I may not be happy with how the game treats the lore of Tolkien’s world, or even with its inclusion of lootboxes as a single player game, but at the very least, I can laud Warner Bros. and Monolith on doing justice to everyone who bought Middle-earth: Shadow of War with some exceptional post launch support.
Take update 1.07, which is available to download now for free, for example- the update includes all the general fixes, tweaks, and balancing, but it also includes brand new free content in the form of online fight pits. These pits will let you have your Orcs and Uruk fight against other players’ Orcs and Uruk online for rewards.
On some level, I have to imagine that this is actually a way to induce players to spend money on loot boxes, because a PvP element is the easiest way to get someone to want to take shortcuts to make their thing better than others’. But, without knowing the final implementation of this just yet, I will be charitable, and give Warner Bros. and Monolith the benefit of the doubt on this one. For now.
See the full patch notes for the game below:
Free Content Update and Features (Included in the patch)
- Online Fight Pits: The Online Fight Pits allows players to train up their Orc followers by pitting them against Uruks and Ologs from other gamers’ armies around the world. Through this ultimate fight to the death in the arena, players can earn powerful rewards and upgrades that can be used to improve their army and continue the battle for Mordor.
Additional Fixes
- Improved Fight Pit pacing: Shortened fight timer and increased damage dealt.
Balancing
- Starting a Nemesis Mission will now reset the cooldown for summoning beasts and bodyguards.
General
- Fixed an issue where player gear and buffs were affecting Fight Pit participants.
- Fixed issues where players’ Overlords could disappear from the Army screen after losing a fortress.
- Fixed issues where an Orc who cheated death after a Pit Fight loss could fail to re-enter the Army screen.
- Fixed an issue where loading into an Online Vendetta could result in becoming stuck on a black screen.
- Fixed a long load time issue when selecting “Leave Mission” during an Online Vendetta or Online
- Conquest.
- Fixed issues with incorrect Orc traits being shown in the Online Conquests preview menu.
- Fixed an incorrect error message when replacing a daily challenge.
- Fixed a campaign audio issue when accessing the first Shadow of the Past Mission.
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