Game Update 1.1.0
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Patch 1.1.0: 12/03/2008
Highlights:
With 1.1, we have been working hard and listening to player feedback to make the great game of WAR even better. We're proud to introduce to the game several exciting changes that you requested! These changes include the following:
* Two New Careers - The Knight of the Blazing Sun and the Black Guard have joined their allies and are now available to play for everyone!
* Open RvR Influence System - As part of our ongoing effort to encourage people to take part in oRvR, we are pleased to announce the release of an influence system geared solely to oRvR. Players who participate in this part of WAR will now have additional incentives for fighting for their realm. As part of this patch we have also made quite a number of changes and fixes to oRvR places and NPCs as well.
* Easy Public Quests - PQs are great but sometimes it's hard to get enough people together to complete them, especially in the lower tiers. So, we are redesigning one PQ per chapter so that it can be completed by 1-3 people.
* Chat Hyperlinking - One of the most requested features by the community has been adding the ability to hyperlink items, abilities and quests in the chat window and now it has been added.
* Armor Set Improvements - We have made a number of adjustments to armor sets to ensure that they continue to be some of the most attractive items in the game. In addition we have made adjustments to ensure they are more frequently available to players at all levels.
* Main Assist - RvR is exciting, chaotic and always challenging but this feature will make it just a little bit easier to help your group fight the good fight.
* Player Statue System - Nothing says "you've made it" more than having a statue with your name on it in the capital city of your realm.
* New Content - Whether it is new lairs, new quests and changes to items, this patch is full of lots of fun new content additions to the game.
* User Interface - Lots and lots of fixes, changes and new additions to our user interface and API functionality, new additions to the chat system and graphic options incorporating community requested features a channel flashing on activity, the ability to turn the chat bubbles on/off, a gamma slider and so much more.
Introducing Easy Public Quests:
* Beginning with update 1.0.6, we are launching a new initiative to expand the scope of our Public Quest experience. Now, solo players and small groups can also participate in these unique and exciting encounters that are one of WAR's most innovative features.
* We have reviewed each Chapter in Tier 1, including all three racial pairings, and have altered one Public Quest in each Chapter (with the notable exception of Chapter One) to be suitable for 1-3 players. We have reduced the numbers on monster kill and gather counters, lowered the difficulty of the second- and third-stage enemies and bosses, and scaled down the rewards of these PQs correspondingly.
* The Public Quest interface which appears on the right side of the screen when a player enters a Public Quest area will now display which Public Quests are now easier to complete.
* We will continue adjusting one Public Quest per Chapter through the remaining three Tiers in the weeks and months to come, so be sure to check the Warhammer Online Herald for updates on our progress!
Chat Hyper Linking:
One of the most requested features from our players finally makes its debut: Chat Hyper Linking! Simply Shift Left-Click on an item, an ability in the ability window, a quest in the quest tracker, or even another player now places a hyperlink into the chat input window. Other players can then click on the link to open a window displaying the item, ability, quest, or player information. Players can have as many unique windows open as they wish. Let the online item stat comparisons begin!
* Because of the addition of this new feature, splitting a stack, which used to require a Shift Left-Click action, now uses Shift Right-Click.
* Right-Clicking a player name in the chat window now brings up a context menu with options to ignore, add as friend, invite to group, inspect, target, etc: Pretty much every reasonable interaction you've ever wanted to have with a player speaking in a chat channel.
Armor Set Improvements:
This patch represents a pretty significant improvement to Armor Sets in all Tiers. We have made a number of adjustments across many sets to ensure that these items remain both highly competitive and desirable. Changes to these items will automatically take effect on existing items in the game.:
* Armor Sets are now represented with their own special item type represented by "Gold" Text
* We have looked carefully at all sets to ensure that their bonuses are attractive to the careers they are designed for.
* The bonus on many individual set items have been increased in power to make them more competitive with other Rare and Very Rare drops at their level.
* Some set items have had their equip level decreased, allowing them to be used at an earlier level.
* Crafters will be able to salavage most set items. Only set items that are available for purchase from a merchant will be flagged as "No Salavage."
* We have added an additional item to the following armor sets:Redeye, Devastator, and Keeper.
* The following set items have been made bind-on-equip: Sentinel Belt, Conqueror Boots, Invader Boots, and Warlord Boots.
Encounter Ward System Adjustments
After continued testing, we have revised the way that the Ward System works. Encounters will now be slightly harder for players without wards; however, players will need less total ward items to become competitive, and will gain an extra benefit if they complete the entire ward set.
* Players without warded armor will continue take up to 200% additional damage from certain monsters. Each appropriate ward worn will continue to reduce that damage by 40% per item.
* Players without warded armor will now have 40% damage output against certain monsters. For each piece of appropriate ward armor worn, the player's damage output against those monsters will increase by 15%.
* Players who wear all five pieces of warded armor will deal an additional 15% bonus damage to certain monsters.
PQ Gold Bag Changes
Part of improving set items was making these items more frequently available to players. As such we have made a number of adjustments to Gold Bags in PQ's to help us deliver these items to the players more frequently without introducing too many new Rare or Very Rare items into the game.
* Gold bags will now only drop Set Items, Crafting Materials, or Money.
* The drop rate for Gold Bags has been increased in almost every PQ in the game.
- Easy difficulty PQ's will now drop bags slightly more frequently.
- Medium difficulty PQ's will now drop bags more frequently.
Hard difficulty PQ's will drop gold bags much more frequently and will also have a chance to drop up to two gold bags.
Open RvR Influence:
One of the most recently requested items by our community has been incentives for open RvR. The open RvR system is the first of many new features and improvements we have slated to ensure that WAR is the best RvR experience on the market.
Influence can be earned both by killing players as well as capturing or defending Keeps and Battlefield Objectives. When a player participates in a pairing's open RvR, they will earn Influence with that race in that Tier. The more Influence you earn, the better the rewards you can obtain by speaking with the Rallymaster located in that area's warcamps. For more information on rewards please see the detailed notes below.
* Each open RvR influence area offers basic, advanced, and elite rewards for a total of 9 rewards per Tier
* New "Rare" items are available as rewards for more casual RvR players.
* New "Very Rare" items are available as rewards for hardcore RvR players.
* Open RvR influence introduces many new weapons and accessories that players can earn exclusively in RvR!
Main Assist:
In order to help groups feel more cohesive and assist in cooperation among group members, we have added a simple main assist function which can be assigned by the group leader.
* The leader of a group may designate a group member as the "main assist" player for that group. This status can only be changed by the group leader, and by the player who has been designated as the main assist player.
* By default, the leader of a group is set to be that group's main assist player when the group is first created.
* When a group contains a main assist player, a main assist button will be visible on the interface of each player in the group.
* When a player clicks on this button, that player's target will immediately change to match the current target of the main assist player.
* Assignment of the main assist designation can be done through the party context menu, or with the slash command /mainassist [PlayerName] or /makemainassist [PlayerName].
* In scenarios, the main assist status is not given to anyone at party creation, but is instead up for claim to any player in the scenario group. When someone has claimed main assist, only that player can reassign it to someone else in the group.
Player Statue System:
Introducing something the team is really excited to bring into the game: Player statues. These statues are located in the War Quarter in Altdorf and in the Undercroft in Inevitable City, and have been enabled to display the top ten Renown Point earners of the previous week and the weekly top Renown Point earner of each realm for that server. If you are the best of the best for your realm, you will now have a representative statue (based on career and gender) with your name on it, making you an idol to millions (at least until someone dethrones you). More information will be posted in the Dev Diary this Friday on the Herald!
General Changes and Bug Fixes:
* Death animations will now play more in sync with the exact moment of a character's death.
* Players will now receive the message: "Your Target Can't Reach You" when they are targeting a monster that is attempting to reach them, but can't.
* Newly created dual-wielding characters will display weapons in both hands on the character select screen.
* Reduced the amount of time that monster corpses will be visible in the world after being killed by another monster.
* When players speak to a Kill Collector NPC for the first time, they will now be presented with the proper dialogue
* Monsters with names that have partial matches to profanity will no longer have their names filtered. For example, "Assassin" will no longer be displayed as "******in".
* Players will now be able to properly use the /follow slash command to follow friendly players through water.
* Players who attempt to zone into a dungeon that has an encounter in progress will no longer receive two messages about not being able to enter.
* Players will no longer receive kill credit for monsters when half or more of the damage done was from another monster
* Players in first-person view will no longer see their shadow.
* When exiting the game, the client will now shut down and return the user to desktop more quickly.
* Fixed an issue that caused players standing on top of a structure, such as a wall, to appear to be standing on the ground.
* Fixed various ghosting issues that caused players to appear to be stuck running in place, or to still be mounted even after dismounting.