[Kiksar]

Specularity is a big issue. The problem stems from a few things, but part of it is the "oooooh shiny!" reaction from both players and artists. Some people love it, and some artists just can't control themselves (I use the term "artist" loosely, not to be mean but a large portion of the people working in game art departments would be hard to classify as artists. I wouldn't classify myself as one, so I'm not just being mean!). Whether a particular object looks more real with tons of specular or not, it accentuates normal map detail pretty heavily which generally makes the object appear more complex and, through some eyes, better.

Pretty much all newer games operate with the same basic material set up. Most objects have:
- a color map (main color information, like a picture or a painting on the surface of the model)
- normal map (tells the light which direction the surface of the model is pointing on a per-pixel basis, creates the illusion that the model contains more detail than it does on a polygonal level)
- specular map (usually black-and-white but sometimes color, black means the surface of the model in that area isn't shiny, white means full shiny/reflective)
- alpha map (if necessary, allows for transparency)
- and sometimes an emissive map of some sort (defines what areas of the model will glow, shoot out particles, or do whatever else is defined by the artist).

For the sake of simplicity, we'll say that most normal maps are created from a high-resolution model. Generally more time is spent on the high-res than is on the low-res model (which is what is seen in-game), so artists/art directors want to show off all the detail they've spent the majority of their time on. Thus, over-done specular maps. Color maps tend to wash out a fair amount of normal map detail unless they're accentuated with plenty of specular highlights. Unfortunately, this means that artists tend to opt for what looks "cool" and shows off the normal map more than what looks right or real, so they make the specular map more intense than it should be.

A great example is comparing a game like Half-life 2 with something like Doom 3. Most modern games, especially on consoles tend to go the overly-specular Doom 3 route, whereas the softer, subtler specular maps in Half-Life 2 (for the most part) produce far more realistic results.

The quality of the art has a lot to do with it too, and artists often hide incompetence behind technology. Since things inherently look more complex with normal maps and a lot of specular, some developers seem to hope that'll make people have the "oooooh, shiny!" reaction no matter the quality of the art.

As someone else mentioned, lighting is a huge portion of getting the look of a game right, and technically it's one of the things that has the most room for growth. Who knows when it'll be, but when hardware and game engines start being able to do real time ray tracing (in a practical scenario) it'll be a big step forward (but as is with everything else, it'll always be limited by quality of art). Bounce light, real soft shadows, and global illumination can't be too far off considering how quickly technology evolves, so I'm looking forward to it.

A subset of lighting is translucency and sub-surface scattering (which have started to show up in newer engines, but are still primitive). It's getting to the point where hard and opaque surfaces can look amazing in games, but skin and other soft, semi-translucent surfaces are lacking (artists try to use specular to cover this up too... it doesn't work). This is another issue of technology that I expect to start resolving itself in the next couple years.

As for the original question of what makes people strongly prefer WoW or EQ2 but usually not both, I think it has a lot to do with a combination of different appreciation for each style and the "ooooooh, shiny!" effect. WoW relies almost entirely on style. It is very no-frills technology-wise. They use mostly color and specular maps, generally lower-resolution models, and everything is painterly in Blizzard's style. Some people love it, some want to throw up, and some are fine with the style but feel like it could be improved upon by the inclusion of some fancier technology. EQ2 attempts a more "realistic" style with more photo-referenced textures, normal maps for added complexity, and so on. Now, I won't say the art in EQ2 is bad (I'm not here to make enemies), but because of the addition of highly specular normal mapped things they also appeal to the "oooooh, shiny!" crowd.

While people's response to art is almost entirely subjective, I think the quality of commercial art is actually pretty objective. It'd be fairly easy to come up with a list of qualities and skills a "good" game artist should posses, but since these people are in limited supply and it's often easier to impress the average gamer with shiny things than with quality art, games will always vary in visual quality and gamers will always argue about what looks better.

(It's late and I wrote too much, apologies.)