Patch 1.3.4 is now live in Warhammer Online, and it brings with it the much-discussed new scenario structure, scenario currency and Tier 4 campaign changes. You can check out the patch notes for all the details.

In honor of the occasion, new Franchise Producer Carrie Gouskos has written a lengthy letter that gives some insight into the development process and what we can expect to see in versions 1.3.5 and 1.3.6. Gouskos says that the team plans to squash more bugs, keep game play fresh with maximized content, and make targeted big changes to the game where it's needed.

As far as 1.3.5 is concerned, Gouskos says Mythic is adding new options to increase your inventory space and shift the focus of the city experience from PvE to RvR. The team plans to improve the auction house in 1.3.6 and will make a decision, one way or another, on the armor set redesign. You can read the long letter after the jump.

Hello all, allow me to (re)introduce myself. My name is Carrie Gouskos, and two weeks ago, I became the Franchise Producer for Warhammer.  The job of the Franchise Producer is to work with our illustrious Executive Producer Jeff “the” Hickman, and a team of talented and committed people, to plan the future and vision of Warhammer, and I’m elated to have this opportunity. If you’re wondering about the departure of my predecessor, Bruce MacLean, never fear, he is still around and working hard on other projects.

For a brief background: I’ve been working on various aspects of WAR’s development for three and a half years. Prior to launch, I was the Project Lead on the teams that created the UI and the Tome of Knowledge. Since then, I’ve worked on a number of different projects such as WAR for the Mac. Most recently I have been working on development of WAR for our Asian markets. It is in this most recent capacity that I have been doing the work that is most relevant to our current live players. The WAR Asia team has been looking at the game with a different and fresh perspective, and we hope to bring that perspective to the live game. This doesn’t mean everything being developed for Asia will be released in the other markets (it doesn’t all translate), but the good news is that nothing is too precious for us to re-examine…carefully!

So we’d like to share some exciting opportunities that we’d like for the community to participate in over the coming patch cycles. Additionally, we want to give you insight about what we’re working on now and some details about the next three versions; from 1.3.4 to 1.3.6. Keep in mind that I’ll give less information about the versions that are farther away. However this is good news for the community, as you still have an opportunity to impact those versions with your feedback and bug reporting!

As I said, we want to give you greater insight into the development process. This already happens with dev diaries and videos to an extent, but we’re going to step it up a notch with even more outlets for communication. To start with, you should absolutely expect to hear from me at least once a month via the producer’s letter. I may not have breaking news, but I do want to check in and let you know the general vibe of the team. Additionally, we’ll be upping communication via your popular social-media outlets, such as Twitter (Community team note: you can follow Carrie’s Twitter at http/twitter.com/cgouskos) as well as greater and earlier insights into our features via not-so-disguised threads on our official forums.
 
We want to get community and Core Tester feedback earlier in the process. We’re also interested in letting you guys have more active participation in the game through some fun contests with unconventional prizes. Not just titles and vanity items, but your own ideas and input into the game with full credit granted. To start with, we’d like to introduce the Loading Screen Tip Contest. We challenge our players to come up with their best Loading Screen help tips (whether genuine or just plain silly). Your tip will be added to the loading screens and immortalized for all eternity. Further details and submission rules will be available soon on the Herald and in the official forums, so keep an eye out!

So what exactly are we working on here in the studio? First off, we are taking a new charge at bugs that have persisted for much longer than they should have. Bugs aren’t often sexy, and we have fixed many, many bugs over the course of the past year and a half, so I won’t dwell on this point, except to say that we are still committed to making sure we banish the bugs from Warhammer.

It’s also important to keep game play fresh. As such we’re finding ways to maximize our content. The first way you’ll see is the announced Weekend Warfronts, a rotating weekend Scenario schedule, featuring a different Scenario each weekend. This might be an old favorite that was removed from the permanent rotation so that we could better concentrate populations, or it might be a new spin on a scenario with improved rule sets. Perhaps it will be something completely silly for a bit of entertainment. We think live events like these are a great way to keep giving you interesting places to play and explore as well as new and fun ways to kill other people…in the face.

Finally; we’re looking at making targeted big changes to the game, where it’s most needed. This doesn’t mean turn Warhammer into a completely different game, What this means is gathering feedback, and then striking at major features that still don’t sit right with us or the players. For example, since the city started regularly launching, we’ve received a lot of feedback about the current implementation of the cities. The fact is that the endgame of our RVR game has far too much PVE in it. Now we’re looking at cities, as big as they are, to see how we can improve the endgame for our players. That’s our first big change, and we’re very interested to hear what players want us to take on next.

And now, for the part you’ve probably already skipped ahead to; what’s on the horizon for the next couple of patches?

Version 1.3.4 has just launched, and it brings with it a first step into the initiatives I’ve been describing. Our new approach to  Scenarios, no matter how controversial, was to greatly improve the experience of Scenario game play while at the same time giving them players new incentives (in the form of scenario currency and weapons) aside from the incentive of “I just like to kill people”  (which is also perfectly acceptable). We look forward to seeing if your experience mirrors our goals. With 1.3.4, we’re also introducing the Scurvy Dogs event and with it our first 6v6 Scenario; The Ironclad. We’re especially interested in player feedback about this experience, as it will help to guide how we treat the Weekend Warfronts and live events going forward.

 In 1.3.4 we’ve given players a new goal to attain in the form of the RvR Weapons. So where will you put all these rewards? Well, in 1.3.5 we’re going to be giving you new options to increase your inventory space by opening up more bank room for each character and adding another tab to the guild vault. You will have to purchase this additional bank space with in-game currency, but we think they’re worth the cost! Players below Rank 40 will no longer have inventory space grow with leveling, but will be able to purchase the space as soon as they have the money to do so. This means higher-level players looking for inventory space by creating “Mules” will have an easier time of doing so. Don’t worry all players will be grandfathered in to the new system, so you won’t be forced to purchase bags you have already rightfully earned. Additionally, we’ve added a little boon for guilds; officers with the permission to edit the guild heraldry and/or tactics will now have the ability reset them as well.
 
Of course the major announcement for 1.3.5 is the aforementioned city changes.  Through these changes we’re going to shift the focus of the city experience from PVE to RVR. With these changes, we’re going to provide a fun and exciting new player experience that speaks to the heart of what our core community is interested in, that whole thing with the killing of the people in the face. While the details are still in development, the motivation  is to create a city siege experience that isn’t dependant on population and will make compelling game play, no matter if you’re hardcore, casual or somewhere in between.  To accomplish this we’re going to be inviting players to participate in testing these changes as early as possible.

There are also other initiatives, such as bugs and minor feature tweaks with the express purpose of improving your experience. We’ll share more on that as we finalize the version and in next month’s producer’s letter, we’ll definitely have more details to share about 1.3.5.

And finally, there’s 1.3.6 and even though the minutiae is not yet finalized, one aspect that we’re considering improving is the auction house. We want to foster player-driven interaction and trade, especially as we introduce more and better items to the game, and you can’t do that with an auctionhouse that doesn’t function as it should. These improvements go hand in hand with our plans to improve the game economy, allowing us to improve the value of new items by making them have more meaning. Also, by 1.3.6 we will make a decision, one way or another, on the armor set redesign. We’re going to maximize the effectiveness of the armor changes for the most players, without taking development time away from the systems that are most important.
 
I hope that this has provided even just a little clarity and insight into our commitment to you moving forward, and our dedication to WAR. There are many wonderful and talented individuals working every day to make this game everything that you want it to be, and we’re  doing our best to share that with you both in word, and on the battlefield.

See you out there.

-Carrie