Posted 27 August 2014 - 02:58 PM

Hello MechWarriors,As you are hopefully aware by now, tomorrow will be perhaps our largest downtime ever. This is to accommodate the move to our new data center. There are many advantages to the new data center such as being more cost effective while at the same time potentially offering greater latency performance to many our non NA customers. Besides that, there are a couple of really important reasons why you might want to make the effort to download the latest Public Test Client here and participate tomorrow...De-sync Bug: This public test will have our latest improvement to the Crytek networking code to work properly for MWO. It would be very helpful if we could get as close as possible to regular Thursday population levels to see if indeed the issue has been improved/resolved. To be clear we can't be sure of the impact of our change until we see the bug in a high load environment, similar to live production. Also keep in mind that this isn't a fix to remove all lag from the "Internets", but to specifically address the de-sync bug.Clan weapon balance test: As you know we have a large task on our hands to figure out the very best way to handle balancing Clan vs IS before the competitive aspects of CW come online. Over the past weeks we have been running various tests, and this public test, will be the latest one. In fact the last time we made a change to Clan weaponry there were plenty of people that stated we should do that on the test server. Well here it is, on the test server and ready for you to test. I am going to avoid telling you any of the details of what has changed. I am going to avoid telling you any of the details of what has changed. My hope is that you get to try these changes out and share your first-hand experience with us before the numbers lead to any preconceptions. Even with these changes, the Clan weapons still do more damage, have greater range, for the same or less heat, tonnage and crit space. In short they still very much fulfill the promises as originally stated on how the Clans would look and play. Within a week of the completion of this Public Test, I will follow up with another post on exactly what direction we will be taking on Clan vs IS balancing.Thanks for your help and support. Please let us know what you think.