Warhammer Headlines
Skalski outlines redesigned city sieges coming to Warhammer
Warhammer Online producer Jeff Skalski has shared another Producer's Letter, and this one's a doozy! Sounds like the team at Mythic have heard the community's complaints loud and clear, and they're dramatically revamping the city siege experience.
Hey Everyone,
It’s that time again for me to share my thoughts on WAR. I hope you’ve been enjoying your summer and the improvements we introduced in 1.3.0b last month. Draw your weapons and get ready for another round of action-packed goodness with our upcoming 1.3.1 patch, aka City Invasion.
One of the biggest enhancements going into this patch is the new approach we have made with our end-game city siege experience. After months of feedback from you, the players, and our own personal experience playing the game, we realized we needed to step back and reevaluate the city siege mechanic from beginning to end. Specifically, how can we make the city siege experience something players will strive for? How can we reinforce RvR in the endgame and not RvE?
Now, before diving too deep into the changes we made, I want everyone to know this is really just step one. We simplified the flow, removed barriers, and most importantly refocused the gameplay on killing your opponents. We set up the city end-game experience so we could easily expand it down the road to make them even more epic.
So, what exactly changed?
Right off the bat, once a capital city becomes contested and you and your Realm start to flood into the streets looking for your enemies, you’ll notice the new main city PQ. Now, each side will be in a race to see who can get to 1,000 Victory Points first. How do you gain Victory Points? It’s easy—simply kill your opponents and hold any of the three Battlefield Objectives scattered across the city. Winners will then push the PQ to Stage 2 and the race begins again, but this time with a twist. The Hero-con encounter will appear like before, but now players can complete the main city PQ by dominating their enemies. In an instance that has lots of enemies? Kill them to win. In an instance that has no opposition? Take out the Hero General and his guards to complete the PQ to help your Realm capture or reclaim the city. The option is yours, but now there is no PvE content holding you back from razing your enemies’ capital city and getting your shot at their fearless leader.
Now, should the city be pushed from contested to the next stage, several new things will occur. First, players will notice that there is no longer a pillage stage. The city will now progress from contested straight to captured. Second, the Warlord PQs open up, which are now balanced for a single warband to complete. Also, it’s worth noting that the Warlord PQs are now time-stamped and are open the whole time the city is in a captured state. Gone are the days of the one-hour time window to experience this content! Second, the King instance is immediately available! It is no longer gated by the completion of the Warlord PQs, but be warned—this encounter is still one of the most challenging in the game. Without proper gear and wards, most players won’t stand a chance.
Lastly, city defenders are never kicked out of their city during an assault! The Tier 4 campaign may be in lockdown, but the fight will carry on for 18 hours as attackers continue to try and hold the city to allow their Realm-mates enough time to complete the Warlord and King encounters. Defenders, on the other hand, will be fighting back to complete the capital city PQ to push their enemies back out of their city. For every time the defenders complete the capital city PQ, the 18-hour timer will decrease by 30 minutes, giving the defenders the opportunity to push out their enemies and reset the Tier 4 campaign at their own will.
Alright, enough about city siege—let’s talk about open-field RvR! In the last patch, we adjusted how we were incentivizing players to fight in the RvR campaign by immensely increasing XP and RP rewards around Keeps and Battlefield Objectives. This time we’re adding a little more spice into the RvR lakes with the introduction of a second ramp to all Keeps found in Tiers 2 through 4. These ramps help widen the play space and give players new tactics to leverage in both offensive and defensive positions. On top of that, we’ve added additional icons and timers to the map to better communicate the current status of the RvR campaign and specific objectives. Now, players will clearly know if a Battlefield Objective is dominated, defended, or both. In addition, players will see the timer status of city stages. All this will be viewable, at a glance, from your map screen or mini RvR tracker.
In my last letter, I mentioned social improvements and we have a dedicated team pushing forward with that initiative. Two items made it in for this patch, the Friends List and Summoning Stones, with plenty more to follow.
The Friends List is much like what you would expect from any Instant Messenger window. It gives you quick access to your friends and even suggests new friends based upon your adventuring. This is just one step to helping bridge the gap between social relationships among our players.
The second item we have in place are the new Summoning Stones. These crafted items will allow players to summon group-mates to their location from almost anywhere in the world. (Of course, not into RvR lakes. No porting in reinforcements on your crumbling Keep before it’s taken over.) ;)
So, I know you’ll enjoy those improvements, but what about bugs? What’s Mythic doing to fix the lingering bugs that some say we’re always too busy to address? Well, I’m happy to say that in this patch we’ve decided that, rather than rushing the Player Systems team, it would be better for them to catch their breath and just focus on bug fixes for 1.31. I’m not going to call out any specifics other than suggest you go take a look at our patch notes here to see all the great fixes they have in store for us.
And last but not least, what about 1.3.2?
Well, I’ll share a little bit with you, but please remember this may not be 100% in-place and ready for live in time. Stuff happens and we adjust as needed, but here are a few things the team is hard at work on.
1. Data has shown us not enough players have experienced a city assault. With the new improvements, we want to make sure that happens, so we’ve decided to decouple the Fortresses from the Tier 4 campaign. They still exist, so don’t worry—they are not disappearing, but they are also no longer required to capture in order to claim the pairing. We have other ideas for the Fortresses, but I would be showing our hand a little too early with those thoughts right now. =) It’s cool, trust me.
2. New User Journey Experience – New recruits come to WAR everyday and many of us roll alts from time to time, so we are taking a hard look at the beginning player experience and exploring how we can make that introduction experience to WAR even more memorable.
3. Apprentice/Hireling System – Wouldn’t it be cool if you could play with anyone at any time regardless of Rank? I think it would. ;)
4. Continued Crowd Control balancing! In patch 1.3.0b you saw some of our first adjustments to Crowd Control, and in 1.3.2 you'll see the next steps as we begin approaching some CC abilities directly. These changes will help to continue shifting Crowd Control to be more strategic and purposeful on the battlefield.
5. The Daemon moon will rise.
Alright that’s a lot to take in, but before I head out I just wanted to say thank you to all of our players for helping us sculpt the world of Warhammer into what it is today. It’s hard to believe that in one month WAR will hit its 1-year anniversary! We’re excited and have a lot of fun events planned for the month, and one of the biggest Live Events we’ve made to date—The Wild Hunt—which boasts a new 6-man dungeon called The Hunters Vale, to help celebrate this great milestone. The Wild Hunt will usher in the new Live Event equip slot on all characters, and is something we plan to continue to leverage for many more Live Events to come. Oh, and before I forget, enjoy the new load times getting into the game. We went from 52 seconds to almost 20 seconds! That’s at least a few extra player kills for everyone a day. ;)
I’ll see you in your city,
Jeff Skalski
WAR Producer, Mythic Entertainment
Twitter @Jeff_Skalski
Some interesting changes to say the least. The "displacement" of Fortresses in the T4 campaign was quite the shocker to read. What do you think of these changes?
Dev Diary: New Keep Designs Coming
EA Mythic's Russel Chamier has posted a developer diary on the Warhammer Herald regarding new keeps that are coming soon(TM).
WAR's keep design has always been a little flat, unfortunately if you've seen one you've seen them all.. It sounds like that stands to change!
From the horse's mouth:
Today, Russel Chamier walks us through the upcoming keep redesign effort, from start to finish. Read on, as Russel delves into the deeply interwoven inner workings of this epic effort, and shows off some of the new Keep designs at the end!
Well here we are again. The last time we chatted we were in the Reikland Factory, searching for cake. This time the search for more cake leads us to open RvR, and Keep ramps.
Keep ramps! This update to our open RvR is a good example of live development on WAR. All games ship with items that will get criticized. In a subscription-style game such as ours, we have the opportunity (and responsibility) to make changes to the product after it goes live to meet these criticisms, and improve the game. With this change to the Keeps, we’re addressing one of those concerns. Specifically, the Keeps are getting a bigger footprint and we’re adding a second set of stairs leading from the first floor to second floor.
PLAN OF ATTACK
Okay, brass tacks. This issue was, at its core, one of space. The single ramp was not offering any sort of interior strategy in terms of attacking the lord. Warbands were essentially just zerging the stairs and it was a fairly limited space to begin with. So, we knew right away the change would be extensive to the existing structure. Because of the space involved, we didn’t want to cut into our Keep’s play space with the new ramp geometry, so we opted to expand the structure out instead.
BUILDING THE FIXTURE
First on the deck was the actual Keep fixture itself. We started with a prototype (imagine very simple shapes outlining the basic volume). You always want to start with simple shapes since, in the beginning, these shapes are fluid and very subject to change. We tried several ramp sizes, for instance, before we settled on the “double original ramp” width. As the prototype progressed, it coalesced into early working geometry.
Here, you can see that we blew out some of the side/back wall and wrapped the new stairs around the rear corner of the Keep. (The delete key is the ultimate wrecking ball for virtual buildings, I would like to add.) As I mentioned before, the new stairs were twice the width of the original ones, and in the new position they did not jive with the original tower already occupying the space. Spatial issues like this are common when you go back and apply significant updates to existing assets. In this case, the rear-right tower exists in this corner position on all the square Keep-types; so, we had to either delete or redo that tower as a function of our ramp addition.
As you can see from the image, we chose to redo the tower. Since we knew we were going to be adding divine altars to the Keeps, we reworked the back right tower to have a chamber/space/gazebo dedicated to the altar, further extending the playable space inside the Keep. At that point, we had two reasons to redo the tower: a new ramp run-through at the base, and the divine altar room at the top. So, the decision to commit was easy. Quick note: The divine altars will move to the new location atop the tower when these Keeps go live.
For the round Keep-types (the Elves/Dark Elves), the new ramp was one long set of stairs with no landing. They also have the “gazebo” space at the top of their back-right towers dedicated to the divine altars. The new ramps for the round Keeps were, like the square Keeps, twice as wide as the original ramps. In all, it was a good analogue to the changes we made for the square Keeps.
While we were at it, we took the opportunity to correct a few other spatial issues in different areas of some of the Keeps; see below for more details.
Anyhow, the entire framework was in place, and we began fixture construction in earnest. That’s where more of the art team was brought in. There were six Keeps to perform surgery on, and in every case where it was possible, we assigned each to its original builder in order to aid in both consistency and workflow.
FUN FACT! Only two Keeps were not made by their original artists, but I’m not telling you which ones unless you can come up with a suitable bribe. Hint: It is a bakery confection often featuring candles.
We didn’t delete the original ramps! So, don’t forget they are still there when everything goes live. They offer a shorter, more direct route to the lord than the new ramps. It was fun to see the core testers flanking each other within the structure of the Keep itself by drawing attackers up one ramp and running in behind them using the other one.
PLACING THE KEEPS
About the time the artists were finishing up with the fixtures, one of our terrain guys (Hi Mike!) was starting to position the Keeps within the game world. The first step was simply replacing the old with the new to see what kind of changes we’d have to make. Since the new Keeps were bigger than the old ones.
Oops! Again, this was not unexpected considering the bigger footprint. The process then became massaging the terrain across the game to accommodate the increased size of the Keeps. That’s 30 Keeps across 21 zones throughout Tiers two, three, and four. We knew going in this would be the case, since each Keep location is unique, but it’s worth noting here so people see the full impact that adding stairs has on game construction. Fortunately Mike was still on the job and not trying to kill anyone. After all, he has a Rank 40 with an interest in all this.
FUN FACT! Our art updates always incur downloads, since you can only see our work if you download it to your client first. Hmmm. Maybe that’s an unfun fact upon reflection.
While we were at it, we corrected some nearby terrain bugs since we were already forcing a download of the zone data to the player.
A few of the Keeps had to be moved because of how they interacted with the surrounding PVE terrain or another portion of the RVR lakes. Of course we didn’t want to intrude on them, so that meant a change in the location of not only the art but all the mobs and other spawned items that are placed by the content team. It also meant we needed to update the icon positions and map image files in a few cases.
LIGHTING THE KEEPS
Since some new exterior and interior lights were added as a function of increased surface area, we had to redo a portion of our lighting as well. That’s where the lighting team comes in. We use light maps, which means the lighting solution you see (if you turn on light maps) is pre-baked by us on the back-end and not rendered at runtime (dynamic). I was especially pleased with how the Chaos Keep looked after it was lit.
Once the lights were placed and baked, the bulk of our work was done. (Well, after we delivered all this stuff to the client building team, I mean.) I like to call it the BDD. Big Data Dump. Read into that whatever you want.
FINAL RESULTS
At this point, the art was done; however, the work on the Keeps continued after we artists passed the baton since there were quite a few changes still to be made by our content developers (including things such as updating the positions of the mobs, and pathing, et al). After that it moved into the testing phase as the data moved through our internal servers. In order for there to be time for these dependencies, the art is done months in advance before it’s finally seen on live. In the case of our Keeps, we finished the work back in June.
And now our tale is finished. I do hope you guys enjoyed seeing how it all took shape on our side. Farewell!
- Russell
Mac Client for Warhammer Online in Beta
Apple users rejoice; Mythic has announced the availability of a native Mac client for Warhammer Online. Available in beta today and an anticipated final release this summer, this new client will allow Apple users to play the popular MMORPG without having to dabble with emulation or reboot into Windows using Boot Camp.
Likewise, players who login using the client this fall will receive an exclusive in-game title ("I'm an Order" or "I'm a Destruction") and item, the "iPomme".
Download the client here, and checkout Mythic's Mac FAQ for more information.
Grab Bag #19 - Wild Card Edition
Grab bag #19 is here! Question answering abounds:
Q. Does destroying a ram pad actually increase the time it takes for the Keep doors to reset?
A. Nope! Destroying a ram pad does not increase the amount of time it takes for Keep doors to reset, but it does prevent a ram from being built for a short while.
Q. Now that the Land of the Dead is out, can we expect to see a reworking of the city siege mechanics? As it stands, the population caps on Fortresses make taking a fully defended Fort incredibly difficult. This makes city sieges happen less, and getting to Stage 2 of a siege simply doesn’t happen if the opposing Realm doesn't wish to participate. This is due to an inordinate amount of emphasis being put on the Rank 8-29 city Scenario. These issues result in Warlord gear being near impossible to gain, let alone Sovereign. Can we expect any changes to this system, moving forward?
A. Yes, we are intently focusing on the contested city content to ensure that they are both challenging and rewarding. Regarding the Rank 8-29 city siege Scenario—when we introduced this Scenario to the lower Ranks, we actually decreased the amount of impact it has on the success or failure of a city capture.
Q. When will Keep takes and city invasions resemble the intro movie? Meaning, when will assault towers and other means of breaching a Keep/Fortress/capital city come into the game?
A. We cannot provide an exact outline yet, but rest assured that the Keep, Fortress, and city siege content is always at the forefront of our minds. We are currently looking at changes to all three!
Q. Has anyone on the dev team looked to see that Keep/Fort designs are a main reason for CC and AoE issues? Meaning the choke-points to the lord as being the only way to get to the lord thus the focus of attacks are the stairs?
A. The C&C and RvR teams are both looking at the area-of-effect and crowd control abilities with Keep and Fortress design in mind. We are working on some exciting changes that will alleviate many of the choke-point issues. Stay tuned for more info!
Q. Will there ever be RvR objectives put in place that promote small-group/individual play?
A. The inherent design and nature of the open RvR lakes allows for uneven battles to occur, so there will always be some risk involved with running around solo, or in a small group; however, Battle Objectives and quests in the open RvR lakes are indeed designed for smaller groups and individuals.
Q. It was announced in part 2 of the Executive Producer’s Letter that Tier 4 RvR was going to be examined for improvements. Can you give any details, vague or specific, on what is the general idea of where you are heading with these changes?
A. We can’t give out any specific details quite yet, but we will say that we have an entire whiteboard filled with ideas to improve all aspects of open RvR (not just Tier 4!). Check out the Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3 for more info about the future of WAR!
Q. This is a question regarding Scenario scoring. I would like to know if, for example, I'm playing in Tor Anroc and I knock back an enemy player into the lava with my Ironbreaker, if they die in the lava, do we still score points or does it not count?
A. As long as you hit an enemy Realm character, if they die in lava, or even from falling damage, you will get credit for their death. It’s not how they die that matters—it’s if you played a role in their demise!
Q. Is there any chance of removing the "Prior Tier" bar, and perhaps moving a prior-Tier's contribution into an existing one...say, the Scenario bar, where T4 can still affect it without being excluded from it?
A. There’s always a chance we’ll do this at some point in the future, and it has been discussed, but we can’t promise anything at this time.
Q. For some reason, in Stage 1 of the city siege, player kills are subject to diminishing returns. This makes perfect sense in open RvR to keep cross-realm farming at a minimum, but why is this in a city siege where everyone is actually very focused on winning?
A. The diminishing returns on player kills are indeed in place to hinder cross-Realm farming. Cross-Realm farming is still something that can occur during a city siege, and can have a very detrimental impact on the city siege progression. We want to keep that at a minimum as much as possible.
Q. Simple question - crest conversion to higher valued crests, is there a chance it will ever be implemented or has it already been decided that this will never happen?
A. We don’t have any current plans to allow for crest conversion to higher value crests. The premise behind the crests are to reward players for participating in specific types of RvR content, and as such we do not want to promote hording of currency, or skipping content. In the future, we plan on adding more items for purchase for all crest and medallion levels so that players who have crests gathering dust in their bank have more meaningful items to purchase with them.
Q. When will a fix be going in for the Tome of Knowledge unlocks increasing load times?
A. We have a fix in the works for this issue that is currently being tested. We hope to push it live in July.
Q. Will there ever be optional warband displays that reduce the current need for squares mod for an effective healer and thus improve customization?
A. We love our mod community and evaluate all of the most popular WAR mods. We always try to implement the game features that the community is clamoring for. We also work with the mod community on a regular basis.
Q. Is there any chance that 'Party' members in a Scenario or warband can be a different color 'dot' on the Map to other people? I've asked about this a few times. I thought this was being addressed for 1.3, but the different colored names above characters, showing guild, alliance etc...is what we got. In a Scenario, there are dozens of red dots on the map...which is my group? How can I heal them if I follow the wrong dots to a different place? Some of the maps are quite big. The only time I know where my group is, is when I'm in a pre-made group with guildies on Vent. Please, please give us green dots for party members or something!
A. This is a feature we’re currently looking into and would love to add.
Q. When are the Dwarfs actually going to get a Guild Rank 37 mount that isn't simply a recolor of existing Dwarf mounts? I was highly, highly, HIGHLY disappointed at seeing ours versus the other ones. The horses look fantastic—ours are just hardly recognizable colors.
A. Our in-house Dwarf Engineers have been hard at work creating a new Dwarf Gyrocopter befitting of those who have earned a prestigious Guild Rank (37 or higher). We think you’ll really like how it looks. It will be comparable to the Guild Rank 37 mounts that the other races currently have. Below is a peek at what it looks like (please keep in mind there will be different colors).
Q. Will PvE dungeons be reworked to ensure a current level of difficulty despite ongoing C&C changes?
A. The C&C team works hand-in-hand to adjust and balance all PvE content, especially in the dungeons, so that it continues to be in-line with ongoing improvements and changes.
Q. Gunbad is being overhauled to make it more accessible and user friendly. Will Bastion Stair get similar treatment?
A. We are very excited about the recent changes we made to Gunbad and are currently gauging player reaction and interest. If the new Gunbad changes are very well received, we would love to move forward with more dungeon overhauls in a similar fashion. Please let us know what you think of the changes on the WAR Official Forums! Bastion Stair would be our next potential candidate.
Q. What is the purpose of the derelict dinghy in the Southeast corner of Ellyrion? Clicking on it causes a pack of Rank 1 Rift Rats to spawn, but nothing else happens. Just up the coast and across the river is an island. On the island are a shipwreck and a small, dilapidated shack. The island is surrounded by deep water and can't be reached (as the player immediately starts to drown). Presumably the dinghy was from the survivors of the ship but that doesn't explain what happened to them or why the dinghy is worthy of a click.
A. The derelict dinghy has not yet yielded up its mysteries....
Land of the Dead Begins Tomorrow
From the Herald:
Greetings!
Tomorrow (Tuesday, 6/23/09) all North American servers will be brought offline at 8:00AM EDT with Oceanic following at 9:00AM EDT to open the Land of the Dead for the winning realms of this past week's Live Event: Rise of the Tomb Kings! In addition multiple other small improvements will also be made during this downtime.
We anticipate servers to be online by 1:00PM EDT. As always stay tuned to the Herald for information during this and other future downtimes, thank you!
Tonight should make for some particularly intense RVR as both sides struggle to solidify their victory for tomorrow's launch.
Patch 1.3 Goes Live Tomorrow
The time has arrived! Tomorrow the Land of the Dead will open for exploration and a whole new front on the battlefield will open!
Details from the Herald:
Greetings!
Tomorrow we will be bringing you the highly anticipated Game Update 1.3, and along with it begins the great expedition to the Land of the Dead, and many other changes and improvement the WAR community has been requesting including Ward System improvements, Public Quest loot system roll options, instance lockout timer changes, and much more! This patch also heralds the start of the Rise of the Tomb Kings Live Event, which begins tomorrow after the servers re-open!
1.3 will be going live on Tuesday, June 16th. All North American servers will be brought down at 8:00 AM EDT with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00 AM EDT. We expect all North American servers to be back up and running by 1:00 PM EDT, and Oceanic by 3:00 PM EDT.
As always stay tuned to the Herald for the latest news and updates and continue reading for the 1.3 Patch Note highlights, complete with a link to the full patch notes at the bottom....WAAAGH!!!
Patch 1.3 Available for Pre-Download
The big Rise of the Tomb Kings patch for Warhammer Online is right around the corner! EA Mythic has decided to make the patch available ahead of time.
You can download the patch here. The patch goes live Tuesday so get ready today!
PTS Reward Time!
The Warhammer Herald is reporting that the reward for participating on the test server has been released to players.
The details:
Greetings!
Those who participated in the PTS Event on Tuesday (6/9) and Wednesday (6/10) for 30 minutes or more over the course of the two days have been grated the Shroud of Imrathepis reward!
PLEASE NOTE: In order to claim your reward right away you will need to create a new character on any server, log them in game and check the mailbox for the Shroud to arrive. Once this new character receives it all other characters on your account will be able to claim it from their mailbox.
Thank you again for your participation and your feedback, we encourage you to continue testing the PTS content and providing your input as there are still some Griffon and Manticore mounts to be claimed!
Have fun and a great weekend,
The Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Team
Grab Bag #18 - Patch 1.3
The latest Warhammer Online Grab Bag is now up on the Warhammer Herald.
Q. What kind of objectives can we expect for the next Live Event?
A. Players will find a Public Quest in each capital city’s War Quarters to gather airship parts and build an airship. There will also be three locations in every Tier and pairing (so, 12 in total) that have airship resources that you can pick up and earn points for doing so. When you kill enemy players, sometimes they will drop blueprints, which will complete one of the Live Event tasks.
Each Realm will also have the opportunity to pick up a unique pocket item by completing the Live Event quest-line. This quest-line differs depending on what Tier your character is in, and is available to players of all Ranks. Completing any of the 10 Live Event tasks will earn points for your Realm. And last but not least, Riekland Factory has been retrofitted to build airships for the expedition—players who win this Scenario will also earn points for their Realm.
Killing enemy players will also sometimes yield special Glyphs that are the key to a secret encounter and reward associated with the Live Event—but that’s the only clue we’re giving out for now!
The whole she bang is here.
Mythic seeking guild feedback on Land of the Dead
With development on the Call to Arms expansion rapidly coming to an end, Mythic has begun seeking feedback from guilds on the Land of the Dead region, PQs and dungeons. The new feedback program, called the Guild Focus Group, requires guild leaders to fill out a brief application about their guild's experiences with Land of the Dead on the PTS.
Starting with this weeks testing of Land of the Dead we would like to announce the first invitational round of our Guild Focus Group program.
As many of you know guilds are very important to the social development of server communities and often enhance player enjoyment of the game. To that end we want to reach out to those that can provide us with detailed, constructive feedback to help improve the game and better foster the communities unique to each server as well as to help thoroughly test new content when it arrives on the PTS.
If you are a guild leader (or want to suggest it to your guild leader) and this sounds like its right up your alley we encourage you to apply!
In order to be accepted you and your guild will need to explore the Lands of the Dead, this application is based on feedback of your experiences there. Please be sure to fill out all requested fields.
We strongly encourage honesty but expect all responses to be mature and constructive. Should you be accepted we will contact you at the email provided and welcome you to the program.
The application and further instructions can be found on the Warhammer Herald.
1.3 Phase III on PTS: "The Sands Run Red" the 9th and 10th
Mythic is forging ahead with testing on the Call to Arms live expansion; tonight and tomorrow beginning at 7pm EST you can login to take part in "The Sands Run Red", the 1.3 Phase III event. For the first time players will be able to experience the Tomb of the Vulture Lord, and the continued struggle for realm dominance over the RVR-centric region will wage on.
As a bonus, any players who login both nights of the event will receive a special item, the Shroud of Imrathepis; Linens taken from the burial shroud of Prince Imrathepis. Those who wrap the burial shroud about their body are protected from harm regenerating minor wounds and injuries. As always, players who go above and beyond in their testing and feedback will be eligble for one of those sexy Griffon or Manticore mounts.
Additional details available on the Warhammer Herald announcement.
Executive Producer's Letter - Part 1
Jeff Hickman dropped by the Warhammer Online Herald to post a Producer's letter to give an update on where the game stands.
He says to expect to more update letters over the next few weeks to give a state of the game to date and I imagine where the game is going!
Hello Everyone,
The first half of 2009 has proved to be an exciting time for WAR! With hundreds of pages of patch notes it's hard to remember everything that's gone live, four careers have joined the front lines, you've experienced our live events which we plan to only make better, and we've made amazing progress in improving performance allowing for larger battles and more stable servers. Additionally we've improved the UI and opened it up even more to our modding community, introduced the RvR Token System, implemented keep upgrades, and we continue to fix bugs and improve the quality of the game every day. To say we've been busy is an understatement and there's no sign of slowing down in sight, we hope you enjoy the ride.
With the release of Patch 1.3 we'll complete the Call to Arms Live Expansion. You will finally have the chance to explore the Lands of the Dead, an exciting new addition with a vast new area to explore, new rewards to earn, and the most challenging content yet!
I'll be discussing this and more over the course of the next several weeks in a three-part Executive Producer's Letter. We want you to have a first hand look at what's new in WAR and what's to come and give you a chance to share your feedback about what you would like to see come to WAR.
Land of the Dead Now Live on Test Server
Fresh news from the Warhammer Herald - Land of the Dead is now live on the test server!
WAAAGH!!!
1.3 testing is picking up steam and the real fun has just begun! Tomb Kings testing will be in full swing this week as you explore the Land of the Dead for the first time and all the perils and rewards that come with it!
We're continuing to evaluate all of the great feedback you provide through the PTS and Career forums. We realize that there is a lot going on in 1.3, and we want to ensure that it delivers a polished, engaging, and just plain fun experience. PTS is a testbed for future content, and it's always important to remember that change occurs constantly while we test new ideas and features, not all of which will make it live, so keep this in mind when testing and keep your mind open! We'll continue to look at the current changes and adjust them as needed to meet this goal, and we thank you for your candidness and enthusiasm when providing your thoughts and opinions.
1.3 is the final chapter in our Call to Arms live expansion, and we want it to be nothing short of glorious. The Land of the Dead is truly the cultivation of all the hard work that has gone into this live expansion, and brings with it mountains of new features and content to explore. Take RvR to a new level as you fight in the fiery sands for dominance over The Tomb of the Vulture Lord!
Invade your enemies' instances, collect medallions and buy new armor and weapons, or build your own, powerful weapons using vessels and the souls of your vanquished enemies. The Necropolis of Zandri stands before all and could decide the fate of every last living thing in the Age of Reckoning!
So join us tonight and all this week as we dig deeper into the shifting sands to uncover the ancient powers that lie beneath them. The dice of fate are rolling and only you can help shape the destiny of WAR!