WAR: The Patch 1.2.1 Coming Next Week

Today, the official announces that a New Patch 1.2.1 will be available next week on the Public Test Servers. It contains a number of changes to the game. Here are some highlights for this patch:

1. Combat Responsiveness Improvements – This subject has been an object of much discussion, both internally at Mythic, and externally among the community over the past few months and the team has been focusing especially heavily on this issue over the past few weeks.  The result is that we have made a number of important improvements to this aspect of the game.  In V1.2.1, casting times have become more accurate under normal play conditions, and players should no longer see a significant "stretch" or "pause" when casting spells while playing in "normal" conditions.   We have also changed the UI display so increments of 1/2 second will be shown to give the player a more accurate and correct representation of time, and in high-lag situations, there will be a slight pause after the bar has filled up instead of the current "stretching" system.  We have also made improvements to the animations and special effects-systems, which will result in better transitions especially when players are "chain-casting."
2. Keep Upgrade System – Our new Keep Upgrade system allows guilds that own a Keep to increase the Keep's utility and defensive capabilities in a number of ways which we will talk about in a ton of detail later today.  Upgrades need to be paid for, of course, through a maintenance fee, and upgrades will decay over time if maintenance fees aren't paid.  We will have a Keep Upgrade Interface to help the guild track the status of its Keep and associated upgrades. And for those guilds that take and hold a Keep until the zone is taken, a special reward awaits.
3. General UI Improvements – We have made a number of improvements to the UI, including a major overhaul of the Guild Window that includes making it larger, adding more tabs and even more useful information. We have also made changes to the User Settings window to make it easier to use.
4. RvR Zone Control Rewards- We have made a number of improvements to reward players receive for capturing an entire zone as opposed to individual Objective and Keep captures. Battlefield Objectives will also buff players in the zone, and the players who have captured a Keep or Battlefield Objective will also see a doubling in the amount of Renown gained when the zone is captured.
5. The Battle for the Gates of Ekrund Expands! – We have added a special 6-on-6 version of the Gates of Ekrund for players between the Ranks of 19-24.  This will help players at these Ranks gain experience faster while the team continues to work on other improvements to the experience-gain pace for those Ranks. Of course, this new Scenario "Broken Gates of Ekrund" is also accompanied by its own quest.
6. Beyond the Sands Live Event – It's time for another Live Event, and the rise of the Tomb Kings is getting closer by the minute!
7. Lots of Bug Fixes – While nowhere near the size of the main 1.2 patch, the team still found time to crush a bunch of bugs while working on the rest of 1.2 and the upcoming 1.3.
8. Return to Nordenwatch Weekend Event – We will also be holding a special Nordenwatch-themed weekend event.
9. And More! – Lots more features, career balancing, and improvements to the game are on their way.  More details about this next week.
   

[Source: warhammeronline.com]