The first “live” expansion is coming to Warhammer starting early February. Again, Massively has the details over at their lovely site:
Warhammer Executive Producer Jeff Hickman: We’ve been launched for four or five months now, and all we’ve done for this time is looking at the game, listening to our players, playing the game ourselves. We’ve been drilling down into all of the little pieces that weren’t quite right for us. We’ve been looking at client/server stability, what we can do with the RvR system, introducing the two new classes … we’ve drilled down on any and all concerns that players might have to perfect the game as it stands right now.
With that starting to be under control, we looked ahead and said to ourselves, “we have about four or five months to do some really interesting, cool new events.” We’re calling it a live expansion. We’re trying to hit really hard for players that haven’t tried Warhammer, or perhaps players that tried it and then went off to play Lich King or something like that. We want them to come back, see all the improvements we’ve made, and all the new content coming up.
The Herald has great info too.
My opinion on this announcement? Too soon to do this. Don’t get me wrong, I think the content for this “live” expansion is great. I myself want to play the Choppa, but I think they are moving too quickly with it. They just introduced two new classes to the game. They just put in a new RvR system. They’ve only now started addressing and getting a handle on various other technical issues that they are facing with RvR. Why they are not letting all of the changes that have accumulated sit and gel a bit longer is beyond me. From what I hear, they still have keep issues and they are still trying to “put WAR everywhere”. I get a sense that this announcement has more to do with “ADHD development” (…for lack of a better term…) than anything else.
Do they really NEED to release this now? I don’t think so. I think Warhammer would be much better served if they spent the next 3-4 months perfecting the current game instead of adding even more classes and content. I love more content as much as the next MMO player, but given the quote from Jeff above (…”we need to do something cool”…) I think the motivations for it are not encouraging and are misguided.
I feel like development for this game is more in the hands of PR people instead of the ones who know better. I feel they are building new content on very shaky ground and that they are at risk of introducing show stopping bugs that will just bite them and players in the ass. I hope I’m wrong, but that is what my gut is telling me…but I just had meat lovers pizza for lunch, so it might be that 
I want them to totally succeed. I’m just sounding note of caution regarding the pace at which they are going.
D out.
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January 29th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Almost everyone I know is burning out way too fast for Mythic to wait let things gel any longer. They certainly need to make RvR more interesting and a huge part of that would be to improve the current keep system (e.g., more dynamic siege), but I think this new content is welcome news all around for most WAR subscribers. Things like zone domination system and fortress performance improvements can only help as well. Until a time when a really good keep system can be implemented, I think this new content will be a really good distraction…
I don’t want to sound pessimistic but I don’t think WAR has time to sit by idly. It took EQ2 18 months to get really good but by then, it was old news and there was absolutely no way for it to reach the maximum potential possible.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I’m kind of with you, Darren. But mainly, from a marketing standpoint they need new shinies and fixes to old shinies. This takes care of the former, and 1.11 will be ongoing attempts at the latter. This is a PR/Marketing release. You don’t make a huge announcement about, “Hey, we fixed something that sucked come try us now!” That’s just not the way it’s done. People are more attracted to the new big features. I’m sure each patch from February to June when the new dungeon is released will include more and more fixes and polish to existing systems right along side the new stuff.
January 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
There is also the issues of class balance. They intended to add melee DPS classes to the Greenskin/ Dwarf matchup eventually. It seems like it would be counterproductive to get all the balance issues straightened out with one of the three matchups lacking heavy hitting DPS classes, and then have to readjust everything six months from now. With the class rosters finally fleshed out and stable, I think Mythic will have a better chance of working out other issues for the long term.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
I’m with Snafzg on this one. Mythic can’t afford to stay in fix-it mode for that long. If they didn’t announce any plans for adding to the game, it’s the same (to me) as saying the game is too broken to do anything with. I think they did this right by releasing the content over a series of months.
January 29th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
You’ve got kind of a different perspective on the same thoughts that I have with WAR and Mythic.
I feel they’re still developing core parts of the game, I’m kind of shocked how they’re still designing it around the players. I’m amazed at how tolerant the fanbase is actually, especially considering how critical everyone has been of other games being released ‘incomplete’. WAR wasn’t released incomplete, but it’s like they put out a rushed version of the game and now they’re working on the real one. They need this content, because some of the content they have isn’t quite working out.
In a sense, it is perfecting the game, it’s just not exactly the same as the current game.
But with such a loyal fanbase, they could pull an NGE and I think they’d still come away from it okay. Although I agree with Snafzg, the fans won’t stick around forever, Mythic needed to pick up the pace (remember the “baby steps” Mark Jacobs was talking about months ago? Yeah, they needed bigger steps). A good dosage of content is probably just about right. If I hadn’t quit already, this could have kept me going a bit more if it’d come around a month ago.
January 29th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
personally i think the development pace is good, they are certainly not sitting on there laurels . Also with the adhd of players, which seems to become more apparent the more mmos come out over a course of a year, they are addressing that with the short term planning of an event a month over the next 4 – 5 months. I think to be competitive in this market now you have to keep the content coming and fresh, gone are the days of once a year or every two years for updates to content. There is not the luxury to be an eq2 anymore and wait essentially 18 months to be the game it should have been when it released ….. as for bug fixes etc that I see coming in there regular updates and works for me. the game is very stable for me, including keep sieges. Is it perfect … nope not yet but i think they know that and is going to be a work in progress …. much like any mmo
January 29th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Still nothing on professions? Ah, at least I have the new Total War coming out.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
So are they in scrambling to keep subsribers mode or growing mode? I ask because I haven’t seen any press release touting subscriber numbers/sales since after they launched and traditionally when mmos start losing subs they are then in a fight to keep what they have.
January 29th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
I think this is fairly typical of Mythic anyways. DAoC had major tuning going on throughout its lifespan – Darkness Falls was added, what – 6mos or so after initial release? I did join in at launch to see all the new shiney, then dropped off knowing I’ll re-sub around March or April when the game is “really ready.” hehe. I also think the player base may be a bit more tolerant because Mythic seems to be doing a MUCH better job in the communication department than many other games that were release with less than “polished” content. AND because what they did release seemed to work for the most part – the systems weren’t totally missing or substantially broken. Plus these aren’t whole new classes, they were part of the original design plan, they just didn’t quite make launch day. It’s probably a good thing that they held them back until they were actually playable.
January 29th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
[...] Get the official word and/or read Wandering Goblin’s look or The Common Sense Gamer’s opinion for [...]
January 29th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
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January 30th, 2009 at 5:11 am
It’s the start of the treadmill.
Mythic knows RvR at this moment can’t keep people happy/interested for long. So they add some of the succesfull WOW formula. Little more zone, little more dungeon, little more bling-bling. More epics anyone?
I like content, but like so many people have said, I’m so not up for the ‘have to get that in order to compete with …” attitude.
Change of direction from Mythic? Time will tell.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Just to clarify, this was a PR move to drum up some news, as well as lay out their overall content plans for the next 6 months. Mark later posted that the 1.2 patch will contain all of the bug and class stuff, along with 1.3.
I think the interesting thing to watch will be whether oRvR is ‘fixed’ enough by June to handle the new dungeon. Personally I think it will be (domination alone will really help move the war along), but if it’s not fixed, adding another lay to a borked system won’t make people happy.
January 30th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Shameless plug on an update I wrote on this: http://www.massively.com/2009/01/30/mark-jacobs-elaborates-on-call-to-arms-and-warhammers-future/
Mark goes into some detail about the upcoming 1.2 patch/