Mythic Entertainment announces that The Land of the Dead is now live in Warhammer Online, completing the roll-out of the Call to Arms live expansion for the fantasy-themed MMORPG. With the 24-hour early access reward concluded, the new content is now available to all. Here's how it's described: "‘The Land of the Dead’ opens the treacherous deserts of Nehekhara to players with the addition of a new RvR-gated zone filled with dozens of new Public Quests™, instanced lairs, and a massive new dungeon to plunder in search of the Casket of Souls." There's also a Land of the Dead Launch Interview on MMORPG.COM, and the Warhammer Herald describes how this marks the launch of the Realm Resource Handicap system. Finally, the Warhammer Herald has a lengthy new Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3 from Jeff Hickman that follows up on news of Mark Jacobs' departure with an outline of their plans for the game going forward. Here's a bit:

We are committed to Warhammer, Ultima Online, and Dark Age of Camelot, and have solid plans for each game. I look forward to discussing our plans for of all of these games with you in the near future. This month, as promised, I’d like to start by sharing some more details from our plans for Warhammer’s continued development over the upcoming months.

Over the past few weeks, we've reached out to many individuals and guilds to share their thoughts, and we’ve been digging down into all of the feedback we have received. As I stated last week, these discussions led us to five key goals which will act as our compass in the months ahead. Our five key goals for Warhammer are:

1. Addressing concerns related to crowd control and area-of-effect abilities.
2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4. Improving server population distribution, both in terms of overall population and Realm balance.
5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (fun rewards) throughout the game.

We're still working out the specifics, and as always the details are subject to change, but we'll share several examples of what we're planning and will continue to do so as more details for upcoming features come together in the coming weeks. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started!