European Test Server

So more or less silently with not much flourish the EU Test Server Shifting Isles went online. Cool! i thought, let's check out the latest changes. You can copy existing characters (rank 10+) over to the test server. Log into your account management and scroll down to the very bottom, there you choose Character Server Copy and NOT Character Transfer. So far so good... bummer tho that GOA messed up the character copy for chars that exist on servers that were cloned a while ago. The only character i could initially copy over was my rank 20 Blorc from Zhufbar. I had to delete that char to be able to copy over my rank 40 main from Karak-Azgal. I'd say thats a F- for database management by GOA on this one. I did not play my clone char, so i just deleted him and was able to copy Thulf over. Of course before i used the copy function i robbed the guild bank to copy over as much coin as possible, you never know what you need it for. ;) Chill guys, i gave it all back. *grin* Your character will copy over with your full inventory and bank, mailbox won't.

The good news on using the PTS: You don't need two separate installs of the game. If you want to access the test server, just start testpatch.exe if you want to play the "normal game" you start warpatch.exe. The patcher will adjust pending on the version you want to access. First: Be excited, all the UI changes will make it necessary to adjust your complete UI once again. Not fun, but if the changes deliver what they promise its well worth it. Test Servers are also very good for addon developers, as some UI changes of patch 1.1 will make it necessary to adjust. The first thing i noticed on PTS is that apparently Mythics attempts to adjust performance screwed up the texture caching for my machine. Inevitable City looked *horrible*, low/muddy textures everywhere. This problem was there for some time right after launch, but was fixed. As things on the test server are subject to change, etc. i really hope this won't go live. The chat filters for more separated system message filtering looks promising. The item linking did not work on PTS (at least not in /say when i tried). In addition all stats on the gear are missing, paper doll says it works but they don't show. I slapped together a compilation of the changed Black Orc set bonuses for your convenience.

EDIT: The set bonuses changed on the PTS since yesterday. HERE is the latest version.

Since we had some open RvR planned from our alliance i did not spend that much time on PTS, but traveled to the open RvR area quickly to check out some of the RvR inf goodies. For each inf step there are two different items in blue (req rr31) quality and two in epic (req rr38) quality. As stats did not show i can only guess, but the epic ones look very good. The weapons (see pic) all have procs, which already made players complain on the forums that those weapons are better then the loot you can get from Lost Vale and Mythic should at least give those items procs as well. Looking at the procs i have to agree and this should be adjusted. I'll go back and try to test some more, should anyone want to give the city dungeons on test server a go, poke me.

PS: Should you have experienced a performance drop/change since the latest patch/hotfixes check your gfx settings. I realized mine were reset/changed and that's why i experienced stuttering in the live game recently.