BioWare Delays ‘Anthem’ Guilds, Cataclysms
By Stefanie Fogel
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Developer is delaying several expected features for its online action-RPG “Anthem,” it revealed in a Reddit post on Tuesday.
Those features include the mastery system, guilds, Phase II legendary missions, weekly stronghold challenges, leaderboards, some freeplay events, and Cataclysms.
While BioWare said it’s delivered many of the game’s Act 1 features on time, it also said it’s encountered more things to fix and improve than it anticipated, and they take priority over new features.
“We have learned a lot since the game went live. We have heard a lot of feedback from all of you, and we have been working diligently to improve as many things as we can in the short term,” the studio said. “We’ve fixed a lot of bugs and made changes which we believe begin to point us in the right direction for the future. That being said, we know there is a long way to go before ‘’ becomes the game we all want it to be.”
While the studio said it will share more about “Anthem’s” Cataclysm feature in May, it’s a little more vague about other issues, like loot. “We have heard your concerns around end game loot,” it said. “We agree that our loot and progression systems need to be improved and we are working towards this. When we have more information to share, we will.”
“A lesson we have learned is we have been talking about things too early,” it added. “There are so many factors that can cause us to pivot on our plans — whether it’s bugs & stability issues, player feedback, or complications with a feature that require us to take more time to deliver it. Our goal is to tell you about new content and features once the work is closer to being done.”
BioWare announced the delays on the same day it released “Anthem’s” 1.1.0 patch . It added a new Stronghold called The Sunken Cell, along with the ability to launch a new expedition from a menu without loading into Fort Tarsis. Players can now access the Forge from anywhere in the world, and they can view contracts without having to run around and pick them up.
