In her final editorial for Allakhazam, Becky "Tovin" Simpson, one of the biggest Warhammer fans I know, has a few things to get off her chest. This is perfect timing being that the first installment of our two part interview with the Live Producer of Warhammer Online, Destin Bales, will be published on Monday. Until that time, please join me in wishing Becky a fond farewell in our forums.

In Warhammer Online (WAR) we've all heard the catch phrase "War is everywhere". In fact, if you followed the game for any length of time during its development, chances are you repeated it often as both a ward against anything EA could do to jeopardize the game, as well as a show of staunch enthusiasm after bumps in the road caused several reschedules of the launch.

For most of us, while war is raging all around us (and sometimes right into us with a jagged sword of might!) it isn't really as permeating as one might hope. In fact, I think I've seen more actual war between siblings fighting over who gets to use the car Saturday night than I have in game.

That WAR copies the WoW-esque style of running across the enemy side while running through the world and questing, is a deep blow to my little Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC) soul, and a "feature" that seems wildly out of place.

Now some of our more hardcore folks who play on PvP servers, may start to howl that this is why the game should only be played on a PvP server! One does not need to worry about flagging or level ranges nearly as much. If it's red - kill it, and everything not of your "side" is red! But I'd remind them that the game was made to play on core servers.

In fact, the only reason PvP servers were added was at the players' strong insistence. That rarely bodes well for a game and I'll take my chances playing on the servers for which the game was designed, and will continue to be developed.

Scenarios are another source of malcontent, with players wanting the feel of war. No one can deny that open Realm versus Realm (RvR) areas as one levels leave much to be desired, if only in the population of participants. Rewards for taking part, as well as an easy way to find out what is going on where is also a requirement that must be met in order for fun to be had.

In the case of open PvP, Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs this week posted a letter addressing the issues and the plan for dealing with them. It was a good day for all WAR lovers!

Though no mention has been made yet of non-scenario servers. I'd move to one quick as a flash, though I doubt any of my friends or guild would, as they're already too well entrenched in their characters and community to just up and leave after only two months.

But the fact remains that for some of us the fighting, especially in scenarios, feels forced. Let's all queue up, nice and neat, to await a chance to kill our foes - if there are enough of them that want to be killed. TO BATTLE! Wait...what?

Open RvR should be and, after the fixes, hopefully will be the focal point of the game. Granted, I've only gotten to the end of tier 3, but open RvR, even for the Halloween event on my server, has been dreadfully empty.

The fighting is spread out among three different areas of the same level range, making it hard to get to fights quickly, since you can't easily see what's going on. When did something like this seem like a good idea?

The great thing about where WAR started this journey is that for all the (minimal but truly necessary) changes they're making now, balance is the smallest of the battles the development team faces.

The game was obviously in testing for quite a while, pitting destruction against their order counterparts early and often. Are there issues here, well certainly. If you expected otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you! Truly, the reasons behind WAR needing some RvR love is not due to the balance or load issues that one would normally expect from an MMO this early in its cycle.

I believe that Mythic's testing of the game, by tier, by race match up and then shutting down beta to deal with what was found served them well in balance and, most likely, load issues. But I feel like the game lost some fundamental "fun" in the process. That's not to say I've given up on the game! But I am much closer than I ever thought I'd be, having cyber stalked the game and its development for so many years.

It's good to see the development team focusing on a core system of the game; one which somehow launched without being done. Truly shocking for an MMO, eh? I'm not entirely certain why I expected otherwise. It's true that every time an MMO is launched I expect more "done-ness" than the last one. So far, I'm not seeing it. Are you?

In short, the regular growing pains an MMO experiences are being dealt with quickly, and decisively. Hopefully fixing these issues so soon after launch will be enough to bring players back once the changes have gone live. Otherwise, not launching with a game that worked the way it was intended is going to end up hurting both players and the Mythic studio.

Players are not quick to return to a game which was fundamentally not right at launch. They're more willing to return to old games that still hold value and fun rather than forking over dollars to test another live patch which may not work at first, a fact that can be blamed only on the very institution that is online games.

I've not left WAR yet, though it's been weeks since I've logged in. I'll log in to check out the changes, and will certainly attempt to get to the tier four areas where there is, supposedly, decent open RvR. Will you?

Becky "Tovin" Simpson
Senior Editor, ZAM Network