Echoes of doom

It seems that not only does the new World of Warcraft patch add soft shadows to nearly everything in the game world, but it also slightly adjust the brightness levels of the entire game, which produces higher contrast. This is exactly the effect I have been applying to some of the images using Photoshop, and it's cool to see games doing this in real-time now (I've seen other examples as well). This also means that I won't have to apply these filter effects anymore, but since I still have unpublished screenshots, such images will appear for a while longer.

However, the increased view distance is one feature I won't always be using. Many landscapes in World of Warcraft do not benefit from it, as they were not built for it. Blizzard adapted the scenery for short view distances, placing set pieces at regular intervals so that there is always something interesting happening in front of you. If you're able to see further, you'll loose the suprise effect of what's around the next corner and unnecessarily clutter your view with all of the set pieces in the landscape. Removing the fog also removes some of the atmosphere of a location, and in some cases also removes the sense of depth and scale.