We have all sorts of Warhammer Online news to share with you today. The Keg End live event officially kicks off today, which means players can earn all sorts of in-game rewards by participating in the seasonal festivities. Keep an eye out for rare world drops, including the Battlebrew Backpack, the Dwarf Keg Handler and the Goblin Bar-Back.

Today also marks the beginning of Mythic's Call to Arms Reenlistment Campaign. All past subscribers are invited to return to the game between Dec. 16-23 to receive special in-game items and 10 free days of game time. In addition, all players will receive a 20% bonus to Experience, Renown and Influence during the same time frame.

Lastly, Design Director Adam Gershowitz just published a developer diary entry that outlines the new Underdog system that was introduced in version 1.3.3. You can read the full entry after the jump.

As many of you are aware version 1.3.3 introduced the “Underdog” system. It is important to note that we don’t consider this system to be a silver bullet for the Tier 4 campaign; rather it is the first of a number of changes we’re looking to roll out over next few patches.

The “Underdog” system allows us to dynamically balance the difficulty of the campaign (and its associated objectives) based on the results of recent campaign pushes. Ultimately this will require realms with long campaign win streaks to be more coordinated and effective in order to keep pushing into their enemies city. The loosing realm (commonly referred to as the Underdog) will benefit from this in two ways; First they will have an easier time mounting a defense. Secondly, the underdog realm will have an increased chance to push the campaign back to their enemies city for a short period of time.

Now onto the details…

At release the underdog system will affect the following aspects of the campaign

• Pairing Capture: Realms with long campaign win streaks will have a reduced window of opportunity to capture additional pairings and gain access to the city, and the underdog will have an increased window.
  
  
• Zone Control: The percentage of zone control needed to capture a Tier 4 zone will increase requiring a higher percentage for Realms with long campaign win streaks, and a lower percentage for the underdog.
  
  
• Zone Domination: Realms with long campaign loss streaks will have a reduced timer for dominating Battlefield Objectives and Keeps

A win streak will start as soon as one realm has captured a city twice in a single 24 hour period. Each successive win will make the next campaign push harder. Win streaks are reduced by one for each successful campaign push by an underdog realm or if 24 hours has passed since the last successful campaign win by the realm on the win streak. Below are two examples on how win streaks work.

Example 1: Natural Decay

1. Destruction wins the campaign and reaches Altdorf 4 consecutive times over a period of 72 hours. At this point they are on a 4 point winning streak, increasing the difficulty of the campaign.
   
   
2. Order holds off destruction for a 24 hour period but is unable to capture The Inevitable City. Since 24 hours have passed Destruction’s win streak naturally decays down to a 3 point streak.

Example 2: Forced Decay

1. Order wins the campaign and reaches The Inevitable City 2 consecutive times over a period of 24 hours. At this point they are on a 2 point winning streak, and the difficulty of the campaign is slightly increased
   
   
2. Destruction takes advantage of their underdog bonus and pushes to Altdorf. As a result order’s win streak is reduced to 1.
   
   
3. Destruction follows up and captures Altdorf 3 more times over the next 48 hours. As a result Order’s win streak is reduced to 0 and their win streak is increased to 2.

As you can see the concept of the system is simple, straight forward and has the potential to grow as needed based on play testing and player feedback. Also, please remember the following: This is only one step in our continuing work on all aspects of RvR such as improvements in the capitol cities, Scenarios, and RvR itemization, all of which are to be revealed in future patches.  As always we’re looking forward to your feedback so let us know what you think!.