Rumors are circulating that there are some major changes coming to WAR in 2011, and it may go free to play, EA is re re evaluating its online catalog and a major announcement will be made before the 4th quarter of 2011.
As of February 9th, 2011. Warhammer online has been reduced to 2 U.S. Servers and 3 European servers.
Lets wait and see if the rumors are true.
Until then check out the WAR producers letter..
It’s a brand New Year! For many, this is a chance to reflect, for others a time to look ahead. Some make resolutions. Sometimes they stick to them, sometimes they don’t. Regardless of your personal view of the New Year and what it brings, it marks a time for change.
This month’s Producer Letter is being brought to you by James Casey. James has been a Producer on the project for some time and has run a number of WAR initiatives (New User Journey, Endless Trial, Verminous Horde, etc.) in tandem with Carrie. Carrie is still working on WAR, but is looking at a different aspect of the game. This new focus will be revealed in due time.
In setting up this year, we took a look at what we accomplished last year and what remained on our ‘to-do’ or wish lists. These are gathered internally and from feedback that we gather all year long. We then plotted those out with our normal patch cycle in mind.
The actual numbered patches for this year (1.4.1, 1.4.2 …) will follow a similar cadence to last year. Our first patch for the year (1.4.1) will be a smaller version dedicated to bug fixes and a few new features. Amongst those features will be a new way to claim account entitlements (such as the Snotling Herald Pets). This new interface will replace the current method of delivering account entitlements via the in game mail system. We did this for a number of reasons.
The primary reason is that in-game mail expires by necessity. The new claim interface will allow you to claim the items anytime. The second reason is that we wanted to give you an easier method to recover lost items that you may have misplaced over time. For items that don’t have charges or function as a ‘currency’ item, such as War Tract scrolls, players will be able to reset those account entitlements at their leisure without having to contact customer service. This new feature will cover all item based deliveries from account entitlements whether they are paid items like you can purchase on the EA Store or marketing rewards from events or the collector’s edition.
Another feature of the patch is a re-structuring of our Scenario line-up. We’ve monitored feedback and statistics over the last year and decided to shake up what scenarios are available all the time for each Tier. The current structure of the Scenarios will remain unchanged, but the Scenarios themselves will be different. Some scenarios stayed where they are, some changed what tiers they are available at, and some are gone and replaced by other classic scenarios. For example; The Maw of Madness will be making its return to the Tier 4 scenario Queue. We’re going to be closely monitoring the scenarios when 1.4.1 goes live and will make further adjustments in later patches as go through the year based on your feedback.
We have plans for major features for each of our numbered patches this year. The plans include expanding existing areas and features as well as new concepts to the Warhammer Online experience. With each subsequent producer letter I plan to share more of these plans.
Shifting gears a bit, I’d like to tell you about our plans for Live Events. We have eight Live Events planned for this year. Some of these are returning favorites (like the recently completed Keg End) and the forthcoming Night of Murder in February. Others are new ones we have planned to fill in some of the calendar gaps. Along with the Live Events, we’ll continue to support Weekend Warfronts with plans to introduce some scenarios that haven’t made their debut in the Warfront format. We also have some very special plans for Grovod Caverns.
Along with the patches and live events, we also have plans to expand our services and Account Entitlement offerings this year. This includes introducing paid name changes, more pets, and more ways to personalize your character.
Finally, I’d like to address a topic that I’m sure is close to everyone’s hearts; server population. We’ve been monitoring the situations on each of our servers in every market. Our current situation on most of the servers shows us numbers that fall within traditionally acceptable parameters, notably our peak population values. Peak population is where we see the most activity on the server; during what is considered prime-time for the server or ‘peak’ hours. However, we understand that population is a key component to enjoying the game. As part of an effort to ensure off-peak hours are as enjoyable as peak hours can be, we are actively discussing our plans for lower population servers. If you haven’t heard anything to this effect by the time this letter sees print, you should see something very soon. We are committed to ensuring that we do what is needed to make sure players enjoy their experience in WAR.
As we close out this producer’s letter, the first of many for the year, we’d like to take a moment and thank all subscribers; past, present, and future. Thank you for your patronage, your support, and your feedback on Warhammer Online over the past year and we hope to continue to provide you an unparalleled RvR MMO experience into the New Year!
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Founder of GamertechTV, and EIC, executive editor of GamertechTV Read more from this author
Personally, I really like WAR and spent over a year sub’d to it. Sadly, the low population simply made the game where it wasn’t worth playing half the time. Log on at un-peak times and even T4 is dead. T2/3 are always ghost towns where you’re lucky to find 10 people ever. T1 is just twinks who’s using the free trial.
The bottom line is…as long as there’s the $14.99 a month sub fee, this game will not recover. Let me repeat, it will not recover. There is nothing they’re going to add or alter to game to bring back any decent of players with the exception of chaning the payment system.
IMO, the best thing they could do is go the route of Guild Wars. You pay for the game up front, no sub fee. I’m sure this would perk the interest of many former players to return and some new players.
Or keep it how it is and land up with not enough people to support one US server. Which will happen.
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I have recently sub’d to WAR 2 days ago actually and i play a North American server, trazy’s part about the population sadly is true its rare to see another player around the game if its roaming questing areas or even in main city’s. I think the $14.99 a month sub fee is fine because the game is very good and has a large map, but the population is not big enough to enjoy what the game has to offer. if WAR goes f2p im sure a lot more people will join. my opinion is that WAR should have a 1-3 month f2p deal and then bring back the sup at a reduced price of $5 – $10. with keys to all players within that time period giving them a free month when sub comes back. just a thought.
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I agree with some of what 2 before me mentioned. Game was great at launch, but lacks content. The idea of orvr, scens, pqs, and lairs were awesome Had loads of fun Christmas 2008.
Anyway, 14.99/month is sorta steep considering nothing ‘major’ content-wise has been added since LOTD. I still am highly entertained playing a trial account.
Going F2P may be a bad idea, if # of players is all that matters then great, but I prefer playing with slightly mature individuals.
No offense to the first poster, but Warhammer online is high quality and I would laugh if it becomes Fp2.
Honestly, the game came out September 2008.. it’s too late for any recovery. Actually, the idea of have an ingame store was cool, lotta profits driven off that I bet.
Sooo yea, it’ll be interesting what the next move may be.. if any
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I’d pay 15$ a month for this game even if it was just me and my friends leveling to 40 then rerolling
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To tell the truth, making it f2p is the best thing they can do now. I had 2 lvl 40 pj’s but servers fell with my pj’s. I’m not motivated to start paying 15 euros a month to start playing in a server in which the language isnt even mine.
But if it’s free to play ,me and some that I know would start playing without bothering about language because..
IT’S FREEEEE
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Actually why not do this, make it f2p like everyone wants and make it so you have to pay for content like most f2p mmorpg are these days. Way I see it its no different then having 14.99$ every month plus side to this method is that content you get is going to be at much faster rate if the company wants to make money and good quality if they wish to keep there player base. And for people who have been loyal to game reward them, for instant in game rewards without any strings attached lets face it this game shot is waaag its least you can do.
And piece of advice don’t charge for gear that is just stupid, that is like saying “pay or be naked”; and don’t charge for character transfer its true its source of income but lets face it if player base quits that will be lost anyways. But my biggest beef with this game was lag issue I noticed one thing this game ran find on test realm but on real realm had issue, might wanna look at that .
PS
if anyone from mythic found this helpful drop me line, I have few suggestion but not going to just simply blurt it out.
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The same goes for me as alot of other ppl are saying…. i played WAR for the short amount of time that I had b4 the time ran out and then i was unable to find any time cards for the game in stores… this made it completely difficult for ppl like me who do not wanna use a credit card to play the game… if WAR went to f2p i would start playing again no doubt! i loved playing the game it was fun especially when it first came out and there were all the different startin locations and what not… i dont see there bein any other choice in the matter…. they need to make it f2p with the options to content and what not like lotro does or we all can say good bye to WAR just like weve had to say good bye to other mmos like Tabula Rasa (which i loved too)…
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I tried WAR, because I’m a old school fan of Warhammer fan, when it came and it was tedious and slow grind to the end level, I got barely to level 30 on one character before I got so bored to the same old areas and plain looks of them all. The pvp was fun but in the end it was just same old as always and because Im not fan of PvP I left it to the background and just focused on PvE. I might get back to this game if it becomes somewhat faster (not meaning the leveling speed mind you) and more interesting. The game had so much potential that it pains to see this one be so “bad”
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