Patch 1.1, Black Guard and KOTBS return

Spear

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=386

Black Guards and KOTBS are back in, item linking, RvR influence system, more lairs, more quests chains, free server transfers, target of target and loads more smaller changes.

Kiith

That sounds pretty damn cool. Any chance of the patch notes being posted? I realise they are probably massive though.

humanji

I'll look for a more itemised version.

Folks,

After over three years of work and one of the smoothest launches in MMORPG history, WAR is moving quickly towards the end of its first month. This is a perfect time to take a look at where we were, where we are and where we are going. First, on behalf of everyone at Mythic, I would like to thank you for your interest in our game. While it is impossible for me to personally thank all 750K+ worldwide account holders, please know that we are grateful for your support to date and the support we hope you will show us in the future. It’s been a long road to get where we are today but it has been a worthwhile journey. While I might be tempted to say that the future’s so bright we have to wear shades, as you’ve seen from our podcasts, we’ll even wear those indoors.

So, as to where we are today, WAR is doing fabulously. We are one of, if not the, fastest selling MMORPG out of the blocks and we are also one of the most highly rated MMORPGs of all time. While the game is off to a great start, we still have a long way to go before we can declare WAR a major long-term success. That success will only come by being focused on making a great game even better. How we are going to accomplish this begins with our first major patch (1.1), the subject of this State of the Game message. While WAR is truly a glorious MMORPG, it is not perfect and over the last month our primary focus has been to correct bugs and tweak a few things here and there. We’ve stayed away from major feature or career changes until we’ve had plenty of time to gather and analyze the data from our players. Having done that, we can now move on to what we are going to do over the next couple of months, culminating with the release of patch 1.1 later this Fall.



Let’s start with what we know is some truly exciting news. I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR. We have very special plans around their appearance and in our next newsletter we will provide full details about that exciting and rather novel event. When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR’s other compelling classes. I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate. We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer.

Creating an MMORPG, especially an RvR-focused MMORPG, which runs perfectly on all types of PCs, is one of the most challenging technical aspects of game development. While the performance of WAR is great on most higher spec machines, we know that we can improve its performance on lower spec machines. We’ve been working non-stop to improve that performance and we’ve got a number of things going into the game between now and 1.1 that we expect will help to address everything from crashes to desktops (CTDs) to stuttering. We have a number of other client changes that will improve things such as propagation and ghosting.

Thanks in part to WAR’s success; our mail system that worked well in Beta has been straining to keep up with the heavy demand placed on it. It’s functional and it works, but it can also be slow and cumbersome to use. In all fairness to the team, the system’s problems have been magnified by the demand of having so many servers and players using it at the same time. That’s not an excuse though and we are working hard on deploying a substantially improved mail system for this patch. We will continue to enhance WAR’s mail system until it is one of the best mail systems found in any MMORPG.

Moving on to some more good news for our RvR players; we have brought additional resources to bear on, and augment, our RvR gear and overall itemization. In 1.1 (and beyond) we will be doing a myriad of things for our RvR players, including improving gear drops, increasing drop rates, and implementing an RvR-influence system to compliment the current PvE-influence system. We will also be giving players more incentive to engage in open RvR by improving the rewards for both assaulting and defending in RvR. WAR is an RvR-centric game and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to encourage people to join in RvR and reward them when they do so.

Other changes for 1.1 include major additions to the chat system (item linking and more) as well as continued work on our targeting system, including adding Main Assist and Target of Target. In addition to the server balancing methods that have worked so well over the last week, we will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations. These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers. Much like we are doing now, we will select certain mid-population servers and let people transfer there. Once they reach a certain population level, we’ll remove them from the list and give their spot to another server. We will publish the list ahead of time so players can plan their moves accordingly.

While that might seem like a lot for a month, we’re not done yet! We’ll also be adding more exciting content to the game, including fourteen entirely new quest chains, two new Lairs, and many more Tome of Knowledge unlocks! This is only the first of what will be our ongoing content updates to WAR and it is a great start.

So, that about wraps it up for this first annual State of the Game, so without further ado…

Okay, so I was joking, we’re still not done. Over the last month the team has been looking at all the careers and building up a list of issues/concerns to address. Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way and there are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career’s abilities. The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities. I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way. Of course, we will continue to monitor and track all the class data so expect, like every other MMORPG, changes to the careers to be an ongoing process.

Well, that just about wraps my first WAR State of the Game and I hope that it has given you some insight into what we are going to be doing over the next month or so. This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything we are working on and I won’t go anywhere near talking about general bug fixes. The items mentioned above are just some of the highlights of our first major patch and I hope you agree that there is a ton of good stuff coming down the pipeline.

As required by lawyers everywhere, here’s the usual disclaimer that this letter is a guide to what we hope to include in this upcoming patch and not a guarantee of any kind. We are working on many things right now and my letters, as always, are just the tip of the iceberg. Fellow WARriors, we have a lot more big surprises coming your way that I will address in my next State of the Game message and it’s going to be a doozie.

Once again, I thank you for your support, patronage and interest in WAR.

Mark Jacobs

VP, GM Mythic Entertainment

Spear

Kiith wrote: »

That sounds pretty damn cool. Any chance of the patch notes being posted? I realise they are probably massive though.

This is scheduled for Decemeber, so it's too early yet for precise patch notes.

Kiith

Ah ok. Thanks for that.

Statso

I'm loving the sound of these changes. Question though, the black guard is also a tank isn't it? So that's 3 tanks on destruction side. wonder how they will make them different. We could really use the Choppa for Orcs to add more MDPS instead imho.

Spear

Statso wrote: »

I'm loving the sound of these changes. Question though, the black guard is also a tank isn't it? So that's 3 tanks on destruction side. wonder how they will make them different. We could really use the Choppa for Orcs to add more MDPS instead imho.

The Black Guard and KOTBS were both tanks, so now both sides have three tanks, and both sides lack one MDPS, choppa and hammerer respectively.

ThE_IVIAcIVIAIV

lookin forward to this

Dcully

Yay ill be able to transfer my sorceress into the guild

Pretty nice update.

Jumpy

Dcully wrote: »

Yay ill be able to transfer my sorceress into the guild

Pretty nice update.

Sorry to say but you cant. Its only off high pops, not on.

Dcully

Yeah just noticed that,oh well.

Jumpy

You might be able to get the boardies to move en masse though. If the guild announced a mass move I would go with them.
Even though I havent seen a queue in a while.

JesterWX

Jumpy wrote: »

You might be able to get the boardies to move en masse though. If the guild announced a mass move I would go with them.
Even though I havent seen a queue in a while.

Queues haven't been an issue for me lately. What has been a pain, is the long setup time when you login, followed by the occasional crashes just you get in and also the lag late at night especially in PQs.

Dcully

There are no queues because a large amount are not playing anymore.
The war alliance and only war forums are full of threads about people leaving.

Im tired of the game,its just a scenario game at this stage.

Cuddlesworth

Dcully wrote: »

There are no queues because a large amount are not playing anymore.
The war alliance and only war forums are full of threads about people leaving.

Im tired of the game,its just a scenario game at this stage.

Just like the WoW forums are full of threads about people leaving. It happens.


Are you not curious as to how the world pvp will work out at 40?

Evac101

Taking it slow and steady with some friends from my WoW guild, all in our high teens on various chars and enjoying it atm since whenever more then two of us are on we group for PQ's, scenarios or RvR depending on our moods.

Really enjoying the game at the moment and intending on subscribing (along with my guildies) to continue our progress through the winter

Dcully

Are you not curious as to how the world pvp will work out at 40?

I sure am but theres no way in hell im going to grind scenarios to get to 40.

humanji

Dcully wrote: »

I sure am but theres no way in hell im going to grind scenarios to get to 40.

That's why we have a guild

Spear

And now a third cut class is returning, and a new class entirely as well.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/55448

humanji

Interesting. Wonder what they're thinking of adding?

Spear

humanji wrote: »

Interesting. Wonder what they're thinking of adding?

Seems to be a widespread suggestion that dwarf slayers will replace the hammerer. This would be more consistent with the pre-existing DPS classes, and help to draw players back to the order side.