The camera in World of Warcraft is a source of frustration. But that could change with The War Within. A new setting makes many things better.
As a player, you simply accept some small bugs and quirks of World of Warcraft. You get used to many problems – and yet sometimes you roll your eyes in annoyance. Especially the camera in World of Warcraft is sometimes a problem as it gets stuck on all sorts of things.
Apparently, this has been a thorn in the side of the developers for 20 years (in the truest sense of the word) – which is exactly why it is being fixed with the new expansion The War Within.
What is the problem with the camera? The camera in World of Warcraft is basically quite simple. Most players control it manually by holding down the right mouse button or have it set so that it is permanently positioned behind their character. This works solidly in most cases – except when it doesn’t.
As soon as any object appears between the character and the camera’s position, the camera quickly moves ahead to be “in front” of that object. For example, most trees can never block your character because the camera immediately repositions itself and would stick right next to the tree.
This practically leads to your camera “jumping” a bit when you turn it, and then getting stuck on objects.
This is particularly annoying during tough boss fights where awareness is important. If the camera makes unexpected jumps or certain areas suddenly become not visible or restricted, it can lead to mistakes that can ultimately cause the whole group to fail.
What is Blizzard changing? With “The War Within” there is a new chat command, namely “/console cameraIndirectVisibility X”. Here, X stands for a value between 0 and 10. At 0, you have the current setting (the camera jumps at every object), at 10 the maximum tolerance of objects that are ignored by the camera.
This means: You can turn your camera freely, and it doesn’t get stuck on objects. However, there are some exceptions. Particularly massive objects, such as house walls, mountains, or even the ground of the game world are exceptions to this.
For most situations, however, this should be a very drastic and useful improvement.
Currently, the feature does not work perfectly, so there are still occasional small jumps – hopefully Blizzard will adjust that. But that’s exactly what a beta is for.
Other settings help: But that is not the only improvement in “The War Within”. In addition to this new camera setting, there is another feature that harmonizes perfectly with it. In the future, you can enable an option that always displays the silhouette of your character, even if it is currently blocked – for example, if it is behind a bush.
These two settings together will provide you with much more clarity of the surroundings in World of Warcraft, and the camera will not give you as many problems anymore.
What do you think of this feature? A sensible innovation that was long overdue? Or are you satisfied with the camera in World of Warcraft and feel it doesn’t need any updates? Many are also hoping for an update elsewhere – namely a second Warcraft movie. What the rumors are about, we have explained here.
