It's not just Patch Day, it's LAUNCH DAY! Congratulations everyone, we made it! As usual the servers will be coming down at 10:00am PDT, and I will let you know when they are back up. Below are the patchnotes for you to peruse at your leisure.
Woo, LAUNCH DAY!
PATCHNOTES:
3, 2, 1, Launch!
Wow It’s been a year since open beta and how time has flown! It has been a fun experience sharing this journey so far but we’re not done, in fact, the opposite is true!

There is plenty of work still on our plate and we are not going to stop till every feature is in your hands. With that said here are some of this patch’s highlights!
The Orion is available for C-bills and has all of its patterns available to customize this amazing mech.
There is a new Applejack Custom Pattern you can equip on you ‘Mechs with some nice new Custom Colors as well.
All the Trials are Champions! Give them a try if you missed them the first time around! You have to buy them to get the XP boost though.
3rd person is disabled in the 12 players pre-made group matches you lucky competitive Warriors.
Non 12 player Matchmaking is tightening its search parameters for Weight and ELO.
Weapon tuning and Bug fixes round out this patch.

Oh yeah and the Credits are up on the Website now with a link from the front end! Legendary Founders included!
See you on the battlefield, MechWarrior’s
Matt Newman

Content

Users can purchase skins for the Orion 'Mechs.
Orion 'Mechs can be purchased with CBills.
New Premium Skin Apple Jack is available for purchase.
New Trial 'Mechs
Jenner JR7-F©
Centurion CN9-A©
Dragon DRG-5N©
Atlas AS7-RS©
Gameplay
12 players pre-made group launch is 1st Person View only.
Match making ELO and Weight Class thresholds narrowed down. NB: These changes will not affect 12 player groups.
The longer a match took to kick off, the broader the range the MM uses in terms of matching ELO and weight class.
This reduction means that the MM will no longer search as broad a spectrum over time (still increases but in a narrower range). It will be much more refined in terms of how much variance will be given in matching players and 'Mechs.
Match making timeout increased to 3 minutes.
This allows the MM more time to find players before terminating its search.
Weapons
AC/2
Heat scale multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.6.
UAC/5
CD changed to 1.5 (same as AC/5).
Jam rate increased to 20% (up from 15% but still down from 25%).
Flamer
Range increased to 90m (up from 64m).
Heat impulse balance so target takes more heat than player (heat generated on target increased and self generation decreased).
Front End
Added a credits button to the login screen.

Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where users are experiencing severe heat from the center volcano area in Terra Therma.
Fixed an issue where the lava in Terra Therma is causing unintentional damage to Mechs.
Fixed a number of stuck bugs in Forest Colony, Frozen City, and Terra Therma.
Fixed an issue where the 3rd Person drone appears to have weapon collision to the user firing.
Fixed an issue where the spectator will remain in 1st person view when spectating a 'Mech in 3rd person view.
3rd Person drone will no longer spawn in Testing Grounds for the dummy 'Mechs.
UAV should no longer interfere with the 3rd Person camera by snapping camera back and forth when launching an UAV.
Fixed an issue where PPC is still colored yellow when aiming at a 'Mech below 90m.
Gauss Rifle will no longer charge when out of ammo.
Fixed key hold repeat issue for Backspace in chat windows.
Fixed chat messages being cut off in chat windows. Fixed the Hunchback Founder 'Mech colour.
Fixed an issue where users could not colour all three channels on the Hunchback Founder 'Mech.
Fixed an issue where shooting a specific point on the destroyed actuator of a Blackjack's side torso will damage the opposite side torso.
Fixed an issue where certain users were seeing blue tree sprites in the Forest Colony maps.
Fixed an issue where shadows would flicker depending on the angle of the camera.

We thank you for your patience and we look forward to seeing you on the battlefield!

-The MechWarrior® Online™ Team

Posted Today, 08:54 AM
State of the Inner Sphere

It’s been just over two years since we entered pre-production on MechWarrior Online in summer of 2011. We unveiled our plans on Halloween 2011 and then spent another year in development before releasing our first open beta version on October 29th, 2012. Since then we have patched the game over 29 times, and have registered over 1.3 million players, and we continue to see amazing growth and engagement from our community!

Since Open Beta launched, we have added 100s of new features: including visual customization, ELO match making, 13 new `Mechs, 4 maps (soon to be 5), tutorials, testing grounds, new modules and consumables, improvements to the UI and HUD, additions to the end of round summary screens, new user stats, controls options, new team play options and coordination in the form of lance and company commands, the massive 12 v 12 feature, 3PV, new `Mech movement on slopes, `Mech qwirks, and much more. Not to mention tuning, bug fixes, and performance enhancements, which have significantly improved the quality of the game during our open beta phase.

With launch officially here, players can expect MechWarrior to continue to storm ahead with regular semi-monthly patches for the foreseeable future. We have a full slate of expansion features coming out during the next year, which include our new entire re-envisioned user interface, private matches, level and rank system, the ability for players to join and create custom mercenary units, new game modes, Clan technology, and the epic battle to control the Inner Sphere. All of this in addition to our regular monthly content updates and events. Expect us to continue delivering new maps throughout the next year, with some exciting new concepts like Island Metropolis out in October, and Moon Base due out in December.

We have captured the essence of what it means to be a MechWarrior pilot and we look forward to expanding the MWO universe with exciting new content for many years to come!

Operation 24

Celebrate Launch and the fielding of 24 `Mechs on the battlefield with Operation 24! Play any 24 games (win, lose or draw) between September 17th and October 1st (10am PDT) to receive a cool in-game “Operation 24” hanging cockpit item automatically.

Launch Event

On Thursday Sept 26th, Infinite Game Publishing and Piranha Games will host the official MechWarrior Online North American Launch Event and Tournament at The Mezzanine in San Francisco. Registrations to compete in the North American Launch Event Tournament are closed, but you can tune-in to watch the invitational tournament and festivities live at www.twitch.com/mechwarrior from 2 p.m. Details can be found at http://mwomercs.com/events.