shaders do exactly what it sounds like. Shade things. As in they typically alter the color of polygons or pixels to simulate lighting effects and color changes. And now even caustics. If the Wii doesn't have them, which I don't know as I don't tend to notice that stuff, and the reason wii games don't look as good is because of it, it is because they make people lazy.
I've seen tons of great low-poly art with no lighting of any kind... Then you have stuff like the ps1 final fantasy models...
http://itc.ua/img/dpk/2003/5/!final_fantasy_9_(psx)_2.jpg
compare the texture work on those to the spidey above..
or on the ps3 for that matter...
All the new graphics things serve one thing. Making really bad looking shadows that look fake, shading models unrealisticly and allowing the texture artists to slack off and make flat boring textures that look less real than those from ff9 on the ps1...
(Granted, the textures on the ff9 models weren't created by a 'person'.. but with the larger models.) But that isn't true of the fine texture work in Wc3 and i'm not sure but I think also WoW...
I've seen tons of great low-poly art with no lighting of any kind... Then you have stuff like the ps1 final fantasy models...
http://itc.ua/img/dpk/2003/5/!final_fantasy_9_(psx)_2.jpg
compare the texture work on those to the spidey above..
or on the ps3 for that matter...
All the new graphics things serve one thing. Making really bad looking shadows that look fake, shading models unrealisticly and allowing the texture artists to slack off and make flat boring textures that look less real than those from ff9 on the ps1...
(Granted, the textures on the ff9 models weren't created by a 'person'.. but with the larger models.) But that isn't true of the fine texture work in Wc3 and i'm not sure but I think also WoW...