Der schon gestern in Amerika aufgespielte Patch 1.03 zu Warhammer Online findet nun auch den Weg auf die europäischen Server. Heute ab 8 Uhr sind damit die Server down. Erfahrungsgemäß stehen sie ab spätestens 12 Uhr wieder zur Verfügung. Inhaltlich führt der Patch unter anderem den von der Community so vehement geforderten Regionen-Chat ein. Auch die Ignore-Funktion wurde überarbeitet. Desweiteren soll ein erster Schritt in der Verbesserung der Pet-KI gemacht worden sein und die Zonenkontrolle wurde angepasst. Aber auch abseits der Highlight gibt es einige interessante kleinere Änderungen. So wurden etwa die Dropraten gewisser Handwerksgegenstände angepasst und ein "Neue Nachricht"-Hinweis eingeführt, damit ihr wisst, dass euch jemand etwas gesendet hat.

* We're pleased to announce the addition of a new regional chat system. This item has been one of our most requested features, and you can find the details below.

* We have made additional improvements to the functionality of the /ignore command. This command should now work more consistently.

* A "new mail" icon has been added to the edge of the minimap to alert players when new mail messages have arrived.

* We have made some additional improvements to the handling of NPC speech and action text in an effort to reduce the amount of chat players see from NPCs.

* In order to provide a more challenging and rewarding experience, we have adjusted the overall speed at which players can gain control of zones and move the campaign.

* Pet behavior has been improved and should act more naturally when changing between passive and defensive modes while the pet is fighting multiple enemies.

* The war against the gold sellers continues! We have introduced a new "report gold seller" command that works as follows: when you type /rg, the game will automatically fill out a gold seller appeal using the name of the last player who sent you a tell. If you get an unwanted /tell from a pesky gold seller, type /rg to start an appeal and get them busted!

* We have added a new option to the user settings that will allow players to enable or disable shader caching. This is a graphical performance option, and for a full explanation, players can hover their mouse over this option in the user settings window. This should help improve performance on many systems.