Three-Card Monte

Both expected and unexpected, in a way, Mark Jacobs announced via the Herald (good boy for using the Herald!) that the "Combat and Careers" portion of 1.05 -- you know, pretty much all of 1.05 -- was being moved to a newly created 1.06 patch. 1.05, which begins more or less whenever you read this, will house the Heavy Metal event and some other changes. This means that we're in for at least one more patch (1.06) before we hit the fabled 1.1 content patch and the Tankly goodness.

Mark gives the reasons behind this last-minute changeup: in making such widespread changes to careers, they want to make sure they get it right before it goes live, and right now that's not the case. Read into that what you will or what has been said -- controversy over some of the bigger changes (grudge tinkering, healing nerf), the knowledge that a major misstep at this stage of the game could severely hurt WAR in the PR department right as Wrath is running rampant, or Mythic listening to the playerbase and responding in a way that perhaps is going above and beyond what they did in beta. All of these are acceptable, in my book.

We're going to have enough to do with Heavy Metal to keep us occupied, but... yeah, people are anxious. We want class balancing, we want some new hefty content, and perhaps most importantly, we want to hear more about what lies beyond 1.1 -- what's in store for WAR in the long run. I know that's a tall demand and perhaps unrealistic for a MMO that's in its toddler year, but it is what it is.

One thing I especially like from his post:

We are looking at several interface changes geared to make target selection, spell-casting, etc. easier and more reliable especially in RvR.

As Mr. Burns would say -- excellent.