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[Paul Inouye]

Rolling Back to 3049 and Why.

Greetings MechWarriors,

We will be rolling back the timeline to 3049 for a few reasons, with the biggest of them being Community Warfare. If we stay at our current timeline of 3051: We end up well beyond the Third Wave of the Clan invasion the Free Rasalhague Republic is in dire straits, and later this year would see the completion of the Fourth Wave. This is not the essence of Community Warfare as we intended to have had when the Clan vs Inner Sphere fighting broke out in MWO.

This rollback has some inconsistencies involved with it. For example, the “S” variants of some of the Clan ‘Mechs are not available until 3050+. However, 3050+ is when they become widely used throughout the conflict zone, not necessarily when they were created. Players can think of it this way… having access to the “S” variants is sort of like having access to the advanced prototypes of these ‘Mechs. We will have to bear this inconsistency for now as the Clan Packs are being released before Community Warfare.

That being said, rolling back to 3049 puts us in a position where the Clans start taking planets in the Periphery around August. When we launch Community Warfare later this year, players will be able to partake in the Periphery conflict and then move into the First Wave of Operation Revival, where the Clans really start to push into the Inner Sphere itself. This is the true feeling of the Clan Invasion that we wanted from the initial conception of the game and originally suggested a 1-to-1 timeline.

When Community Warfare is ready, the Clans will only occupy a small number of planets. This is where players will have the ability to follow a recreation of the Clan Invasion by forcing their way down into FRR territory and harassing House Steiner and House Kurita along the way. However, if the Inner Sphere players are organized, they can even change the course of BattleTech history and try to stop the Clans in their tracks.

Regarding the 3 additional clans that join the invasion in Wave 4 (Clan Nova Cat and Clan Steel Viper) and just after Wave 5 (Clan Diamond Shark), we are planning on pulling them into the conflict closer to their reveal dates next year (i.e. as soon as possible).

We hope you understand our desire to re-align the timeline to really help bring the impact of what Community Warfare will mean in MWO. We would greatly appreciate your thoughts on the impact of this timeline change and you can provide it here in the feedback thread.