Read here or go to here.
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.
Well this is making me realy looking forward to december :D:D
Finaly Mithic.. THE BLACK GUARD.. YEEEEEEEEEEEEY.
