Great expectations

I found myself with very hesitant to write any posts atm, there's allot i want to write about the problem is it all up in the air.

It appears from the patch notes for 1.1.1 that fortress's are being made significantly more accessible and that mythic expect this to open up capital sieges allot more.

generally i'm in favor of this but the problem is Zone Domination was announced a long time ago, but no significant information on how it will operate has emerged since it was first announced.

Without the changes to zone locks being made it unlikely that the keep changes will have a chance to be experienced because zones are still to difficult to lock.

The new careers and associated live events are very unclear too.
As for the 'live expansion' there is no info outside mythic's very tightly controlled press release.

The Zone domination system has to be done just right, in particular it important that the difficulty of preventing a lock increases as time passes to encourage people to fight early and not just wait until the last moment and swoop in and ninja 1 thing.

There are a couple of methods mythic could use but as yet no indication has been given as to which one will be used.

Its unsure as yet is if mythic want to make zone domination the primary way of capturing a zone or if SC's and PQ's are still going to be the primary method.

Im hoping for a bit of both The way id like it to work is:

Keeps Contribute a static amount

BO's contribute a static amount on initial capture and then a constant stream of VP's as long as both keeps are held.

PQ's & SC's both still contribute VP's which decay over time.

anyways this is still all pie in the sky, but i hope mythic's tight lipness & the amount of time they have spent on it means that whatever changes are being made are significant

On a final note there's one line on the patch notes which is making me very hopeful
'New Quests: New quests are available from Keep Lords and Battlefield Objective Sergeants' i wrote here about my hope for quest with decent rewards for zone caps so im gonna cross my fingers and hope, but equally its possible the quest could be timed quests which give a bonus if the objective is held for the duration which would certainly give a better incentive to defence.

Another beer based event?

allot of people seem to be assuming that bitter rivals is just a very literal title for the patch but i reckon its a bit of word play which signals yet more beer themed tomfoolery
from the wiki definition of bitter

Bitter is a British term for a style of beer or pale ale. The expression first appeared in the UK in the early 19th century as part of the development and spread of pale ale.

considering the berserk nature of both classes a big piss up followed by a fight seems 100% appropriate.

Just not feeling it

With all the fuss doing the rounds currently as mythic prepare for the slayer/choppa event + whatever gonna go on on valentines day i find myself oddly uninterested.

I can't explain it, I really should be interested, im a life long meele dps player and the valentines day event looks like it may be based on the lore of the two classes i play in WaR.

But for whatever reason its all a bit 'Meh' atm.

perhaps my enthusiasm will pick up when whatever it is goes live

Lich King Frozen

Today i froze my WoW account. Which after playing steadily since its European release means i find myself surprised to be doing so.

This made me think about what fundamentally has changed about wow which would make me want to stop playing.
As far as i can tell its all about the story.
Two types of storytelling happen in WoW the story the game tells you, and the story you create for yourself.
From 70-80 WoW excelled at telling you a story, the us of phasing really made the quests stick with you, what Syp says here i think amounts to pretty much exactly what phasing brings to the table a constant visual reminder of the quest progress .
Sadly all good things must end and after you hit 80 they pretty much do. To give them credit Blizzard tried hard producing some of the best storylines in the game in the final zone (icecrown), the problem is that these last 2-3 evenings in total at best and then the grind begins in earnest and the game stops telling you stories.

This is where in WoW the players own experiences used to take over, Raiding used to be about creating your own mythology, your own heros and villians. I can talk for hours to guildys about our raids in WoW and tbc but when i comes to Wotlk conversation dries up.

Its not that the dungeons are badly designed and i think for a 'entry level' raid they are very well tuned.
the problem is we are stuck at reception and not allowed into the rest of the building. Easy difficulty is fine if once you got past that there something else to do, but in wow atm the only thing to do is farm more gear, or try for achievements.

It was the challenge of defeating bosses which gave meaning to the my pre wotlk play in wow. We wern't the elite and we certainly didn't put in as many hours as many guilds did but that made us all the prouder when we got somewhere.
Making WoW casual friendly is fine imo, but what should go are gear check fights like Brutallus.

If Uldar had been in game when wrath launched i doubt id still be writing this.

Im sure i will go back to wow at some point(which is why the accounts frozen not canceled) but not until the endgame offers a real challenge again.

GIVE ME A ZONE CAP QUEST OR GIVE ME DEATH!!!!!

OK perhaps not death,ill take cake instead. but if we dont get a change to the RvR system as it is i expect some sort of compensation.

Paul Barnet i know that you and your swarm of underlings are out there somewhere in the great ocean of the internet swimming from site to site like some giant over enthusiastic tyranid fleet devouring all that the blogging community has to say, so hear my call!

Here's a idea for WaR which fits your famous “It’s so obvious that I should have thought of that!” criteria (although it 100% not genius).
You can solve the current keep trading problem, and encourage more fortress sieges with one incredibly simple change.

Add a quest which gives a significant amount of XP, RR and RvR influence for the capture of a zone.

The fine details don't matter much, but here they are anywaysClick to read more

Im not sure what the appropriate amount of XP or Influence would be but lets say you gave 15,000 Renown points for a zone cap.

"woooo there" i here people say "that's a helluva lot of Renown" but you can easily earn 2-3k in a SC so i think that this is a fair amount for capturing a zone.

Id also say that the quest should scale

lets say use the chaos/empire paring as a example
for destro:
Chaos wastes: 10,00 Renown
Pragg: 15,000
Reikland 20,000

with fortress current problems i feel quest to cap them would be wrong because people would be excluded. But if mythic can stop that there would be no reason not to introduce them in the future.

also a quest to 'breech the walls of aldorf' or similar would be nice but not essential.

There! Isn't that almost sickeningly simple!

I know this is far from a subtle or nuanced idea but it is 'actionable' if myhtic wanted to they could have this in place in days. most changes ive seen would take a while to bring in.

& i know i can think of 1 shockingly simple flaw >_< but since its a problem with mythics overall RvR system rather than this specific idea, so im gonna ignore it.


Note: I tried to use 'a idea' rather than my idea here because im sure someone somewhere has though of this before, its just so obvious. Nevertheless i think its a idea worth trying to champion.
(bonus points for those who spot the reference from the 1st line)

The Battle for Battle Objectives.

Regis arbitrary and Syp have all been writing about about the future of battle objectives recently, and Regis and Arbitary have both come out as strong advocates that villages may be the answer.

Now while these are all great bloggers i have to say that this time i feel in the words of Ned Flanders they are "wrong didley wrong"

There are to me at least allot of reason why this wont work but im going to stick to what i think are the two biggest( mainly since these are the ones which need the most explanation otherwise id just but a quick note on them in a comment).
Click to read more


The flow of the campaign.
One of the great strengths of mythics RvR system is that it has a clear end objective and that flow that encourages more and more RvR.
Your aim is to take the other realms capital everything between that is just a speed bump to be overcome.
Once a army looses it sense of common purpose it will start to fragment.
Currently the biggest interruption of this flow is the time it takes to turn over a zone, but i would suggest that the new zone domination mechanic should end this.
This sort of fast paced war with constantly moving fronts makes for a interesting meta game. One problem the current slow state of RvR doesn't lead people to consider is that while maintaining the flow of a 'offensive' is good allowing a blitzkrieg is bad (at least in terms of making a fun game).

The reason allot of people dislike BO's currently is that they feel they discourage actual RvR fighting. There really is no reason to defend a BO unless you are very close to locking a zone.
What will often happen is that outnumbered side will typically take up residence in one keep while to offensive force captures the undefended Bo's(On Karak-Hirn the most commonly used capture sequence ive seen is Keep BO BO BO Keep BO).

One way of looking at BO's real function is took consider what would happen if they didn't exist.
Currently BO's act as time sinks, they buy defenders time to get into a keep or to return to a zone before it is locked. remove that and the meta RvR just becomes a case of who can get the biggest zerg up and destroy keeps the fastest before someone can react.
Because of their simplicity there is really no difference between a 6man group or a warband group in the overall speed that a BO is taken.

I guess what im trying to say is that defenders need the breaks in fighting that capping a BO provides in order to mount a proper defense.

Arbitary talks about how RvR doesn't currently teach people the skills needed, but essential capital cities in a contested state rely upon the exact same things (BO 's and SC's) to quote the herald

"You fight for control over the City just like regular open world zones. A City Scenario is available to join from anywhere in tier 4 as well as within the City. Capture the Objectives in the City to earn Victory points over time and remember to always kill the enemy players you come across as it all contributes to Zone Control in the City."

the only difference is the chronology of when public quests play a part.


Tactical Justification?
To pick off where i started on a comment on W&W
Keeps are built to protect villages, villages don't protect keeps.
It really is that simple.If a village was attacked its populace would typically retreat to the keep. In fact allot of medieval villages were built just outside castle walls.
If you look at real medieval warfare forces would basically never fight in the open unless there numbers were roughly even. In some cases if there was a area with good natural defensive quality's (like a valley or hill) sometimes a force would make a stand but generally the simple rule was castle and keeps exist for one reason and one reason alone: Somewhere to retreat to when you can't win a open battle.

So is wrong to pillage a village?
Well people want to pillage and that's understandable and to me at least a good thing to be aiming for in your game design. Anyone who has play WoWs Wrath of the Lich King expansion will tell you that the one great innovation blizzard introduced has been phasing. They way that the world changed about you anchored you in the narrative in ways that most mmos including WAR fail at miserably.I think the desire for villages is at heart a desire for this sort of feeling of impacting the world which is atm lacking from war before the city siege stage.
What i would dearly love on one level is the same to happen as when a city is locked down, that when a zone becomes locked the entire opposing factions half of the map is taken by the victors and new variation on the public quest which had been active in that area spawn as players of the defeated faction being unable to enter or respawn in it.the problem with this is that it just doesn't work with the way fortress battles are fought. What use is this sort of transformation if it can be reversed less than 1hr, equally the 24 hour duration of the capital siege is completely unusable.

But there is one area which had no use outside RvR
that generally have a unique look and which could easily be made into a interesting fight.

and that is warcamps.

Let say when u cap a zone the defeated realms warcamp becomes a PQ with a 15-20min timer on it. There is a 3 min timer on the flight master before he despawns. Player from the defeated realm cannot enter the RVR area, and if they die do not respawn.

This would work as a reward for the winners in the form of getting to loot & burn the opponents base, and at the same time allow the defenders some time to regroup before the next zone is assaulted. Participation in the PQ could contribute influence to players RvR influence pool. And since there would only be 1 PQ it would lead to far less fragmentation than happens currently.

Soooo long story short. Regis you had it right 1st time. Warcamps good. Villages bad. At least in my opinion anyways :D

Imagine If.... Wards were Talismans

Imagine If.. will be a weekly series of posts written in the style of a WaR herald post introducing a new fictional feature to the game.
Wards are here to stay like it or not. But lets look at a different way they could be implemented (which Syp quickly touched upon).

Patch IF1.0 New features: Talismans of Warding
Due to customer feedback on the ward system and the success of the introduction of RvR influence pools we have decided to introduce a new system which will allow more players access to higher levels of content.

Changes to current sets
The Superior Ward and The Excelsior Ward have been partially merged, both will reduce damage in Sub-Boss encounters and King Fights by 10% and can stack up to 5 times.
In addition The Excelsior armor sets will increase damage and healing in King encounters by 2% and can stack up to 5 times.

Talismans of Warding
From IF1.0 onwards you will be able to supplement the wards offered by Tier RvR & Dungeon set with Warding Talismans which can be slotted into any gear of your choice. All warding talismans are classed as Semi-Unique, meaning you can have maximum of 2 of the same talisman equipped in your gear at once

Ward Talismans come in 3 levels, each level is unlocked upon reaching the required renown rank. The wards are available from different vendors depending on the power level of the ward read below to find out about their locations.
Click to read more

Lesser Talisman of Warding:
Provide the lesser ward effect which will reduce damage in High Level City Dungeon and Fortress encounters by 10% and can stack up to 5 times.
Sold By: Keep Provisoner.
Keep Provioners will spawn in The Keeps of any of the Pre-Fortress Zones (ie: Chaos wastes is the order pre fortress zone for order in the empire/chaos pairing) after the zone has been locked.
Requirements:Rank 35-40 and Renown Rank 30

Greater Talisman of Warding:
Provides the Greater ward effect which will reduce damage in The Lost Vale and City Invasion PQ encounters by 10% and can stack up to 5 times. The Greater Ward effect also includes the Lesser Ward effect
Sold By: Fortress Provisoner.
Fortess Provisioners will spawn inside a enemy fortress once they have become captured.
Requirements:Rank 40 and Renown Rank 40

Superior Talisman of Warding:
Provides the Superior Ward effect will reduce damage in Sub-Boss and King encounters by 10% and can stack up to 5 times. The Superior Ward effect also includes the Lesser Ward and Greater Ward effects.
Sold By: Siege Camp Provisioner.
Siege Camp Provisioners will spawn inside Capital city Battle Objectives once they become captured.
Requirements:Rank 40 and Renown Rank 50