world-of-warcraft-graphics
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Which matters more, graphics or gameplay?
Graphics have come a long way in the last 20 years. We've gone from simple white squares on a screen to photorealistic cutscenes and gameplay. We used to have monochrome backgrounds, and now we've got lush, textured environments. Most players come upon a game with an expectation of what level of graphical advancement they would like to see. Likewise, gameplay has evolved in leaps and bounds. We no longer suffer extreme death penalties, and we can find random people to run dungeons and raids with by only clicking a couple of buttons. New gameplay ideas are being presented seemingly with each patch, and to a lot of success -- a simple gameplay hook can keep people coming back and playing a game for months, even years. But are the two mutually exclusive, and have they become so? Obviously, in an MMO, no one wants to run around an ugly world populated by trees that look like pipe cleaners, but is it a deal breaker? Would you rather play a fun, fulfilling game that looks a bit dated or play the most gorgeous, graphically stunning MMO that may lack good mechanics or an involving story?
Patch 3.3.5's Out of Storage error
While some players are happily playing with the new features included in Patch 3.3.5, many others are unable to do so due to problems that cause the game to crash. Blizzard has noted this situation and is working diligently on a fix to this problem. In the meantime, a thread on the Technical Support forums addresses this issue and what players can do to make the game playable again. The issue appears to pop up as an Out of Storage error for players running World of Warcraft on a 64-bit OS. What can you do while waiting for a fix? Simple -- turn down your graphics settings. Blue poster Datth had the following suggestions to make: Datth Extremely low view distance settings (177 vs 1277) is more than enough to compensate for the extra memory being used in this patch by a few factors. A lot of people are able to get by with setting View Distance from max to about halfway using that alone. Using d3d9ex mode (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21723843232&sid=1) can shave off another ~100-200MB from what it's currently doing right now too. source Blizzard hopes to have the game fully functional for all players at any level of graphics quality soon; however, there is no ETA currently on when this fix will occur. Keep an eye on the thread in the Technical Support forums, as they are sure to post more information as they learn more about the errors.
