Update 3 is nearly in the books - we're diligently working through bug queues and helping out our Testing team to clear up any other issues that may come our way this week. We're targeting next week to have it published live. It goes without saying but I'll say it anyways --- Thank you for your patience!

Along with this update, we've thrown in a few holiday items to spread the cheer in many forms from lootable/claimable items, festive mounts, veteran rewards, city and housing decorations and gifts to be had from our Customer Service, Dev, and Community teams. We hope you will enjoy them!

Here are some other comments that have come from many of your questions through numerous channels:

* Producer's letter - Items disclosed in the Producer's letter seem to have sparked quite a bit of communication. That's good but it also has upset some people and I believe one huge point has been missed. The letter listed many things we are looking at to change, fix or enhance but I believe I did not stress enough that we have not finalized all details at this moment - We are still planning for the next year and we are listening to what you have to say before we make our final decisions. I hope this helps to clear that up. Again, we are not going care bear on you.
* Crashing, Performance Issues, Bugs, Unfinished quests or missing content - These issues are going to be addressed. We have made some awesome strides as far as our performance goes but we're not out of the woods yet. Update 3 next week should offer even more improvements but you are correct, we need to knock down the annoying bugs that affect your gameplay and enjoyment. A lot of problems have been introduced by means of implementation so we will be spending a bit of our development time dealing with old issues while we develop new content. This is the unfortunate truth and quickly over time, we will be dealing with less problems from the old as we create the new.
* Experience Curve - Nothing drastic has been changed to date. What we have decided to do before making a large sweeping change is to look at the peaks and valleys and see if they are out of whack. We are also comparing this to the average level of players leaving the game. Obviously, we can't say 100% that our customers are leaving at "this or that" level because of the experience curve because we do not have exit polls. But we can see some correlation at certain levels though. So we're going to examine that and more than likely smooth out some of the "Extreme" cases. Also, some of the features mentioned in the letter (such as Brotherhood) may be implemented to see if that puts us at the pace we think is desired. Test and re-test, then implement. Again, nothing drastically changed nor scheduled to drastically change.
* Death Penalty - We have something unique in making players fear dieing, rather than just paying an armor repair cost. I do not want to lose that uniqueness that separates us from the others. I will have to say that you have come up with some other resolutions besides just changing this mechanic completely. That's why we keep coming to you as you play the game so extensively and are able to inspire us when we need it. For example: Increasing the death penalty the higher your level - Lesson it early on but increase it steadily. Again, you have given us some ideas to continue to build on this, so we'll continue to chat about this.

-Thom