Welcome to the inaugural weekend WAR rollup post on the reroller blog!
I’m going to try and post these every weekend, to serve as a quick look back at interesting happenings in the Warhammer Online community over the course of the previous week, including forums threads, blog posts, new blogs that have launched, WAR patch notes, and any other interesting stuff I think that everyone should be checking out.
Since I’m still out of town for a few days, and I’ve only been reading the blogs sporadically (and the forums not at all), this week’s will be a short post. Just a few little tidbits of interest for you that are worth a read.
Without further ado… this week’s news rollup!
Barnett backpedals into dessert-laden frenzy
Mythic Entertainment’s Paul Barnett has had an interesting week, initially throwing his development team under the bus over a bug that caused oRvR contribution calculations to apparently be ”kinda broken”, then backpedalling in an interesting attempt at reconcilation between Mythic’s design and programming departments.
Here’s the original video — apologies in advance for the video’s awkwardness; Barnett came across pretty harsh, even though I’m generally a big fan of his work:
… and here’s the follow-up. I think anything involving desserts and faces constitutes a solid apology, even though there are other people in the gaming industry who may think otherwise.
The eagle… err, patch 1.1a has landed
As the two new WAR careers have been out for a couple of weeks already (at least, in advance release), most people are still focused on that. However, the release of patch 1.1a this week is important in its own right, introducing some spiffy new features to the game, in addition to the new tank classes:
- Open RvR influence & rewards
- Select simplified public quests in tier 1
- Chat hyperlinking (finally!)
- Armour set improvements
- Main assist in groups
- Player statues: weekly fame rewards in major cities
- User interface enhancements
If you haven’t played in a few days (or longer), you’ll definitely want to login soon to check out these changes. As I’m away from my gaming machine for a few more days, I’ll have to take what everyone else has said about the patch as gospel in the meantime. Sounds like it’s a batch of worthwhile changes!
Rumours regarding official forums abound
Michael Zenke at Massively is reporting the rumour that official WAR forums are on the horizon in early 2009. Although Mythic’s Mark Jacobs has repeatedly re-iterated his vehement desire to not have official WAR forums, one cannot deny the attraction of having official forums. World of Warcraft has had official forums since well before launch, and most other MMORPGs seem to host their own just in order to keep player feedback in a centralized area that they can control and monitor.
Having most players spread out between the Warhammer Alliance boards and IGN’s Warhammer forums seems like a waste of potential community-relations and marketing power. I completely understand the toll that monitoring a community’s postings can have on moderators and administrators (I run Protagonize in addition to developing reroller, and even a ~5,000 registered user base is a lot of work to manage.) However, the control over the flow of information and the finger on the pulse of the community that this provides you with is undeniable. I think having moderated, official WAR forums would be a boon to the community and Mark Jacobs should take a step back from the forums situation and not let his emotions interfere in what could be a good move for his organization.
Keg End live event launches December 17th
The Warhammer Herald has a post up announcing the launch of the next WAR live event, Keg End, which is scheduled to run from December 17th to January 5th, 2009. I think these live events are a great way to get people involved in the WAR community and to keep people coming back on a regular basis and engaging in oRvR (which seems to be the main goal of most of each events’ tasks.)
Keg End looks like a good time; to quote the Herald, “Keg End is here, with the mud and the blood and the beer!” And really, what’s better than an elite reward that returns you to your capital city’s pub?
Unlike that other game, WAR has done a great job so far of not just focusing on sappy seasonal events, and creating engaging events with unique, interesting rewards that actually kick people in the ass to participate regularly. Since we’re already looking at the third live event since launch barely three months ago, I think it’s safe to assume that we can expect live events to keep cropping up every few weeks. And that’s a good thing. I hope they can keep up the pace.
The rollup wrap-up
Since I’m about to head out for yet another free dinner (gotta love all-inclusive resorts!), I’m going to cut this rollup off for now. I’ll be back next week with another quick take of what’s been going on in the WAR community. Got a tip for me? Feel free to comment on this post or to email it my way. Cheers!
