Why? Well I think it’s because it changes the play field. Presented with a different situation in ORvR and scenarios, it’s interesting to see how it all plays out. Instead of the usual day in and out, it gets a nice kick of newness. Players who have rarely journeyed in to ORvR zone came out in zerg loads for the Witching Night kill players objective. The night that the quest came up Praag went crazy with huge zergs on each side, and the night ended with the fortress assault crashing the server 3 times.

Would like to see something similar happen, but without the crashing of course.

But now, not winning, why bother? Just take the exit and try queuing again for a winning one. I would vote it as the worst fix ever. Pressing that button to join a scenario should be like a contract for the players to play. Not to let’s see if we are winning or not, and then maybe, just maybe step out and try to be cool.

Really should just break the fix again or just punish players for ruining other player’s playing experiences. Anything from debuffs or even renown loss. Or just a message telling them how much of a coward they are. Just something.

The trap of statistics is that it tries to simplifies huge amounts of data and numbers in to something imprecise: words. The exact wording “Average of All North American Servers”. I assume (and assuming is always a bad thing), that they took all the percentages of all the servers and then added them up and found the mean. That is the fact then. The spread is 49% Order and 51% Destruction.

That what it is, but what it isn’t is a counting of all the players and then finding the weight in shear numbers. Second thing is that they counted “Active Accounts per Faction”, so I assume (yet again not a good thing) that it’s active accounts and not active characters on servers. Meaning… hey all those alts or tryout characters left on all those other servers you don’t touch anymore has strewed the results. But that’s part of statistics, with a huge sample population (seemingly everyone in this case) it should all equal out.

However, I don’t think that a lot of people feel like it’s a fair fight when they play. I’m glad that the Herald made a mention of that. For one reason or another, if it doesn’t seem like a fair game, people lose motivation to play. Mythic being like a gym teacher organizing students in to teams, something has to happen when the fat kid, the shortest, and the wheelchair is all on one team. Then again I feel that both sides on the server I play on has their own fair share.

In a one on one situation, it’s getting the other guy’s health down to zero before your own health reaches zero. In control point scenarios, it’s capturing points, holding them, and killing the other side. End goal being to reach 500 points before the other side does or at the time limit have more points. In the campaign, it’s capturing two fortresses, successfully take over the city, defeat two city bosses, and then finally defeat the “king/warlord”.

To help or be hindered from reaching any of those victory condition, it’s depends on a lot of things. From class, level, gear, player skill (yes I would think there is some skill in playing a MMO character), group make up, realm morale, global strategy, etc. On this side of the fence and the other. Need to start tipping the scale a bit I think.

For my Magus, clugging along just entered tier 4 a few days ago, the “2″ key is bound to Pandemonium. Awesome AoE DoT that provides a huge chunk of damage in scenarios that easily puts me up as top damage dealer. Short cast time and short range makes it a slight risk to use, but it’s worth it most of the time. Combined with Glean Magic to reduce Spirit Resistance it can really start to hurt.

The shaman the “2″ key is home to ‘Ey, Quit Bleedin’, the most used healing ability I use. It’s a great HoT and spammable. Finds plenty of uses in any situation. Best way to heal anything that isn’t taking burst DPS, and it’s the best way to augment something taking burst DPS.

Now for the interesting bit, for the marauder, action bar 1 actually switches around depending on what arm/mutation is currently in use. For the Monstrosity, it’s all about the Demolition spam. Even though my marauder isn’t speced or equipped well for Demo-spam it has it’s uses in PvE. Great way to do damage to multiple targets and not draw too much aggro from it. For the other two arms, Savagery and Brutality(which I don’t use anymore), Rend is placed there. General use DoT, not great but it’s not bad. Finds use for those extended PvE boss fights and efficiently uses AP. In RvR, it’s nice to leave a parting gift to your killer, or DoT up those part-runners/bomb-planters/point-cappers.

On the Shaman, I got the shoulders and the chest piece. Rather lucky for me. Out of the many times I ran Bastion Stair, and the couple times of the City Instance it was the first time I got boss drops. The run was smooth overall, did it with another guild and a guildmate. I think one of the other guys haven’t been in there before, but it worked out fine. The last boss did give us some trouble though, just having people get comfortable with the encounter and the pools.

On the Marauder, the run felt slower. Then again my Marauder’s single target DPS doesn’t compare to a Witch Elf’s. But I bring the armor, the survivability, and the utility. I got the shoulders for this character from this run, it matches nicely with one of the arm graphics. Even though I felt the run was slower, it was still a smooth run. Again we had first-timers with us, but we actually took down the last boss in one try. One of the group members actually commented in vent that it was the smoothest run of bile he had.

Usually the role of leadership in a PvE run of instances or PQs is pushed on the one with the most experience. Those who know what to do teaches and mentors others. That is how tips and tricks get pass on first hand. Actual experience beats just reading the strategy on some website or forums. And after learning, the then followers can now be leaders of other groups to repeat the process.

But an important factor is that the person has to be comfortable in the position of leadership. To feel comfortable, they have to be comfortable with the task at hand and the players they lead. Have to know the task and what to do (experience). Have to be ok with the players playing beside them. Part of why PUGs is a dirty dirty word. I don’t think many of the end-game instances in Warhammer are ran with PUGs. Much more at ease and relaxed when it’s a party of guildmates, alliance members, or friends of friends at least.

So the rules in Open RvR are going to be changing, and hence the strategies employed will too. The bottom line being that if a side takes and holds all the keeps and objectives in a zone, they are going to have a “very good chance of capturing the zone”. Overall, I think it’s more fair and fun. No more of this you really could use those points you get from tier 3 zones to flip tier 4 zones. Or the other side needs to come out and play to have anything happen. I think this would provide for a lot more non-zerging encounters.

Taking and holding a zone sounds like a nice layer of complexity. On defense, you need to split up to cover all your bases. On offense, you have a nice selection of target, and will have a meaningful impact if just one objective is taken. There’s an element of risk, there’s the chance for small groups to shine, and there’s the possibilties of spliting up the zerg. I have more hope now.

What does this have to do with Warhammer Online RvR? I say it’s the source of the main complaint of zerging. The rules support this type of strategy, and rewards it. No limit on players, independent Open RvR objectives,  and rewards not related to the amount of people participating.

When taking a zone, it’s normal operating procedure to move as a huge mass of people from Battlefield Objective to Battlefield Objective. Why? Well it’s to have everyone benefit from it. Each capture and 3 minute holding, it’s 1000 Renown Points and 200 Influence for an individual. If you think about strengthen your side, that’s the way to do it. Have as many people as you can earn points.

There is very little very reason to be any where else other than with the zerg. Maybe go and try to pick off strays if your lucky, but it’s doubtful you’ll find enough to equal the reward of just tagging along with the zerg. All signs points towards the more you have the better off you are. I feel that the current game rules for Open RvR is just too simple. There isn’t anything that forces the zerg to break up. Or even to consider it. There isn’t reward in taking risks. But what can be done about that.

I think it should be made more complex. Add more steps, add more layers, and add more risk. Based on the current map and setup, why not link Battlefield Objectives and Keeps. Make it so that you need to take and hold an objective to take a keep. Add secondary goals. Not only does your side have to take the keep, but in the mean while you have protect something else. Split up the zerg. Allow for more opportunities for decisive battle of all scales to take place.