2016 is in full swing and we now have new closed beta hours for both NA and EU OMDU closed beta servers.

North America

The servers will now be open all weekend starting from Thursday evening at 6pm CT up until 10PM CT on Sunday. Plenty of time to get some games in for both testing and fun!

Europe

In the EU the servers are open from Thursday evening through to Sunday evening as well. Thats Thursdays from 5 PM (CET) untill Sundays at midnight (CET).

Twitch Streams

Plenty of Twitch streams will be taking place including ‘Meet Your Match‘ every Friday with your hostess with the mostess Nananea playing OMDU with the community. Plus Robot Entertainment will be continuing the popular ‘Insider Access‘ which gives us exclusive interviews with Robot staff talking all about OMDU and more. ‘Orcs After Dark‘ is also back every other Thursday where players can join Robot Entertainment staff for an evening of play. Every other week Nananea will take us back to a blast from the past with OMD1 and 2 gameplay with ‘Throwback Thursday‘.

Here is a summary of the line-up:

Showing on OrcsMustDie.tv

Show	Time
	Tuesday – 3pm Central US
	6:30pm – 8:30pm Central US
	6:30pm – 8:30pm Central US

Showing on OrcsMustDieEU.tv

Gameforge Communications Manager FaTeReLLa is on hand throughout January with various streams. Here is the current line up:

Good news for those who are part of the Orcs Must Die! Unchained closed beta. The testing hours have been opened up to 24×7 all Christmas holiday season giving you a chance to check out all the great new features that came with patch 2.6, including the new PvE map “Surrounded”.

North America

Not only are the servers available 24×7 in NA, there will also be 10 guest heroes available too. Spend your holidays with Hogarth, Blackpaw, Ivy, Midnight, Oziel, Maximilian, Stinkeye, Gabby, Dobbin and Zoe.

Europe

In Europe all heroes will be available with just one exception, Oziel will not be available. In addition there will be an Iron Chestnado starting from 23rd December which means the drop chance of Iron Chests will be increased.

Happy Holidays!

Patch 2.6 for Orcs Must Die! Unchained is now Live for both North America and Europe regions. Hop on in and check out the new features such as:

• The brand new survival map “Surrounded” built exclusively for PvE with the OMD2 feel.
• New Potions and Scrolls and Crafting!
• New objectives for Unchained Fortress!

And LOTS more! Check out the full patch notes if you haven’t all ready, or if you prefer video format check out the Insider Access video below with Doug Houserman talking all about patch 2.6.  See you in-game!

If you happened to watch the Super Special Live Stream event on the Orcs Must Die! EU twitch channel which took place a few weeks ago, you would have seen a special guest! Indeed, Rimmon from the OMDU EU community made a guest appearance having been invited to Gameforge HQ for 3 days by FaTeReLLa to talk OMDU with the Gameforge team.

Rimmon has been a strong influencer in the OMDU EU community. We interviewed him earlier in the year as part of our Fan Friday series where he was working with Muchcoffee on Atypical Neurons, a fan site for OMDU bursting with detailed information about heroes, traps gear and minions.

Having been invited to Gameforge HQ Rimmon has taken to the forums to blog about his experience, which had quite an interesting start with trouble with cancelled flights. It was all worth it in the end though and Rimmon got a sneak peak of what is coming up for OMDU and patch 2.6 and beyond, as well as meeting and greeting the excellent Gameforge crew who look after the OMDU EU community. Rimmon had a great time playing plenty of games with the Gameforge team on and off stream and has left with an even greater positive vibe, writing on his report:

As I left Karlsruhe I did so with renewed motivation, and fresh ideas. I hope that I’ll stay with this community as it grows, and I will of course continue trying to support, and benefit you guys in some way. I’ve been trying out Guide Writing, Fan Site, Videos, and Streaming, in the end I’ll spend my time on what I enjoy the most, be sure that whatever I do I’ll find a way to contribute to the community.

 

Be sure to check out Rimmon’s full report over on the OMDU EU forums using the link below. You can also check out the stream from the special event below too.

http://board.omd.gameforge.com/board5-community-off-topic/board17-fan-corner/3856-my-visit-to-gameforge

The patch notes for patch 2.6 for Orcs Must Die! Unchained are now available online, and oh yes, its a big patch!  Robot helpfully provides a super quick bullet point summary:

Patch 2.6

• New Traits!
• Crafting!
• Potions and Scrolls!
• New Survival Game Mode and accompanying map = SURROUNDED!
• New Guardians, to be placed in Survival Games!
• Updated New Player Experience!
• Unchained Fortress Returns with a Neutral Objective!

There are also a number of changes to heroes in terms of balance and some ability adjustments. Be sure to take a look at your favourite heroes before the patch lands so that you are in the know of changes that could effect how you play.

The patch is landing this Thursday, 3rd December. Please be aware that there will be an account wipe as before.

More information on Insider Access

For more information and discussion on the patch notes prior to the release next Thursday be sure to tune in on Tuesday 3pm Central to the Insider Access Twitch Stream where the bots will be on hand to answer your burning questions!

Did you catch this weeks episode of Insider Access on the OMDU Twitch channel? If you did you missed out on another exciting episode, and this one had alot of big reveals! Designer Jerome Jones was on hand with Community Manager, Justin Korthof to talk about the brand new PvE exclusive map coming to OMDU in the next patch.

[Show as slideshow]

The new map is called “Surrounded” and is built specifically for PvE. This is not a PvP come PvE map, but a map built from the ground up for Survival Mode. A preview video of the new map can be found below and you’ll soon see why it gets its name “Surrounded”. Indeed players will be thrown into the action in a castle that is being attacked from all directions. Check out the video below!

There are tons of cool features in this new map. Bringing an OMD2 feel with environmental traps and a larger map with many different entry points for minions to spawn. Numerous rooms are found in the castle such as say an armoury and players can place a specific room related guardians to help defend. Players will have many choices on where to build their killboxes on the larger map providing a great depth and breadth of strategy and options. Check out the interview with Jerome Jones to get all the details on this new map and its features!

Jerome Jones on Insider Access

Surrounded and more coming in patch 2.6 landing Thursday 3rd December!

Thats right, also revealed on Insider Access is that the next patch will be available on Thursday December 3rd when the servers come back online after usual maintenance. This next patch is going to be a big one, one of the biggest yet for OMDU – so brace yourself for some pretty heft patch notes that should be incoming shortly!

Have you been keeping an eye on the OMDU Insider Access streams? If not watching live you can catch up by VOD on the official OMDU YouTube channel. This weeks Insider Access was very interesting. Community Manager, Justin Korthof (SixOkay) sat down with Mike Creasy (DangerMike) to talk about the new tutorial system. Poor Mike has yet again had to re-work the tutorial system with all the changes that have been made over the patches. He has been working on the tutorial system since August 2014 and has had to deal with many major gameplay changes since then.

The good news is that a new revised tutorial is coming together and its looking really awesome. On Insider Access we saw a 9 minute video taking us through the new tutorial for Survival mode with the video being produced by Nananea. The new tutorial is looking and sounding great with comprehensive voice over talk from Maximilian the War Mage and excellent visual cues. The new tutorial also teaches players good practice at setting up kill boxes so that newbies have a better steer on what to do on their early games and to help integrate into the community faster. If you haven’t already seen the Insider Access episode be sure to check out the video extract below!

Spoilers!

One of the added bonuses of seeing the new tutorial is we get to see some upcoming new OMDU features. If you are eagle eyed you can spot a number of new things. Here are some examples:

New Guardian Options

Looks like options to place different types of guardians is coming

Yarr! – New Boss

Any guesses on Captain Orc’s name?

There are some more hidden reveals in the video too if you take a look closely at minion armour, traps and some more bosses / minions. Check out the new Survival Tutorial video below which is coming in patch 2.6.