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 WAR is as Shiney as Gold!
August 26, 2008, 05:02:58 PM by Hybrus
[Warhammer Herald]
EA AND MYTHIC ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCE THAT
WARHAMMER® ONLINE: AGE OF RECKONING™
HAS GONE GOLD
Award-Winning Fantasy MMORPG Marches Toward Sept. 18th Launch
FAIRFAX, Va. - August 26, 2008 - GET READY FOR THE WORLDWIDE WAAAGH! Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) and Mythic Entertainment today announced that the highly-anticipated MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR), has gone gold and will open its servers on September 18, 2008 at an MSRP of $49.99 in North America.
"We've done our best to create the next great MMORPG experience, but it's the fans that will bring our world to life," said Mark Jacobs, vice president at EA and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. "The Day of Reckoning approaches and it's going to be glorious! It's time to go to WAR."
Based on the popular tabletop game from Games Workshop, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is an epic fantasy MMORPG featuring innovative Realm vs. Realm™ game play that pits the forces of Order and Destruction against one another on the battlefield to determine the fate of nations.
Awarded "Best Online Game" at the recent Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, "Best PC Game" of E3 by G4's X-Play and "Best MMO" of E3 by IGN, WAR has been well-received by critics and by the gaming community as an accessible and engaging MMO title. Tens of thousands of players have already joined the battle in the closed beta, and soon the time will be at hand for players the world over to pledge their allegiance to the armies of WAR.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is scheduled to launch simultaneously in North America, Europe, and Oceania on September 18, 2008. Available for PC, WAR is rated "T" for Teen by the ESRB. For more information, visit http://www.warhammeronline.com/.
Welcome to Mark Jacobs!
August 26, 2008, 02:00:09 AM by Archimalay
[Waaaghead]
Greetings Mark (MBJ)!
Thanks for taking the time to register in our small corner of the WAAAGH!!! community, we're glad to have you with us. Please everyone welcome Mark Jacobs to Waaaghead! 
Warhammer Vault: Mark with a Preview Weekend Update
August 25, 2008, 09:46:31 PM by Archimalay
[Warhammer Vault]
Mark Jacobs has stopped by the Warhammer Vault message boards to give an update on the issues currently in the Beta:
Folks,
Okay, it was a wild and crazy weekend in WAR and while some of you might be tempted to go all Samurai on us for a couple of the bugs, overall things went very, very well. As long-time readers of my notes now, I won’t do a Nick Winters and we are anything but pathological liars so we’ll always own up when we make a mistake and we made a couple here. So, let’s talk amongst ourselves and have a little chat about the top nine list of the biggest issues and where we stand in regards to them.
(1) Client Crashes – I’ve talked about this as one of the reasons why we didn’t release the NDA until recently. Here’s the current status.
- Just a little too many currently. While we are better off than we were in beta, we must do better still before release.
- A number of players will lower spec machines had more CTDs than higher spec machines.
- Number of fixes already in pipeline. They are working their way through our testing servers and will be pushed to the players once they have been vetted internally.
- Engineering time for CTD issue has remained heavily committed; our top engineers are working on the various issues.
(2) Monster Pathing and AI – Well, what can I say other than not even all of King Tut’s wealth could have made us feel better for messing up on this one. Well, maybe all his wealth.
- “Yes, that monster seems to be behaving a little oddly”. Monster responsiveness was very sketchy, odd pauses and tethering issues.
- “Oh, was I supposed to go in that direction?” Pathing sometimes wonky - mobs get stuck or go in wrong direction.
- Utter confusion at times as both monsters and pets will engage and disengage seemingly at random
- Internal server optimizations last week broke the pathing/AI. And I mean really, really broke it. This truly was a “Opps, we broke this code” moment for us and we don’t have many of them.
- Going to ensure that this problem is fixed this week. As I said in my first Preview Weekend, this is a major concern for us. Fortunately we have no underwater combat in this game or some of the NPCs may have been appropriately dubbed land sharks.
(3) Pet Responsiveness – With similar issues to Monster Pathing and AI, this was not our finest hour.
- Need to transfer "combat responsiveness" fixes to pets - have pet move immediately on button press.
- “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” Pets suffer from same pathing and lack of response as general monsters. Pets hopping around like they were headed to Del Staters.
(4) Global Cooldown Timers –This seems to be a hot topic for players to talk about. However, things aren’t always as they seem.
- Reality and perception are two different things, Warhammer has a GCD of 1.4s, WoW has 1.5s
- Need to improve on the feeling of sluggishness of the GCD and UI.
- Or is it really 2.0 seconds? Bug with display where our timer shows 2s when it is really 1.4
- Next in line please? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.
- “Ability not ready” messaging needs to be improve, a sound effect if Global Cooldown in effect, maybe more cowbell?
(5) Client Performance – This is one of those issues
- Need better scalers on effects, sounds, graphics, etc to help lower end machines (already lots of additions to coders)
- This thing loves memory like Dan Aykroyd loves bass. We have already improved the memory consumption of the client and taken 100M out of current test best.
(6) Better animations
- So much more coming in the next two versions of the client. We are currently incorporating serious amounts of new animations into the game. Hopefully nobody will sneak a coneheads model into the game.
- Look at what my XXXX does now? Over the next month we will address many class-attack specific issues across all 20 careers.
- “U think you can dance?” Nope, but we have added new racial animations for movement, fidgets and redid some emotes.
(7) Texture Blurring
- Textures are currently cached in a manner that results in blurriness on entering a region.
- We will look at adding a client scalar.
(8) Targeting, Camera, etc
- Currently our targeting system differs from many MMOs in terms of our features and how we go about things. We will identify and make a more standard initial setup but allow flexibility.
- Will add additional keybinding selections to allow flexibility
(9) Renown rank gear
- Unfortunately, a new bug (well an old bug we fixed and then managed to break again) which allowed Rank 10 RR 6 players can go to Tier 2 to get better gear and then come back to Tier 1 and own scenarios. We are currently working on a fix.
I hope you enjoyed the Preview Weekend and we thank you for your interest and we hope, patronage of our game.
Guess what folks, that’s the news and I am outta here!
Mark
[Source]
Warhammer Herald: Amazon.com Preorders
August 25, 2008, 07:26:28 PM by Archimalay
[Warhammer Herald]
If you have preordered Warhammer Online from Amazon.com, we wanted to let you know that your codes will not be mailed to you. Instead, you can find them in your Media Library in your Amazon.com account. Here's how to access your codes:
Select "Your Account" from the upper-right corner of the Amazon.com screen.
Select "View Your Media Library" from the right column in the "Where's my stuff" section near the top of the page.
Log in if necessary.
When the Media Library page appears, at the top of the screen you will see several tabs, one of which is called "Downloads". Click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the word Downloads.
Select Bonus Items.
You should see all the codes you have access to here.
[Source]
Warhammer Herald: Guild Highlights: Keep Claiming
August 25, 2008, 05:04:45 PM by Archimalay
[Warhammer Herald]
In WAR, guilds play an integral part in claiming keeps for their side. Not only can you fight together with your banner held high, but those banners can be used to benefit everyone in the area in keep defense once you’ve claimed the keep as your own. Not only that, but your guild will gain certain benefits and advantages just for owning a keep. Imagine your colors flying high for the masses to see. Stir passion in your allies and instill fear into the hearts of your enemies as they come to recognize your colors!
  To claim a
Keep, a Standard Bearer must plant their guild’s standard into a specific slot
on the roof of the Keep. Upon doing so,
the guild banner tactics will be applied to the specified area in RvR. For
Example: “This Guild Rocks” has 2 tactics applied to their Bronze Banner: +5%
coin & +5% loot drops. When they
claim a Keep with that Banner, everyone from their Realm within the specified
range of the banner will get 5% more coin and loot drops. Once a Standard
Bearer plants his Standard to claim a Keep, that Standard Bearer gives up his
rights to carry a Standard again until the guild loses control of the keep.
The benefits your guild will enjoy while having a keep under their control include: - Guilds will earn experience over time while holding the Keep
- Guilds will be notified via chat window warnings if their claimed Keep is under assault.
 - If a
Guild Disbands, then ownership of the Keep is abandoned and all guards and banners will be switched to non-guild specific.
- If a Keep
that is claimed by a guild is captured, then the Standard associated with the Keep is considered captured.
[Source]
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