Big Orc Face

Oh no! They killed Karl!

But bloody hell, congratulations to Destruction on Karak Eight Peaks! They killed Karl Franz! I've not been playing much this weeks (Sims 2 has been pulling me into it's black hole) but I've been keeping an eye on Monolith's Realm War page, and we're inching closer and closer to Tchar'zanek. It's just a matter of time...

In which Kipling sees the Inevitable City

I spent 2pm until 10:30pm of yesterday playing WAR. Not for the Bitter Rivals Live Event (which is fun, I might write another post about this soon, but for now I'll say that the new scenario is, as another Monolith-er wrote "awesomely confusing"), but because Order were extremely busy locking down zones before besieging the Inevitable City.


Looks peaceful. Aaaah. However, for most of the time, the sands were strewn with broken corpses and towards the end of the zone lock out, groups of Order huddled tensely on BOs, waiting for the inevitable zerg o'Blades (which happened at 1 minute to lock out. They failed).


But I got my first ever gold bag from the south keep! And I got my Annihilator Maskhelm! Woohoo! (You can see the rest of my gear if you click on my name in the sidebar of this blog)


I also caught sight of Gorefang out there! Very brave of him to be out there at level 32, and I did wave. Unfortunately he fell to the ground shortly after and died a bloody death. I saw Codpeace, but I was dead and couldn't wave.


Hours later, we'd locked out Chaos Wastes and Black Crag, and it was time! Time to siege the city! And then the game failed. If you're in a warband, and your warband is in a full instance, you're forced to queue. What it took other players to tell me, was that you need to leave your warband, log out and log back in, rush the door and only then are you given the option to pick the PQ of your choosing. It's broken Mythic, fix that ASAP.


This was really the high point after we got to the city. I didn't think it was visually impressive (unlike Altdorf!), and I felt the pressure to join in the PQ rather than explore, in case of epic loot. I wanted epic loot. My name is Kipling, and I am a LOOT WHORE. The best I got was 10th place, and the green loot bag still sits in my bag because the green gear is not as awesome as it should be and I can't pick between the rest of the rewards. I'll probably choose the Apothecary item, because patch 1.2 broke the last two vials I had in my bank.

So at the moment, once the zones lock out, the game loses any kind of allure. The PQs are boring (repetitive, grindy, your chance at loot is low thanks to the distribution of abilities between characters) and the process of actually getting into cities is far from clear. And where's the option to just run riot through the streets? Next time I am going to forgo the loot, and explore the city properly, because the small chunk I saw was not as visually impressive as I would have liked!

But criticism aside: the process to get zones locked out is fantastic: exciting, rich with renown and if you want it to be, extremely satisfying when it comes to strategy and tactics. Will play again.

Monolith Population Stats

Mythic released some figures about my realm in a recent post on the Herald. I knew we were being steamrolled, but chalked it up to us being a bit crap and being slower to level than Destruction. But no:

Active Accounts Per Faction: 44% / 56%
Relative Average Exp. Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Relative Average RP Earning Rate per Time Unit: 50% / 50%
Average Exp. Per Character: 51% / 49%
Average RP Per Character: 51% / 49%

There are 12% more Destruction players on Monolith. TWELVE PERCENT. And we're actually earning more XP and renown than they are? Wow! In the face of such difference, the fact that we've been able to organise and blitz an area is amazing! Well done everyone. Order are kicking ass on Monolith and everyone should get a cookie.

They also said:

"We do realize that numbers alone do not always equate to the very real perception players experience when waging war in open RvR. There are many different variables that can play into what you actually experience, including the time of day/night, the organization and cohesiveness of the group, and player skill. As developers, we also realize that it’s simply not possible to control these aspects, and there are times when one side is inevitably outnumbered on the battlefield."

I guess the only thing the devs can do, without completely meddling with the game and thus give certain players an advantage over others, is to push for server transfers for one faction side only. There were the exact same arguments in World of Warcraft, so it's not a unique problem, and I am glad to see Mythic addressing them, sharing information with us and helping us all overcome the frustrations we face instead of branding us a bunch of crybabies and return to counting their piles of money.

Now that's customer service, and that's why I'll keep playing. Fluffy bunny non-combat pets would help too.

So Shamans are AWESOME, huh?

Playing as Icepick yesterday I came across not one but two RVR flagged Destruction players in Ostland. No idea why they were running that way, they were quite close to what I think is their warcamp, but this is the first time I've seen anyone flagged in such an obvious enemy area. So, being a good slave to Order, I attacked them both. One was level 13 and went down too fast (I needed Marauders for a quest) to comment on, but Boomsok was another matter. The little bugger managed to get me down to half health (!) before I managed to murder him in cold blood amidst the trees. His self-heals were epic and I'll definitely think twice about jumping a Shaman in the future.

And obviously, when a scenario popped for both of us 2 minutes later, I was absolutely spit roasted by the Destruction team in revenge. D'oh.