Play Logs: Week 10 of Warhammer Online .
DateTime:7/8/2009 5:21:12 PM

Welcome to week 10 of our ongoing Warhammer Online coverage. Though reporting is slowing down and will be coming to an end shortly, I have still been actively playing the game and keeping a close eye on developments both within the community and in terms of updates like patches and hot-fixes for the weeks since the two-month report ran. In the interest of continued coverage, we've decided to roll these advancements into one post.

Class balance, which we pinpointed as the number one area of concern for Mythic going forward with its title, has remained a contentious issue. Mythic has begun to roll out a number of different measures to help ensure that server balance is maintained. One such addition is the advent of low-pop experience bonuses for servers that need additional soldiers on one side of the war. Other additions include increased XP rewards for open RVR combat and various chat upgrades such as open area public chat channels that better facilitate organization with other players.

The true test of Mythic's roadmap for the title, though, will come with the many fixes and additions small and big due with the first large-scale update coming in December. The free update will bring two of the previously removed classes back into the mix—the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun tanking classes—amongst many other fixes. Unfortunately, it has been revealed that former fan-favorites the Orc Choppa and the Dwarven Hammerer will not be making an appearance yet, and one of the two will not be coming back at all.

Unlike many MMO developers (and famously Funcom with Age of Conan), Mythic is acting on complaints from the fan-base with lightning speed. Both forum requests and in-game tickets are being addressed with great care and dedication on the part of the developers, and for that they should be commended.  

However, work still needs to be done. Population issues vary server by server, but complaints about faction imbalances don't seem to be going away as fast as Mythic would have hoped. The measures taken so far should ensure some balance in the short term, but how things play out in the greater scheme of things remains to be seen. As it stands, though, it seems that Warhammer Online has firmly planted its roots and appears to be developing nicely in its second month.