You may have noticed that we’ve been a little quiet lately. If you’ve been with us long enough, you know that being quiet usually means we’re thinking really, really, hard about something. In this case, we’ve been thinking really hard – and even arguing some – about a few big decisions to make for the game.

We’ve always seen community feedback as an important part of our development process. We read practically every Steam review, forum post, Facebook comment, support email, and Twitter reply out there.

When we look at the big picture from players alongside the server data, a clear picture starts to emerge– Survival is by far the most popular element of OMDU. With this portrait of the current game becoming clearer, we’ve been faced with some difficult discussions.

Despite tremendous efforts, Siege PvP mode just hasn’t worked out. As we’ve gone through various iterations on the game mode, we've ultimately seen only a small portion of our players actively playing Siege. More importantly, people who play Siege matches are less likely to continue playing the game at all after their match. This has been the case since the beginning of Open Beta, when matchmaking queues were shorter and games were more frequent. As some of the most passionate fans of Siege mode, it’s been difficult for us at Robot to come to terms with this feedback and data. Ultimately, the Siege game mode has a small hardcore group of players, but it isn’t building a healthy long-term community around itself.

As the game has grown, Siege and Survival modes have competed with one another more and more for development resources. The need to balance the traps, heroes, and gear for both of these game modes and develop each in consideration with the other is holding both modes back.

The most common piece of community feedback we get is that the game still needs to feel more like OMD and OMD2. We’ve always agreed with that feedback. Adding Survival and Endless modes to OMDU was a big step in that direction, and we can make them much, much better. The vast majority of our beta players came looking for that classic Orcs Must Die! feeling, and we can and will deliver it.

Siege mode is being removed from Orcs Must Die! Unchained as of the next update . We believe that competitive gameplay still has a future in Orcs Must Die!, but we’ve decided that Siege mode is just not the right fit for that. Competitive gameplay could return to OMDU, and if it does, it won’t be in the form of Siege.

Our focus will now turn entirely toward making Survival feel, look, sound, and play more like a clear evolution of OMD and OMD2. We’re doubling down on Survival mode to bring back the kick-ass OMD gameplay you love.

We will be doing an account reset with the next update of OMDU . The shift in the game has required changes to many of the existing systems and inventory simply won’t slide over into the new systems. All social connections – guilds, friend lists, friend referrals and their rewards – will remain intact, but any progress or content you earned through play will be reset so that all players can experience the new game equally.

Any gold that was purchased and then spent in the game will be put back into your account, and ALL players will get an additional $5 worth of gold if they login within the first two weeks of the new update.

This week will be all about answering your questions. On Tuesday September 20th at 3:00pm CT, tune into Insider Access on OrcsMustDie.tv. We’ll have a live Q&A session with Robot Entertainment CEO Patrick Hudson and Orcs Must Die Executive Producer Chris Rippy. On Thursday September 22nd, we’ll also have an Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Design Director Ian Fischer over at /r/OrcsMustDie. We hope to see you there.

In the meantime, you can visit this FAQ to find answers to many of your additional questions about topics like launch and Founder Packs.

While we are saddened to see Siege mode going away, we are also extremely excited for the future of OMDU. We’ve got big plans for OMDU, and we are eager to prove it to our players.

All five heroes are available to play for free this week, so log in and give them a try!

All five heroes are available to play for free this week, so log in and give them a try!

All five heroes are available to play for free this week. Log in now to give them a try!

All five heroes are available to play for free this week. Log in now to give them a try!

Bionka, the orc queen, is back on her throne, and she’s leading a full-on orc revolution. The time to summon your magical armies through the rift is now!

Create guilds and invite your friends and teammates to join you. Chat together, work together, earn guild points together to unlock rewards for everyone in your guild.

You think you’re a real pro orc-slayer, huh? Put your magic where your mouth is. The 5-star rating system from previous Orcs Must Die! games has returned for Survival mode.

Your friends aren’t playing OMDU yet, you say? We just made it easier and more rewarding than ever to make new friends. Use the new Refer-A-Friend system to invite your friends to OMDU and you could both unlock amazing rewards, including an exclusive Blackpaw skin.

Remember when you fell madly in love with Orcs Must Die!? Two new compact and frantic maps bring back more of that epic defense feeling you’ve been missing in Orcs Must Die! Unchained.

Bionka, the Queen Momma, is the matriarch of the orcs and leader of the Unchained. Bionka is now available in-game, and her royal abilities and motherly love mean there’s never been a better time to be an orc minion!

Release 1.3 has all of this plus a mountain of other updates from balance adjustments to new bosses. Read the detailed patch notes.

All five heroes are available to play for free this week. Log in now to give them a try!

After sending her sons, including Bloodspike, to conquer the Order, it is time for the orcish queen to leave the Dark World and attack the Order herself. With her flail and her beautiful singing voice, she plans on taking a chunk out of the Order and making a new home on Centre. Make way for Bionka, Queen Momma!

Bionka is the supreme leader of the Orcs. Not only is she their leader and queen, she is also considered mother to all orcs in their culture--not necessarily by biology but by nature of being the queen. Bionka takes this maternal responsibility very seriously and, while a bit rough around the edges, she loves her “family” and will fight to help provide for her “children.”

Bionka brings a versatile set of skills to battle and packs a big punch. She hits hard and protects her “babies” with her dulcet tunes. She is not particularly quick on her feet, but when she gets near her enemies, she can pack a huge wallop with her massive flail.

Read the full hero preview with Lead Hero Designer Paul Hellquist, and prepare yourself for Bionka, Queen Momma!

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, we take your feedback very, very seriously, and hopefully you’ve seen that in some of our recent updates. To recap a few from the last patch (1.2), we took what the community felt was an overly complicated system, crafting, and did a number of things to streamline the feature. We’ve greatly reduced the number of materials in the game, simplified the recipes required for each item, and added the ability for players to target a needed material before each game. Each trap can be upgraded more frequently now too, among many other things.

Another big area of focus for us lately has been on the Survival game. With your help, we realized that the game was missing some of the original OMD! “feel”. We started addressing this in patch 1.2, but there are still several things on our plate that we’re anxious for you to try. As a quick recap, we recently changed the amount of damage players do to minions, yet at the same time changed up some minion behavior so they’re faster, and aggro to the player differently which makes them more of a threat. These changes, we think, bring back both the cool feeling of power from the original games, plus some of the great intensity that may have been missing recently.

That’s really just a start for Survival. Coming soon, we’ll be adding some great new features, and making some changes, that honestly, might feel a little surprising. With the next update we’re going to change the maximum numbers of players allowed in a standard Survival game from 5 to 3. Now, why in the world would we do that? Good question, and it’s one we’ve thought about quite a bit. The biggest reason, is we find playing with 2 other players is just a ton of fun. It’s a great size for coordinating things in the game, and for strategizing.

From a design perspective, we’re now able to give the player more power than we could when 5 players are in a match, which just feels way better, and allows us to make “tighter” maps that are more like the original OMD! games. This change to maps alone makes the game feel fantastic. We’ve got a couple of these tighter maps - The Baths and Throne Room - coming out in our next release, so be sure to give them a shot, and let us know what you think.

If you’re a big fan of playing 5-player Survival games, and on bigger maps, that’s not going away entirely. Beginning at level 80, you can play Endless games as a 5-player group, and we’re going to keep making big maps for this mode moving forward. This is a great way for large groups to play together and chase leaderboards. Speaking of leaderboards, did we mention we’re adding a brand new feature to the game with this update? Guilds are coming to OMDU, and guild leaderboards alongside them! Band together with your orc-smashing friends to climb the guild leaderboards for bragging rights and awesome rewards.

We’re also bringing back an old favorite feature from previous OMD! games… the 5 Star (formerly Skull) System. Now you’ll be able to go to Battleground Select, and try to get a “5 Star” rating on every map. It’s fun, and it’s wicked hard. We’re also allowing level downscaling through Battleground Select, so you veteran players can bring in new friends and still have a great game. This will be in the next patch (1.3), so it’s just right around the corner.

There’s plenty more coming that we will be talking about soon. We’ll be doing more to teach new players to get them up-to-speed faster in all modes of the game, and in Siege we’ll do a better job communicating with players when key events happen in the game that they should be aware of. Of course, we’ll keep the heroes, traps, traits, and maps coming, so keep an eye out for those too.

Alright, that’s probably enough for one day. I appreciate you sticking with us. Even with all those words, I realize you’ll probably want even more specifics. Please check out our forums, and our weekly Insider Access twitch stream where you can ask us questions directly, and where we can really dig into the details. You can also check out the full patch notes for the upcoming Orc Revolution update for additional details, once they are released.

Thanks again for helping us shape Orcs Must Die! Unchained into a great game. We always appreciate your feedback, so keep it coming!

Did you miss this week's Insider Access? Never fear, we've got the video right here! Paul Hellquist joins SixOkay to reveal the next hero coming to Orcs Must Die! Unchained with the Orc Revolution game update! Like Bloodspike before her, Bionka the Queen Momma is returning to OMDU!

Bionka's skills and animations have been completely revised since her first appearance in OMDU. Check out the full Insider Access video, including the hero overview for Bionka, Queen Momma!