The WAR live event, Keg End, is in full progress this weekend. We apologize to our readers for not clarifying a few things in our Keg End Wiki Article, as well as not listing the article in our main ToC. Everything should be in its proper place now.

Our guild has had quite a bit of fun with this event so far. We have slain Drunken Gnoblars, guzzled Keg Caches and bar hopped in Altdorf. The mysterious and all-powerful golden stein awaits! So grab your frosty mug and join us for Keg End!

For those of you frustrated at having to go to a B&M store to purchase a copy of Warhammer Online, or simply want to do away with all tangible items and live completely in the virtual world, STEAM yesterday began offering the game.

Spore, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and More Available Now

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - December 18, 2008. Just in time for the holidays, Valve announced that, Spore™, Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™, Mass Effect®, Need for Speed™ Undercover and EA SPORTS FIFA Manager 2009 are available now to gamers in North America via Steam, a leading platform for PC games and digital content with over 15 million accounts around the world.

Status: This update is rescheduled for tomorrow (Sunday, 12/21) at 7:00 AM EST.

Early Saturday morning all NA servers are coming down for maintenance for a few hours:

At 7:00AM EST all North American servers will be coming down for an update to the servers with Oceanic servers following shortly after at 9:00 AM EST. We anticipate that North American Servers will be back online before 11:00 AM EST and Oceanic before 12:00 PM EST. This update is part of our continuing efforts to improve server stability across the board but especially in Realm vs. Realm Combat.

Another round of Hot Fixes today!

Combat and Careers : Squig Herder

• What Blocka?: The effects of multiple armor de-buffs will no longer stack. Only the largest armor de-buff will affect the target.

For this Dev Diary, Missy Hatch prods Bruce Maclean, Development Director for WAR, to write a bit about Patches and how they are produced. Patches, Updates, Hotfixes (or is it Hot Fixes)... we should have a Dev Diary on what each of these exactly means.

This week’s Dev Diary has a funny story. You see, I (Missy) usually give our devs at least two weeks of lead time for their diaries, to make sure they're not rushed or stressed. A Dev Diary is an important window into the studio and how it works, and so it’s my opinion that a dev should feel relaxed and at peace when he or she sits down to the task. I asked Bruce to consider writing this Dev Diary on October 28, and have been gently reminding him about it ever since.

Beginning at 7:00 AM EST, all North American servers will be brought down to begin the update to 1.1.0d. Oceanic servers will follow at 9:00 AM EST, and we expect all servers to be back online no later than 1:00 PM EST.

You can find a full list of notes here. We'll be updating this message with the maintenance progress throughout the morning, so be sure to check back with the Herald often. Thanks!

Another patch goes live tomorrow! Improved performance and progress in RvR is the focus. The WAR team wants to make sure that our systems are performing at peak efficiency during the holidays and the Keg End event, even if our characters are inebriated!

1.1.0d will be going live Friday, 12/19. All North American servers will be brought down at 7:00 AM EST with Oceanic servers to follow at 9:00 AM EST. We expect all servers to be back up and running by 1:00 PM EST.

Mark Jacobs, in an apparent desire to be Mythic's own Santa Claus has presents for all the good little Orcs and Dwarfs (and everybody else) this season.

Seems they are continuing to do their best to reduce stability issues, reporting a 75% reduction in the number of CTDs over the past few weeks.

And, in the spirit of the season, they had this to say:

Starting today, December 18th, we are going to be speeding up the leveling curve in WAR for a few weeks.  This will result in players’ time to level being approximately 10% faster in Tier 2 and 20% faster in Tiers 3 and 4.

Click below for the full announcement!

Status: Update Complete

Looks like we have another RvR stability update for all servers.  Every little bit helps!

At 10:30AM EST all servers will be coming down for an update to the servers and anticipate everything to be back online before 1:30PM EST. We've made good progress in improving server stability and these further changes are part of our continued efforts to enhance your experiences in game, especially in RvR.

We'll continue to work to make your time in game even better and thank you for your continued cooperation as we do so!

Another round of Hot Fixes were released yesterday. While this looks to be a long list, the first Hot Fix has an effect on a lot of the following Morale abilities.

Combat and Careers

We are making a change to the way in which morale abilities interact with crowd control immunities. Starting now, morale abilities are no longer exempt from crowd-control immunity timers. Crowd control immunity now applies to all player abilities, whether used from the action bar or the morale bar.

See below for a detailed list of the morale abilities that are affected by this change.