Teppotastic

A quick apology for not posting like I promised – my sleep patterns have cut-loose and cycled into oblivion now Uni is over. My bad.

Now onto the topic of this (hopefully succinct) post.

I’ve got back into WAR in a big way lately – moved onto the EU servers and got a couple of local buddies into it too. Firstly, let me just say I love the PvP in this game. If you want drop-in/drop-out 10-20min fun, you’ve got scenarios, if you’re just pissing about – go play PvE. If, on the otherhand, you want some good solid PvP, find a Warband and do some Open RvR. Maybe you’ll even take a Keep, right? WRONG. It seems that after T1 all the good adventurous people leave the game. All you get in T3 warbands is a kind of insipid cowardice that is not becoming of either side, especially the war-mongering Destruction. “Oh noes, there’s some Order there – lets run away”. Even if we outnumber keep defenders 2-to-1, if we don’t have 2 full WBs, nobody wants to try. It disgusts me.

I could understand if there was some risk to this. But the Death Penalty is laughable – it’s 10% reduction to HP (give or take) and costs a couple of silver to fix at a Healer – who you’ll spawn next to. I could understand if there were negligable rewards too. But the fact of the matter is that Mythic have spent some energy making RvR (and all PvP) much more rewarding since launch. There’s normal exp, Renown Rank (PvP level), Influence (for area-based rewards), high-value loot (chance of set-peices – I’ve seen over a dozen in the last couple of hours of RvR), Tokens/Medallions (collect them up to trade for set peices at vendors), “normal items” (Rare -> Common) and plain ol’ money. It’s not like you even have to run all that far when you die (and you will die at SOME point – though not as much as you might think) if your healers are halfway competant. Considering I’m playing a healer – if you’re in a WB with me, there’ll be at least one

I don’t care if it’ll take awhile – all that time we’re racking up rewards and sure, so is the enemy – that’s part of the game. There is no “I Win” button. This is a competition between players. It just strikes me that people want to join these warbands so they can say they only play RvR and that they’re “hardcore” because of it – but all they want todo is comp-stomp the 4 normal guards and 1 champion/hero guard at each of the small Battlefield Objectives. They place an inordinate value in “locking down” the zone for buffs.

What happened to the Player in PvP?

*deep breath*

I feel alittle better now. I’m told that these tactics are exactly that “tactical”. I’m not convinced. I’m also told it’s even more like this at T4. Which’ll be interesting because if the general mentality in MMO high-level PvP prevails – people will only want to have L38+, fully kitted out people in their teams.

*lesigh*