A Sneak Peek at Patch 1.2

[ashrik]

This is just a thread to try and take a look forward beyond the current news of company layoffs and general EA Mythic dickery. There's a patch coming down the pipeline, along with 2 more classes, a live event, and whatever other hoopla they are attempting. Let us take a look at a sneak preview of what's to come.

Source: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/110197320/p1

Folks,

Well, it’s Friday and time for another Sneak Peak at the next major patch. In this case it will be an early look at the Patch 1.2 patch cycle. While we could easily call this patch Combat & Careers Part Deux, I think a better name is the Bugs, Careers, RvR, Bugs, Items and Bugs Patch. Over this patch cycle we will have addressed and resolved about 500 bugs and issues (some internal, most external) and some of the changes have already been pushed to LIVE. Now, while a lot of these are teeny tiny little bugs, such as grammatical errors in tool tips, the majority of them are substantial. This patch is intended to be made available to our Core Testers next week on our Public Test Server (PTS). We also intend to break with tradition a little bit and make the entire patch notes available to the community before the patch goes to the PTS. So, without further ado, here are some highlights from the 1.2 patch cycle.

1) Bugs: I’m certainly not going to list 500 bugs/issues here, but the list is rather lengthy and right now bug fixes alone are coming in at about 16 pages of notes.

2) New Careers: Two new careers have been added, the Slayer and the Choppa. For those that got a look at the Choppa during Beta, you’ll see some changes and improvements but the Slayer is all new and ready to take the field for the first time.

3) Combat and Careers Adjustments: Lots and lots of bug fixes, adjustments and tweaks to all careers. This Balance patch focuses on addressing a number of global issues identified by the players that have been affecting the overall feel and balance of the game. This includes items such as Resistance stacking, Disorient effects, and Damage Absorb shields. In addition to these more global changes, we continue to work on each individual career addressing many of the more significant balance concerns and bugs brought up by the community. This includes a focus on the following careers; Witch Elf, Witch Hunter, Chosen, Knight, Black Orc, and Swordmaster.

4) Realm vs Realm: RvR is introducing several great changes including the new Open RvR Rallying Cry, Zone Domination System, and Siege Weapon Improvements and more!

5) Items: Itemization improvements and fixes for Gunbad, Bastion Stair, Lost Vale, Fortress Raid Rewards, City Invasion Rewards, and more!

6) Crafting System Improvements: Overall improvements to the system with Apothecary being the focus of this patch. New ingredients, improved interfaces and more.

7) Public Quests: Easy PQs for Tiers two, three, and four! This completes our first pass at the Easy PQ system and we will continue to review and tweak the system as necessary. As we have already done for Tier One, we have gone through the PQs in each Tier and made sure that at least one per chapter can be completed by 1-3 people.

8) New Live Event: The Bitter Rivals event will be launching with this version as the official kick off for the anticipated introduction of the Slayer and Choppa!

9) New Scenario: The Twisting Tower Scenario will be making a special preview appearance!

10) User Interface: Lots of UI improvements for both old and new systems! These improvements cover everything from crafting to RvR.

11) Mail: Send multiple items attached to each mail! Easily one of our most requested features by the players.

12) Client Stability: Continued improvements to the client in the areas of stability performance and visual quality. Improvements to an MMO’s client, just like the server, are ongoing and these will continue now and in the future to be one of our priorities.

As always, there’s a lot more to this patch than I can hope to cover here and things are subject to change during testing, but 1.2 is a huge patch for us and it will be followed by another large patch, 1.3. I’m also working on a State of the Game that will lay out, in more detail, our plans for the rest of 1.2, 1.3 and beyond. And once again, this is only a Sneak Peak. happy

Mark

What do you think? I think that I seem to be struck by some form obstinate optimism that leads to an unending life full of disappointment. Predictions for what goes right and what goes wrong, anyone?

[Megrim]

It's 'peek'.

[ghost]

I'm predicting wrong in a generalizable fashion.

[Tannhauser]

It sure sounds good, but Mythic's track record doesn't give me much optimism.

[apocrypha]

It's 'peek'.

Maybe it's "peak" as in "already reached it's"? 

[slog]

When your patch fixes over 500 bugs, that should be a sign that you released too early.

[schild]

ctrl+f "experience"

Phrase not found.

[Bismallah]

I think I might, while bored at work, go back and look through how many times they have said they were improving stability in the previous patches... sounds like a fun and time consuming thing to do tomorrow.

I am eagerly awaiting the PR spin for the Russian release combined with the drop of subs for Q1 2009. We all know they are still losing users, however with their current trend of "well we never said we had 800k subscriptions, just registered users" I wonder if they pull the same thing with Russia. "We sold XXX number of boxes and gained XXX number of registered users" all the while steering clear of saying 'subscriptions'.

<shrug>

I am about done though posting about WAR, it's getting old and the lines are being drawn in the sand between fanboi who will play till the servers burn in a fire and those that are admitting the product is garbage and have moved on. Although, the forums are a hoot, back to focusing on Eve.

[schild]

I think I might, while bored at work, go back and look through how many times they have said they were improving stability in the previous patches... sounds like a fun and time consuming thing to do tomorrow.

Sounds great, post it somewhere else.

[schild]

Wow, for such a short post it's loaded.

I am about done though posting about WAR, it's getting old and the lines are being drawn in the sand between fanboi who will play till the servers burn in a fire and those that are admitting the product is garbage and have moved on. Although, the forums are a hoot, back to focusing on Eve.

1. Posting about WAR outside of a gag is already old.
2. Lines are drawn for such people long before any game even comes out. There is no "being drawn."
3. The forums aren't really a hoot. Everything old is still old. It's another set of MMOG forums, woop woop.

[Fordel]

You know what is more disturbing then one fucked up Schild avatar?


Two of them back to back. 

[Venkman]

I had to block it days ago 

[schild]

Babies.

[Fordel]

It's the fucking twitch that gets me. The delay is juuuust long enough that I think it's a still image, then it twitches in the corner of my eye while I'm reading a post and wigs me out.

[waffel]

When your patch fixes over 500 bugs and comes 4 months after release, that should be a sign that you released too early and lollygagged for 4 months..

fixed.

[tazelbain]

4) Realm vs Realm: RvR is introducing several great changes including the new Open RvR Rallying Cry, Zone Domination System, and Siege Weapon Improvements and more!

Need to know a lot more about this.  This being one bullet point seems a little messed up.

[Triforcer]

I had to block it days ago 

I don't understand.  It doesn't bother me at all.  Maybe its like one of those magic picture things where my eye can't pick up on the disturbing frequencies or whatever.

[FatuousTwat]

I had to block it days ago 

I don't understand.  It doesn't bother me at all.  Maybe its like one of those magic picture things where my eye can't pick up on the disturbing frequencies or whatever.

Doesn't bother me at all either.

[Arthur_Parker]

I am eagerly awaiting the PR spin for the Russian release combined with the drop of subs for Q1 2009. We all know they are still losing users, however with their current trend of "well we never said we had 800k subscriptions, just registered users" I wonder if they pull the same thing with Russia. "We sold XXX number of boxes and gained XXX number of registered users" all the while steering clear of saying 'subscriptions'.

1st quarter results they couldn't reports subs as the quarter ended a couple of weeks after release, this quarter finishes at the end of March, so it's not the same, Russia will have had over a month to cycle subs.  EA will have to report total subs if they stick to the same policy as the last quarter, I suspect a total sub number 350,000 to 500,000 providing WAR does reasonably well in Russia.  I'm not sure if they will report US+EU subs separately in the next quarter as everyone strongly suspects that the number will be dropping and they will be tempted not to confirm that.

[UnSub]

I had to block it days ago 

I don't understand.  It doesn't bother me at all.  Maybe its like one of those magic picture things where my eye can't pick up on the disturbing frequencies or whatever.

Doesn't bother me at all either.

I liked that version of the song as far as it went. Not going to download it, but it was something I didn't mind.

[Geki]

Doesn't bother me at all either.

Looks like an epileptic Simon LeBon

[Fraeg]

Doesn't bother me at all either.

Looks like an epileptic Simon LeBon

What what in your Seven and the Ragged Tiger

[Delmania]

1.) This is not something to be flagwaving or proud of.
2.) Giving promised content is not new.
3.) Hotfixing issues while ignoring design flaws pointed out in beta is a sure sign of success!
4.) See #3!
5.) Gotta make sure people keep running those PvE instances in an RvR game!
6.) See #3.
7.) See #3.  Public quests sound like a great idea in theory.
8.) Too bad live event can be completed without even knowing it.
9.) That's what need to incentivize open RvR, another scenario!  See 3.
10.) See 3.
11.) Then why didn't you fucking have it at release?  It's not like mail servers are a "whoa, omg" new concept.
12.) You used the same graphics engines, and DAoC is more stable than WAR.  There is a concept in development known as "code reuse"  This does not mean throwing away all the work and starting again.

[schild]

Doesn't bother me at all either.

Looks like an epileptic Simon LeBon

What what in your Seven and the Ragged Tiger

Heh. That was good.

[Geki]

Every time I see the little animation he says:  FLEX FLEX!  (in the butt)

Thanks so much for planting "The Reflex" in my head...   This was intentional wasn't it?

[raydeen]

Every time I see the little animation he says:  FLEX FLEX!  (in the butt)

Thanks so much for planting "The Reflex" in my head...   This was intentional wasn't it?

"Schild's gone too far this time..."

[Lum]

55 pages of patch notes

[Delmania]

Extensive, to say the least.  It's going to take some time to digest and see if they actually dealt with any of the underlying design issues of the game.

Edit: Though reading the RvR section I am not too hopeful.

[schild]

55 pages, two instances of experience, neither one addressing the issue.

ALSO

MORE GODDAMN PVE CONTENT

Forget it. If I wasn't a fan of archives, I'd delete this forum outright.

[Delmania]

There were some changes.  The zone domination system seems to be an effort to force people to actually defend the keeps and objectives, and the new quests add more rewards for doing oRvR.   Cities degrade in ranks, not sure what that will do. 

Given this and the changes to the chosen I was right in that the fixes only serve to addres the symptoms and the actual design flaws.

Edit: oh yeah itemization changes. 

Still nothign that address the fun sucking grind that slams you in th face in tier 3.

[Tmon]

We are introducing the new Rally Call system. At various intervals, players will be called to join the battle in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 RvR lakes. A button will appear near the mini-map, enabling willing participants to jump right into the action.

This sounds promising but why only tier 1&2?  They don't seem to realize that most people have fun in tier 1&2, it's tier 3 causes people to quit.

[Zzulo]

here are the actual 1.2 patchnotes. Long read:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/patchnotes/index.php?id=2009_1-1-2

[Fordel]

I'll give Mythic one bit of praise, those are some very well formatted patch notes.

Table of Contents and everything!

[Lum]

55 pages of patch notes

here are the actual 1.2 patchnotes. Long read:

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/patchnotes/index.php?id=2009_1-1-2

What, was my link not pretty enough?

[waffel]

A gigantic patch like that is one you usually see during beta.

It's rather sad they decide to fix a lot of 'bugs' 5 months after the game has been out and after they take a 500k+ player hit.

Reminds me of them admitting ToA was horrible and loosening its stranglehold on the game only AFTER everyone quit because of it.

Better late than never?