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
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
