Last night a PTS event was held to put the latest patch (1.3.3) through its paces. The focus of the event was on the new WAR Report system. I ended up wandering around the world checking out the new HDR/Bloom graphical option. Read on for a run down, pictures and a video!
NOTE: Part 2 can be found here.
The goal of the WAR Report is to give the player a picture of what is going on in the game. Upon logging in, you will see if any keeps are under attack, what the most active PQ is, where the most players are and any recent Hot Spots or the Battlefield objective's taken.
It also gives you the opportunity to teleport to the closest warcamp once every 8 hours. That should at least save you 40+ silver once a day. I'm not sure how often the WAR Report refreshes, but it seemed to do it in a reasonable amount of time. There is a page for each tier, not just tier 4.
In your User Settings window, under the video tab, there will be an Oooh, Shiny setting. This will turn on HDR and Bloom post-processing. These are client side effects, so it is likely many players will have a different experience.
I put together a short video illustrating some of the differences between High Quality and Oooh Shiny.
Overall, I was not very impressed with the HDR/Bloom. In some scenes, I had a hard time even seeing a difference. Sometimes it was an improvement and other times it looked worse. They probably need to tweak it some more, so I will reserve final judgment until later. The next video will show combat with these settings active.
So when I started out on my travels, I could not find the flight master. He was no where to be seen... until I looked up. In the patch notes they mentioned that the flight master would be using the appropriate mount. So when this goes live, be sure to look up.
Overall it was a fun event. I think around 180 people showed up to test, so there was a lot of fighting to be had. Tonight is part 2, which is supposed to be more of a stress test. If you participate you will receive an in-game pet (imperial house or chaos hound I think). I'll be there!
