On the Ball

As you've probably heard by now (unless you've been under a rock) the Test Realm opened up last night. Most folks have focused on the new school-based housing, most of which is visually stunning. They're pretty, but in sheer number of items you can stuff into them they're identical to the current larger houses, 150 items outdoors and 250 indoors. I was hoping with all that room they'd hold more stuff. Sadly there's still no sign of a castle-selling tortoise in Grizzleheim.

From what I've seen on Twitter and various blogs and forums, one change most folks don't like is the appearance of our health and mana balls. The new ones look "wrong" some how, but I couldn't quite figure out why, so I took both versions and put them side by side.



That's the current version on the left, Test Realm on the right, using the same graphics settings for both. They've made the balls bigger, but when graphics are stretched they often come out looking more chunky. They've also removed the glowing halo effect which makes those hard black edges look even more jagged. The current version looks a lot cleaner than the new one, more polished, while the "new" test one looks more like a rough draft of the original.

I hate to say it, but it looks to me like someone in KI's graphics department really dropped the ball on this one.