Ladies and Gentlemen.
In a few short hours, we will be releasing Tier 4.
Without further ado, here is your hype video!
Click here to watch on YouTube
But now, more ado.
I know, this is crazy. We were at least Two Weeks away. You are, perhaps, confused - I can hear your thoughts. "I thought there would be more hype? Genisaurus said they were going to wait a week after the last video!"
I will explain, and I strongly suggest you continue reading.
As many of you are aware, we left the server in a very unstable and broken state a little over a week ago. We have been working on Tier 4 for some time, and some of the Tier-4-specific code slipped into an unrelated update, and broke things. As a result, we rolled back the server to the last-known point before T4 development started, which turned out to not be a very good place to roll back to. This had no effect on our T4 development branch, but it meant that we would have to duplicate efforts to fix any of the glaring bugs.
On one hand, this is an alpha, and this kind of thing should be expected. On the other hand, there's no use testing something everyone knows is broken, and the majority of our playerbase staunchly refuses to acknowledge themselves as testers anyway. We made a decision to finish the bare minimum of what would be required to get Tier 4 ready, and release it as early as possible. This has required even more of our already stretched-thin time, and it will require several concessions from the players.
First of those, is that you must remember that this is an alpha, and will be riddled with bugs. PQs will not work, gear will be made available unintentionally, things will break and the server will need to be reset right in the middle of whatever you are doing. This is something many of you are acutely aware of already. But some of you try very hard to ignore our alpha status, and we will be having a large influx of new players who don't understand how things work here. Which brings me to...
Second, we will be attracting much more attention from fair-weather players in the coming days and weeks - players whom have sat on the sidelines waiting for us to finish Tier 4, or whom have at some point lost interest in the game between major updates. These players will be bringing with them a large number of questions, a sizable amount of confusion about changes we've made, and opinions about how we should have done it instead. We expect all players, old and new to be familiar with the rules, and our standards of behavior. It would be a shame if our GM staff had to ban players just as we finally released the best part of the game.
Third, our GM staff has doubled in size, but they are just as eager to play as you are. Please, make their jobs as easy as you possibly can. Use the bugtracker to report new bugs. PM GMs on the forums with complaints about players. Please do not contact them directly in-game, unless you absolutely have to.
Fourth, understand that our early deployment of Tier 4 means that we will be rapidly developing and deploying updates and fixes to content as we go. Expect the server to be rebooted often. Expect wipes of all kinds, though we will try to minimize their severity and number. Expect things to break as often as they are fixed. Large updates like this are a two-edged sword: the longer you develop without an incremental update, the more there is to fix. But some things require big releases.
Fifth, while we have fixed many bugs with this release, we will still be suffering from the bugs causing mass disconnects and crashing. We are still trying to track down how some packets are being malformed, and what causes this to happen. These mass disconnects scale with the number of people in any one area - so while we all love a giant fight, please do not put the entire server cap in Praag.
But that's enough about that, let's talk about the content.
Changes to the Tier 4 Campaign:
First, I want to be clear. Nothing about this campaign system is permanent. We will be demolishing the whole system and building it back up in the near future. We will involve you when we are ready to reveal what we are working on, but in the meantime, be aware that what we're giving you is a temporary Band-Aid.
- The Tier 2 and Tier 3 campaigns are largely unaffected by these changes.
- Siege weapons of all kinds should work.
- All three pairings will be available upon launch. Fortresses and Capital Cities are not available at this time.
- To capture a zone, you must hold both keeps and all four Battlefield Objectives.
- In the central zone (e.g. Praag), one faction holds each keep. In the end-zones (i.e. Chaos Wastes and Reikland), one realm will start holding both keeps. The attacking realm will have to fight harder and harder the closer they push to the gates of the fortress.
- When a zone unlocks, all of the Battlefield Objectives will be neutral and locked for 10 minutes. This is to allow both realms to establish control over some or all of the objectives.
- In Tier 4, a realm is only required to control two Battlefield Objectives in order to attack a keep. However, the doors of the enemy keep will regenerate health faster the more BOs the enemy holds.
- Experience, Renown, and Influence rewards have been removed from all Battlefield Objectives and keep captures. Capturing or defending a keep will still grant a gold chest, and defending still provides some experience and renown.
- Experience, Renown and Influence rewards have been added to zone locks. Additionally, zone locks will grant Officer's medallions.
- The rewards for zone locks, kill quests, and keep captures or defenses will get worse as you are pushed closer to your own fortress. The rewards become better the closer you get to your enemy's fortress.
- When a pairing is locked, it will stay locked until all three pairings are locked (or until a server reboot, for now).
Changes to Leveling:
- Renown Rank is now capped to your current Career Rank. You will no longer gain renown if your renown rank is greater than your career rank, until you reach level 40.
- The renown rank cap has not been raised. We are deliberating a change to the way we handle renown caps, and you can expect to hear more about this very soon. Said change would require a coding effort that would have delayed T4 more.
- The level caps in each tier are now as follows:
- Tier 1: 11
- Tier 2: 21
- Tier 3: 31
- Tier 4: 40
- There will be no upconversion from Soldier's Medallions and Emblems to Officer's Medallions and Emblems for a period of time. Tier 4 renown potions will be purchasable with Soldier's emblems for a time.
- Annihilator set pieces are purchasable at vendors in all friendly T4 held keeps and both capital cities. An entire set costs 530 Officer's Medallions.
- Rank 34/34 Scenario weapons are purchasable from the T4 Scenario vendors in the War Quarter and the Apex. Weapons are 335 Officer's Emblems for 1-handed, 670 Officer's Emblems for 2-handed.
- Rank 39/39 Scenario weapons are also purchasable from the T4 Scenario vendors in the War Quarter and the Apex. Weapons are 440 Officer's Emblems for 1-handed, 880 Officer's Emblems for 2-handed.
- Mercenary set pieces are purchasable from the T4 Scenario vendors in the War Quarter and the Undercroft. The full Mercenary set costs 880 Officer's Emblems.
- Uncommon (green) renown weapons and armor have been completely overhauled. These new items are purchasable from the renown equipment vendors in the War Quarter and the Undercroft.
- Ruin set pieces are obtainable through Tier 4 PQs. At the moment, the following PQs are guaranteed to work:
- PRAAG :
- Chaos - Tomb of Deathsword
- Empire - Hells fall
- DRAGONWAKE :
- HE - Dominion of khaine
- DE - Caladains furnace
- THUNDER MOUNTAIN :
- GS - Reicharts raiders
- DW - Ungry ungry greenskins
- The Tier 4 epic quest chains have been implemented, and offer several powerful weapons to choose from. Along with this, many items have new and functional passive abilities. Expect more abilities to be implemented over time.
Some Wipes:
- Characters: characters meeting any one of the below criteria have been deleted.
- Belonging to an account which has been permanently banned. Exiled and temporarily banned characters are fine.
- Belonging to an account which has not been logged into for over 1 year.
- Charger's Charms were never meant to be available, and have been wiped now that the ability they grant has been fixed. They may become available again in the future.
- Mounts with a 60% speed bonus are now available. Old, nonfunctional mounts have been wiped, and the gold used to purchase them has been refunded.
- Boundless items were discovered to have been originally awarded from content that is not available, at an extremely low drop rate. As such, they are more powerful than most T4 weapons available, and were given in higher quantities than was responsible. They have been completely replaced with new items with a more appropriate degree of power.
- All purple and blue items have been removed from the drop lists until such a time as their proper origins can be discovered.
And last but not least, the full patch notes:
[Groups]
Londo:
- Group member's nameplates will now be shown in green while in orvr.
[Scenarios]
Londo:
-Serpent's Passage scenario has been enabled.
[Keeps]
Nalgol:
- Goldchest for successful keep defense.
[Guilds]
Nalgol:
- New guild leader assignment if. If the guild leader is banned or not logged in for 26 days.
[General Changes]
Genisaurus
- Added support for a new command for all players: .ror will convey information about features unique to RoR
- Added support for variable NPC ranges. Engineer and Magus turrets will have their proper ranges restored, depending on their tooltips (100'/65'/30').
- Renown Rank is now capped to your current Career Rank. You will no longer gain renown if your renown rank is greater than your career rank, until you reach level 40.
- Rewards for capturing BOs have been removed.
- Added support for items and skills that increase the maximum AP pool.
- Some set bonuses related to mastery trees have been reworked. They now add free mastery point(s) to the indicated mastery tree. These points are lost when removing the gear, as are any abilities or tactics you no longer qualify for without the bonus points.
- The number of kill quests in each pairing has been reduced to 1. The overall kill quest rewards have been increased, and will now be restricted to the pairing in which they are assigned.
- Adjusted Debolster requirements to account for the new tier caps.
- Tier 1:
- No mastery points spent
- No more than 10 renown points spent
- No gear equipped higher than level 8.
- No talismans in any equipment
- Tier 2:
- No more than 5 mastery points spent
- No more than 20 renown points spent
- No gear equipped higher than level 18.
- Tier 3:
- No more than 13 mastery points spent
- No more than 30 renown points spent
- No gear equipped higher than level 28.
RyanMakara:
- [5478] Item: Changed Torn Holy Shirt to Medium robe instead of Robe.
- [5565] Item: Steelcap Mushroom now sells to vendors for 90 brass each.
- [5602] Item: Fangbreaker Bigchoppa has been renamed to Fangbreaker Bigloppa and now looks like an actual 2 hander for Black Orcs.
- [5604] Item: Trisanctifier's Klad now has the correct stats.
- [5627] Item: Ironfist Ambraces now have appearance.
- [5611] Quest: 'Ead 'Unta (Destruction Tracker boots quest) can now be completed again.
- [5474] NPC: Fixed a strange looking shaman.
- [5474] NPC: Aspects of the Winds of Magic now have the correct subtype.
- [5498] NPC: Bloodforged Bloodletter now has the correct subtype.
- [5503] NPC: Zchekil the Vile double spawn removed.
- [5559] NPC: Grim Wolves no longer kill their cubs.
- [5619] NPC: Chaos Raven now counts as a bird.
- [5629] NPC: Deep Root Spider is no longer a Chaos follower.
- [5601] NPC: Stopped Loremaster of Hoeth from messing with the Winds of Change, reducing his size back to normal.
- [5464] ToK: Killing 1,000 Goblins now awards the appropriate tome unlock.
- [5501] ToK: For Once It Isn't Guano tome unlock and title reward added.
- [5529] ToK: Ironmane's Lock added to Memorial Plaque.
- [5536] ToK: Good Night Goblin is now obtainable.
- [5540] ToK: Simple Minds added to Observation Point.
- [5542] ToK: Correct unlock added to the Bloody Sun Banner.
- [5573] ToK: De-spite can be obtained again from killing Maegda.
- [5628] Dog Waylayers grant the "Dirty Dealin'" tome unlock upon being killed now.
Saupreusse:
- [4797] NPC: Fixed all double spawns mentioned in this ticket.
Other Changes
RyanMakara:
- Level 6 quest chains salvaged from older Return to WAR recruitment politics have been added for both Destruction and Order, obtainable from Spymaster Raveth and Scoutmaster Herold. They award the Return to WAR trophies.
- Added the required ToK unlocks for Greenskin Grappler trophies. They currently count for 1k, 10k and 100k Orc NPC kills (this unlock is order only).
- Fixed an exploit in Temple of Isha that allowed players to jump over the walls.
- Removed the Rank 12 mounts intended to be only used by guilds from the Light Mount vendor.
- Added the correct Rank 12 guild mounts to the guild vendors.
- Changed the armor of Dwarf Ranger NPCs with more appropriate attire, resembling a more lore-oriented look.
Torquemadra:
- Added functionality for a very large number of passive item abilities. These abilities will be added to items over time.
- Removed Bloodlord and Ruin helm appearances from various t3 armors.
Meralors:
- Fixing AreaIDs, all areas should display the correct influence.
Dana:
- Set the sell price of the new accessory items on the library vendors to 1 copper.
And so much more. There's so much that went into making T4 possible that I can't itemize. There is so much work that can't be thoroughly listed, because it was required just to get T4 off the ground. Everyone on the team has put a ton of time and effort into getting us here, and we wouldn't be here today without their efforts.
Ethreal 
Corque 
Urgiz 
Loxley 
Chilli 
Maduza
