Title says it all, whats your personal preference for gfx when gaming? If I missed any post them here and I will add it to the poll.

Examples:  (If you disagree with my examples post your opinion and I will change my examples.)

Realistic - AoC, LOTR

Cartoon like - WoW, Flyff

Asian Style - L2, Aion

2D - UO, Maplestory

Both realistic and asian style .... Always have loved the graphics in Lineage 2

All styles as long the game is fun and entertaining and has realism in it's animation, for example (NO i am not playing WOW, did play it for some time in CB/OB and in release till one week after release of BC) but we all know it's cartoony, yet the animation are pretty realistic when walking,running/swimming, most MMORPG's don't even come close to it.....unfortunaly. And it has to be somewhat mature looking, for example I can not play a game like Mable story as the game TO ME looks for younger people, yes I have a few friends enjoying the game, but that does not change the fact how I personaly see a game like that.

Originally posted by tvalentine

Both realistic and asian style .... Always have loved the graphics in Lineage 2

Ye i think aion would be a hybrid of realistic and asian.

 I would like WoWs controls and mechanics with Dark age of camelots art style. I love DAoC but the controls suck and they got even worse when they tried to change the default controls to mimick WoW.

I'd take Playstation 1 graphics if it ment shadow of the collosus animation/controls.

I like realistic and Asian style graphics. Didn't vote cuz  I can't pick both. heh

Anything that doesn't have gay emo characters with spikey hair.

Well I voted for realistic.. BUT... I would have to say a mix of the 2 is also very good.

The 2 best looking MMOs currently out IMHO is Age of Conan and Aion (even though its beta)

Guild Wars 2 also looks like it is going to be absolutely AMAZING looking. Which is very mixed realistic asian.

The problem with most full realistic renditions such as EQ2 and Vanguard is the dull color palet that is used in the games and the lack of a High Fantasy feel to them with dull looking armors and weapons... Age of Conan could pull this off because of the style..

 I'd like the art examples to be more specific. Here is what I think the examples should be.

Asian style: Slim metrosexual males. Can carry physics defying weapons. Anime style facial features. Lineage2, Aion, guild wars etc.
Realistic: Mimics what we see every day. Can't carry 10ft long swords etc. Age of conan, Dark age of Camelot, Everquest. An art style that answers the question, "What if this fantasy setting happened in real life?"

Cartoon/Unrealistic: Doesn't follow any set style. Can be 2d or 3d. World of warcraft, Fly FF, City of Heroes.

My favourite style is Asian, always loved Guild Wars, Lineage and now Aion.

I also tend to enjoy realistic graphics, but in my opinion they have a serious problem in the MMO market, that is aging.... realistic graphic engines tend to age worse than cartoony or asian, and after 3 or 4 years the game starts to look very dated

I dont think the type of graphics are the important thing, i think that the graphics should suit the landscape. In the end I want good lore ad gameplay.

I remember in WoWs first development and they were introducing cartoonish graphics, lots of people had hissy fits... but they still played it.

I like the realistic looking games more than the others, although we'll see how Aion will hold up me in next few weeks.

Honestly, I'm not too turned off by how graphics are. Fluidity is the key really. Like when EQ was out and I could run it on me 350mhz Pentium back in the day, and it still ran OKAY. Compared to how when EQ2 first came out and the engine was not fluid even with my high end rig.

Originally posted by shadout00

Honestly, I'm not too turned off by how graphics are. Fluidity is the key really. Like when EQ was out and I could run it on me 350mhz Pentium back in the day, and it still ran OKAY. Compared to how when EQ2 first came out and the engine was not fluid even with my high end rig.

 

 

same here, if the game runs smoothly and is optimized graphically. animantions are fluid, no clipping, etcetera...

the graphics dont have to look super awesome...just run nicely (and i only think a few games have ever ran this way for me, and they were single player games).

assassin's creed

WH40k Dow2

those are the only two i could think of off the top of my head than ran smoothly/had very few bugs. (as in, not a drastic rise and fall of framerates, it remained steady)

realistic to a point (i draw the line at GTA IV).  Aside from that it all depends on the game/lore.  I love the TF2 graphics as it suits the silly mood of the game, likewise i think Crysis would have looked like utter crap if it went for anything other than realistic.  MMO's are the same

I prefer graphics that fit with the game style.

realistic works with realistic games.. and so forth.

cartoonish, asiany graphics (asian is usually kinda cartoonish as well) seems to scale better than realistic does. Its also alot harder to make character models look good in realistic games... I'd rather have stylized graphics, than uber realistic.

I lean towards Asian/Cartoon, but anything will do.  Long as it's well done.

 cartoon and asian style,for one reason if we want one day to be able to fight 100k vs 100k you got to limit graphic i beilieve wow is a good trade of ,mabinogi is also good 1 thing tho,not the spec mabinogi recommend that setting suck in best of situation 

once i found out how to get all the toy i can for that game (graphic)gees its one of the great anime game.(not polished tho or very por instruction)

one a side note check last week end  we were trying to do a live even in wow trough live.worldofathene.com

men as mutch as athene tried it didnt work 

no dont blame it on anybody!

why?we where 4000 minimum trying to make gnome etc one problem either wow server cant support 4000 player in gurubashi

or there is a problem between  ustream and wow

oner thing is sure even tho graphic quality is low on wow it still cant support live event 

so when companys bring awsome graphic and they never had the volume of player wow gets i laugh 

its easy to raise graphic a lot less to try to make it work with 1000 vs 1000 player

right now gaming company that gets involved in wow will have to lower screen herts like they did in the past like instead of say 60 lower it to 32 herts

for me i always go in a game and say, finally we ll get an epic battle 

lol first time i go in wintergrasp i get from 5 to 10 second lag

later blizzard has to lower everything because they cant support what they promissed

im sorry but i d rater have low graphic or mabinogi  and get 1000 vs 1000 fight instead of regular arena fight

if i wanted eye candy i d buy a ps3 slim and say screw mmo

doesn't matter to me very much since after playing for 10 or so mins I'm not seeing graphics anymore.   However I will shy away from realistic graphics since most devs will go retarded with them and make everything "dirt" colored, do bad job on the lighting forcing the user to have to use messed up gamma settings, or just do something stupid like not having armor that actually matches the art style of the avatars.

I don't think LOTRO has realistic style graphics, they would probably fit under cartoony. Vanguard would be a better fit under realistic.

and I don't think Guild Wars has Asian style graphics at all. Unless you are counting Factions and even then Factions doesn't fit the stereotypical Asian graphic style in MMOs

Either way I can appreciate any graphic style if it is done well.

As long as the character models have fluent movement and there is plenty of options to custimize your character I am fine.

Clipping should be at a minium and the environment should be full of life.

I like cartoony graphics with bright, contrasting colors like WoW. It's more pleasing to my eyes and more cohesive to the fantasy setting. It's sort of like how you can read a comic book, with superheroes dressed in all sorts of ridiculous costumes, and you overlook it because it just fits with the setting. Take those same superheroes and put them in a live action movie, and you start to realize how ridiculous those same costumes could look. That's why, I'm sure, that the X-Men ended up with single-color jumpsuits. My biggest problem with realistic graphics in MMOs is that the inconsistencies stick out like a sore thumb. I know what real people and places look like, and I can form a pretty detailed mental image of what a fantasy element should really look like if it existed in the real world, and some things in games that attempt a realistic look fall flat. 

Really, though, it depends on the setting. If it's a modern day MMO set in a close approximation of the real world, where tech replaces magic, realistic graphics would fit well. In fantasy, I'd rather it be more cartoonish, because the very nature of a cartoony look allows the artists to be more free and wild to come up with outrageous things that are perfectly believable within the context of the world.

I've always wondered why I try to play MMOs that are more in keeping with what I want gameplaywise, such as Vanguard, but I always gravitate back to WoW. WoW's gameplay is nowhere near my ideal MMO, but I feel... well, for lack of a better word, more comfortable with it. I think the graphics have as much to do with that as anything else, and probably moreso.

Hard to select really. To me, "asian" divides up very roughly into:

1) Cutesy anime - which i can't handle at all, but then i assume it's aimed at kids.

2) Anime - this looks good but the male characters in the games are all too metrosexual for me.

3) Realistic-anime blends - more like Lineage. I think that style is pretty cool.

I also think the western style follows a similar pattern where there's a sprectrum from cartoony to realistic with cartoony-realistic blends in between something like WoW -> Lotro -> EQ2 -> WAR/Vanguard/AoC/DaoC.

In theory i'd go for realistic but usually what that actually means is very dark and very dull, so in practise i'd go for something that was maybe 2/3 realistic and 1/3 cartoony (either western or asian cartoony).

As others have said though, if a game had my favourite graphical style but it didn't run really smooth then i'd go with a game that ran smooth instead. I think that pulls it back to more of a 50/50 cartoony-realistic blend.

I prefer 1D graphics and people with really big heads.

Of all the ones available right now I would go with the artistic style of WoW.. But I would like to see a mix of artistic and realistic that uses a high poly count but in an artistic world.

Flame me if must but, a mix of Warhammer online and Age of conan would be perfect IMO