2010 - The Year of Quality

Yeah, Mythic conciders 2010 to be the year of quality, we can all agree on that especially with recent patches, performance has been improved alot. I read a statement where they said that they're satisfied with current performance which has been their #1 priority, so they are now able to focus more on new content.

"Next year is going to be an exciting one, and I am looking forward to sharing more of our plans during the frigid days and long winter nights of January. We’ll have exciting new Live Events, new weapons and cloaks earned by spilling the blood of your enemies in RvR, a new Scenario structure, economy and loot drop improvements, adjustments to the King and Warlord encounters to convert them to RvR-only battles, UI customization enhancements, Tier 4 RvR campaign improvements, daily quests and so much more - and that’s just our near term plans for 2010."

(source: 1.3.3 Producers Letter - Bruce Maclean)

Itemization

Sounds fair and good, I'm really looking forward to see the new weapons, the Bloodmoon staff I use tends to feel a bit old. I really hope that they implement them wizely, they should make oRvR more appealing to high RR players and new weapons could be a nice carrot. The problem is, which I've noticed in our alliance as well, that many of the "good" players /ignore oRvR, I really can't blame them, 'cause scenarios are just way alot more rewarding.

No more r29 ruining your scenarios

The most promising announcement (for me at least) is "a new scenario structure", which naturally could mean anything. But all we can do is hope for a tournament mode in style with Guild Wars, that game was brilliant really, what NCSoft did was that they made an ongoing constant competitive battleground mode, you could join a queue with your team and then fight your way to the top. Well, I might be wishing for too much, but at least give us a premade vs premade option will you? :)

Warlord/King PQ restructuration

Oh dear, they plan to make 'em RvR only, which could end brilliantly or just make it impossible to complete any of them. This game is and should be as much about RvR as possible, but I enjoyed the only WB raid instances in the game, so hopefully they don't remove them entirely, but well, they have so much lore to look in to that they should come up with something fresh and fun.

In overall their revealed plans are fine, we're still waiting for the armor rewamps as well which they stated were to be released in 1.3.3, so hopefully they're finished to the next patch. However, I'm still waiting for the "next big thing", these patches we get are more or less maintenance mode, I'd like to see what the creative team has been working on since LotD (1.3), if they have. This game needs proper endgame (rr70-80) content, but that's another post.