Last week we featured an editorial about Warhammer Online, speculating about the ways in which the game's developer, Mythic Entertainment, might have hindered the MMO's long-term success. Was WAR released too early? Was it the endless gameplay and client bugs that drove subscribers away, or the fact that WoW's Wrath of the Lich King dominated the market last winter? What could Mythic have done differently? More importantly, what is the company doing today in order to retain current subscribers and lure back old ones?

As fate would have it, the timing couldn't have been any better. This week, at Comic Con in San Diego, CA, ZAM had the chance to sit down with James Nichols, Community Manager for Mythic Entertainment and talk about WAR. We brought up many of the player issues and concerns circulating the community forums these days, including the lag in large-scale battles and the fundamental design problems facing ORvR. We're also interested about the hotly-debated combat and career issues brought up by the community, as well as the lifespan of the Land of the Dead event, and the future of WAR in general.

Make sure to read the interview transcription after the jump!

Mythic introduced a small update to the way that expedition resources for the Land of the Dead are calculated.  It appears that these changes are an effort on their part to make the resources from player kills take a larger role in the capture of the Land of the Dead.

The number of Expedition Resources necessary to win control of the Land of the Dead has been reduced to 500, and the number of resources awarded from zone control is now 250. This will make the Expedition Resources earned from defeating enemy players in open RvR have a greater impact on securing the Land of the Dead.The number of Expedition Resources that drop from players and NPCs in Tier 4 RvR lakes and invaded capital cities will remain the same, which greatly increases their relative worth toward gaining control of the Land of the Dead. This change will reset both Realms' current resource pool, but not current LotD control.

Game Update 1.3.0b is now live on all North American and Oceanic servers, so you'll be greeted with some changes the next time you log in to the game. For example, you'll be able to buy the new Renown Rank 40 CC ability, as well as respec your Renown Points for a low price for the next week. That's a good reason to sign on as soon as possible to enjoy the price drop while it lasts.

There's also been several changes made to the Archmage and Shaman careers, as well as crowd control and AoE abilities. You can read the highlights or the patch notes for more information on 1.3.0b.

Once again, Mythic decides to merge more of Warhammer Online's servers. It's a move that the company has caught a lot of flak for in the past, with arguments coming from both sides. Some fans were initially upset that Mythic didn't start merging servers earlier in the game, and with more frequency. They complained that the company—and its CEO at the time; Mark Jacobs—needed to swallow its pride and admit that servers were so unbalanced they were virtually unplayable.

A smaller number of people thought the MMO just needed time to flourish, and that perpetual server merges were destroying the game. They complained that the merges were breaking up guilds and making it difficult for players to stabilize on one specific server. Another complaint was that the merges looked terribly bad to the media and would-be players, who might lose faith in the game and never give it a chance.

Something I've realized since the Everquest days of gaming is that, when it comes to MMOs, the developers will never, ever be able to please everyone. In fact, I think it's quite a feat of genius when MMO developers are able to satisfy even half their players. However, you'd think that after a decade of mainstream MMO popularity, these publishers and companies—especially the larger ones—wouldn't keep making the same mistakes that proved to be the downfall of more than one title throughout the years.

The highly anticipated 1.30b patch is now on the PTS (Warpshroud)!  This patch is the one discussed in the producer's letter yesterday.  It contains the AoE and CC adjustments and the Shaman and Archmage career improvements.

We're not done yet though, and this is only one step of many we have planned for accomplishing the goals we set out to achieve with the release of 1.3. So, read on for the 1.3.0b PTS Highlights and Patch Notes, and join us for the PTS of 1.3.0b. Be sure to visit the official forums to share your feedback and help to squash any bugs you come across!

Check out the full notes here.  See a lot of nerfs for your career?  Don't fret, everybody got some!

Warhammer Online Producer Jeff Skalski has written his first producer's letter to the community, and he talks about the upcoming 1.3.0b patch and gives a sneak peek into 1.3.1. Patch 1.3.0b is scheduled to launch this month and attempts to address players' concerns regarding crowd control and AoE abilities.

As far as crowd control is concerned, all immunities will persist through death; the duration of disable immunities will increase; root immunity and knockback/pull immunity will be combined; and there will be a new Renown Point purchasable ability at Renown Rank 40 that will give players temporary CC immunity. You can read more about the patch, which hits the PTS this week, in the letter after the jump.

Patch 1.3.1 will bring the second ramps in for the Keeps and will add incentives for Keeps that are defended and upgraded. "Players will receive a boost for both XP and RP, plus additional gold bags handed out for a successful attack or defense," Skalski said. Also, the Wild Hunt live event will help celebrate the game's one-year anniversary.

A round of free character transfers are scheduled to begin tomorrow, July 14, and will allow players on Ironfist, Vortex, Monolith, Magnus and Skull Throne to move their characters to one of three specified servers. In celebration, players on all servers will receive an extra 20 percent experience and renown for a limited time. For more information, check out the free character transfer FAQ.

In addition, a new set of hotfixes was announced today that squashed a number of bugs. You can read the full list after the jump.

The Warhammer Online team has released Grab Bag Number 20, which answers a bunch of questions submitted by fans on the official forums. For example, one player asked what changes can be expected to Crowd Control. According to the response, "Some of the Crowd Control changes which you'll see coming in the next patch include increasing Immunity timers, combining Root Immunity and Knockback Immunity together, and a new 'Crowd Control Immunity' short-duration self-buff available as a Renown purchase, as well as Immunities persisting through death."

High and low server populations were also discussed, and the team said they expect server merges to resolve population issues on lower population servers. Therefore, players can eventually expect to see higher populations regularly. You can read the full Q&A below.

It was announced last month that EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. Well, BioWare has told Eurogamer that Mythic will "without a doubt" help with Star Wars: The Old Republic. BioWare co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka have also played Warhammer Online, and in regards to that game, Zeschuk told Eurogamer in an interview that BioWare can "probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us."

Zeschuk said "not that much" has changed since the restructuring. "I think because we had been already working side by side within EA, we had already been sharing stuff back and forth, so there wasn't any, 'Oh no, now we're forced to share things, how terrible.' We'll just continue what we're doing, which is actually sharing technology ideas," he said.

The biggest news in MMO gaming last week might have been Mark Jacobs' departure from Mythic, as we reported earlier. At the height of the story's frenzy, we also featured a story on Jacobs' explanation of his departure. The Jacobs story pretty much overshadowed everything coming out of Mythic around that time, including this substantial announcement about Warhammer Online from Jeff Hickman (Mythic's new exec), titled "Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3."

"We're looking at some fairly radical approaches on how to best bring the population together," Hickman said. "We want to ensure everyone is having fun, but we need to do so in such a way that further imbalances aren't created overnight as we have seen in the past. There are a lot of ideas on the table, but your satisfaction is our top concern."

It seems like Mythic is finally rethinking a few of its previous strategies and paradigms, specifically the issues of population (im)balance, stability and sieges. But that's not all. Hickman lists off quite a few other issues that Mythic recognizes as problems or player concerns, structured in a series of concise bullet points. The icing on the cake for some fans, however, was Hickman's acknowledgment that Mythic is still committed to Dark Age of Camelot, among its other games.