Fortress Changes, Experience Buffs and other News

If you guys haven't been checking the Herald, or were away from your computer for the past couple of days, chances are you may have missed some very significant news updates. First off, Mythic has buffed experience gain AGAIN. Now players Rank 20 through 33 will have a significantly faster leveling curve. This means that all of Tier 3 and part of Tier 4 gets the buff. So once again, they are giving me a chance to get one of my many played alts to T4, at least. This stokes me out and my goal of getting one character to max level before I roll yet another alt will be easier to realize.

Speaking of alts, Mark Jacobs' most recent post on the Herald hints at some big announcements coming at the end of this month. This coupled with MJ's reference to Snafzg's "Mythic's Top Ten Priorities for Warhammer Online in 2009" post tells me we may be getting a sneak peek at the first expansion! If true, this is super exciting news, and forum-goers all over are heavily speculating on what new races or content we may be getting. I'm hoping for a Skaven/Lizardmen pairing myself. I can also see them implementing new capitals, such as Karak Eight Peaks and Karaz-a-Karak for the DvG pairing.

However, I want them to announce the new MDPS careers for the Dwarfs and Greenskins and implement them soon! I want my Slayer! I want me Choppa! WAAAGH!

Okay, now that I'm no longer hyperventilating, lets look at some of the other news. In response to the crashing issues plaguing fortress captures, Mythic is implementing a throttling system, that will funnel players under a certain level attempting to to enter the fortress area to warcamps, once a certain population threshold has been met. This will address the issue of low-level players joining a fortress defense and lagging the server through overpopulation of the fortress area, leading to a crash. As pop thresholds are surpassed, the game will winnow out lower level players until at max threshold, only 39-40 Rank players will be allowed into the zone. 

Now opinion is split on this, with some players lauding the attempts to fix the crashes and some players disliking the fact that lower levels can not join the defense as easily. Myself, I'm for this change, because unfortunately I've seen people telling other players to zone into the fortress defense, no matter the level, and force a server crash when their fort is under attack. I myself do not agree that flooding the tier with lowbies that can't effectively fight and overloading the server to be a valid tactic. Reports have also been made of groups of lowbies sitting in the fort spamming emotes and AoEs. 

And last, Mythic is already looking at tweaking the Fortress Lord stats to ensure that they are in line with the number of players participating the the siege, as well as looking at other ways to optimizing the code for additional stability. Also, they are considering giving Fortresses their own zone, both to improve stability and to increase the amount of players that can participate in a siege.

Well, that's your news wrap-up for today, I can't wait for the big announcement at the end of the month, whatever it may be. It's a good time to be a WAR player, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the future. Take care, gents.

Sources:

http://thegreenskin.com/2009/01/09/mark-jacobs-responds-to-the-top-10-priorities-list/

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=564

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=570

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=571