Version 1.3.2 of Warhammer Online is on the PTS right now and includes a number of major changes to the game. The most notable of these changes are the New User Journey and Apprentice System. The former being a total overhaul of the experience new players have with the game, while the latter allows for a new City of Heroes-style sidekicking function called the "Apprenticeship" system.

The details of the new user journey are quite extensive, but some of the major changes include an entire shift of focus from the three racial pairings to the Empire vs. Chaos pairing. In the interest of making the game more accessible to new recruits, all new players, regardless of race, will begin in the Empire vs. Chaos starting zones, and all RvR will be re-focused to this pairing as well in Tier 1. In addition to the aforementioned shifts, new characters will also be placed in a default starting guild, many UI elements will be disabled and revealed slowly to new characters, an overhaul of the tutorial system has been implemented, and much more.

RvR as a whole will also see some major changes in 1.3.2, as well. One such example would be the removal of Fortresses from the campaign. Also, players will receive better rewards for attacking well defended and/or upgraded keeps. Upgraded keeps will be denoted on the map with a number of stars indicated how beefed up they are.

A bevy of balance changes have also been implemented with 1.3.2 including yet another wave of changes targeted at the various crowd control abilities available to players in the game. Numerous knockdown, knockback, and stun abilities have been retooled to cause a "stagger" condition instead. Many bug fixes will also be implemented in 1.3.2, including a fix for a curious bug causing the game to crash on systems making use of 32 or more processors. I don't know about you, but I can't say that's ever been a problem for me!

For the full details on 1.3.2 check out the patch notes here.

Sweet, that supercomputer I was using to run WAR won't crash as much now. Here's hoping!

So, they are merging the races into one starter zone per side? Sounds like death throes.

get rid of public quests or make em scale to the amount of ppl that are doing em so you can solo the whole thing if need be. Make it so the range aren't way over powered and fix the damn servers already.

I'm curious why they are fixing things that aren't/weren't issues.

I mean there really was no difficulty leveling in that game. Myself and many people in the guild had quite a few alts by the time we left.

The problem was the end game. Making it even easier to get there wont solve anything.

Just unplug this biggest MMO scam in the history already. 

Its nice they are trying to revive this game.

I recently went back and tried to play it again but there just werent enough people playing to make the public questing worthwhile

Its probably a good idea that they are trying to encourage players to bring their friends in and concentrate the small amount of people who are playing into a single starting area

I doubt I will go back to it though, I gave it a good shot and it just didnt fly with me.

Good luck though, can really tell you're stretching your lifespan WAR!

So glad to hear they're focusing on one set of zones as opposed to have everyone so spread out PQ's couldn't be done and open RvR was already scarce in the other areas that weren't in the Empire vs. Chaos zones anyway. 

Originally posted by neoterrar

I'm curious why they are fixing things that aren't/weren't issues.

I mean there really was no difficulty leveling in that game. Myself and many people in the guild had quite a few alts by the time we left.

The problem was the end game. Making it even easier to get there wont solve anything.

Hey buddy... ummm it looks like they are trying to fix the end game by making it more accessable... since according to you that wont work... what would make the end game better in your eyes?

Might already be a bit to late for those changes?
Small story (and imagine it in fastforeward motion): Waited 2 year for the game, bought the CE, went to beta, made a char since day 1 and reached RR 70+, was guild leader, had big hopes every time they had a new major update, quit the game.

Now rolling back a bit and explaining like so many have explained it in the past and never thought I would be one of them (pretty sad tbh).
The last part of my game play experience while I did had a blast at the beginning of the game till T3 beginning of T4 , was also to keep guildies in the game hence myself (eventhough I'm a huge fan of Warhammer (GW) IP) at later levels and not just lvl 40 but RR 60+ - the level, ecenomy and other things like that are quite trivial in WAR imho.... but not RR or was it?
Anyway... came a day I couldn't take it anymore (main reason was the constant lag spikes - of course, beside the constant  incorrect imbalanced "fixes" throut out the patches i.e.-> AoE dmg through keep floors, CC - they're talking about fixing that since ages ago and thousands got tired of this issues not being addressed. They just left, even I who never thought I would leave WAR. Ok this is just my 2 cents about all this, I could go on but kinda afraid to make this into a wall text.

WAR comunity forum was also one of the main reasons I joined MMORPG.com back in 2006 or so...

Still I wish the best of luck to Mythic and to all the gamers still playing WAR.

Cheers!

Great. Yet another game lumping all the races together into the same experience, and this in a fantasy setting more racially divided than any other in existence. I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.

It began with EverQuest II. Thanks, SOE.

As much as I despise World of WarCraft, to Blizzard's credit, at least they didn't do this, even though their crowd would totally adore it.

Looks like a great round of changes.

All new characters that join the Realm of Destruction will now begin the game in the Chaos starting area, no matter their race.

All new characters that join the Realm of Order will now begin the game in the Empire starting area, no matter their race.

New players will automatically be placed in a 'new player guild', one for each Realm, to facilitate communication among those new to the game, or those who are rolling up an alt character, and to make finding a group a bit easier.

WTF ?!?  Forcing stuff on new players is not a way to encourage peoples to play your game ?  And BTW what's wrong with the other races starting area ?

I'm coming back. How long till this patch go live?

Originally posted by Saerain

Great. Yet another game lumping all the races together into the same experience, and this in a fantasy setting more racially divided than any other in existence. I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.

It began with EverQuest II. Thanks, SOE.

As much as I despise World of WarCraft, to Blizzard's credit, at least they didn't do this, even though their crowd would totally adore it.

I dont understand whats so bad about this.

In WoW, orc, troll, tauren and sometimes undead and belf, come leveling together a XR.

I love this part of the game where i can see the different races together, instead of high elf all the way...

Originally posted by Aguitha

All new characters that join the Realm of Destruction will now begin the game in the Chaos starting area, no matter their race.

All new characters that join the Realm of Order will now begin the game in the Empire starting area, no matter their race.

New players will automatically be placed in a 'new player guild', one for each Realm, to facilitate communication among those new to the game, or those who are rolling up an alt character, and to make finding a group a bit easier.

WTF ?!?  Forcing stuff on new players is not a way to encourage peoples to play your game ?  And BTW what's wrong with the other races starting area ?

OMG forcing!!!!!shift1!!!

Come on now... Apparently everything was wrong with racial starting areas, such as the main feature of the game PvP.

That smell?! Oh, it's desperation. Seriously this is DOA. I was a huge fan, struggled through all of the redo's and flailing, but it's just over. This was one of the most seriously flawed implementations of a property that exists solely on rock solid system. (DDO would be the other). WAR had, and still has, the best scenarios of any MMO. The concept of RvR sieges was and is still a great one, never properly implemented. PvE and Public quests are just failures.

I will tell you what i would pay to play though with WAR. Give me queue-able scenarios and RvR sieges and nothing else. Just like the tabletop game.  I can queue for a siege when I want some meat or I can queue for scenarios when I want some quick play. Characters are all one level, and spells/abilities are set. Maybe special weapons/armor for number of battles and achievements that are mostly for show and very small advantages. Make it all about winning and strategy and honor/ladders. I know tons of tabletop players that would come back in an instant for that, myself included. Charge $5.99/mo. and salvage the work and effort put into this game so far.

Let me "paint" my hero for some customization, let me have some epic battles, and let me go on with life. This game just doesn't have enough of anything else to make it worthwhile long-term. Sorry.

Complaining complaining complaining, people always complain...

But for me, War is the best MMO I've play. I can´t wait the  corrections and news of this new patch. 

Most of what i see here is about ppl that tried and  now follow others flames talking bs of this game, but  every MMO has your problems. I dont know a game free of bugs. Show me one. 

OK, I´m suspicious to talk about War, but i've played lots of MMOs, and no one could mak eplay more than 1 month.  I didnt try Aion yet, cuz  I´m wating the free trial, i'll talk about this game after try  then. BUt till now, War is the best, its all.

For those who have played and quit WAR, what do you play now and why is it better than WAR?

Ok it was kind of obvious having six starter areas was going to spread the population (well no duh) combined with needing grouping for PQ's (particularly harder ones) = never going to complete them.

But if they do this rollback thing, it kind of defeats the point of having the seperate story strands and zones. At least for those who aren't going to bother cross-travelling to newbie areas? Iirc last time I played, if I was an Elf in Elf zone I had the lore and story fed to me about the attack and the army situation and how my character evolved there. So if I'm an Elf in human zone I assume it's going to be explained in-depth as to why I'm starting there? I know they cover it (sort of...) if you travel across the zones later on...

Unless I'm misunderstanding it?

Originally posted by RVallant

Ok it was kind of obvious having six starter areas was going to spread the population (well no duh) combined with needing grouping for PQ's (particularly harder ones) = never going to complete them.

 

But if they do this rollback thing, it kind of defeats the point of having the seperate story strands and zones. At least for those who aren't going to bother cross-travelling to newbie areas? Iirc last time I played, if I was an Elf in Elf zone I had the lore and story fed to me about the attack and the army situation and how my character evolved there. So if I'm an Elf in human zone I assume it's going to be explained in-depth as to why I'm starting there? I know they cover it (sort of...) if you travel across the zones later on...

Unless I'm misunderstanding it?

I have to agree as I always thought that separating the races the way they did would spread the population too thin. And even though people have screamed for racial cities, again, I always thought that was a bad idea and that it was a good thing they did not make it in game.

Just because a game company plans something for a game doesn't mean that in the long run it's good for the game. It might be "neat" but given how these games tend to run, you need to make it so that new players find people and that people are brought together at key points in the game.

This is only a good thing.

Proof EA has put Warhammer on the back burner and focusing all on ToR. Shrink the game, more linear and nothing new.

Great patch but too late. 60+ servers down to 6... and out of these 6, 2 are semi-dead (Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne) so before the year ends, they could be down to 4 (or less) servers.

Lessons learned:

* Listen to player feedback.
* Fix game problems within weeks and not months and years later.

Originally posted by skeaser

So, they are merging the races into one starter zone per side? Sounds like death throes.

Just not enough new players trying the game. T1 is basically dead so new players are turned off by the lack of players. This is a band-aid solution. It must suck though because they spent so many resources on those now gone 4 other starting zones...

Originally posted by Erazor01

For those who have played and quit WAR, what do you play now and why is it better than WAR?

Aion.  It has the epic battles and fluid PVP that WAR should have had.  Aion might not become the mythical WoW killer, but it is definitely a WAR killer.