So it has been a few weeks since the release of 1.2 but Mythic is hard at work releasing the next patch for WAR. Patch 1.2.1 is now on the public test server. Just like the last patch, 1.2.1 is quite large with a ton of new features and fixes. Some of the features include more utility and defenses for guilds who own a keep, combat responsiveness improvements, and plenty of RvR enhancements.

Highlighted Features for 1.2.1

Keep Upgrade System
Own a Keep? Want to keep it?  Want to get more out of it?  Then the new Keep Upgrade system is perfect for you!  Guilds that own a Keep can now purchase upgrades to bolster their hold’s utility and defenses in a variety of ways.Once a Keep has been claimed, a guild member with sufficient permission can speak to the Guild Keep Agent on the upper level of the Keep to choose what upgrades to purchase.  These upgrades require a periodic maintenance fee and some are available in multiple levels.  Once purchased, upgrades will take time to be completed. This process can be monitored via the new Keep Upgrade Interface. Upgrades will decay if funds are unavailable to pay their maintenance or if a guild member chooses to stop paying for the upgrade.
Guilds that successfully hold a Keep until the zone is captured will be rewarded with a free gold bag that will be mailed to the guild master, and is tradable to his or her guild members.

Combat Responsiveness Improvements
We are always working to improve the overall responsiveness of our game client and server. With version 1.2.1 players will see some significant improvements including the following:

• Casting times have become more accurate under normal play conditions, and players should no longer see a significant “stretch” or “pause” when casting spells in low or moderate latency situations.
• Accuracy of the spell cast UI has been improved. The display will now show ½ second increments and will no longer “stretch” time to compensate for latency. Instead, players will see a pause after the bar has filled completely if they are in a high-latency environment. 
• Continued improvements to animation and visual effects performance have been made. Players will see smoother transitions between animations and significantly less stuck visual effects, especially when chain-casting abilities.

UI Improvements
We are pleased to announce several improvements and enhancements to the game’s User Interface!

• The Guild Window has received a major facelift and several functional improvements. We have added more information to the Guild Window, such as new news alerts and additional statistics on the profile tab. We have also resolved several interface bugs with the window, such as promoting and demoting through the UI and loss of guild permissions.
• The User Settings window has been divided into tabs for convenience and clarity. The Customize Interface window has been folded into the User Interface window under the "Interface" tab. Tooltips have also been added to various elements in the User Settings window in order to explain their function.

RvR Zone Control Rewards

• Various improvements have been made to Zone Control Rewards in Tier 4 zones to reward players for zone captures more so than individual Objective and Keep captures. When active zones are captured in Tier 4, all players in the zone are awarded Renown based on their level similar to Tiers 1, 2, and 3. If a Keep is claimed by a guild when the zone is captured, a Gold Bag will be mailed to the Guild Leader who can then mail it to anyone in the guild, as they see fit.

• Battlefield Objectives that are owned by the conquering realm will also buff all of the players in the zone with the same buffs that Sergeants grant players.  Lastly, players who have captured a Keep or Battlefield Objective in the zone which is then captured will be awarded double the amount of Renown they would normally gain from capturing those locations.

Upgrade Your Assault with Ordnance!
We are pleased to introduce a new resource to RvR that players can trade in for deadly assault upgrades!  Scattered throughout the RvR lakes and acquired from killing players, Ordnance is collected and traded in for various items and weapons to use in open field RvR!  Battering rams with more hit points, ballistae that do more damage, oil immunity potions, caltrops, and dynamite can all be purchased and used on unsuspecting enemy players!
New Guild Recruitment Options
Guilds can now set up a "profile" for their guild using the “Recruitment” tab in the Guild Window. Settings for type of guild, careers, and levels being recruited, as well as guild "recruiters" can be set in the Recruitment tab. Once your guild recruitment info is filled out, players can search using the same criteria in the "search" tab to find guilds that fit their individual play-style and needs. Guilds can also be hyper-linked into chat either by shift-left clicking on the "Link Your Guild" link in the Recruitment tab, or by shift-left-clicking the guild title in the search results panel. When players click the guild hyper-link, they will receive an individual window identical to the panel in search results. No more chat spamming required, just let the hyper-links fly!

Character Profiles
Introducing the new character profile system, which gives you complete control over the way you play your characters! Each character will now have its own Interface Profile. This will allow customization of addons and UI layout on a per-character basis. You can also customize multiple profiles per character. For instance, if you want to have a different set of addons for soloing versus open RvR, just open the Profile Management window, create a new profile, and make any changes you wish. You can then swap between those profiles at any time in the management window.

Profiles can also be copied from character to character, even across servers. Just choose "Create from existing Profile" when making a new profile, and you will be shown a list of all the profiles for all characters you have on all servers.
When you first log in, your first character will automatically map your existing user settings to the new profile. On first login of an alternate character, you will be asked if you would like to start with a default profile or use the profile of an existing character.
Please note that this is only the first iteration of the character profile system. We are working to add new features, including the ability to save keybindings as part of the profile.
The Battle for the Gates of Ekrund Expands!
The massive Gates of Ekrund are all that stand between the Dwarf-held mines at Ekrund and the greenskin-infested domain of Mount Bloodhorn. The battles fought for control of this ancient structure have been among the most bitter in the Age of Reckoning, and now both sides are calling for additional reinforcements!
Beginning with this update, players of Rank 19-24 will be able to join a special 6-on-6 version of the Gates of Ekrund called "Broken Gates of Ekrund." Also, a new quest has been added to the game to reward players who answer the call to defend (or smash down!) the Gates.
General Changes & Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that could cause the reported /played time to become inaccurate over time.
• Fleeing monsters will not flee as far as they previously did and will no longer immediately leave combat after fleeing.
• If the ‘Show Guild Heraldry’ option in the Inventory Panel is checked, and the player is wearing a non-standard back item (for example, the Brewmaster Backpack or Heavy Metal event cloak), the back item will be replaced with a default cloak displaying the guild heraldry.
• Player mounts and other creatures that are set to hug the ground will now do so everywhere and not just on terrain.
• The game client will now prioritize corpses with loot on them over empty corpses. As a result, players will now be able to more easily loot items from piles of corpses.
• When changing appearance (such as a Marauder mutating) the cloak Show Guild Heraldry setting will now persist through the appearance change. 
• Fixed an issue where guild taxes and tithes were not able to be set on certain servers.

Capital Cities

• Sigmar’s Crypts: Arch Lectors Zakarai and Verrimus will now correctly apply a damage debuff to players when they switch powers.
• City Lord and King fight bosses are now immune to the snap target component of taunt abilities. They are not immune to the threat generation caused by taunt.
• The Renown merchants that offer Tier-based Renown gear similar to the Renown merchants in the warcamps have had their titles adjusted to make it easier for players to identify each Tier of Renown gear. 
• Players will no longer be required to select an instance when entering a contested city.  Instead, players will always be placed in the same instance as their group or warband.  New instances will be created by the server as older instances become full.
• In order to allow more players the opportunity to participate in city-related RvR, the contested city Scenarios (The Undercroft and the War Quarters) are now only accessible to players in the Rank range of 8-29.  All players below Rank 28 will be bolstered to Rank 28 while in the Scenario.
• Players who attempt to log into a city that is contested will now spawn at their refugee camp instead of inside the peaceful version of the city.
• Upon successful destruction of the door into the city, friendly guards will arrive to support the invading army’s foray into the enemy capital!

Combat and Careers
General

• Victory Cry: This bonus will now last 60 minutes and persist through death.
• Blessed Curse: Fixed a bug that allowed this Scenario ability to linger after leaving a Scenario, causing death to the player. 
• Updated the visual effects for the following abilities:
  • Shrug it off (Shaman)
  • Magical Infusion (Archmage)
  • Thunderous Blow (Marauder)
  • Rending Blade (Chosen)
  • Chosen Auras (Chosen)
• Fixed a bug that was causing diminishing returns on stats to not calculate correctly. High values of stats will now begin to diminish correctly. 
• Rapidly activating abilities will no longer occasionally cause the build-time bar to become incorrect. 
• To reduce excessive error messages and improve the feel of combat, error messages about abilities "not being ready yet" will no longer be displayed while within the global cooldown. 
• Fixed numerous cases of bonuses which would not be correctly reflected on your character sheet. 
• Items with range-increasing bonuses will now correctly display the amount of the bonus in feet. 
• Combat log messages will now inform the player what ability has disabled them. 
• Fixed a bug that was preventing buff icons below the first row from displaying their tooltips. 
• The build-time bar will now display tenths of a second. 
• Fixed a bug that was causing certain ground targeted spells to not display their graphics.
• Fixed an issue where some effects weren’t displaying on the heads and cloaks of players correctly. 
• A tradable broken item that repairs into a bound item will no longer incorrectly warn the player that the broken item itself will bind on pickup. 
• Interacting with an object while your weapons are sheathed will no longer cause your weapons to disappear. 
• Effects which increase your Hit Point regen rate will now function while in-combat. 
• Fixed an issue that caused any buff that lasts longer than 18 hours to display an incorrect duration.  
• You may now occasionally discover items that can be traded to other players, but cannot be put on to the Auction House.

Mythic announced today that they will be offering a 10 day free trial for Warhammer Online. The trial will hopefully allow players who are interested in the game but want to try before they buy. All trial accounts are restricted to Tier 1 content and Capital Cities. If you try a server with medium or high capacity then T1 RvR is a blast. Coupled with the live event, now is the best time to start WAR! Below are details from Mythic:

Are there any restrictions in the trial version?

• Trial accounts may receive mail and purchase from the auction house; however, they cannot send mail or create auctions.

• Trial accounts are limited to designated servers. If you’d like to play with friends on other servers, you will need to purchase a retail copy of the game and transfer your character to their server (or create a new character on their server). All characters Rank 11 and under on purchased accounts have access to unlimited transfers, with a max of one transfer per day.

Can I play on a computer that has the full game installed?

Yes, you may play the trial on a computer that has the full game installed, but the free trial restrictions will still apply.

If I cancel my account, will that lock me out of the trial?

No, you will be able to play until the end of your free trial period. After that, the full version of the game must be purchased, and you will have to enter the Product Registration Code and billing information in order to continue to play.

Where can I download the free trial?

The free trial is available for download here.

For the European Trial go here.

RvR Highlights:

RvR Fortresses

RvR Fortress raids have received an update for their itemization in version 1.2. The focus of this update was to better reward players for completion of a Fortress capture as well as give players who do not successfully capture a Fortress some chance at improved loot.

* The Fortresses now feature the same world drop items found in the high-level city dungeons. This includes rare drop “Watcher” weapons.

* The Fortress PQ bags now feature new, unique Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare items.

* Non-PQ target mobs within the Fortresses, including general mobs and the guards of the lords, now have a chance to drop the Conqueror Belt. The belt will no longer drop from Gold Bags.

* Additionally, the Conqueror Belt has been made bind-on-equip. This only affects new instances of the Conqueror Belt. Any Conqueror Belts found prior to this patch will remain bind-on-pickup.

* The number of PQ reward bags that drop in Fortresses has been increased to 30, with 12 Gold Bags for each completion.

Zone Control Domination

To help place more emphasis on Keep claiming and defense, as well as to combat the “defense by not defending” strategy, we are introducing the Zone Control Domination mechanic. With this system, players who take and hold all Battlefield Objectives and claim Keeps in a contested zone (in Tier 4) or a shared RvR lake (in Tiers 2 and 3) have the opportunity to capture that zone, forgoing the standard mechanics of Zone Control. Each Battlefield Objective and Keep will be worth 1 Domination Point. To capture a zone via the Domination rules, your Realm must have all 6 Domination Points. In Tiers 2 and 3, capturing all six points in a shared RvR lake will give the capturing Realm control of the entire Tier. These are represented as small pip marks on the Zone Control Bar. Battlefield Objectives and Keeps have different requirements for earning their Domination Point, as follows:

* To earn a Domination Point from a Battlefield Objective, it must be owned by your realm for 30 minutes.

* To earn a Domination Point from a Keep, it must be claimed by a Guild and then held for 2 hours. If you lose control of a Battlefield Objective or Keep at any time, you lose the Domination Point.

* Multiple Domination Points cannot be gained from a single source (for example, it isn’t possible to get 6 Domination Points by capturing Martyr’s Square 6 times).

* If a zone that was taken over by Zone Domination is put into a contested state, all timers and Domination Points are reset.

New RvR Chain Quests

* The rally call has gone out! The WAR rages on and help is needed at every warcamp across the realms! New quest-givers have appeared in every warcamp and will offer players brand spanking new chain quests. ‘Chain’ quests are a new feature that will allow players to complete a set of linked quests and repeat the ‘chain’ again once they have completed all of the quests in the ‘chain.’ The new quests will be available from NPCs in the warcamps, and they are designed to reward players for participating in open RVR.

General

* Keeps that are providing a Standard Tactic buff will now display this information in their tooltip.

* RvR Hotspot tooltips have been added to give an indication of how big the battle actually is.  Hotspots will also be displayed on the racial pairing view and campaign UI tracker.

* The Zone Control Bar can now be clicked to provide more details on each Zone Control Pool, including each contributing system, and who is winning the battle for each. This will tell you what your realm still needs to accomplish in order to conquer the zone!

* Players will now get a help tip regarding Zone Control and its bonuses.

* We are introducing the new Rally Call system. At various intervals, players will be called to join the battle in the Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 RvR lakes. A button will appear near the mini-map, enabling willing participants to jump right into the action.

* The Keep loot timers have been extended to allow more time for players to reach the loot chest.

* Public Quest objective trackers will no longer overlap with Battlefield Objective trackers when moving quickly from one to the other.

* Users now have more UI options to enable, disable, or throttle Center Screen messaging. You can get to the new options by clicking Customize Interface in the main menu and selecting the Center Screen Message category.

* Cities will now degrade in rank when they have been pushed into a contested state. The number of ranks removed will be determined by how much damage the enemy does to the city. Realms who have their King captured will find that their city is reduced to Rank 1.

* Various city-related art bugs have been resolved.

* Both destroyed and damaged Keep doors will now properly reset after a failed attack.

* Additional Guards have been added to the Order Warcamp in Eataine.

* A Quartermaster has been added to Stonewatch Fortress.

* The oil in Badmoon Hole will no longer give the message, “Target is out of range” upon use.

* The oil at the keep Hatred’s Way is now attackable.

* Additional guards have been added to the Gharvin’s Brace Warcamp.

* The flags will now update properly in the Login’s Forge Scenario when one side has captured an objective.

* Talisman merchants have been added to Altdorf and the Inevitable City.

* Ranged siege weapons, such as catapults and ballistae, have had their cone of fire increased to a full 360 degrees.

* Normalized the amount of player kills required for Keep Defense Quests. The experience and monetary rewards for these quests have been adjusted accordingly, resulting in an overall increase in experience and monies awarded.

* Reduced the amount of time that a Capital City will remain in the Contested state from 6 hours down to 2 hours.

* Capturing Battlefield Objectives in the Cities will now contribute more Victory Points towards City Capture.

* Increased the chest timer on rewards for Contested City Public Quests to 4 minutes from 2 minutes.

Today marks the start of WAR’s first expansion “Call to Arms”. The Bitter Rivals event will start on March 3rd (Today) and will be available for download via the WAR Patcher. This event will allow players to gain access to the much anticipated careers of the Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer. There are a lot of improvements and new editions that will hopefully bring back players
and relay cement WAR as the RvR/PvP MMO of 2009. We are very excited about the latest information from Mythic:

“Call to Arms will introduce WAR’s next two careers, the Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer, and ends with the unveiling of the Land of the Dead, a massive new Tomb Kings dungeon zone!”

February also brings details on WAR’s upgraded Recruit-A-Friend program and a 10 day FREE trial of WAR for FilePlanet subscribers.

Below are the details from the February Newsletter:

• Two New Careers – Unleash the savage fury of the relentless Orc Choppa, or take up the doom-laden oath of the unstoppable Dwarf Slayer!

• Bitter Rivals Join the Battle – Introducing the newest live event for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals focuses on the ancient hatred that burns between the Dwarf and Greenskin races.

• Fight for Control of the Twisting Tower – Enjoy a limited-time preview of this upcoming new Scenario found deep in the heart of the maddening Chaos Wastes.

• New RvR Gameplay Enhancements – Introducing the new Open RvR Rallying Cry system that summons you to key battles in Tiers 1 and 2. The new Zone Domination System for Tiers 2 through 4 rewards a realm that truly conquers the entire battlefield. Also, many improvements to siege weapons ensure that the mighty engines of war are now more lethally effective than ever.

• New Treasures Await – Across-the-board itemization improvements have been made to the Fortresses, world dungeons, and city dungeons of WAR, including better world drops, quest rewards, Influence rewards, and more.

• Crafting System Improvements – We’ve made many improvements to the game’s crafting system, including pairing-off specific gathering skills with specific production skills in order to make crafters more self-sufficient.

• Easy PQs Make Their Debut in Tiers 2, 3, and 4 – Scaled for courageous bands of 1 to 3 adventurers, these Public Quests offer a rewarding PvE experience without a large commitment of forces.

But for disbelievers or WoW junkies, take a look at this video from Aqeit on youtube. This is a T4 dungeon with some excellent bosses to fight:

WAR is all about…WAR. However you must have an organized guild and a large population server to experience WAR’s full potential. Dark Crag is among some of the top servers but for the moment it seems Order has an upper hand.

The bottom line, find a server that has a high population of active players and the game suddenly transforms before your eyes. I really enjoy the ORvR and premade SC’s. When the expansion arrives next week, be sure to try one of the new dwarf slayers on a high population server!

Warhammer is all about RvR. The game is primarily designed around the “WAR” concept. A player must utilize both RvR and PvE effectively in order to expedite the leveling process.  Since the game thrives on RvR, players who primarily PvE, will miss out on a lot of what WAR has to offer. This is where Scenarios start to play a huge roll. No longer are these “battlegrounds” a place to go have fun and mess around with friends (you can still do that…). But with the ability to gain far greater experience points and renown points for the winning realm, players must coordinate and vigorously compete in order to gain a substantial experience bonus for winning the scenario. This creates great incentive to not go afk, man up, and fight the opposing realm.

A recent post on WHA has laid out some number crunching and cleared up some confusion surrounding the leveling (exp) process. According to SpyridonZ

“In my opinion, the optimal progression method for Gear AND XP, is to run Scenarios for XPing (preferably with a group, as that makes it faster and more fun) until the “8″ or “9″ levels – meaning in Tier 2 level 18 or 19. Tier 3 level 28-29. At this point, take a little time to run PQ’s to get some gear for the slots that you have not won a Rare Drop for as of yet.”

Public Quests are a nice innovation and players should take advantage of the loot and rewards. Just like in most MMORPG’s, you will out level your equipment at a fairly fast pace until endgame. So focusing only on gear at low levels should not be a major priority. You can still get excited at the site of “epic” loot from PQ’s! But it just means at low levels, you should focus more on completion of quests and scenarios.

“Questing is good to do at two different times – First is between Scenarios while waiting for the Queue to pop, Second is late night or early morning when Scenarios arent popping very much. This will ensure your XP progression continues even while you are waiting for a Scenario.”

Mythic has done a good job spreading out the different ways a player can gain experience. If you have always strived for player vs player combat, then WAR will not only provide this experience, but surround you with the experience throughout your WAR adventures. The Renown system will continue to grow as the game moves on and will remain one of the many features that set this game apart. Hopefully you have gained some tips through reading this that will help you expedite your leveling process.

This week I will be talking about the the multiple Battlefield Keeps and Objectives in Tier 1 and Tier 2 of the different race zones. Today’s topic features the “The Ironclad” which is located in the Tier 2 Zone of the Greenskins vs Dwarfs called “Barak Varr”. In case you are unfamiliar with how these different zones work, please read “Understanding the RvR System”. But in simple terms, there are 3 race v race zones (ie Greenskins vs Dwarfs) each with tier zones, battlefield objectives, and keeps.

A player can gain access to “Barak Varr” once they are elgible for Tier 2 (usually around level 10). The easiest way to gain access to this zone is by using your local flight master. Upon arriving, head north-west on the map and you will reach ”The Ironclad”. The objective is to gain control of this large iron ship. There are cannons mounted on the front and a flag to capture in the middle of the ship. The ship is easy to board because it is parked next to a set of docks that you can walk across.  There is a quest you can pickup at “Foultoof’s Warcamp” which will send you out to the multiple RvR zones in order to “scout” these regions.

Overall, this zone is full of RvR action and “The Ironclad” objective doesn’t require a large force to capture. However, battles of 15 vs 15 can be quite fun and a bit of a challenege because of the chokepoint on the docks. If you plan to visit this RvR zone, I do reccommend you be atleast level 14. Goodluck!