Mail Call: WAR Beta News

I finally got to reading my WAR newsletter.

It's long so don't fall asleep. There's actually more, but I'm nice and read it and highlighted the good parts that at least I cared about:

We're almost ready to re-open the WAR Beta, and I know that our Beta Community has been gnashing their teeth in anticipation. Guess what? They should be giddy with excitement because we'll have an amazing amount of new features and enhancements in the game for them to test, as well as brand new Elf content for them to experience.

Before getting into content specifics, I wanted to share a quick word about our testing process as we'll be doing things a little differently in this next phase of Beta II. Instead of bringing up the Beta server and leaving it up 24/7 for free play, we'll be moving forward with a series of focused Beta events set around a specific concept or two. These events will last anywhere from 3-10 days and will enable us to gather specific, detailed feedback from our Beta Community in regards to specific features and locations. We'll be bringing the server down between each event for a day or two in order to prepare for the next focused event. This will also give us time to process the feedback we receive and incorporate it in future events.

When Beta reopens, players will be treated to what we're calling our "Dark Elf Sneak Peek". During the first weekend, the Beta Community will be able to play through the Dark Elf starting and Tier 1 areas with two new careers. We are going to ease players back into the Beta to spend some quality time with the Dark Elves, as well as with many newly updated UI elements, such as the Tome of Knowledge. We are looking forward to hearing the community's thoughts on these areas of the game.

Much of the testing over the next three months will be focused on RvR and the enhancements we are implementing to this system. The team has been diligently working on the Open Field RvR experience while the beta has been closed and they are anxious to debut the expanded Battlefield Objectives with ... wait for it ... new RvR Keeps.

While we aren't ready to publicly discuss Keeps and their siege mechanics in great detail at this time, anyone that has taken part in a Keep battle in Dark Age of Camelot® will have an idea of what we have in store for WAR (though it should be noted that this new Keeps system will differ from the one found in DAoC). The addition of Keeps will bring focus and meaning to Open Field RvR and beta participants should be able to experience this new system in its early stages by the end of the year.

Player Careers have also received a lot of love and attention these past couple of months. One of the biggest issues raised during the beta was the perceived lack of differentiation between characters of the same career and same level. Why should every level 30 Warrior Priest look and play the same way?

We are actually approaching this issue from two different angles:

First, we're introducing the concept of Career Mastery to better differentiate character abilities. This new system allows a player to customize their character's skills to suit their desired play style. It allows an archetype career (Tank, Ranged DPS, etc.) to stay true to its role, while giving the player the flexibility to pursue specialized skills to make their character more unique. To learn more about Career Mastery, please read this week's Beta Update posted on the WAR Herald.

Second, we are implementing our Trophy system which will allow players to visually differentiation their characters from others of the same career. This system has always been planned and is now being introduced into the game for the first time. In a nutshell, players are awarded visual bits, or Trophies, that they are then allowed to place on their character in pre-determined slots (the number of slots is determined by a characters level). Over the course of the game, you'll literally be able to earn hundreds of these Trophies, way more than you'll be able to equip at any one time, and display them in thousands of unique combinations.

This combination of the Trophy and Career Mastery systems, combined with our player creation options, numerous available armor sets, armor tinting system, and weapon variety will ensure that no two players will ever look the same on the field of battle in WAR.

One final system to discuss and that is Public Quests. PQs are an exciting aspect of the PvE side of WAR, and they are something new and completely unique to our game. They have been very well received in beta, but we've been tweaking and enhancing them to make them even more engaging and fun. One of the biggest changes to PQs are the way we divvy up loot. We've implemented a new and improved loot system and we'll be very interested to hear what the testers think of it.

With all of these new additions and exciting new Elf content, we're certainly going to be keeping the Beta Community busy well into the new year.

Speaking of the new year, you'll be happy to know that we'll be *finally* inviting a few thousand guild members (from specific guilds chosen in our Guild Beta contest) into the Beta in early '08. They will be helping us test the newly implemented "Living Guild" features. Believe it when we say that guilds won't just be a glorified chat channel in our game. They will have their own personality that the guild members can craft as they play WAR, and some significant new ideas make them a vital part of our game.

That is all for now from the Beta. For those of you still waiting to get in, keep checking your inboxes because we'll continually be bringing new participants into the game as we ramp up our testing efforts in the new year.

In other words, despite setting my Inbox to refresh every 20s, I won't be getting in, but some SOB who wears their pants chest high will. :(

Also, the other highlight of the newsletter had to be the Ale Power Dwarven Mount. That is the win right there because the other chumps have to ride stupid wolves and horses:


Unfortunately, despite being the coolest conceptually, they have the worst "gas-mileage." If you get my drift.

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Giggity giggity?