Warhammer Online

There's a new patch on Warhammer's public test server. The 1.4.6 update is designed to tweak both realm vs. realm and scenario PvP. In terms of RvR, one of the biggest changes is the shift from multiple city invasion instances to a single instance. The instance will support 60 players from each realm -- 120 total. "Once that number is reached, no further reinforcements will be allowed," according to the update notes on the WAR website.

Scenario brackets are also being altered. Whereas the old system grouped players into tiers based on character level, the new mechanic uses both levels and renown rank. Players from level one to 15 go into bracket one, while players of renown ranks zero to 69 and 70 to 100 go into brackets two and three, respectively.

[Edit: Clarified 120 total players in the instance]

In the increasingly diminishing field of subscription-only MMOs, two distinct camps have formed. There is the Old Guard that has its established playerbase and is simply not interested in jumping on board the F2P train, and then there are the New Kids on the Block (which would make an excellent band name, by the way), who argue that their premium features and AAA content warrant a subscription in the F2P age.

A few years ago, doing a list of the final few F2P holdouts would have been a ridiculous proposition, but now it's actually difficult to get to 10 of these. Each company has a different reason that it hasn't given these games more flexible payment options (FPO should replace F2P; pass it on!), and while some have addressed this publicly, others say nothing and leave us to speculate on it.

For today's Perfect Ten, we're going to look at the 10 biggest current F2P holdouts in the industry and muse about what's going on behind the scenes. Will this list be impossible to do in a few years or will subscription-only titles come back in a big way? Hey, I don't predict things; I just make lists.

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Are you the sort of player who just can't get enough of Warhammer Online, whether in classic form or the new Wrath of Heroes bite-sized version? Or are you a fan of the latter game and not sure if you want to keep up a subscription to the former? The latest cross-promotional deal for the games is aimed directly at players like that -- starting now, any players with active Warhammer Online subscriptions will receive a 50% bonus to gold and experience in Wrath of Heroes.

There's no complicated process to getting the bonus; if you have both accounts on the same EA/Origin account, your characters will reap the benefits, although it may take up to 24 hours for the system to line up if you've just started a subscription. The bonus also stacks with items from the Wrath of Heroes store, letting veterans of Warhammer Online get ahead in the new game.

Most studios would be overjoyed to have pioneered one significant advancement in video game history, but then again, most studios aren't Kesmai. While it's not a household name today, it's reasonable to say that without the heavy lifting and backbreaking coding that this company shouldered in the '80s and '90s, the MMO genre would've turned out very different indeed.

Last week we met two enterprising designers, Kelton Flinn and John Taylor, who recognized that multiplayer was the name of the future and put their careers on the line to see an idea through to completion. That idea was Island of Kesmai, an ancestor of the modern MMO that used crude ASCII graphics and CompuServe's network to provide an interactive, cooperative online roleplaying experience. It wasn't the first MMO, but it was the first one published commercially, and sometimes that makes all the difference.

Flinn and Taylor's Kesmai didn't stop with being the first to bring MMOs to the big time, however. Flush with cash and success, Kesmai turned its attention to the next big multiplayer challenge: 3-D graphics and real-time combat. Unlike the fantasy land of Island of Kesmai, this title would take to the skies in aerial dogfighting and prove even more popular than the team's previous project.

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I'm a sucker for a good, clever idea. You know the type: the ideas that make you slap yourself on the forehead and shout, "Why didn't I think of that first?" Or for the less humble of us out there, "Why, I did think of that first! But I got lost on the way to the patent office and I'm pretty sure that someone stole my dream journal to pilfer my genius notions!"

While critics point their fingers at the MMO industry and proclaim it a barren wasteland of innovation, there are quite a few awesome -- if small -- ideas that bubble up in MMO and move the genre forward. Maybe they're teeny-tiny baby steps; maybe they're giant hopscotch leaps over the six-spot with the rock in the middle. But these ideas can and have had the power to change how these games are made and played.

So this week I'm saluting 10 clever ideas, both large and diminutive, as a reward for a job well done!

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Hey kids, it's time for another Warhammer Online producer's letter (no, it's still not dead, doomsayers). The dev team is currently hard at work on the 1.4.5a patch, and in case you were wondering, that little "a" basically indicates additions to the previous 1.4.5 update. Said additions will take the form of "functionality, messaging, and tweaks to the fortresses and relics," all of which are still being discussed on the official WAR forums.

Next up is the 1.4.6 patch, and Mythic has switched gears to focus on bug fixing instead of the previously planned open RvR tweaks. There are also some additional items of interest on the horizon, including a new live event and some changes to crafting. Head to the WAR Herald to read up on all the details.

[Thanks to Benjamin for the tip!]

In the happy, carebear world of Warhammer Online, we've reached the time of year when the clouds break to let in a ray of sunshine that warms the souls of all it touches and sprinkles hearts with... oh, forget it. It's Murder-o-Rama, aka the Night of Murder.

Mythic's annual WAR bloodfest centers around players attempting to appease a gruesome Elf god by taking out contracts on each other's lives. From February 9th through the 22nd, players will try to complete Tome of Knowledge tasks by completing "Marked for Death" quests and killing those with a dripping red skull-and-crossbones over their heads.

The rewards are worth the effort, though, with items like Lobbin' Noggins, Khaine's Caress, and a fun pike sporting your opponent's head that you can slam down next to a defeated foe. It's the yearly holiday your mother always warned you about, but you never listened then and you're probably not going to start now.

2011 was an odd duck of a year for MMO news. A huge chunk of the year felt devoid of significant releases, but that was mitigated somewhat by the major launches of RIFT and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Titles got shoved back to 2012 or beyond, MMOs that we thought never would go free-to-play did, and the industry continually surprised us with revelations, ideas, and controversy.

So in my last Perfect Ten of 2011, I put together the 10 most significant MMO stories of the year. Ten seems like an awfully small number for such a great big field, so I had the rest of the staff members chime in with their nominations just to make sure I wasn't too off-base with any of these.

It was a whopper of a year, and Massively was there for all of it -- the ups, the downs, the queues, and the QQs. It's time to wrap it up with a pretty bow and dedicate it to the history museum!

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It's time for another episode of This Week in MMO, and the focal point of this week's episode is none other than the freshly launched Star Wars: The Old Republic. Gary Gannon, Mike B., and Mike Schaffnit share a conversation about the staggered launch, the early start, the newly announced grace period, and much more.

Of course, the world does not revolve only around SWTOR, so the guys also take some time to highlight other goings-on in the MMO world. Warhammer Online will be merging servers once again, which does not forecast a sunny outlook for Mythic's PvP-focused title. Also on the table is talk that the gradually less sane Richard Garriott will be returning to work on the Ultima universe. What could this mean to MMO players? Well, click on past the cut and find out for yourself.

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Amidst the news of server merges, Warhammer Online fans could probably use something to celebrate, something to lift the spirits a bit. So it's fortunate that the annual Keg End celebration is just around the corner, giving everyone a chance to get drunk and rowdy even by the already aggressive status of the world's inhabitants. Running from December 14th until January 4th, Keg End is a chance to celebrate in style in the Dwarven tradition.

The rewards for the event haven't changed much this year, with the usual assortment of Party Kegs, Keg Taps, and Battlebrew Backpacks. There are giants roaming the field looking for their own ale and a handful of sporting battles, and there are plenty of special drinks to be sampled just for the event. So get yourself ready to log in tomorrow and take a nice roll through fields filled with blood, beer, and battle. Especially beer.

Saddle up, rough riders: It's time to head to more fertile lands! Starting next week, select Warhammer Online players will be given the option to transfer between servers for free. The decision is Mythic's attempt to merge underpopulated servers, and the company hopes that this move will drive up the action in RvR for previously quiet locations.

Players on the Gorfang (North America) and Karak Azgal (Europe) will be able to move house to Badlands and Karak Norn, respectively, starting December 14th. Once this happens, Gorfang and Karak Azgal will be marked as "Legacy" servers, keeping new players from rolling on them, and then after three weeks, the two servers will be shut down completely. Any characters left on those servers will not be playable until they transfer to their new homes.

Mythic is also paving the way for guilds to move wholesale to new servers, with more information about this coming next week.

Warhammer Online fans can be forgiven if they took to scratching their heads in puzzlement as BioWare-Mythic announced the Wrath of Heroes MOBA at last summer's Gamescom convention. After all, here was a new fantasy title that was brazen enough to borrow the IP and arguably the best gameplay mechanic (scenarios) from an existing MMO that's still alive and kicking.

The distinction between the two games is up for discussion in a new Warhammer Online interview at Stratics. "There is no direct link currently between your WAR and WOH characters. That being said, we plan on giving WAR subscribers benefits in WOH," explains producer James Casey. "We are also looking at other ways to connect them and have the benefits go both ways."

The interview also touches on the next WAR update (currently slated for the PTS next month), as well as the fact that the devs are considering a level-cap increase on the game's endless trial offering.