Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's Patch 1.1 was mentioned a number of times by Mark Jacobs across various forums this week. While many are calling it the "magic patch" and placing impossible expectations on it, there are a few interesting changes we can expect to see. Rolling right off the heels of the Heavy Metal event and sweeping class adjustments, it seems the Mythic team has been extremely busy this holiday season. What is coming and how exactly will it affect our current gameplay?

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Will PQ's Become Populated?

While not directly affecting the patch, the Public Test Server is just about ready to open up for everyone. This will provide the typical testing environment we've seen in other games, which allows players to preview and provide feedback on pending changes. Fortunately Mythic also appears to be allowing character copies. This assures that everyone has the opportunity to experience things as their current character, not a generic geared Test alt. Will this increase the amount of player feedback? Most certainly. Many of us have little problem hopping on one night to assess changes we are very interested in and complain. Overall a win for everyone.

The Knight of the Blazing Sun and Black Guard (yes I spelled it right) are in and everyone seems to be enjoying them. However if you didn't finish the Live Event, this patch will make these available to everyone. When thinking about how noticeable they'll be, the simplest thing to say is, "Both sides are getting a tank so this cancels things out right?" This wave of new tanks promises to have a ripple effect on the battlefield. More hard targets, reduced DPS, and heavier healing are in the future which will require some strategy changes. Most importantly a number of classes will be abandoned to create them meaning less of everything. For better or worse, it's hard to say how this will turn out just yet.

Public Quests are too hard for the average person and group according to the changes we will see. In an attempt to make them more accessible, one PQ per chapter is going to have it's requirements reduced making it easier to complete with just 1-3 people. Don't be dismayed that this is an easy button solution though, the rewards have been adjusted as well. In future patches we'll see additional PQ's changed meaning those in the higher end won't really be affected right now unless you are rolling new tanks to play.

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Black Guards are In!

Open RvR Influence appears to be one of the most interesting additions to the Warhammer Online world. In an attempt to reward and motivate people to participate in more oRvR, a previously discussed system is finally being revealed. Much like we have with our current Public Quests, each influence area (which is a Tiers racial pairing) has a set of rewards based on your influence level. Taking battlefield objectives, capturing keeps, and slaughtering the opposition will provide you with the necessary influence and hopefully guarantee people will move out of Praag for once.

Along these lines a series of additions and adjustments to oRvR areas will balance encounters and increase player satisfaction. For this change in particular: "All Fortress Lords have been adjusted to ensure that they provide the intended level of challenge. This includes updates to their abilities, damage, and defenses." This very likely means they were being taken out too easily. There is also a notification system which will tell you when any battlefield objective or keep in your tier has changed hands. All this adds up to quicker response time from both sides and more flashpoints.

Not all the changes we'll see will be high profile, but some are technical in natures such as UI tweaking. First and foremost is at long last the ability to hyperlink objects. No longer will you have to send a tell spelling out all the stats on a piece of gear that dropped. Link away as you would in other games. Other things like chat boxes which light up when updated or gamma sliders will add some customization that many have been asking for. Mailbox sorting, Guild administration adjustments, and too much more to list have also made it in. While much of it is aggressive bug squashing we've come to know from Mythic, a few are cosmetic and it should easily improve the overall play experience.

No true fan of the game will be disappointed with 1.1.0 but what about those teetering on the fence post? Will this be the magic patch everyone hopes will improve the game for them? Keep an eye out in the next two weeks for 1.1.0 to hit the Live servers. In the mean time be sure to check out the Public Test Server when it goes live to see all this for yourself.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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