World of Warcraft is three years old, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear the game doesn't look the best or is the biggest drain on a normal system. Where WoW makes up for the lack of graphic fidelity is style.
To this day few games have managed to nail its appealing look. But let's assume for a moment that you are sitting with a nice gaming rig at your feet. Crysis on high barely makes the machine sweat, so World of Warcraft is a joke to your computer. Would you like some graphic tweaks that exceed those of the settings within WoW itself?
The best way to do this is setup a marco for a quick, one button change as opposed to making it one individually through the chat window. Ease of use is what we want.
/console farclip 777
/console horizonfarclip 6226
/console groundeffectdensity 256
/console groundeffectdist 140
/console smallcull 0
/console skycloudlod 3
/console characterambient 0
Being that this does affect the framerate, some may not find these changes to be significant enough to sacrifice the frames. So here is another macro to return the game to the settings we are all accustomed to.
/console groundEffectDensity 16
/console groundEffectDist 1
/console horizonfarclip 1305
/console farclip 177
/console characterAmbient 1
/console smallcull 1
/console skycloudlod 1
/console detailDoodadAlpha 1
From there one can readjust the settings through WoW itself. The big question is it worth it? I'd say probably not. World of Warcraft running at max settings is a sight to behold, and increasing it beyond this is overkill. Plus one of the best experiences about a new expansion pack is being surprised by the new graphic tweaks that Blizzard will throw at us. Don't ruin that.
[Via PC Games Hardware]
Kyle Stallock
Updated June 4th, 2008
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I will definitely be trying these out.
I don't play, but whatever 'groundeffect density' is, turnig it from 16 to 256 should make a helluva difference
Yes, this is actually an old macro tweak. the groundeffect density replaces the sparse vegetation with massive amounts, so it looks like your character is ACTUALLY running through grass.
People should give out consoles commands for other games too, such as half-life, making it look slightly better ect...
Kyle, want to take a before/after pic?