No. 1 Call of War 1.5 or “The game like it always should have been”
Silvio B., Game Designer of Call of War and Community Manager back in 2015
We never planned for Call of War to be stagnant. It was always meant to evolve and improve, with the gameplay mechanics and graphics being refined over time. This is very important in today’s competitive games market. While we made some additions to CoW over the course of its development, we could have done more in retrospect as we were quite slow or hesitant in certain aspects. With Call of War 1.5 we want to rectify this and create the game how it was envisioned to be played a long time ago.
One of the major areas we wanted to overhaul was the balancing. Back in 2015 we were kind of lucky that it worked out as well as it did, but since then that status-quo was never truly challenged. In hindsight the balancing changes that we did over the years were rather minor. That is the nature of a live game. We constantly strived to improve things, always with your feedback in mind. We knew that we wanted to make drastic changes in some areas. We know that those changes are the hardest to swallow. They create situations where everyone has to learn the game nearly from scratch again. On the other hand, it makes it pretty exciting as well. Once all of the changes have been properly refined, it will be worth it!
When we started with CoW 1.5 we also created a list of over 100 new features we wanted to add. Ranging from a real Metagame and Generals to an overhauled and interactive battle view. We were fully aware that we wouldn’t be able to add all the features on that list so we focused on adding several smaller to medium sized features. We also threw some features of CoW’s sister games into the mix as that was easy and allowed us to add more content. Still we do not want Call of War to become too similar to those games - we really hear you there - so we also work on exclusive features that the other games do not have. Some of those features were already part of the CoW1.5 Events, but some of them are still planned to be added in the future.
Speaking of which: You have not seen the final version of Call of War 1.5 yet. There are more changes and features lined up. We wanted to test them in an iterative process to really get the most meaningful feedback from of you - and you are really helping us a lot. Thank you for that! CoW 1.5 should not be a do or die thing for the community. We wanted you to be included in this right from the beginning and hopefully you already see that we are taking your concerns seriously.
Today we are already 8 months in the CoW1.5 process and we achieved so much and also learned so many things from you. There is still a long road ahead of us and walking this road together with you means a lot to us.
Maybe you have guessed it already, but the name “1.5” already suggests it: Even with the changes we are currently working on we will be only half way where we want the game to be. There is still a lot to do until we can call this new version Call of War 2.0, but that will be our final goal. And there will be plenty of room for your input. For us this process is the biggest project at the moment and it will definitely shape Call of War for the future! This is why it is our top highlight in this series of news stories.
We are really proud of what we have achieved so far with Call of War and look forward to what we will be able to achieve in the years to come. Let’s not only celebrate the past 5 years of the game, but let’s celebrate also the future of the game - it is going to be awesome!
Thanks for staying with us all this time. You are amazing!