Ok, so this is the third MMO that I have looked at that uses the Unreal Game Engine.  This makes for great collision, physics, landscapes, and junk on the ground that either gets in your way or doesnt depending upon how important it is - very nice.

However, the models for characters and NPCs of all types are simply horrible.  They are gangly, animate poorly, and rely on the model to handle the textures instead of the skins handling the textures.  All in all, this leads to bad perfomance and gaphically hideous game.

Could we just have games with modeling and graphics created by the studios?

I'm a little over my head in terms of the technicalities when it comes to texturing and character models using the UGE2.0+.

I'm curious though, I've seen a few games that use the Engine and the models like great, Fable comes to mind if I'm not mistaken. It's quite possible this is different in an MMO Environment though, can anyone share why this is ?

Originally posted by cadamire
Correct me if I'm wrong... but I believe that Lineage 2 uses the Unreal Engine, and they have the best character models around, they make everything on your character look gorgeous...

Of course they also have rather few models...

Good catch Cadamire.

As per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_II

Lineage 2 does indeed use the same engine. And I agree, it has some amazing character models.

Its really up to how the companies create them.  It also has some importance on how the company wishes to spend its resources for the game.  Take Lineage 2 for example.  The character models are gorgeous, but the actual environments are a little sparse with large polygons.

The reason why many pick up an engine like the Unreal Engine or the Quake Engine is because it saves time in redoing work.  If a company made a new engine for every game they made, it would just be a huge waste of time.  Its alot easier to spend the million on a pre-existing engine.  Actually its very reasonable to see the market shift to programmer houses that solely create engines and sell them out.  This would inturn make the artists creating the levels save time in learning a new engine, and it would make the actual game engines run and look better through committed development.

You are just pushing your video card too far. The models are done in entirely seperate programs and basically just loaded by the engine. What is happening is you are looking at very high polygon models (relative to previous games) and that is multiplied by the number of players.

It is simple math:

15 characters with 500 polygons each = 7,500 polygons + the background

15 character with 1000 polygons each = 15,000 polygons + the background

Which will run better on an older system? The one with fewer total polygons. The animations are fed in likethe models. However the engine will cut out frames if your card is being pushed too hard (lots of models in one area) making it look choppier than designed. This will happen a lot if you setup you graphic settings t work well when stationary in low pop areas.

Although I am not a fan of L2 they optimized the engine well. By removing a lot of extranious things entirely they reduce the load and were able to up the polygon count as well as keep it running well on older systems. The Unreal engine isn't the issue. It is partially user error and poor programming the vast majority of the time.