You’ll have to wait a little longer for a first glimpse at Wardogs Season 3. Developer Bulkhead has been quick to communicate updates and changes for its breakout new modern-military multiplayer game, but it’s pulling back just a touch. It announced last week that we’d be getting a special devlog around now combining both a reflection on the current state of Season 2 and a Season 3 preview, but has since decided to hold fire and make sure its messaging is perfect the first time around.
Last weekend, four key members of the Wardogs team sat down for a podcast discussing the rollercoaster launch of Season 2, what went wrong, and why it had made the decision to bring Season 3’s start forward. During that conversation, Executive Producer Joe Brammer said the team had “got to slow down” when it came to the pace of updates, and admitted it panicked in deciding to reverse its policy on putting core gameplay fundamentals ahead of rolling out new content.
Worried about how quickly the huge player base had burned through what Wardogs currently had to offer, Brammer says the team overreacted to player feedback, and “worked really hard” to stuff plenty of new features into Season 2. “And you know what happened? The quality dropped. We didn’t double down on everything, the way we’ve iterated and iterated for years, thrown things away twice and kept the third one.” One week on, and it seems the studio is taking its own conclusions to heart.
“Hey everyone! We’re not putting out our devlog this week,” Community Manager Brian ‘L0ssy’ McCrann announces. “We’re making some big moves and want to get the information right before committing to camera. It’ll take longer, but this is us building out a stable foundation for Season 3 and beyond. Thanks for your patience.”
We’ll have to wait a little longer for the official rundown of what lies ahead, therefore, but perhaps that’s for the best. While quick communication is often great to see, Bulkhead’s snappy decision-making and responses have caused some situations where plans were made and then changed, or significant calls came without sufficient consideration. Creative Director Tim Nightingale noted that the sudden announcement of Season 3 being brought forward “put a sour taste in people’s mouths.”
We do already know one important feature that will be introduced with the launch of Season 3: limited servers. The final name for these has been up in the air, with ‘primitive’ the other leading candidate, but the gist is that they’ll restrict you to the “early-to-midgame” gear, stripping away high-rank armor, power weapons, and top-tier vehicles such as tanks and artillery. Nightingale hopes these servers won’t be necessary by the time 1.0 arrives, but they’ll be a welcome workaround if you find yourself struggling to keep pace with the sweats next season.
Wardogs Season 3 is currently scheduled for Thursday, November 12. Due to the reduced length of Season 2, Bulkhead has said it plans to extend the availability of gold skins to ensure players don’t feel too short-changed.