World of Warcraft 64-bit native?

Is there going to be a 64-bit native version?

It seems almost all the new computers in Best Buy and such are 64-bit.

So I think the time has come for more games to support 64-bit versions.

But they can.  I mean like, are there plans for an "andvanced client" that is redone perhaps to make better graphics?

I'm sure 64-bit processing width would reduce lag with a lot of players in the area as well if it's programmed to use 64-bit.

How would 64-bit improve graphics? WoW is a 2004 game. Any 32-bit game from 2008 looks considerably better than WoW does, from a technical graphics point of view. 64-bit processing would do nothing to reduce networking lag, because a CPU has almost no effect on network communications. A 64-bit client would offer nearly zero performance improvements because the game doesn't even come anywhere near close to using over 2GB of memory addressing. If anything, 64-bit could allow a farther drawing distance.... But you would need a more powerful video card to be able to render that extra view distance as the same performance. Im getting the impression that i dont think you fully understand the advantages of 64-bit computing are over 32-bit. The only real difference is being able to use numbers larger than 2,147,483,648 natively. Its relatively rare that a number higher than that is used at all for games.XaosII

 64-bit has double the instruction length and can process up to twice the amount of data in one CPU cycle.

This means that calculation are faster.

Not only will having more RAM and less data in the HD cache / page file help with "processing lag", the better calculations can result in more things happening.

When you are talking about things that have a lot of "units" and "players", theres much more that it uses other than a good "graphics card".

 

64-bit: More than just the RAM:

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/10/16/64-bit_more_than_just_the_ram/1

 

Regarding network lag, it MAY help.  It depends on how you implement it.  If it invovles compression, having data decoded by 64-bit processing can significanlty reduce the time it takes enabling you to use better compression techniques to transfer MORE information with LESS bytes.

WoW doesn't come close to reaching th 2GB addresssing limit. It could already have unloaded paging information into memory.

I have no idea what you mean by "better calculations can result in more things happening." What calculations? Are you talking about higher accuracy floating point calculations? A game like WoW would not require calculations using 64-bit precision.

As for the drawing distance, thats the only real, immediate tangible benefits for games that 64-bit computing offers beyond 2GB memory addressing. By providing 64-bit precision for the environment's position grid, developers can have a much finer granularity of object psoition in 3D space - but that would absolutely kill performance in 32-bit. They can, at the very least, extend drawing distance beyond 32-bit precision of their camera frustum without the same penalty that a 32-bit CPU would get. But you would still be required to have a better video card to render the added drawing distance.

64-bit would allow for faster compression and decompression, but not for better compression and decompression. The size of the data sent back and forth would be the same. Network lag woud be identical.

While we are at it, SOE could do the same to the original EverQuest :roll:RK-Mara

Perhaps.  But EQ is different in a sense of whether it's worth it to spend the money into it.

WoW has made quite a bit of money for Blizzard so it's not that far fetched for them to invest a fraction of the funds into making an "advanced client" to ride the hype and attact even more customers.  At this point still, as it's is "4 years old" it apparently behaves like a "new hot title".  And many people buy it and play it for the first time as if it was a "new game"...not just "returning players" for WoTLK.

For example, EVE online has an advanced client.  It detects whether your computer can install it and you can even turn it off if you don't want it and go back to the "basic" graphics one.  And they are not even that successful.  Well, maybe they make a lot of money anyway because they don't add content too often, so they have money to make a new client or whatever.

I would imagine moving from 32-bit to 64-bit isn't too different in principle.