With much anticipation, Update 1.0.6 has been officially announced! Tomorrow the servers will be taken offline at 6:30AM EST, with the Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00AM EST for the update.

This is our biggest update yet! It's chock-full of exciting career changes and heralds the debut of the highly anticipated Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun careers. If you've finished the Heavy Metal event and have opened your Heavy Metal Chest, then you will be able to play a Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun when this patch goes live (before anyone else!). For those of you who did not complete the Heavy Metal event, don't fret! You, too, will be able to play these two new careers starting next week.

Because this is such a massive update, we've added the notes directly into our wiki with discussion regarding the update located in our forums. Part 1 focuses on Highlights, Combat and Careers. Part 2 completes Combat and Careers and finishes with General Changes and Bug Fixes, Items, RvR, and UI.

Another weekly site update, sharing with you the latest information regarding WAR Allakhazam, as well as reviewing important announcements you may have missed earlier last week.

Categories include: News Highlights, Forum Discussions, WIKI/DB Updates, and Guide Updates.  Click "More..." below to view a summary of each category!

There was some brief maintenance done to the Dark Crag server this afternoon. Here are the latest updates:

Update 11/28/2008 1:39 PM EST: Dark Crag is back online. We'll see you in game!

Update 11/28/2008 1:00 PM EST: Dark Crag is offline.

Currently the Dark Crag server is offline due to technical difficulties. We are aware of the issue and are working on a resolution to get you back in game in a timely fashion. 

We apologize for the inconvenience on your holiday weekend!

As I've seen in our own forums, there has been plenty of discussion regarding the performance of Tier 4 content. Fortunately, the developers want you to know they are listening to your concerns:

The WAR community has expressed concern with overall performance and server stability in Tier 4, particularly during large-scale fortress sieges. We want you to know that we’re listening and dedicated to resolving this issue as quickly as possible. Our Production team has been working hard to resolve this with both server-side fixes to resolve any crashing issues, as well as client-side fixes to improve frame rate and other graphic-related issues that can occur during large battles.

Another Hot Fix today!

RvR Updates

• Keep upkeep costs for guilds that have claimed a Keep have been significantly reduced.

If you own a Collector's Edition of the game, you'll have that neat little Citadel miniature as well. WAR Herald has an article on how to paint it and make it shine proudly on your WAR shrine in your home!:

Those of you lucky enough to own one of the WAR Collector’s Edition boxes will also be the proud owner of a limited edition Citadel miniature — the mighty Grumlok, Warboss of the Bloody Sun tribe, along with his sidekick Gazbag the Shaman. This figure was sculpted and cast especially for the CE by Games Workshop and is available only in this box.

Did you paint your miniature, and have your own WAR shrine like I do? Send us screenshots and we'll post them here next week!

Another round of character transfers has begun! Servers included are from the NA Core, oRvR, RP Rulesets, as well as the Oceanic oRvR and Core Rulesets.

Round 7 of our Free Character Transfers has started! Players of the following servers are now able to login to the Mythic Account Center and begin transfer of their characters. Please be sure to read all instructions carefully! There are cases where you may lose items if you do not properly prepare your character for transfer. This also applies to the Guild Transfer functionality.

Click "More..." below to view the complete list. See here for the complete list over all of the rounds so far implemented.

With the holidays approaching we know you'll have plenty of time for Turkey, Egg Nog, and of course WAR! The WAR team has opened up the last of the Heavy Metal events so you can partake in all of them:

You may have already noticed that we have opened up the last 7 events for the Heavy Metal Event so you can take part in them all, at your leisure, over the extended Thanksgiving Holiday.  We want everyone to have a chance to unlock the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun. You can now finish the event and redeem the Heavy Metal Chest from a Herald.  When you redeem the chest, it is important that you open (right click) the chest so that you become eligible to play the classes a week earlier than everyone else.  If you qualify through the Heavy Metal event, the Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun will become playable next week when we do the 1.0.6 patch.

See who is planning on participating in what events here !

Current Server Status: Maintenance Complete

All servers will be coming down at 1PM for immediate maintenance to address server stability. We apologize for this short notice and we anticipate all servers to be online by 4PM EST.

Update - 3:00PM EST: All servers are now online.  Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Update - 2:00PM EST: All servers are currently offline for maintenance.

If you care about Open RvR and what happens to its development, you will want to read the entire Open RvR - State of the Game article just released:

Over the last few months I’ve spoken about our continued focus on improving our open RvR systems.  While we have taken some major steps in the last month, we believe that there is much more we can do to encourage people to take part in oRvR throughout the entire evolution of their character(s).  Over the next few months we have some very exciting changes and additions taking place.  Please note that as always, this does not represent everything that either we are doing or thinking about doing, just what we, as of now, plan on adding to WAR. 

  We have a number of major initiatives planned for oRvR in WAR.  Please keep in mind that these changes/systems apply to oRvR only and not to scenarios.  This is not all we are working on but these do reflect the majority of oRvR additions that we are currently working on/planning for the next few months.

Click "More..." below to view the rest of the article. We've also included it in our forums for further discussion.