Tuesday 1 June 2010

Producers Letter is out and this time…

…I’m liking it quite a lot. You can find Carrie's Producer Letter here. As our main source of future WAR news, it’s actually somewhat lacking in the amount of things we get to hear about, but there are two very cool bits of news. At least from my perspective they’re very cool to hear, but those expecting to hear about expansions, red plagues and the removal and public humiliation of Bright Wizards and Sorcs… well you’ll be disappointed, but ah well :P

One of the things I’m liking about Mythic, particularly in recent times, is their ability to put their hands up and say ok that was a bad idea. I’m sure some people will wish they did that a bit more regarding certain careers and so on, but then that’s probably a bit harsh and to be honest change is often best as a gradual thing. Anyways, the reason I’m waffling on here is because Mythic have listened to the serious concerns raised by myself and many others about the plans to let people play both factions on the same server.

Because of this, we gauge player reaction through many outlets to make sure that our vision for the game aligns with community sentiment. In the last producer’s letter I told everyone that we would be allowing players to play both realms on the same server. There were reasons for this decision, however community sentiment about the impact this would have on Realm pride was, to be blunt, mixed. As a result of this mixed community reaction we have reevaluated our decision. The intent behind this feature moving forward is to only allow the option to play both Realms in the case where there is only one server to choose from. In smaller language markets our only option up until this point has been to merge them with other markets of different languages, or allow them to play on one server but force them to choose which realm they prefer playing. This feature allows us to achieve our goal of offering the best possible gameplay experience for all markets.

As far as I’m concerned this is excellent news and I’m 100% with Mythic on this decision. As a solution for languages covered by 1 server it makes perfect sense. Great job. I'm sure some people will now cry about them not doing this, but I geuninely think it would have been terrible for the game and the tattered remains of realm pride.

Ok the next bit of lovely jubbly news is 1.3.6 will not only feature the much delayed new armour set graphics, but will also include a system to choose what armour style is displayed on your character.

Our solution is to introduce a new system that will let you set your armor and weapon appearance independently of your armor stats, so that you can look how you want to look and yet keep the statistics that you personally prefer. The goal is to give players the added benefit of having the new armor sets available to them, but the ability to change their appearance if they don’t like the way they look.

I really, really like this. Perfect solution and I can’t see how anyone could not be pleased. The look of your character is hugely important to your subconscious bond to it as a player, so giving us more customisation options and the ability to not look shite because we got an armour upgrade, is all very good news. With this change we get our cake and we get to eat it too.

Ok as players we are expecting 1.3.6 to be the BIG career balancing patch, I'm not sure why, I believe Mythic said as much... but I can’t remember where. Confirmation anyone? Regardless of that, there is only one bit of class changing information discussed which is to do with Zealots and Runepriests. It sounds like quite a dramatic change in play style, the exact details of which the letter does not confirm, but basically the Harbinger of Doom is to become THE HARBINGER OF DOOOOOM! I’ve just got my Zealot to 40, so I’m very interested in seeing more info on this.

And finally the much anticipated blogger video is out. Alas it's nowt to do with expansions or other moments of wonder, instead its regarding the new loading screen tips. However it's well worth a watch and is a good way of introducing the competition. Mykiel you are comedy gold mate.

1 comment:

  1. It seems we get the Producer's Letter, and then more items appear in the Dev Forum for the userbase to chime in on. I don't mind this as it gives me an opportunity to see how other players are interpreting what the Devs put out there.

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