Dear exiles,
Today we announced that we’re rolling out a leveling system for Followers alongside the Mounts update. On the same date we’re also introducing a mechanic to limit the amount of Followers each player/clan is allowed to have.
We’ll be talking about these additions on stream on Thursday (5pm CET / 11am EST / 8am PST).
If you have questions about these systems, please leave them in this thread and we will endeavor to answer them during the stream.
Will you make some mechanics to get rid of obsolete Followers without killing them? Some menu command to “set them free”?
Try to read the info first. Then ask questions! 
So they wont get too much overflow with questions that their link already answer 
Not a single word about how I myself can get rid of some extra Thralls of my choice without killing them somehow. Not “random ones”.
Followers won’t have a Grit stat at all? Can’t you give them Grit but give it a new purpose like increased Health regen out of combat or something?
You can dismiss your follower by using the “Break Bond” command from the radial menu. This will immediately remove the Follower from your employ - no more dragging them over to the Volcano in order to watch them die horrifically in lava (although if you are in a particularly nasty mood, you can still do this, of course).
This is exciting!
Will the ability to order thralls and pets to stand down be implemented with this as well? It’s always a fun time when you’re trying to sell something to a customer and your guards locked behind doorways are screaming that “they’ll die today!”. Strong arming a customer has its place, but yikes to an honest person.
Really bad for business. 
Two questions.
1. Will Followers have states such as ‘passive’ or ‘active’ or ‘reactive’?
For example, if set to ‘passive’ they will not attack; if set to ‘active’ they will attack anything not you or a clan member; or ‘reactive’ they’ll attack only if you’re attacked? Or, some system to at least distinguish between AI and players.
2. Will mounts be a viable means of transportation, or are they strictly intended for combat?
Please keep questions limited to the Follower leveling system and the Follower limit.
Will there be any improvements with thrall/pet AI? To go along with this update
The issue we gonna hit is that we provide and defend most of our (PVE) servers map rooms near obelisk just the thralls/animals defending those gonna cause problems quickly.
Mounts take slots of followers limit ? and dancers ?
Two questions for me :
-For solo/co-op game : Will there be an option to disable the follower limit ?
-When you say that old followers will be less powerfull, how much less powerfull ? For exemple, if I take my actual Spinas and I capture a new Spinas, will the level 1 newSspinas be as strong as the old one, or a bit better or worse ? And a fully leveled new Spinas will be how much stronger ?
THIS IS FANTASTIC NEWS!!!
I am so excited for this change to come, absolutely brilliant! OMG FML!!!
I think this is a enormous step in the right direction making the game so much more exciting and giving a great thing to work towards as well as a strategic battle plan for your specific playstyle / character theme! Are you a Pictish warlord with more bears and wolves than humans.
Personally I feel that the current numbers, which I understand is not final, are still a little high. Reason being for me it was always a bit silly walking in a PVE server and seeing a wall of animals, literally close or more than 100 guarding a simple shack cos the player just loooooves fluffies! 
Questions:
edit:
Assuming craftable Undead followers will count towards your number, will there be a system like the recycle bench to scrap unwanted undead and retain some of the resources used to craft them before placing? I just don’t want my cap to fill with useless wretches and have to send them packing everytime I don’t get a silent legion dude as well as loose all the crafting resources. (TBH I have never tried placing an undead into the recycle bench, so sorry if it’s already a thing)
Things which no one understands:
We have no way to get rid of thralls in a fast way, but the old ones are uncapable of such things…
Yet you enforce the cap limit on OLD thralls…
Who comes up with such a bad combination?? Make it retroactive…
Edit: Oh, break bound = killing them (or releasing). Then I am at the same question like Toggles: Will thralls have the levels if they are still in chest? So only placed ones dont have that feature or all before the patch?
Are any of the Perks non-combat related? Like like have a Bearer give you a carry bonus or a Darfari give you bonus Survival in the desert?
Can old follower level?
What will happen to my old pets and thralls?
When this new system comes into play, your old Followers will be less powerful on average than the new Followers. The new thrall leveling system won’t roll out retroactively, so old Followers will be without levels, stats and perks.
Will stored thralls be considered part of the “old system” or once placed, after this build goes live, be useable under the new Follower rules.?
^^^ That sounds awesome, thank you!
Will we have a grace period during which to manually cull our thralls & pets using the new Break Bonds features? If not, then that means there’s going to be a LOT of volcano trips in store for established players.
Really hope you can give us at least a week or two of leeway here to sort things out via Break Bonds, it would be hugely frustrating to login patch day to find and Erii the Ravager with God Breaker armor randomly deleted while our first Thugra in non-epic DLC armor is still lurking around.
I have to search all bearers again… Making that thing not retroactive is by far the worst idea Funcom had in a long time… And honestly I cannot understand it AT ALL!!!
This non retroactive things on SUCH A FEATURE and on THRALLS, just feels like a big slap in the face. I understand something like this in a BETA… But seriously?
People who played the game have to invest time again to have same features like someone who will start new in December.
Who comes up with such a bad idea???
I do agree. My Spinas as killed so many bosses, and when I say “so many”, he has at least killed one hundred bosses. But no, he’ll probably be bad and I’ll have to farm him again.