GotNoRice
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2001
- Messages
- 12,023
I'm curious who else here is going to be playing in the new expansion, and what your thoughts are. Shadowlands is going to be released on October 26th. The 9.0 patch will come a few weeks or a month before that, introducing all of the mechanical changes (both gameplay changes and changes to the game engine) before the new expansion content is actually released.
I'm excited that they are going to be using Ray Tracing now. I *almost* went with a 1080ti instead of a 2080 the last time I did a videocard upgrade, and now I'm really glad that I went with the 2080 since this is by far the game I sink the most time into. Many who aren't familiar with the game talk about how old it is, as if nothing has changed over the years. In reality, it's pretty amazing that the game has evolved from something that used to be able to run on a Voodoo3 or TNT2 into something that now uses DX12 and Ray Tracing. I've been playing on the Beta and the performance impact from enabling Ray Tracing is actually pretty small. They have also introduced dynamic video settings, where you can set a FPS target and some settings will automatically lower themselves if/when you fall below that FPS target. That is great because static settings don't make sense in all situations. The game can become quite bogged down in content with 25+ people when it's trying to display every single animation from every single spell/ability that every single person is using, as it typically would with all settings at maximum.
I'm not sold on some of the new talent and spell changes, as well as new systems like covenants. But that's pretty much always my reaction at the beginning of a new expansion.
I'm excited that they are going to be using Ray Tracing now. I *almost* went with a 1080ti instead of a 2080 the last time I did a videocard upgrade, and now I'm really glad that I went with the 2080 since this is by far the game I sink the most time into. Many who aren't familiar with the game talk about how old it is, as if nothing has changed over the years. In reality, it's pretty amazing that the game has evolved from something that used to be able to run on a Voodoo3 or TNT2 into something that now uses DX12 and Ray Tracing. I've been playing on the Beta and the performance impact from enabling Ray Tracing is actually pretty small. They have also introduced dynamic video settings, where you can set a FPS target and some settings will automatically lower themselves if/when you fall below that FPS target. That is great because static settings don't make sense in all situations. The game can become quite bogged down in content with 25+ people when it's trying to display every single animation from every single spell/ability that every single person is using, as it typically would with all settings at maximum.
I'm not sold on some of the new talent and spell changes, as well as new systems like covenants. But that's pretty much always my reaction at the beginning of a new expansion.