population-cap
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Counterpoint on Warhammer Online's Fortress siege population caps
We reported earlier this week that Warhammer Online has been having some issues with Fortress sieges, and opted to implement a solution -- population thresholds. That solution has led to fewer Fortress-related crashes and overall improved performance, but not everyone is as enthusiastic about the changes Mythic has made to Warhammer Online. A good example of this type of dissent among the WAR ranks can be found at MMOCrunch in a criticism written by Paragus. He takes aim at the Tier 4 campaign changes to Fortresses and states that imposing population thresholds diminishes the very thing WAR bills itself as -- a massive realm-vs.-realm game. He doesn't pull any punches when he states, "The fact that they are trying to spin this by saying 'to allow even more players to participate' by capping population in a given area only makes me feel better about pulling my guild out of this game. I'll be waiting for the flames from Warhammer fans."
Changes and new features in EVE's latest Empyrean Age patch
The next EVE Online update is the Empyrean Age 1.1.1 patch, which deploys on September 30th. It brings with it a number of fixes and a few new features as well. These features are centered around the Jita problems, with three new jumps being added to help players avoid the laggy system: Muvolailen-Maurasi, Maurasi-Perimeter, and Veisto-Sarekuwa. An 'avoid system' option has been added to the autopilot, with a default setting to avoid Jita. Taking the population cap issue a step further, CCP Games is also rolling out an Auto-Move feature to the login process. In the event a player attempts to log in to a system which has already hit its population cap, the player will have the option of moving themself to a neighboring system. The rest of Empyrean Age 1.1.1 is comprised of smaller fixes and improvements, namely to the user interface and EVE's communication channels -- Voice, Mail, and Chat. In addition, they've fixed a problem where Stabber Fleet Issue ships wouldn't display (or cloak) properly due to an issue with the ship's model in the Trinity graphics engine. These are the changes announced at this time, but see the full patch notes for additional revisions made by CCP as the deployment approaches. Until then, the devs are discussing the changes -- both announced and unannounced -- with players on the official forums.
