While the upcoming Faction Play update is humming along smoothly on the content-side, the Matchmaker portion of the Faction Play update in particular has run longer in development than originally projected. While the update could potentially make it in for April's patch, doing so would not enable us to properly test the updates both internally and run a PTS to ensure stability on production servers. Due to these considerations, and the need to ensure this fairly significant re-write of the Faction Play Matchmaker system is working correctly, we have made the difficult choice to push the Faction Play Update to the May 21st patch.
This delay will allow us to perform a necessary stabilization pass for internal testing as well as to run a PTS to ensure that nothing goes awry on the production servers when it comes to the Faction Play Matchmaker. Internally, we're expanding our internal production oversight on this aspect of the update to conduct daily update scrums and ensure its progress is running at-pace. I'll update the community again this Friday and will continue to do so throughout the remaining development of the Faction Play Update as we approach the PTS.
I apologize for the delay of this anticipated and much-needed update to Faction Play, but we must make sure that the Faction Play Matchmaker is working correctly or all will be for naught, as the Matchmaker is a critical pillar of making this a successful update.
Now for some good news. To help offset some of the disappointment from this delay, we will be releasing a new re-worked Quick Play map in the April 16th patch instead of the May patch! This is the frozen version of Canyon Network that was recently mentioned in the Roadmap. This alternate version of Canyon Network is more than a visual change. There are new visible pathways to the upper deck areas near the center and there are a few more blocker areas and assets to make the gameplay unique to this map compared to the original Canyon Network.
![Posted Image](https://static.mwomercs.com/downloads/canyon_update.png)