The highly anticipated 1.36 "Hybrid Supply" (the mixture of moveable supply and town based garrisons) is rapidly approaching Closed Beta! We expect a full release this April once we complete a two week open beta "burn-in" process to educate players of how 1.36 works and of course help us refine any last little tweaks so that we can have a very successful launch. This has been an extraordinary project and will dramatically improve the way the campaign is played. Please continue reading to learn a bit more about the software release process involved with this major update.
We're getting awfully close to 1.36 Hybrid Supply coming to CLOSED BETA. We'll be inviting our Builders and High Command officers simultaneously to try it out, for up to a week, and we have a hopeful goal to be in CLOSED BETA of 1.36 by the end of this month, March. Barring any major item popping up, we reserve the right to be in April if required on this. But that's our goal, end of this month - YES it is getting closer!
Our developers and testers have been working on this hardcore and understand how urgent it is to stabilize the WWII Online Campaign experience. So this should be wonderful news to you all.
OPEN BETA / SOFT RELEASE
We'll be going into Open Beta immediately following Closed Beta / any fixes required during that time. Open Beta will be 1.36 deployment on the LIVE CAMPAIGN SERVER and will require a full-stop interruption of the Campaign. Regardless of the Campaign's state, when Open Beta is ready for deployment, we will be calling the Campaign to a DRAW. So be ready, you've got the heads up.
The decision to place 1.36 on the Campaign server comes from me directly. Not to upset anyone, but to ensure maximum play-testing and getting you all up to speed with what is happening.
Open Beta should be considered a "soft-release," and after that two week "burn-in" period, we'll be calling 1.36 officially live and run it alongside a Campaign.
I need everyone to understand how important this is and be excited about what's before us. This is the most anticipated release of WWII Online in a very longtime, as it impacts the way the Campaign is played out. So we need maximum activity and positive / collaborative feedback rolling throughout. Everyone should be stoked who has been looking for this.
RELEASE
Once we've passed Open Beta and our team has knocked out any last things that creeped up, we will go into the regular Campaign. We will run a "Welcome Back Soldier" so that all of our players can come back in and check things out, alongside our new product plan offers (which will be announced shortly).
I hope you're ready - it's almost here!
From the development roadmap
HYBRID SUPPLY SYSTEM (1.36)
We engaged heavily with the community and even our people internally about our original plans for 1.36, and we've made some changes that we think are going to do better to meet the best of both worlds, that being town based supply and what we know today with TOE's / Brigades. We know that there are some issues with High Command officers and players have to do to keep the current system running, for those of you stepping up to HC and holding the line (we salute you big time!). But it's our duty to make some changes and do the very best we can so that we set you up for success. So here are some short notes about what 1.36 will be about (now) and why this will have a very big impact on game play. It should be noted that several of our goals as announced last year still remain, so while this may be a bit redundant (and obvious to some of you vets) we're going to be sure to list them out again so everyone knows what we're trying to do.
Primary Goals Include:
- Stabilizing the Campaign map during ALL time zones.
- Providing more supply for the players throughout the entire theatre of operations.
- Redeploying High Command's focus on cultivating great community relations and massive coordinated battles.
- Providing greater opportunity for organization via planned operations.
- We're looking to incorporate a newer version of web HC tools to connect with web Squad tools as well.
- Bring the value back to squads by incorporating them as part of the HC structure.
- Completely revitalize the approach with HC by enabling voting brigade leadership and upwards (minus central command).
- MASSIVE overhaul of the user interface so that it is easier to follow, with a better design to direct users into action and more user friendly.
- Restoring rear line re-supply and interdiction operations.
- Continuing to give HC a role that can lead the player base
- Reduce the pressure HC officers with workload, and reduce blowback from community
- Continue to have move-able supply to maintain diverse game play
This will be achieved by:
- Enabling garrison supply across the frontlines, and one town to its rear.
- Enabling the continuation of move-able flags that are supplemental (not the standard).
- Refactor how players spawn in to simplify the user interface.
- Make the movement of garrison supply based on automatic conditions according to map outcomes.
- There will always be a frontline with garrison supply, regardless of how the lines are presented on the map.
- There will always be a rear town with garrison supply behind and adjacent to the frontline town.
- Allied forces will be capable of changing ownership of their towns (US / FR / UK) via HC options commands