Friday 11 September 2009

Pebble beach warfare?

Firstly I’d like to look at a few possible definitions’ of the word “Zerg”. You can pick one or dispute them if you like.

Definition 1

“The Zerg Swarm are a race of fictional insectoids and the overriding antagonists of the StarCraft series. Operating as a hive mind,….”

Definition 2

"Overwhelming an enemy with numbers - going for quantity instead of quality, by rushing your opponent with hundreds of millions of players that have little skill.”


Now I have been trying to par-take in some RvR this week and the “War” zerg doesn’t seem to even live up to any of the above. Rarely have I seen any focus, or even a goal of the PvP and there has been certainly no idea of rushing an opponent to overwhelm them with numbers or any inkling of a hive mind. (By the way I am not blaming Mythic for this; I am putting the blame squarely at the average player.)

I have joined a few war bands and a lot of the players are not even playing in the same zone. Then when I have run to where the main clusters of players are, you find a massive group of order and destruction just fighting in one spot. My best attempted at describing this is pebbled beach warfare. Each side has a turn at being the water, a wave of players smashing into the pebbles dissolving into nothing remotely meaningful.

Now I still consider my relationship with War meaningful, but this kind of PvP is like having dinner with your other half and finding a ginger hair in you lovely prepared chips, sausage and egg, when you both have brown hair.

What has happened to us? Are people just trying to grind renown, is it the fact flipping zones and taking keeps only gets you “Annihilator” gear, and most people and their dog already have this? One member of the guild did suggest moving to another zone, then some one pipe’s up they don’t want to do PvE RvR (taking keeps without opposition).

Before this post just descends into a rant, I will try being constructive.

For me, the only way to have a truly organised war band or scenario group is with Ventrilo or Team Speak. No matter how fast you type you can not respond to the flow of RvR without it. As well an integrating voice communication (I’d do what Dungeons’s and Dragons Online did and get the experts to help you integrate it, I seem to remember they used the gamespy people.) I would make it configurable and have 3 types of people in a war band. The leader, scout and member, allowing the war band leader able to assign roles and turn off mute depending on your role. That way you could have voice communication so only the leader and scouts can chat and the rest listen.

Should a war band leader get more renown or a gold bag, which significantly helps to flip a zone? A player already gets more renown on a tic if they took keeps and objectives. If you’re a war band leader with over a certain number of members could you also get something extra? A gold bag to re-distribute or more renown? This might make more people step to the front and try and lead as doing so actually requires thought and effort.

Do we need a war band leader only chat channel which spans regions? The region channels tend to get spammed therefore could leaders use this to coordinate themselves?

Mythic have done lot’s to try to coerce players to take objective and keeps, with extra renown and gold. But as far as I have witnessed a lot of the population for that past few weeks any way seem to be happy with the pebble beach warfare.

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