Welcome back to another adventure everyone and I do hope you have enjoyed it thus far!
I am pleased to announce that Wars of Arda V1.0 will finally be released *VERY* soon! I have posted this article to try to drum up attention for the big release, and to give you all an idea of what you can expect in this release, what you can expect to *not* be in the V1.0 release, and what will happen next.
Firstly I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to our work thus far! I have updated the credits section on our homepage, but if I have missed anyone who wasn't credited and would like to be credited specifically on our moddb page do let me know (find me on Discord)!
Now, the good stuff! We have made incredible progress since our last article that contained our first developer diary. We have overhauled several factions since, we have updated faction emblems in almost every place they can be found, we have been working on balancing and rebalancing, and we have begun planning our campaign! A list of the factions you can expect in V1.0 is listed on our home page, but I will list it out here as well. There are a total of 27 factions in V1.0:
-Kingdom of Gondor
-Principality of Belfalas
-Kingdom of Eothrym
-Kingdom of Esgaroth
-Kingdom of Arthedain
-Kingdom of Cardolan
-Kingdom of Rhudaur
-Dominion of Mordor
-Shadow of Dol Guldur
-Orcs of the Misty Mountains
-Witch Kingdom of Angmar
-Sultanate of Harad
-Loke-Khanate of Rhun
-Kingdom of Gramia
-Realm of Dorwinion
-Ice Tribes of Lossoth
-Kingdom of Umbar-Adunaim
-Khanate of Khand
-Union of Ered Luin
-House of Imladris
-Kingdom of Lindon
-Kingdom of Lothlorien
-Kingdom of Eryn Galen
-Kingdom of Khazad-Dum
-Kingdom of Nordinbad
-Chiefdom of the Gwathuirim
-Chiefdom of the Ordvir
Current Limitations:
As of right now, we still are multiplayer and custom battles only, but that will change in V2.0. Furthermore you will notice the odd unit card that is misleading (the Lords of Londaroth in Esgaroth's roster for example do *NOT* have a bow) or may not be an *exact* representation of the unit model. This is because we are a very small team that also contribute to other Middle Earth mods. We have poured a ton of effort into this mod, but understand that it is an ongoing project. We're also still working on unit sprites, so you'll notice a lot of placeholders. Finally, you may notice the odd emblem here and there, or place-holder models for faction generals and such, though we have largely taken care of this.
What we have planned:
Following V1.0's release, we plan to host a tournament in partnership with Scouts of Entertainment within 2-3 months following the relase. Following the tournament's conclusion, we will take an undetermined amount of time (though hopefully on the scale of weeks to months) to prepare a mid-version patch that will contain missing emblems, new general and character models, updated unit cards, meta-balancing, unit descriptions and unit description cards, and unit sprites.
We're investigating the potential of at least one new faction as well that will be released prior to V2.0, but possibly 2-3. Medieval 2 Total War can sustain up to 31 factions so we should in theory be able to add another 4 in total. In practice though, it is not so simple as there are several constraints. Our biggest constraint to adding any more factions at this time is actually unknown, though it is suspected to be a UI issue. In the event however that we can add another faction, preference will be given to the Orocarni Alliance, which are the Dwarves of the Red Mountains. If we can add two and then three additional factions then we will add (in order of priority), a faction representing the province of Harondor (we're still working out the name), and then a Reunited Kingdom of Arnor that will be avaiable for multiplayer but will be intended to be a campaign faction. The other constraint that might limit the addition of more than one faction is the limitation to 500 total units that can be present in any one expansion/mod of Medieval 2 Total War. At last count we were somewhere between 475-480, and we will need 3-5 of those that remain for ships in the campaign. All of this would also come out in a mid-release patch, or in a potential V1.5.
V2.0 then will simply provide some blanket updates to all factions, and will add a rudimentary campaign. By "rudimentary" I mean that there will be few if any scripts but it will be functional. Further iterations of WoA will add scripts to the campaign provided that either I personally pick up the ability to script write, or we recruit a script writer.
All of that being said, this is simply a plan, and no plan survives upon contact with reality. The fact of the matter is that I am incredibly busy and will eventually need to take a bit of a break from my break-neck modding pace. Furthermore I will need more dedicated mod contributors and preferably developers with skillsets that I don't already have. The next best thing would be someone with no prior modding experience that is willing to learn (seriously modding Medieval 2 is hilariously easy).
As the mod development evolves I will provide updates by articles and by developer diaries that I can assure you. In fact the next developer diary I'm hoping to do within the next couple months to bring everyone up to speed on some more specifics.
I'm afraid that is all I have to say today! Again, keep your eyes peeled around this space for the V1.0 release as it is ridiculously close to ready for release!
I hope you'll join us on our next adventure!
-Bilbo
