Guild Wars 2

Do we know if the expansion uses any Direct X from this millenium?
Or are we still in the cave with direct X 9?

DirectX 9 was released this millennium actually. The last DirectX to be released during the last millennium was 7.0 (as a release candidate, the actual release came in 2000).

It is unlikely that they will completely rebuild the whole engine. The current engine works quite well so no real reason to spend millions of dollars and years of work in order to completely rebuild it. It would also require supporting multiple versions of the client, which would require quite a bit of money and so on.

It took them 2 years to get this engine running properly and assure maximum compatibility with a wide variety of computers due to the Dx9 engine.

Your super-duper card will continue to be as useless as all “next gen” graphics cards are before actual games are released for it.
Thus a big waste of money. Congrats.

lordkrall.7241:

The current engine works quite well

No, it really doesn’t.

In WoW you could choose between different directx versions, they could introduce that. They also went from directx 8 to 9 in GW1 Prophecies to Factions. Imo it is a bit embarassing to have a 10 year old renderer. It’s really ancient.

Still stoneage with no perspective on any future update to the core system till GW3 if it ever comes out. It’s very sad really specially the silence from ANet on this subject.

Not many want better graphics..but we do want performance worth our day and time and the rigs we invested in. I just hope they announce something after DX12 is out. The game offers disgusting performance when considering the resources it eats up and in many cases does NOT (and should) eat up because of it’s engine.

stop asking for direct X upgrades its not going to happen.

but do start asking for 64Bit clients. that is far more important.

32bit clients have limited access to system resources

64bit can use as much as it likes / is available = huge increase in performance just from this.

Weirwynn.2390:

No, it really doesn’t.

Yes it does.
It is in no way perfect. But it does work the majority of the time.

ProtoGunner.4953:

In WoW you could choose between different directx versions, they could introduce that. They also went from directx 8 to 9 in GW1 Prophecies to Factions. Imo it is a bit embarassing to have a 10 year old renderer. It’s really ancient.

I don’t think it is fair to compare a company like Blizzard that makes millions every month to a company without any steady, guaranteed, income.
One could also point out that the difference between DirectX 8 and 9 was quite a bit smaller than the difference between 9 and 10,11,12.

There is also the fact that the engine was still rather new by the time Faction launched, but now it is over 10 years old (since GW2 uses a modified GW1 engine) and would require quite much rewriting. Something that I am not sure they could justify, seeing as the current client works well enough.

At the time GW2 was developed, only DX9 or DX10 were available (DX11 was still in beta). A small bit of research would show you that going the DX10 route would have been a disaster (it was a major cluster). They pretty much HAD to settle on DX9 to release when they did.

Now in terms of updating, they would have to either support multiple engines or alienate long time players that use older hardware. I doubt they are eager to do either.

I’m happy you can support DX12, but Anet actually needs to 1000s of players that have DX9 capable hardware to log in and buy gems….(we all do, or the GW2 servers shut down).

There are many PC games (offline and online games) out there, which offer to chose between DX 9 and DX 11. I think this would be a great option for Gw2 too. Everyone i know has a notebook or pc which a graphics card that is dx11 ready, so it would be an improvement for the people with PC’s younger than 6 years, and for the other people dx9 would be also available.

Work on GW2 began in 2007, the latest DX back then was DX10.

Anet chose to build the game to cater for a wider variety of gamers, not just the ones with the newest GPUs; this meant DX9 at the time.

This of course makes sense, however development took way too long, and out came DX11, GPUs became cheaper, processors got better and cheaper as well.

I’m not saying there arent players out there with a Pentium 4 and DX9 card; but really if you havent updated your system by now, you really are limiting yourself.

But then anet did say they were, apparently, working on DX11 support, but it seems they have gone back on these words as well and concentrated on the china release and HOT.
Of course if HOT were to be a brand new game they would use DX11, but since GW2 is still on DX9, HOT will have to be DX9 as well. Which is a real real shame.

Everyone wants DX11 support, but by now we’ve all given up hope of them actually spending time and resources on it. Who knows, maybe HOT will bring in enough money to allow them to do it, but I’m not holding my breath.

Anet boasts about the graphic design of this game, and yet sticking to DX9 is a real arrow to the knee for the game in this regard as well.

Weirwynn.2390:

lordkrall.7241:

The current engine works quite well

No, it really doesn’t.

Agreed! For the tech it’s using it runs pretty badly even on fantastic rigs. It should be doing much better. Other games can manage it. It’s a shame really :-(

lordkrall.7241:

Weirwynn.2390:

No, it really doesn’t.

But it does work the majority of the time.

Surely, given the resources and time the game has had put into it, we could have expected better than just “it works the majority of the time”? I want it to work and work well. It largely fails at that second bit.

It may work the majority of the time, but most of that is average at best – not exactly something to celebrate I would have thought.

You guys are aware that most of the games that have DirectX 10-11 support also support DirextX 9, right? And that people on Windows 7 and 8 will be able to upgrade towWindows 10 (which have DirectX 12) for free during the first year after Win 10 release?

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/198204-most-directx-12-features-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card
http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to-deliver-free-windows-10-upgrades/

HawkMeister.4758:

It took them 2 years to get this engine running properly and assure maximum compatibility with a wide variety of computers due to the Dx9 engine.

Your super-duper card will continue to be as useless as all “next gen” graphics cards are before actual games are released for it.
Thus a big waste of money. Congrats.

His “Super Duper” card might be an AMD R9 280x, 290 or 290x, all of them support DirectX 12. They range from $200 to $300 / 350 and can play most PC games with constant 60fps @ 1080p. Hardly a waste of money.

Lévis.5489:

You guys are aware that most of the games that have DirectX 10-11 support also support DirextX 9, right? And that people on Windows 7 and 8 will be able to upgrade towWindows 10 (which have DirectX 12) for free during the first year after Win 10 release?

Not everyone will be able or even want to update to Windows 10 though. Also keep in mind that Windows XP is still listed as minimum requirement for Guild Wars 2. And Windows XP can’t get the free update, nor can Windows Vista.

lordkrall.7241:

Lévis.5489:

You guys are aware that most of the games that have DirectX 10-11 support also support DirextX 9, right? And that people on Windows 7 and 8 will be able to upgrade towWindows 10 (which have DirectX 12) for free during the first year after Win 10 release?

Not everyone will be able or even want to update to Windows 10 though. Also keep in mind that Windows XP is still listed as minimum requirement for Guild Wars 2. And Windows XP can’t get the free update, nor can Windows Vista.

cmon
windows xp got abandoned even by m$ a YEAR ago
its old, outdated, not supported anymore system. move on. win7/8 can run on quite any machine.

“My card is direct X 12 ready.”

As the title of this thread states. I wanted to reply simply by saying Guild Wars 2 is not yet ready :p

Have a good day,

zaw.6741:

lordkrall.7241:

Lévis.5489:

You guys are aware that most of the games that have DirectX 10-11 support also support DirextX 9, right? And that people on Windows 7 and 8 will be able to upgrade towWindows 10 (which have DirectX 12) for free during the first year after Win 10 release?

Not everyone will be able or even want to update to Windows 10 though. Also keep in mind that Windows XP is still listed as minimum requirement for Guild Wars 2. And Windows XP can’t get the free update, nor can Windows Vista.

cmon
windows xp got abandoned even by m$ a YEAR ago
its old, outdated, not supported anymore system. move on. win7/8 can run on quite any machine.

says the Windows guy to the Mac crowd …

and could you please stop demanding a render engine, that would kill the Mac-port?

zaw.6741:

cmon
windows xp got abandoned even by m$ a YEAR ago
its old, outdated, not supported anymore system. move on. win7/8 can run on quite any machine.

That is rather irrelevant. I personally don’t use XP anymore, but people do, and the game can currently run on XP. I do not recommend it due to security risks and such, but the fact remains that some people might not be able to (or want to) upgrade.

And that doesn’t really change the fact that not everyone will be able to or want to upgrade to Windows 10, even if it is free. I am not sure I will, at least not at first, since it is rather common that the first few months (or in the case of some of them, years) are rather bad and buggy.
It is of course also a matter of taste. I did not upgrade to Windows 8, due to having a computer, not a smart-phone. And Windows 10 seems to follow the smart-phony road.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m happy you can support DX12, but Anet actually needs to 1000s of players that have DX9 capable hardware to log in and buy gems….(we all do, or the GW2 servers shut down).

Hahah, yeah right. Im sure someone playing on potato pc would buy gems for real $ instead of upgrading their museum to get better performance.. Most likely these ppl doesnt give a flying f.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

I wish they could give us at least 64bit client.