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MechWarrior Online prepares for launch

by: Mike -
More On: MechWarrior Online
The pistons are firing, the engines are heating up, and mechs are springing to life as MechWarrior Online takes a few more steps toward being battle ready.

"We've hit a cadence," Russ Bullock, executive producer at Piranha Games said. " About every 2 weeks, we're patching the game."

The newest patches are in preparation for 12 v. 12 battles bring implemented later this spring, Bullock said. These additions include: new hero mechs, new maps, a better user interface and community warfare.

The most notable is the latter. 

"We're putting command elements into the game," Bryan Ekman, creative director, said. "They're adding a lot of depth to the game on a communications level."

The community warfare commands give players the ability to relay information to separate squads, or lances. Each of these lances is headed up by another player, to whom the commander can give sub-commands. This multi-tiered communications tree is a main focus of MechWarrior Online's proceedings leading up to the 12 v. 12 battles they're planning.

"We're allowing players to organize better, and we're excited about the concept," Ekman said. 

The aforementioned userface 2.0 will also help organization, albeit on an individual level. Players will be able to see their lance mates' vitals and move mechs from one lance to another, if they have command over them.

Facilitating all of these new additions are new maps and mechs that Piranha Games has been hard at work planning and creating. The Highlander mech, last week's Hero unit that sold more than any preceeding it, is now available in all variants via the MechWarrior Online store. Furthermore, the high-end preset Champion mechs are live, beginning with the Dragon Mech, a loadout maximized for long range combat.

New maps are also promised, consisting of a variety of locales ranging from volcanoes to asteroid fields.

Players can pledge allegiance to the faction of their choice, earn reputation within that faction, and wage all-out mechanized war against their opposition now in MechWarrior Online