The Warhammer Herald has been updated with an update on the status of the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning beta.  The update includes information on city landmarks, armor dyes, UI improvements, and more.

We're back from Thanksgiving with turkey, stuffing, and all the fixin's ready to rock and roll into these final weeks before beta goes live. We now give thanks to Career Mastery, RvR Keeps, and if that's not enough a User Interface revamp. Hold onto your britches because this update is going to knock your socks off!

Waaagh! And well met!

This week’s update once again kicks off with new information from the Cities Team:

Hello from the Cities Team!

This week some truly exciting work is being done. As you walk through the streets of Altdorf or the Inevitable City, there are HUGE buildings that dominate the sky; think “Big Ben” or the “Eiffel Tower”. We call these structures “Marvels”. Marvels help us provide the iconic look and feel of a city and make them immediately recognizable. But as amazing as they are to look at, until this week you couldn’t actually enter inside.

It was a major let down and, many of us wept. But now we are rejoicing as we are building the interior structure of the Bright Wizard College, the grand hall and throne room of Emperor Karl Franz, and the terrifying Magus tower of the Inevitable City.

The process of building these interiors requires a great deal of planning. In keeping with our guiding principle - WAR is everywhere - these interior spaces are not simply places to take screenshots, but places to wage epic battles! So, with that in mind we carefully proto-type our play spaces, check them out for the number of players we expect to engage, and then the very necessary Games Workshop concept approval process, and finally we start to model and texture them.

Read more here.

Woot more updates witchs means more stuff. Now let me into the beta you jerks I want to play this game.

"

Career Mastery will allow players focus on different facets of their career giving them the opportunity to differentiate themselves from others, while still making sure that every character, no matter how they're specialized, can still perform the basic and fundamental purpose of their career.

In the end every player can decide not only how deeply to Master each path, but also which additional skills they might want to purchase from that specialization choice.  You may choose to go full-bore down one path, max out its Mastery and purchase every supplemental skill, making your character outstandingly good at that aspect...but you'll only have enough points remaining to Master another path halfway at the most.

Like WoW talent system, but HOPEFULLY more thought out and more friendly to hybrid builds

The first stage of changes and additions to open world RvR is under way and I’ve been cleared to share with you a glimpse of the details. We received a lot of feedback regarding warcamp camping, the battlefield objectives, and the feeling of the RvR area as a whole, and we have been listening. We have begun making changes to the battlefield objectives to provide more incentives to players to capture them, as well as making them more dynamic and interesting. 

Open world PvP FTW!

I signe dupto the newsletter at the end of 2005 and i signed upto the beta when they first opened it and yet all my friends who signed up much later than me, got in lol. They don't even play it anymore too cause they said it was too much like WOW and it's like what a waste of accounts.

PINK ORKS!!!!!

Oh hey, yeah that's cool. I signed up for the beta too...unfortunately I haven't received any sort of confirmation or acceptance, or really any word at all directly from EA/Mythic.

It'd be nice to "be active" in the forums, but I'd rather not be active anywhere unless I've got some real input, not just speculation.

This probably wouldn't be happening if Mythic had full control over the beta invites.

Thanks again EA!

Originally posted by Seveth

Oh hey, yeah that's cool. I signed up for the beta too...unfortunately I haven't received any sort of confirmation or acceptance, or really any word at all directly from EA/Mythic.

 

It'd be nice to "be active" in the forums, but I'd rather not be active anywhere unless I've got some real input, not just speculation.

 

This probably wouldn't be happening if Mythic had full control over the beta invites.

 

Thanks again EA!

Huh? What do you mean "if Mythic had full control over the beta invites?"

Just speculation, but generally when I corporation acquires a small company, all or most of their policies and procedures are implemented as well. When I say "If Mythic had full control over the beta invites", I mean, there's a 90% chance EA followed suit and implemented their testing/QA procedures for the development process.

From my experience with Mythic, having played DAoC from Launch, and actively took interest in other products of theirs (a very little know project they started before EA take over and WAR, a game called Imperion), the development, HR, and customer support team has always been incredibly benevolent to their subscribers. With promises that once development with Imperion started, they would offer current DAoC subscribers a chance to beta test, if they wanted (maybe I'm creating false memories, but that's what I seem to remember).

*shrug* I guess at this stage of a beta, it doesn't really make any difference, and the comment was a bit out of place. It's just one of those things...a feeling I guess. I signed up for the beta newsletter when Mythic first announced their development with WAR while I was still playing DAoC. Again...haven't heard a word from them or EA since.

I wish they'd let more people in..

Originally posted by Seveth

Just speculation, but generally when I corporation acquires a small company, all or most of their policies and procedures are implemented as well. When I say "If Mythic had full control over the beta invites", I mean, there's a 90% chance EA followed suit and implemented their testing/QA procedures for the development process.

 

From my experience with Mythic, having played DAoC from Launch, and actively took interest in other products of theirs (a very little know project they started before EA take over and WAR, a game called Imperion), the development, HR, and customer support team has always been incredibly benevolent to their subscribers. With promises that once development with Imperion started, they would offer current DAoC subscribers a chance to beta test, if they wanted (maybe I'm creating false memories, but that's what I seem to remember).

 

*shrug* I guess at this stage of a beta, it doesn't really make any difference, and the comment was a bit out of place. It's just one of those things...a feeling I guess. I signed up for the beta newsletter when Mythic first announced their development with WAR while I was still playing DAoC. Again...haven't heard a word from them or EA since.

 

I wish they'd let more people in..

Good thing it's the 10% chance that we're dealing with here.  As far as I can tell anyway.  A deal they offered to Imperion players that isn't offered to WAR players is hardly reason to say that EA has taken over.  I think the key is "a very little known project."  They're dealing with almost 500,000 beta applications.  I think a ton of people would be pissed off if just because you played DAoC you were guaranteed to get into Beta. 

They have offered other deals though.  Like giving out beta slots to everyone that showed up at the Baltimore GamesDay. (At least I think it was Baltimore)

Either way, they've been very giving with their beta slots so far, and I think whether you give credit to EA or Mythic it's a good thing, and better to me than the DAoC deal you mentioned with Imperion.

You and thousands of others haven't heard a word, nor should you.  You might have a better "chance" but you shouldn't be guaranteed anything. :p

That would be like Blizzard guaranteeing everyone that played Starcraft a WoW beta slot.

Yeah, I agree. I was just being a bit childish. It happens.

It would be absolutely ridiculous for a game with the scope of WAR to have x-many instant beta slots gone, simply because they are subscribers to a game by the same company. I do like the basic idea of that, however, that people already contributing to the company's well-fare and revenue get additional opportunities. With a corporation the size of EA, though, they'll never need that kind of relationship with the players. I was just mentioning the Imperion situation for comparison, mainly because I really didn't have anything else.

I guess I'm still just bitter about the EA take over. I mean, it produced a lot of good things, but at the same time, almost damaged some relations with subscribers. Mythic has done the best they can to try and keep a good relationship with their customers, and the public in general. That's one of the reasons I'll probably at least try out any game they will develop. Seems like after the acquisition, though, that relations have started to degrade a bit, partly because the customer base (DAoC subs) are decaying, and because of all the focus on WAR.

Ah well. Online community is a perpetually changing realm...not much any of us can do about it, but look forward to what might be the next best game.

       Sounds great will have to give this a try,If I ever get a chance.

Will players be able to dye their armor? Yes.

Will players be able to “bleach” or revert dyed armor back to its original color? Yes.

I just hope it doesn't cost an arm and a leg like it did in DAOC (at least when I last played it).

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Originally posted by Seveth
From my experience with Mythic, having played DAoC from Launch, and actively took interest in other products of theirs (a very little know project they started before EA take over and WAR, a game called Imperion),

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Actually, I believe that was "Imperator"

D.