This week has seen our new junior designers and scripter start in Montreal, along with the arrival of the majority of the team now, so we are fast getting up to full speed in the new location. A few people asked about what was done where now, after last week's update. The main production of new content will be done in Montreal, with those in the Oslo office providing live support, and additional production, but the majority of the team is now based in Montreal.

But now, on the stuff you are more interested in, amid the settling in we have been working on the next game update, and as mentioned last week there are quite a few interesting adjustments making their way into it. There are a reasonably extensive list of adjustments and tweaks to the Raid content for the end of tier three and tier four, hopefully removing some of the issues that were making certain encounters a touch too difficult (Keeper of Artifacts we are looking at in particular!), generally we tried to make sure we covered the areas where guilds were getting blocked by the difficulty curve being too steep. We have also increased the mastery awarded for completing tier three raids so that there is more incentive for those currently exploring in Khitai to return to try these raids.

We also resolved a couple of instances (like the hardmode of the Den of the Crowmen) where the correct loot would not always show up.

Then we have the next stage of the progression changes for the expansion content. There are a few things we are doing there, we are raising the faction rewards for higher tier repeatable quests, in particular in Paikang and Kara Korum, increasing the award of Marks of Acclaim in Paikang and Kara Korum, as well as adding in a new option for solo players where Marks of Acclaim can be traded up to Trophies at an exchange rate if you really want to chase epic items (it should be noted that manner won't be 'quick' as we have to still maintain the balance that teaming and doing the group content is the best way to get all those items, but we wanted to add it for players that really wanted to pursue the solo path only).

Then we have some class balance adjustments and a few ability fixes. This primarily relates to Rangers, where we will be adjusting their traps to prevent the effect stacking when multiple rangers combine, and also adjusting their damage downwards a bit, and resolved a couple of issues that caused some of the abilities (Hunting Hawk and Shred Armor) to be more beneficial than intended.

Along with a few other miscellaneous fixes, this update has shaped up to be more extensive than we intended with quite a few good 'tweak' type updates. We think they are needed though, and didn’t want to wait for 2.1. The update is being tested this week and next and we will look to release it to the live servers the following week.