Guild Wars 2

Ansau.7326:

There are no plans to upgrade to a newer API because a lot of people is still running this game in Windows XP, so the maximum API they can support is DX9.

Unfortunately, people still depending on XP for their computing (it is/was my favorite version of windows to date and that is unlikely to change), they can only blame themselves if a rug gets pulled from under their feet at any moment. I mean Microsoft software that is supported is bad enough, unsupported software from them is something else entirely.

Not that I don’t agree with you, changing the system requirements of a live game drastically would be a poor decision on ArenaNet’s part.

I cant remember a dev answering a question regarding dx version, ever. So I wont keep my hopes up you will get one this time.

aspirine.6852:

I cant remember a dev answering a question regarding dx version, ever. So I wont keep my hopes up you will get one this time.

There has been one a long time ago. I believe they said it wasn’t on something they were looking into at that time

Ansau.7326:

There are no plans to upgrade to a newer API because a lot of people is still running this game in Windows XP, so the maximum API they can support is DX9.
.

Please point me people playing on XP still…“a lot of people” are you a visionary, working for AN or something? Any statictic webside proves that youre wrong. Dont say things out of hat if you dont have anything to prove that youre right.

ps. most popular OS is W7 as it stands now.

I think they are waiting for Windows 10 release for DX12.. then HoT will use DX12 ?

I’m only guessing here..

I believe China is still nearly 30% XP.

It takes money to add a render path, rewrite to scale across cores, etc. Would you rather have your money going to new content or an overhaul of the game engine? And don’t give me, “two guys on a Red Bull fueled weekend could do this” BS. Dx9 to Dx10 is major, much more than going from Dx10 to 11 to 12.

And it’s likely not the renderer that’s the problem, it’s handling other players being around you.

Beldin.5498:

Rampage.7145:

Now that would be a good reasson to buy a 100$ expansion, having the game on Dx12 running efficiently along all CPU cores, not the mini Rytlock.

But then people will start to cry that ANet have also to include a free copy
of Windows 10 .. because its unfair to give them a game with something that
they can’t use.

Oh .. and all people who have already bought Win10 want their money back
from ANet .. lol

Yup!!!

I haven’t been keeping up with DirectX for a while now. But is there really an inherent performance boost just by changing DX9 → DX9+ ?

The only time they ever really mentioned it..

https://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2/photos/a.135044094208.103264.114036714208/10151048222709209/

We will be evaluating supporting DX11 post launch. ~RB2

Behellagh.1468:

Would you rather have your money going to new content or an overhaul of the game engine?

The latter, personally. I’ve been playing this game almost everyday since head start and I can always find something to do in the game even with long “content droughts” as other players like to call it. I’m probably in the minority with this opinion, though. Meh.

The DX11 64 bit clients of W* and AA
are proof that tech alone can’t make a
client better.
If they can’t do DX11 64 bit properly
they should stick with what they know
and what works fine.

According to website i read this morning, everyone who has preview build of windows 10 and doens’t even own another license (or an illegal one), will get windows 10 for free. That means soon windows 10 (might) be crazy hyped and used all around world. Enoug motivation for Anet I think. And if they do so, wait for AMD zen architecture, so you can use your wisdom of that architecture rather then do it now.

Windows 10 = Dx12. Wich theoretically) uses less Cpu power and more gpu power wich we really need in gw2. Nvidia Titan is useless at this moment for gw2.

skowcia.8257:

Ansau.7326:

There are no plans to upgrade to a newer API because a lot of people is still running this game in Windows XP, so the maximum API they can support is DX9.
.

Please point me people playing on XP still…“a lot of people” are you a visionary, working for AN or something? Any statictic webside proves that youre wrong. Dont say things out of hat if you dont have anything to prove that youre right.

ps. most popular OS is W7 as it stands now.

I’m not a visionary, neither a anet worker, but a very documented person about this particularly matter.

Windows XP is still the second most used OS, so we can supose a lot of people is still playing the game in XP.
http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

And finally, I’ve found what we can say the first official statement about performance optimization. Happily all it does is to confirm my idea that a newer API wouldn’t solve pretty much anything because the problem is the cpu being collapsed with the gigantic amount of calculations from the main thread. And that it would take a lot of time to do it (redo all the game engine to work as a multi-threading). He also talks about 64bit client, which would may only solve crashing problems.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ajnso/bad_optimalization_in_gw2/csdnn3n

PD: More statements:
“There are a lot of processing that scales with the amount of players, some more obvious (more to animate, more nameplates to move around the screen, re-order for depth, and update), and some less so (determining which character/object is under the cursor, moving the dots on the minimap). Some of this scales with the amount of cores in your system (animation for one), but if it takes too long the main thread still has to wait for it to finish.”

“(How can you say that x64 is not the/one bottleneck and in the other sentence it is ?)
It’s not really a bottleneck. When I said the “actual FPS gain is minimal at best” I mean on the order of 1-2 FPS."

“(However GW appears to run on a single threaded mostly, and it is doing a lot of work. It’s handling networking, input, sound and updates for up to 150 characters in a zone at a time. It may also be doing CPU skinning which means handling animation vertex positions locally, instead of in a vertex shader.)
Most of your post is entirely on-point, but to correct this bit:
Network has its own thread already, as does sound.
Characters not around you are not being processed.
And skinning is done in the vertex shader.”

http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 according to your web.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

And most important
http://www.statista.com/statistics/265033/proportion-of-operating-systems-used-on-the-online-gaming-platform-steam/ hell yeah almost 6%

XP is dead, its not even supported anymore. Holding everyone else due to possibility that few people playing on xp is wrong. Its their fault for using XP. If they want to continue playing the game they have to upgrade pc. Many of newer games doesnt even support vista, let alone xp..

2yr old article
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Steam-Survey-Most-PC-Gamers-Have-Weaker-PCs-Than-PS4-Xbox-One-58833.html

“Speaking of video cards… majority of Steam users are rocking DirectX 11 GPUs. In fact, 64.78% have a DX11 GPU while only 29.4% have a DX10 GPU and only 1.75% have a DX9 GPU.”

GW2’s lighting on all maps needs to look more consistently good like lion’s arch.

OP do u have the game running at low – mid settings ? that would explain why it wouldn’t look so great.

at max detail the game is very nice to look at and is immersive.

don’t forget GW2 is CPU dependent. a high end GPU will only go so far as most of the work is done on your CPU. have u consinderd either over clocking your system or getting a modern updated system for 2015 ?

I know a lot of ppl are like BUT GRAPHICS CARD DOES GRAPHICS !1!!. this is true. but the game uses the CPU to render then the GPU does the rest which is why u nothice like 30-40% GPU load when playing GW2 and 70-90% CPU load on GW2.

anyway the game is very nice looking and if anything all it needs is to be optimised to use modern hardware much better.

and maybe even just a 64 bit client would be nice

Will you pay for the new engine? then where willl be the Funding?

Will you buy the 60%-80% not being able to play a machine? So we wait…When most old rigs are phased out or only have a minor group affected by loss of compatibility make transition while retaining the gamer circle easier..

Will you solely take over the cash the 60%-80% spend? when converting to a full 64 bit, DX 12 environment with 8 core support needing 12 Gb RAM?

I ruin on a i7 3930K with 2 gtx 780’s and have problems with the engine now and then due to it being very legacy friendly…. but I am happy, it looks ok.

I have some other things I can compare it too, I still remember my text and Mono-, 4- and 16-color RPG’s…

30+ years ago it was the bomb… being actally able to move things on screen… pong, pacman and so on… Ppl are really wanting things now, 16.7M graphics have been here for a while but I still remember my 1st 3d graphics accelerator.,.. and 256 colors on most games…

Problem, though is the computer game industriues need to make games for a market, if they ‘d develop suff only usable on the newest chip, and freshest gpu’s most ppl would’t buy it and the game would’t have a market… so gaming corps generally strat developing on a exising engine, |Gw2 runs on a gw1 engine…

The game engine for Guild Wars was developed by ArenaNet. Engine components developed for Guild Wars are available to be licensed to other NCsoft companies and have been used in other NCsoft games. However, ArenaNet have said they will not license the game engine technology to non-NCsoft companies…

A-Net having a personal engine and future might lead to a engine upgrade allowing for multicore use, 64 bit support and dx10+ support. If they think it’s worth it.

I think it would be worh to modernize / rebuild the engine with 64 bit support, Full GPU renders, multicore support and DX 11 and/or (12) support, but I would understand this will not be instantaeneous…

I’ll see what will happen, (MMO)RPG players, are often older and less into full gamer rigs.

Bloodlust.3672:

Overall, I want it to look more like an Unreal Engine 4 game—something next gen looking .

Not a fan of the jimquisition?
Well if Jim F. Sterling’s youtube channel has taught me anything it’s not so much the engine so much as what you do with it (i.e. unreal engine can make extremely bad looking games too).

Bloodlust.3672:

GW2 character details do look great, but the environment details are very weak and are a major visual drawback

Which is a issue of texture quality, more so than game engine.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Updating the graphics engine is usually so costly in terms of resources it usually only happens when there’s a new game (and even then, some sequels reuse the previous engine). The game is 3-years old; I expect it to have 2012 graphics, not 2015.

Pretty much this. It not exactly the same as making a new game, but it isn’t too far off.

Zok.4956:

I played ESO and I think the results of the graphics engine are much better than in GW2.

To be expected.
GW2 – August 28, 2012
ESO – April 4, 2014

John.8507:

The game like GW1 was designed for very low system specs, so people with older computers could run it still.

A fair number of MMOs for a while use to follow this approach, rather have a game that works decently on a large number of systems than only on a small number of high end systems.

Ravenmoon.5318:

^ These issues can be avoided entirely by implementing Dx11/12 renderer.

I’m not so sure just importing DX11/12 libraries into the source code and compiling it would in and of itself be any sort of improvement. You’d need to literally go into the engine and modify it to use the newer tech and depending on the architecture is most likely going to be a large undertaking.

Behellagh.1468:

Well there are the spoiled photorealistic players with the hardware that other game engines can render individual dust is rays of sunlight which adds nothing to the actual gameplay. Pretty if you have the time to look at it.

Them be the times we are in.

krixis.9538:

OP do u have the game running at low – mid settings ? that would explain why it wouldn’t look so great.

Screenshots would be nice though, just for demonstrative purposes.

I just got my new pc and am running everything on highest possible. The game itself is awesome looking, the engine however seems to be having difficulties with high populated events. Shatterer will bring my pc with crossfire to its knees, and I dont think that should be possible.
Could be that it has no new dx support or something else, I dont know much about game engines and how to make them more powerfull :/

Bloodlust.3672:

GW2 needs a new graphics engine, as the current one is looking very old and dated. I really want to see cleaner sharper lighting and the addition of ambient occlusion shadows. Overall, I want it to look more like an Unreal Engine 4 game—something next gen looking .

Also, on a related note, I want to see the current messy UI graphics get overhauled and be replaced with a cleaner sharper one. I know it was orginally trying to go for a unique style, but in reality it just looks lazy and low budget. Even GW1 did the UI graphics better.

I hope we can see such an update after the GW2 Heart of Thorns expansion.

NOTE: I already run GW2 on max graphics at 1920×1200 on a pro IPS monitor.

Last I heard, the expansion was going to add a number of new graphics settings, but we don’t know what those are yet, so this thread may be a bit premature. There were rumours that SSAO was part of that, but I can’t find the links right now.

I wouldn’t expect a major UI overhaul until the next expansion at the earliest. The current UI is functional, attractive to most people (your objection is a purely personal aesthetic one, and not a common opinion), and isn’t going to change much until it can do a significantly better job. Even then, they’ll probably retain the painterly style, rather going for some pixel-perfect precision UI.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Updating the graphics engine is usually so costly in terms of resources it usually only happens when there’s a new game (and even then, some sequels reuse the previous engine). The game is 3-years old; I expect it to have 2012 graphics, not 2015.

This is a pretty gross simplification, and worse, does not apply to MMOs.

MMOs update their graphics engines in a different way to sequel-series-type games (and you’re describing the latter).

Most MMOs update their graphics engine periodically. This often coincides with expansion releases, but not always. WoW, for example, over the years has gone through many updates to the graphics engine. If you have been playing for the last decade and still have all your screenshots, you should try looking through them.

WoW, too, has added the two main features the poster is requesting:

1) A sharper lighting engine (they’ve actually done this multiple times).

and

2) Ambient occlusion as an option.

Now, what doesn’t often change are the TEXTURES. Those are a massive effort to create and to update, but the engine itself? It’s not as significant. Indeed, GW2 has seen engine updates before, a number of times, just not ones quite this big. I would expect that we will see another, either with the expansion, or in the year following the expansion’s release. GW2 hasn’t quite started looking “dated” yet, but it’s getting there, and that means it’s time to update the engine.

Would be nice if they ditched the ancient DX9.

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Then you might just wanna go on Elder Scrolls Online.

The Elder Scrolls Online is indeed an awesome game with (among many other positive things) gorgeous graphics, but so is Guild Wars 2.

Uh? Thats a vey strange thing to say about the best looking mmorpg in the market. If theres one thing where gw2 rules above all competitors is graphics…

…not to mention the ammount of detail present in the game.

Well, Blizzard updated their graphics a lot. Compare vanilla with now, it’s a huge difference, also they let you choose the renderer; either dx9 or 10 I believe (last time I checked was Cataclysm…).

Anyway, for an MMO, GW2 looks rather good. Though I think they could update a couple of things. Lots of environmental textures have horribly low rez textures and a lot of structures have very low polygon count. Especially in the outer areas of a map. Also, I think they should add a new direct x. Imho using a 10 year old renderer is outdated. They should’ve introduced dx10 from the beginning and have it included during the development of the game engine.

Anyone remember Duke Nukem: Forever?

You know why it took 15 years to be released? Everytime a new updated engine came out, they wanted to use it and the game had to be remade from scratch.

It’s a lot more work than just “hey lets update the engine!”. If they did it now, it the midst of finishing the expansion, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. They would need to not only rewrite the entire game to work with the new engine, but scrap all the work on the expansion and start over as well.

We are talking about at least 2 years worth of work to make it happen. Longer if they continue to do updates. (i.e. LS, Holidays, etc.)

So would you rather see no updates, no content, no anything for 2+ years to have a better engine? Or have stuff to do in game? People are already upset that there is “No new content” since the announcement of the expansion. To which I can proudly say “I told you so!” We saw it coming, but were poo-pooed and ignored. And it’s only been a couple of months. Now extend that to several years. What would be the state of the game at that point? Would it be worth it? How many people will be able to justify buying a whole new machine JUST to play GW2? How many would want to?

No. Don’t update the engine. Keep it as is. If they want to make GW3, then by all means, use the better updated engine. It would be cheaper and faster to do that, then to overhaul GW2 for a better engine.

Graphics are fine MMO’s are built to appeal to the masses.

Graphics don’t look dated at all, maybe you are just playing on low settings.

I don’t actually care about lots of fancy new graphics tech (although, of course, I wouldn’t say no) but I’d personally like to see them rewrite the engine to accommodate DX12 and finally make proper, efficient, use of CPU resources. I’d love to see a perma 60fps GW2. Aside from that, the game still looks fine to me at 2560×1440. Maybe higher texture quality, but aside from that it’s still a nice looking game due to the aesthetic.

i personally hope that anet will implement dx12, it will be a huge performance boost to the game given that gw2 is so cpu demanding due to some graphic related processing overhead….

i think that having dx12 will see significant improvement over the fps, especially for people who use AMD.

furthermore, is free uprade to windows 10 for those who have windows 7/8, so most people has it

It has already been said but install Gem FX and Sweet FX. Depending on the settings it makes a huge difference and I could never go back.

You need to distinguish between quality of art and quality of engine. While the engine might be average quality, the art design of GW2 is without peer. Some zones are jaw droppingly lovely

What they DO need to do is create some new zones, and keep the same amazing quality of art direction

From what I know GW2 was designed to look good even with low resources. It doesn’t look bad at max settings either and how it handles massive crowds and skills imo. They just need to not slack off in the new creations they make on it’s textures and make them look up to date. And possibly re-make old areas with improved textures and models, etc.

Bloodlust.3672:

GW2 needs a new graphics engine, as the current one is looking very old and dated. I really want to see cleaner sharper lighting and the addition of ambient occlusion shadows. Overall, I want it to look more like an Unreal Engine 4 game—something next gen looking .

Also, on a related note, I want to see the current messy UI graphics get overhauled and be replaced with a cleaner sharper one. I know it was orginally trying to go for a unique style, but in reality it just looks lazy and low budget. Even GW1 did the UI graphics better.

I hope we can see such an update after the GW2 Heart of Thorns expansion.

NOTE: I already run GW2 on max graphics at 1920×1200 on a pro IPS monitor.

Graphic kitten.
If you don’t enjoy the game because of the graphic then stop playing.

Game is fine in small to medium size groups of players usually. The problem is for a game that focuses on large scale open world content the engine is simply not up to the task of supplying a reasonable frame rate, even on the most powerful machines. Large zergs can tank the framerate well below 20 fps on the best gaming machines.

Game focuses on large scale open world content – Engine can’t handle said content well

The limit is not the characters but the amount of attacks and effects, and the distributiuon of said info…

All I want is to have an Apple Metal renderer backend

I agree that graphic is outdated, anyone who says otherwise never played anything outside of f2p mmos. But its okay..graphic is not everything. Howered when it perform like a crap with outdated graphic and then you see another mmo with even more effects, really beautiful graphic with little nice details you know something is wrong. And that is a bit sad for AAA game.

I think GW2’s graphics hold up pretty well still.

Think most off all it needs higher res textures, even at 1080p and supersample enabled the textures are really poor up close.

Hello everyone and all Anet peeps, was just wondering if maybe GW2 might be getting any DirectX 12 support, just thought about it as it would allow more players to be able to play the game at better framerates and therfore enjoy the game even more, at least imo.

But hey would love to hear from anyone if they know anything about DX12 on gw2

Just below your post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-needs-a-new-graphics-engine/

VaLee.5102:

Just below your post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-needs-a-new-graphics-engine/

Haha oops didn’t see that there. But still i would love to see it implemented at some point

Are you kidding?! This game is freaking gorgeous! The art style is wicked!

Plus you can use SweetFX to make it even better!

skowcia.8257:

I agree that graphic is outdated, anyone who says otherwise never played anything outside of f2p mmos. But its okay..graphic is not everything. Howered when it perform like a crap with outdated graphic and then you see another mmo with even more effects, really beautiful graphic with little nice details you know something is wrong. And that is a bit sad for AAA game.

The screenshots you have attached are just a very different art style. I do not know that game it is, but I don’t necessarily agree that GW2 looks worse. The thing is, GW2 never aimed for a photorealistic look in the first place, but rather a softer, more cartoony fairy-tale look (but not as cartoony as say, WoW).

green plum.7514:

skowcia.8257:

I agree that graphic is outdated, anyone who says otherwise never played anything outside of f2p mmos. But its okay..graphic is not everything. Howered when it perform like a crap with outdated graphic and then you see another mmo with even more effects, really beautiful graphic with little nice details you know something is wrong. And that is a bit sad for AAA game.

The screenshots you have attached are just a very different art style. I do not know that game it is, but I don’t necessarily agree that GW2 looks worse. The thing is, GW2 never aimed for a photorealistic look in the first place, but rather a softer, more cartoony fairy-tale look (but not as cartoony as say, WoW).

Art doesnt matter all that much compared to lighting, details, fx, textures etc. Then again there are games that due to art looks really amazing as in the screenshot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slYcFe-RJHg (storm from 2013, year later after gw..)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnfQEcJncz4 some animations of archers which would be a ranger in gw. Not everyone like these eye candy stuff but theres no doubt that current animations of many classes are lackluster in comprasion. For example warrior gs 4, you wear volcanus yet you throw some trash white gs – please..

Imo gw doesnt need a lot, hd textures and better anmations is all it needs i think. Most important thing is performance tho and as it stands right now, it doesnt perform well in crowded areas. Dx12 would definitely help there.

Max quality with supersample at 1080p:

http://s29.postimg.org/8ildglq6u/gw020.jpg
http://s22.postimg.org/qqznrrsc0/gw021.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/lt98a4gr9/gw022.jpg

Now tell me again how amazing the graphics are.

VaLee.5102:

Max quality with supersample at 1080p:

http://s29.postimg.org/8ildglq6u/gw020.jpg
http://s22.postimg.org/qqznrrsc0/gw021.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/lt98a4gr9/gw022.jpg

Now tell me again how amazing the graphics are.

Yeah..and thats the most weird stuff. You have on some pieces with overall a bit decent texture, then you find out something like this..i mean wtf? Its not even close to what i posted earlier and art doesnt matter here. The quality is simply bad.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The game is 3-years old; I expect it to have 2012 graphics, not 2015.

DirectX 11 was released in 2009. I expect a 2012 game (Guild Wars 2) to have at least 2012 graphics :p

There are many DX 11 games that were released years earlier than Guild Wars 2. Here is a small selection, including some other MMOs:

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (2010)
Battle Forge (2009)
Civilization V (2010)
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (2009)
Dungeons and Dragons Online (released 2006, DX11 support added 2010)
Lord of The Rings Online (released 2007, DX 11 support added 2010)
Star Trek Online (released 2010, DX 11 support added 2012)
The Secret World (2012)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

It’s perfectly possible for a DX 11 game to be backwards-compatible and also support DX 9 and/or DX 10.

DX 10 is not much better than DX 9. but DX 11 features a lot of real improvements such as tessellation.

DX12 is amazing because it drastically reduces the amount of draw calls, but it will only work on Windows 10. Although Microsoft are offering Windows 10 for free to current owners of Windows 7.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9112/exploring-dx12-3dmark-api-overhead-feature-test

skowcia.8257:

I agree that graphic is outdated, anyone who says otherwise never played anything outside of f2p mmos. But its okay..graphic is not everything. Howered when it perform like a crap with outdated graphic and then you see another mmo with even more effects, really beautiful graphic with little nice details you know something is wrong. And that is a bit sad for AAA game.

You’re comparing a game released in 2012 and started being developed in 2007 with a game still in beta and started in 2010.
Btw, if you played Black Desert (that game) you’d know the crazy and ucceptable popping the game has. You should prefer lower graphics than insane ones near you, but lower than gw2 far from you and a freaking bad popping.
Just look at those screenshots and see the downgrade done in not so far graphics.

VaLee.5102:

Max quality with supersample at 1080p:

http://s29.postimg.org/8ildglq6u/gw020.jpg
http://s22.postimg.org/qqznrrsc0/gw021.jpg
http://s29.postimg.org/lt98a4gr9/gw022.jpg

Now tell me again how amazing the graphics are.

That’s because dx9 doesn’t support tessellation, which would bump a lot the quality of stone buildings and walls.
It could also be improved with better textures, but the game already weights +25GB and the new expansion is about 35GB of space. If devs put better textures for all buildings in the game (tons of them), game could easily need +100GB of space.

Hurrakan.4259:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The game is 3-years old; I expect it to have 2012 graphics, not 2015.

DirectX 11 was released in 2009. I expect a 2012 game (Guild Wars 2) to have at least 2012 graphics :p

There are many DX 11 games that were released years earlier than Guild Wars 2. Here is a small selection, including some other MMOs:

Aliens vs. Predator (2010)
Battlefield Bad Company 2 (2010)
Battle Forge (2009)
Civilization V (2010)
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 (2009)
Dungeons and Dragons Online (released 2006, DX11 support added 2010)
Lord of The Rings Online (released 2007, DX 11 support added 2010)
Star Trek Online (released 2010, DX 11 support added 2012)
The Secret World (2012)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

It’s perfectly possible for a DX 11 game to be backwards-compatible and also support DX 9 and/or DX 10.

DX 10 is not much better than DX 9. but DX 11 features a lot of real improvements such as tessellation.

DX12 is amazing because it drastically reduces the amount of draw calls, but it will only work on Windows 10. Although Microsoft are offering Windows 10 for free to current owners of Windows 7.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-performance-preview-amd-nvidia-star-swarm
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9112/exploring-dx12-3dmark-api-overhead-feature-test

Gw2 was released in 2012, but started to be developed in 2007. Back then dx10 was just released, but nearly everyone were running XP. Dx11 came years later and the game was way more developed.
Few months before the release devs were thinking about moving to dx11, but they preferred to stay with dx9, as still a lot of people was running the game in XP (which doesn’t even support dx10).

skowcia.8257:

I agree that graphic is outdated, anyone who says otherwise never played anything outside of f2p mmos. But its okay..graphic is not everything. Howered when it perform like a crap with outdated graphic and then you see another mmo with even more effects, really beautiful graphic with little nice details you know something is wrong. And that is a bit sad for AAA game.

That game isnt even out is it?