In a blog post today, Creative Assembly laid out their plans for Update 1.1. Expected to launch in “early” April, it’ll make some changes to the shape of the game as well as fixing a few bits and fiddling with balance. The blog post also gabs about faction balance in multiplayer (the delightful Ogre Kingdoms are “overperforming heavily” while Grand Cathay are faring the worst), improving AI responsiveness during battle, fixing bugs, releasing the mod manager and enabling Workshop support, and more. They talk vaguely about longterm plans too, though don’t say anything new about Immortal Empires or the usual Blood Pack DLC. They say their present goal is to “iron out the technical wrinkles, improve the stability and performance of the game, and adjust the balance and gameplay based on ongoing commentary from the community” to create a “strong baseline” for future additions. Eventually, they hope to break from Twarhammer 2’s pattern of pairing the big patches with DLC releases, and start releasing “major” updates with balance tweaks and bug fixes between DLCs “on a quicker cadence than previous games”. I’ll be curious to see what the game becomes down the line, as the end of a trilogy and grand unification. “Though best considered as the final part of an excessive strategy megagame, Total War: Warhammer 3 is a heavyweight in its own right,” Nate said in our Total Warhammer 3 review in February. “A little too much RTS grind in the midgame is easily outweighed by transformative changes to multiplayer, sieges, diplomacy and more.” What he was really waiting for is the upcoming Immortal Empires campaign which will roll the lands and factions of the entire trilogy into one giant war. Disclosure: RPS co-founder Alec Meer (RPS in peace) wrote on Twarhammer 3.
