Happy July Everyone!
Even though it’s the lazy days of summer, things are quite busy around the studio. The coming months promise to be very exciting and to kick things off Stuart Zissu (Producer, Dark Age of Camelot), Andy Belford, and myself will be making our way across the pond to GamesCom: Cologne. While in Germany we’ll be talking about the future of WAR and DAoC so be sure to stay tuned for coverage from the event, which takes place between August 18th and August 22nd. While in Cologne, we’ll be looking to get together and meet up with the players, so watch for updates on the Forums, the Herald and Twitter (http://twitter.com/WARHerald) for where to hang out with us on the road!
We’ll be waging WAR on two fronts in August as we make our annual trip to Games Day: Baltimore! Join James Nichols, James Casey, Nate Levy and more members of the WAR development team for a special presentation and live Question & Answer session at Games Workshop’s annual celebration of all things Warhammer! Games Day Baltimore is coming your way Saturday, August 21st.
Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past month, you know that we’ve been focusing on two things: Game Update 1.3.6 and the transition of our European community to BioWare Mythic. Right now there’s nothing more important to us than delivering the best possible play experience to all of our players, both on North American, and now, European servers. With two weeks of free playtime for all current and past European players and double XP and Renown, the last 30 days have seen unprecedented population numbers on many servers, especially Karak Azgal, Karak Norn and Badlands. Peak population numbers have been as much as three times normal levels. We’re closely watching how these servers are performing under these extremely high loads and have been focusing on ways to further improve client and server performance. In short, when it comes to providing the best possible play environment for our community, there’s always room to improve.
Players from across the globe have been coming together on the official forums, sharing new viewpoints and play styles and we have one more hurdle to clear to finalize this transitional period. By now, most of you are aware that we have integrated the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning forum community into the BioWare Social Network. This coming together of two great communities enables all WAR players to enjoy the benefits of the long standing BioWare Social Network community without losing any of the privileges available to them on the WAR Forums. To those who don’t already frequent the WAR forums (http://www.warhammeronline.com/forums/), now’s the chance to let us know how you think we’re doing with the development of WAR!
And now for the game stuff!
Public Testing for 1.3.6 has begun, so now’s the time to head over to the Warpstone PTS. You can log in by using the testpatch.exe file in your Warhammer root folder. While on Warpstone be sure to check out all of the new 1.3.6 features and give any feedback you may have. Because of the feedback we receive during the Public Test phase, we’re able to improve, iterate, and polish on many features each version, all thanks to our community. For the complete list of 1.3.6 changes on the PTS (as of this time), you can read the patch notes here.
Following the launch of 1.3.6 The Wild Hunt Live Event will be making its triumphant return. Now’s the chance for players of all Tiers, not just Tier 1, to acquire the elusive Fleet Stag Cloak. We’ll be reintroducing The Wild Hunt sans the Public Quests surrounding the Vale Vines in the RvR Lakes in addition to some other minor content changes.
Speaking of Live Events, almost every week we deliver a new one in the form of a Weekend Warfront. We’ve been following your feedback in the forums about the Weekend Warfront system and one thing we’ve heard loud and clear is that the community wants more 6v6 Scenarios. We love The Ironclad, but it needs more adjustments before we bring it back. In its place the design team has created an entirely new 6v6 Scenario. This Scenario takes place in The Eternal Citadel and is pure, unadulterated Death match goodness…with a twist :). We’re hoping that everyone loves this new 6v6 Scenario and, depending on community reception, we may just add it to the permanent rotation.
For news on the Combat and Career front, I’ve asked C&C Design Lead Nate Levy to talk a little bit about the impetus of the changes to the Close Quarters Combat Archetype Tactic:
“One notable change that we're making in 1.3.6 is an adjustment to the "Close Quarters"/"Expert Skirmisher" tactics in the Ranged DPS archetype. Our intent for these tactics has always been for them to be a little bit of a "role reversal" - letting a long-range attacker be more effective at very close range - because that makes for some interesting play styles and situations. We're changing their effects so that they play much more directly to that purpose: they will now make your abilities build up more quickly when your target is very close to you. This means that if you choose to slot one of these Tactics, you'll have a much easier time casting long-build-time abilities while you're under close attack, which greatly expands the options available to you in such a desperate situation.”
In closing, while Tier 4 is a very important part of WAR, we know that players only get to Tier 4 by passing through the first three Tiers. As we’ve been examining the ORVR experience, as well as our other plans for the future of WAR, we wanted to incentivize ORVR in Tiers 2 and 3. In order to do this, we’ve taken a page from the DAoC playbook and have added high experience value NPCs to the RVR lakes in Tiers 2 and 3. While we expect players to gravitate to these camps because of the xp,the ultimate goal is to drive the lower Tier populations back into the RVR Lakes. This change goes hand in hand with the deliberate decision to restrict access to Land of the Dead for all players below Rank 32. More players in the RvR Lakes means more fun for lower Tier characters and, of course, more killing in the face.
So that’s it until next month. We’ll see you on the battlefield…and beyond!
-Carrie
