A Letter (P?)

-It's running down my leg miss-

So Mark Jacobs and whatever marketing team he has reading the stuff he posts has released a "letter" to "Folks"

Am I a folk? Lets assume I am for the seconds and rather than just link you to the warhammer site Ill post the lot here for ease of reading and lack of alt+tabbing or whatever you do to get a new webpage. (Ctrl+T is my best bet looking at the number of Firefox users)

Ill comment on it as I go along in Bold

Folks,

Over the last few months I’ve spoken about our continued focus on improving our open RvR systems. While we have taken some major steps in the last month, we believe that there is much more we can do to encourage people to take part in oRvR throughout the entire evolution of their character(s). Over the next few months we have some very exciting changes and additions taking place. Please note that as always, this does not represent everything that either we are doing or thinking about doing, just what we, as of now, plan on adding to WAR. Yay!

We have a number of major initiatives planned for oRvR in WAR. Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios. This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months.

First, we have created an RvR Influence system. This system is designed to reward our oRvR players with lots of new stuff that you can only get through oRvR. This will be a complimentary system to our PQ Influence system. This system is already implemented in 1.1 and is scheduled to go LIVE along with that version in December.
I take it that 1.06 patch is now 1.1 or are they releasing the rearranged classes before that? oRvR Influence sounds like a bucket of awesome and was something I was talking to my guildies about the other day as a method I think would help increase oRvR participation.

Second, we want to improve the visibility that players have into oRvR and make it easier for players to get involved in the action quickly and easily. We have a number of wide-ranging changes going into our map and travel systems to allow players to better understand the state of oRvR in our game and also allow them to get to the action faster. We have already taken one step with putting a Rally Master in each Warcamp but we will also add the ability for people to have a second bind point to make it even easier for players to move around the maps. We will also make it easy for players to see where players from their Realm are engaging in oRvR, a Campaign HUD for all tiers and other improvements. We will also improve Tier-wide messaging about what is going on in Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Other additions include changes to the UI, in-game manual improvements, map enhancements, and a few other changes. How many times have you wished for a second bind point? In any game? This is a pretty huge boost to travel ability, I just hope that both bind points arent on the same 1 hour cooldown. All of this sounds like it will, assuming Order can drag their collective asses out of Tor Anroc and Serpent's Passage, increase oRvR just because people will know where they need to go to get some easily. If they fix the sllightly buggy Keep/OB ownership on the map that will be great too.

Third, we want to provide greater incentives to players to participate in oRvR. In order to accomplish this we will be adding additional layers to the questing system of oRvR including the addition of Keep Quests, “Daily Event Quests”, Chained RvR Missions, improve the initial Tome Unlocks and other oRvR-oriented Events. We will also improve our BO itemization. Our goal is to provide players with even more incentive for participating in oRvR than we have already. All of this sounds good, I said from the start of Live that Daily Event Quests would be awesome for PvP (sorry RvR) and anything that improves RvRship for the game is a win in my book (tome?). I probably won't pay that much attention to the tome stuff or Chained-RvR missions if that just means go to an RvR point, kill two players and then interact with an item, but anything that gets people in RvR lakes is a huge plus.

Fourth, we want to encourage guilds to take and control keeps, and we will continue our work on adding better rewards for Guilds who own Keeps as well as the addition of a system of Keep upgrades. This system will be added to the game in several stages beginning in the late winter. Can't wait to see what these are, holding a keep at the moment is a lot of money for a cupful of meh.

Finally, we will begin work on a global oRvR “Fame” system that will be tied directly to the Tome of Knowledge which will provide more rewards, titles, experience, etc. for participating and being successful in oRvR. This system will provide even more incentives for people to participate in oRvR than the current systems and one that fits nicely both with the ToK’s concept as “This is your life” as well as an additional advancement and reward system. I never play enough to build up the time to get a title that a billion other people already have. Meh.

Please keep in mind that these additions are subject to change and given the nature of these changes/improvements, they will not go LIVE until we have thoroughly tested them. However, these are crucial improvements to WAR and are being treated as such by the team. Please read, will be pushed back two patches just like the class changes.

Finally, I want to close this out with a brief explanation about the role that we believe that oRvR should play in WAR. It’s really as simple as this, oRvR should be a major focus for leveling, item gain, etc. in WAR. Some of the systems are already in place and in Tier 4, oRvR is alive and well. On other Tiers, however, oRvR is not being engaged in as often as we had hoped when we launched WAR. Our goal is to ensure that oRvR is the place where players can level the fastest, get the best items and overall, have a great time while doing it. It is supposed to be riskier, more challenging but ultimately, more rewarding than any other place within WAR. What is outlined in this letter are some of the ways we plan on making this happen over the next few months and beyond.

As always, we thank you for your patronage and support. We won’t let you down.

Mark

Well, as we can see they are telling us all the good stuff we want to hear and based on previous patch output (I always have a bloody patch when I log in) I imagine that all of this stuff will be done. I'm actually gonna say that it looks like the Warhammer team still love the game and are doing all they can to keep their players happy.

Hopefully they will make good decisions and we will get a great game out of it. The game is good at the moment but it still has its flat bits. It shouldn't take much to make it great.