Are graphics in MMOs important?

Graphics, they’re important. You’ll find countless people on the internet who claim that they don’t care about visuals, it’s the gameplay that matters - those people are lying. Whether it’s crisp, readable type in a text adventure or fluid action in something like Infamous, how the game is presented visually is not only important, but the first thing that will endear us to a title. It doesn’t have to be the most beautiful thing in the world, granted, but it needs to look good enough and run well enough that the looks doesn’t impair on the enjoyment of the gameplay, the score, the design and everything else that makes up a video game.

So while individuals might have their own definition of “passable” graphics, at the very least things have to be done to a level that we can recognise what we’re doing and who we’re doing it to.

The “I Don’t Care” Myth

As we moved into this generation of consoles and newer, slicker GPUs for computers, a certain sort of person decided that, to a proper gamer, graphics didn’t matter. Developers were wasting time and money pumping efforts into something that only idiots and sheep could possibly be interested in; the key, they thought, was not in how the game was presented, but how it played. They were the sort who said, more often than perhaps they needed to, that Space Invaders was a better game than Gears of War despite being thirty years apart and of a much lower graphical quality. What those people failed to mention, of course, was that Space Invaders was built around a certain graphical system, so that the people who made it, experts in their fields no doubt, could create perfect designs for that sort of game.

Gears of War has got the looks! No discussion there...

Despite being thirty years apart, it would be absolutely laughable now for us to think that somebody would make a game of Space Invaders with the graphical efforts that went into Gears of War, not because the game is old or unpopular (I’d argue more people play it now than played it at the time of release) but because the former doesn’t need the visual impact that Gears of War does. Space Invaders isn’t trying to give you a plot nor involve you in a world that requires suspension of belief, you have a goal and a time limit in which to achieve that goal. So it’s stupid to believe that graphics aren’t important, because as much as people might harp on about it being a shallow thing to enjoy about video games, looks are very much a part of us accepting a game and good design can be the difference between quality entertainment and bargain bin fodder.

The MMO

MMOs, as I touched on in an earlier article, walk a very fine line between being graphically impressive and needing to allow for as many different sorts of people as possible. Battlefield 3 might sell just because it looks fantastic on high-end systems (although in that example there are other reasons to play as well) but an obscure free-to-play MMO from Korea is less likely to get a following just because it looks nice and it’s certainly wouldn’t do as well as the decidedly aged World of Warcraft. It’s important to look passable, just good enough not to draw complaints about the graphics, but not so great that it’ll disallow people with low-to-mid spec systems. If I could tell you the amount of times I’ve written something to the effect of “the graphics are average, not enough to blow you away but not enough to distract from your enjoyment either,” you probably wouldn’t believe me.

The Secret World looks great too

Involving Everybody

By making the decision to upgrade the graphics, the developer is potentially slapping themselves. Without a doubt every website even vaguely linked to the MMO world will write an article about a beautiful new game, they’d probably even dedicate a few more MBs of their web space to a set of screenshots, but if the game doesn’t come quickly then by the time of the release date, something else has already stolen the graphical thunder and the hype has died down. Everybody unable to run it has instantly dismissed it anyway, but for people only interested in showing off the graphical power of their system, paying for something that’s already started to look at all dated isn’t going to happen. And, it goes without saying, you’re not going to get this sort of risky move in the free-to-play world, they just can’t afford to dismiss an entire portion of their potential audience.

TERA in all its glory makes you want to wander...

TERA, The Old Republic, Secret World and God Slayer

With that said, there are some absolutely stunning MMOs that have either just come out or are coming in the not-so-distant future. TERA, as you may have read in my many articles about the beauty of that game, can be absolutely stunning and, to a lesser extent, I found The Old Republic to be impressive as well. Secret World looked great in the videos posted to this site last week and has moved back to the top of my to-play list (unfortunately it’s a list that never actually gets anything struck off, so it might be a while). God Slayer, the new MMO announced to be using the Cry Engine 3, may fall into the trap outlined above, but for the record does look fantastic and I wait for more details.  So there are games out there pushing the graphical boundaries of the genre and, honestly, I think I enjoyed them all the more for it.

Call me shallow (“shallow”), call me easily impressed (“you’re easily impressed”), but I’ve felt more ingrained in the story of TERA, more in love with my surroundings than in almost any MMO you care to name and I can’t help but think that’s down to the graphics.

Conclusion : MMOs and importance of graphics

Graphics in MMOs are definitely important and, as we’ve seen before, it’s easy for a developer to slip up and leave players with a game that looks underwhelming and, as a result, becomes less enjoyable. How important are they though? Does it matter that we could be exploring worlds with a level of detail found in the Uncharted games; should we expect Crysis-level visuals? We have to be realistic, that isn’t going to happen until more people can run that sort of game. But from the brief glimpse of the future we’ve had, from screenshots of God Slayer, from TERA and from The Secret World, we can see that the general graphical quality of new MMOs are increasing and, with it, how far we’re willing to be sucked into the world ahead of us.