WARDOGS backend update: Lonestar cash and XP bonus removed, Driver progression and tank-unlock exploit fixed

What BULKHEAD announced

At 20:58 UTC on 15 October — the first evening of Season 02 — BULKHEAD posted on X that it had "got a few things wrong" and was pushing a backend update. The post lists four points and links a ten-minute video with the reasoning; there is no Steam announcement for it yet.

• Removing the blue team's (Lonestar) cash and XP bonus
• Driver progression fixes
• Fixing a Driver exploit that let lots of players access tanks too early
• Coming soon: limited-mode servers with no power weapons and no vehicles

The Lonestar experiment ends after a day

The Season 02 patch notes framed the Lonestar bonus as a social experiment: the faction had a notoriously lower win rate than the other two teams, so Lonestar wins and teamplay actions paid extra cash and XP for Season 2 only. One day of live play was enough for BULKHEAD to pull it. The notes' other Lonestar measures — moved faction spawns on Bakurani, work on uniform visibility and the 20 % vendor discount for a team at least 40 points behind second — are not mentioned in the post, so we assume they stay.

Driver track: the exploit and the fix

Season 02 rebuilt the Driver track so armed-vehicle players get kills earlier: the Wolf-110 with the M2 Browning at level 16, the T-72B3 at level 20, the Flakpanzer Gepard at level 25 and the SPH-2 at level 31 (down from WARDOG level 90). An exploit let many players climb that track far faster than intended and put tanks on the field within the first hours of the season; BULKHEAD says it is fixing the exploit together with Driver progression bugs. Whether levels gained through it are rolled back is not stated.

What it means for your orders

• Class levelling: the XP tables are untouched by this update — the cheaper Season 02 thresholds still apply, so the delivery estimates on our class pages stand.
• Driver orders: the pace of a Driver climb should follow the intended curve once the fix is in; our orders are played through the normal track, so a rollback of exploited levels would not touch them.
• Cash orders: with the Lonestar bonus gone, cash income is back to the standard Season 02 economy — the higher assault-weapon kill bonus, logistics delivery streaks and the diminishing returns on crate selling.
• Limited-mode servers are a separate server list when they arrive; nothing in the post changes the rules on standard servers.

What we are watching

A Steam post or X follow-up confirming the backend update is complete, any hotfix patch notes, and whether BULKHEAD rolls back levels or cash earned through the exploit. We will update this item when BULKHEAD posts.