WoW Classic demo cracked open – graphical changes revealed

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Classic demo will officially go live on November 2nd, granting purchasers of the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket the change to relive the experience of Vanilla WoW, albeit with Battle.net integration and a modernised back-end. 

Preloads for the demo have already started, but that hasn’t stopped the WoW fanbase from having a peek inside. Thanks to a tool called the sandbox emulator, the World of Warcraft Classic demo can be tricked to operate without signing into Blizzard servers, making the game playable, but without server-based content like quests, NPCs and character levelling. This trick will allow players to explore the game world and little else. 

Cracking open Blizzard’s WoW Classic demo has allowed early players to have a look at the game’s graphics, both when using the game’s “Classic Mode” option and while using the game’s new maximum settings. While World of Warcraft Classic uses the game’s original models and assets, Blizzard has allowed players to make use of their modern PC hardware to enable enhanced shadows, increased foliage and clutter densities and new water effects. The long story short is that WoW Classic can look at lot better than the original. 

Below is a video from Tips Out, who has compared a variety of screenshots which contrast the game’s “Classic Settings” and “Max Settings”,  revealing a startling difference in the game’s visual makeup. 
  

World of Warcraft: Classic Edition will go live on November 2nd at around 8 PM GMT, but only for owners of Blizzard’s £35 BlizzCon 2018 Virtual Ticket. The demo will go offline on November 8th at around 5 PM GMT. 

You can join the discussion on World of Warcraft Classic’s demo version on the OC3D Forums.