Werits PTS Adventure

Yesterday, the WAR Public test Server opened its doors to the public. While it does not feature the Slayer or the Choppa, it does have most of the rest of the 1.2 patch. Copying my character, Tirew, over and logging is was a breeze. In fact, I was able to rename Tirew to Werit for the PTS!

Upon logging in, I had to reset a lot of my UI settings. One thing I noticed is that the game looks better. I'm not sure if it is just me, but everything looks crisper. It was set at high quality which is what I normally run at in non-rvr situations. Either way, looking good.

I also noticed my gun had a sweet new model. I would post a screenshot, but the server is offline. The old model wasn't bad, it just was not placed on my characters back properly. Instead is was above his head. The new one is placed correctly but looks a lot different. I did get some compliments about it :)

The map is coming along nicely. There is a tooltip for the battle indicators which give a vague idea of how many people are there. I had always thought the different battle indicators served this function already. Also, you can navigate to the other maps with directional arrows on the sides. Nice touch.

Zone Domination is in, sorta. You can click on the zone control bar to get... 4 other progress bars. Each representing one aspect of the zone control (i.e. Objectives, Scenarios). I hope they work on this a bit. I was hoping for numbers rather than bars. Also, it does not really tell you how much each bar matters in the scheme of things.

With zone domination, you now have to hold objectives for a set amount of time (30 minutes and 2 hours for keeps). The times appear on your map. As of yesterday, they need a bit of work since they are not really lined up with the objectives. Also, you don't seem to be able to retake objectives and other strange bugs. But it is a test server.

Keeps are going to be wild and crazy places due to pick lock actually working. In the few keep fights I was in, there were always folks inside the keep. I'm not sure how much I like this whole idea. Keeps used to be a safe haven, now the only 'safe' spot will be standing on the keep lord. Gone are the days of a small desperate defense. Keeps will only be worth defending if you have a good sized force.

Chosen were probably having a great time on the PTS. Their Blast Wave skill was bugged. It was changed to debuff wounds rather than resistances. Someone neglected to fix the value it debuffed for... so we had Chosen taking away 4,000 health AoE style.

I did get a message about Order making a Rally Call. I have no idea how this applies to Tier 4, which is where I saw it.

The new Groups menu looks very nice. I was not able to do a Tier 4 wide search for RvR groups though, however that ability will be very helpful.

It was very nice to have my Barbed Wire animation back. Actually, I noted a lot more animations... I guess they added a bunch more.

The keep/objective defensive quests in Tier 4 have been upgraded to reward 1.5 gold which pretty good compared to what is on live. I was unable to find the RvR Quest chain though.

By evening, they had to turn off region chat and scenarios. Such is life on the test server. With Chosen wrecking everyone, seemed like a good time to call it a night.

So far things are looking good.

Posted in: PTS,WAR