregarding anything I have to say. My settings really are on max, the fact you would even call that into question speaks volumes for the point I was trying to make. The game really does look old.

@arch4non said:

@WinterSnowblind: I'm pretty sure this problem has something to do with the lighting. Just look at the two screenshots, you only see any of the detail if you nudge the camera in a perfect angle similar to the one you took in your screenshot.

Please don't go "omg ur a troll" while simply disregarding anything I have to say. My settings really are on max, the fact you would even call that into question speaks volumes for the point I was trying to make. The game really does look old.

I'm calling your claims into question because your screenshots look vastly lower quality than mine, and all I did was stand on top of a hill and slightly zoom in. There's also the fact you "regret pre-ordering" based solely on the graphics. To me, that means you're either trolling, or you're just an incredibly shallow individual.

Well, you can plug your ears and call me a troll all you want but it doesn't change the fact my settings are on max with high res character textures enabled. I'll say again the fact you just confused max settings for low settings really does paint an unfortunate picture.

Graphics aren't the only reason I'm not so happy about my purchase, it's just the reason related to this topic. There are many other reasons including the WoW-like tab targeting/auto attack combat. TERA did a lot of things wrong, but if it got one single thing right it would have been the combat. Though, even the awesome combat isn't going to make me overlook everything else along with the subscription fee.

@arch4non: My game also looks far better than yours, even when not on max. (I tried both)

Something is wrong.

I think everything looks great, If it is looking like this pre-optimization I can't wait to see the final product ,,,

On max settings. I think it looks great.

Showing the different lighting

@arch4non said:

I'm at max settings. The frame rate isn't really something to complain about as the game is still in beta, but the graphics themselves...oh boy. The game looks old and it's not even out yet.

There seems to be a lot of flat details mixed in with the environment, similar to WoW. Railings and whatnot are completely flat.

Your video card either can't support the higher level textures/effects or you have an ATI card (for which the game hasn't been optimized yet). As you can see from the screenshots above, your game isn't supposed to look like that (and the obvious culprit is lack of beta optimization). Relax.

Technically, TERA looks incredible. And ran like butter for me. But to even compare the art style to how breathtaking Guild Wars 2 is is, well, unforgivable. TERA looks like the quintessential over-designed Asian 'fantastic' theme. FFX-XII + XIV, Aion, you name it... they might as well be interchangeable with their nonsensical art.

Some screens. Does the ArenaNet logo next to the names of the last two screens mean they are employees?

@Subjugation: Talking to cows... excellent.

@Subjugation said:

Does the ArenaNet logo next to the names of the last two screens mean they are employees?

Yep.

Well after walking back from two hours of Guild Wars 2 beta.... it's graphics are "okay". I was in the human lands so maybe that was part of it but the shaemoor zone humans start in is just plain boring and lacks any personality. It honestly didn't even look too much better than SWtOR mostly because the art doesn't have any flair. That is not to say that it didn't look better, but graphics are about more than technical reality. A perfectly rendered highly detailed brown box is still just a brown box if you get the analogy?

Entering the capitol Divinities Reach stepped up the game quite a bit though and it was much more visually appealing.

@Karkarov: We'll have to disagree on that one. I have everything set to the absolute minimum and I still think the artistry is incredible.