Rush To The Tanks: New Warhammer Online Patch

Mythic have announcified two new careers for Warhammer Online, due to appear this Winter. And they're beefcake. The Empire’s Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Dark Elf Black Guard will be available to the game's current 750,000 players, as part of the first major patch, 1.1. Discussed by Mark Jacobs in his first State Of The Game address, we've cobbled together the highlights of the rest of the included updates below.

Mythic explains the careers better than my feeble mind, so here's the Human arse-kicker:

The Knights of the Blazing Sun are devoted to the cult of Myrmidia, goddess of warfare and protector of civilization. These frontline combatants specialize in Battlefield Commands, using applied tactical knowledge to outmaneuver their enemies and lead their allies to victory.

And here's the fathead Elf:

Dark Elf Black Guard, on the other hand, care little for tactics or guile. The embodiment of hatred and disdain, they make up the elite of the Witch King’s soldiers. Equipped with the finest armor and sharpest blades, the Black Guard is an indestructible wall of hate against which all foes are crushed.

Mark Jacobs adds some thoughts about them.

"When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR’s other compelling classes. I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate. We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer."

Other patch ingredients include improving performance for lower spec machines, obvious bug fixing, improving "propagation and ghosting", speeding up the mail system, item linking in chat, and tweaking RvR.

"In 1.1 (and beyond) we will be doing a myriad of things for our RvR players, including improving gear drops, increasing drop rates, and implementing an RvR-influence system to compliment the current PvE-influence system. We will also be giving players more incentive to engage in open RvR by improving the rewards for both assaulting and defending in RvR. WAR is an RvR-centric game and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to encourage people to join in RvR and reward them when they do so."

Then there's server transfer options to populate mid-population servers, 14 new quest chains, two new lairs, more Tome unlocks, and then finally career tweaks.

"Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way and there are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career’s abilities. The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities. I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way. Of course, we will continue to monitor and track all the class data so expect, like every other MMORPG, changes to the careers to be an ongoing process."