State of the Game, Whats coming for ORvR - Snap reaction

So Mark Jacobs has made his state of the game address.

If we get through the fluff what does he actually say.

1.2.1 also contains the initial Keep Upgrade system (more on this below), more improvements to T3 in terms of content and experience and the Combat and Careers team will give some extra loving to the Archmage, Shaman, White Lion, and Marauder, another Live Event and much more

All good, especially healer love.

We are also working on a new ORvR Influence bar which is filled by killing players and unlocks higher renown ranks in T4. We also want to improve XP, Renown and Influence Rewards for fighting other players apart from those bars.

The detail will make or break this, we will have to see what more we can learn.

We are also looking at implementing a “Nemesis” system which tracks the top 20 enemy players that kill you and which will give you rewards for hunting them down.

I can see this being very popular. I have already been thinking how best to use this system. should I pick as healers, all high renown players or players with high play times. I can see this being fun.

We want to make BOs more relevant and necessary for the Keep take to Zone Capture progression.

Interesting, with some great potential, short on actual detail

Our current plans include putting in a Keep Upgrade system that encourages guilds to claim and upgrade Keeps. These upgrades would be usage upgrades, not just visual upgrades. We are looking at giving interesting and useful things to guilds who upgrade Keeps; defense improvements, guilds rewards, etc. We also want to put in more attacker options, more attacker abilities, and experiment with new types of siege warfare. Down the ramp (a pun a day and all that) a bit, we are also working on putting in an additional ramp to the Keep Lord room in every Keep and Fortress in the game.

Could be fluff, could be great, we need to see the detail. An adtional ramp will be a great move.

players will no longer be able to bypass other players in City Selection and you will no longer have City Instances which are 40 vs. 0!

About time.

I suspect that some people may get very annoyed about the lack of detail and it does read as if Mark was backed into a corner and wrote this against his will. Overall, lots of potential and I am optomistic. Mythic do seem to be concious of flaws in the game and they are trying to address them.

Fortess time

I did not have time to post today as I was running a fortress atempt(or at least trying to)

At first it was a bit like this



Luckily in the end it a bit neater and we took it.

Fortress down on Karak Hirn: Operation Snotstorm.

Last night the Destruction Forces of Karak Hirn set out to take a fortress. Approximately an hour into the operation the human stronghold south of Reikland lay in ruins. Hordes of destruction pillaged as their loyal piggies frolicked in the once proud abode of the Lord of that land.

The Build up:

I got a very interesting mail in the post the other day from Roo. Roo’s ambition was to get 200+ destruction players in the field and try and push 2 zones at the same time in the hope of taking a fortress. He had contacted every guild in the game and got commitments from all the Alliances to support this initiative. H spent a small fortune on internal mail and organised meetings of all those interested.

The Plan:

I took the lead in Reikland with my alliance and 2 non aligned Warbands, Roo took the lead in Kadrin Valley. Zone pushing started at 7pm GMT / 8pm CET, giving people with lives a fighting chance of getting home from work.

When the zone locked:

When we locked Reikland the team that locked moved to the fort immediately. The other zone team moved to blockading duties. If the first team wiped on the lord, we would have immediately moved the next team into the fort before Order could return.

The transition from zone lock to fort attack went very smoothly and the first door was down as our stragglers arrived at the fort and the population cap was reached. The second door went down very quickly with a rather scary amount of DPS concentrated on it.

Over the last few week we had practiced out Lord attack tactic and had been fine tuning it (having a little more success each time) this time it worked perfectly. It did so because everyone knew the plan and executed it. Discipline and good spirits ensured that when we had killed all the order players in the fort we were well placed to take down the lord. The kill on the Lord was especially nice as people controlled their agro and didn’t get over excited.

The feeling after the kill was very gratifying, while people did get loot; I genuinely think no one really cared. The kill was a combined effort with everyone on destruction playing a part. Players in tier 4 with sub level 40 characters formed their own WB to defend the outer zone so that they could allow level 40s in to do the fighting. Everyone did what they had to do to make the kill possible even if there role was less than exciting. Not everyone can be the Main Tank or the general but without every single player doing what was asked there would have been no kill.

Overuse of the word Thanks

This bit may be a bit tedious.

Congrats and thanks to all destruction players, everyone did their bit, every pq farmed is as important as tanking the Lord.

A special thanks to Roo, the level of preparation he put in to this was staggering. People were mailed, meetings were held, forums were set up. His target was 2 simultaneous zone attempts and a fort capture; he got that through sheer hard work,

Thanks to my alliance Shadow Wind, its very easy to run a zone lock when you have 100ish people that do exactly as you tell them. We kept a census of our members during the event.

7:00pm - 100 members
8:00pm - 113 members (Reikland Lock/Reikwald Fort)
9:30pm - 107 members
10:00pm - 100 members
10:30pm - 91 members (Eataine Lock/Fort Attempt)

To the other warbands (non Alliance) who worked on Reikland I would like to thank Calana and Bakchop and their teams.

Thanks to Bakchop who took his warband to Eataine to stop order from capping there while we were in KV.

Thanks to Donegal who rounded up the sub 40 players into a warband. Thanks to you guys for staying out of scenarios and the fort.

Grats to the guys in Tier 3 who were working away to support us.

Congrats to order for a superb defence of KV and the grace of the majority in acknowledging the fort take. The ORvR on our server last night speaks highly of the competiveness of the server.

I expect a backlash soon.

It was a pleasure to be involved in and I really enjoyed myself.

Aldorf here we come, Mrs Wiggles needs a new dress.

That Elusive Fortress Take

In the last few weeks I have found myself trying to organise the unruly masses for a Fortress take. Our best effort so far was the Lord in the Elf Tier to 10%.

I have come up with a few tips (pretty obvious) for those of you who would like to do the same. There is nothing earth shattering here but they may help.

1. Use CAPS, some people don’t like them but it catches the eye
2. Use channel 2, It saves you annoying people in channel one, region chat.
3. Have able deputies who can and will support you in public channels
4. Let someone else lead the Warband you are in. It is hard enough to run a raid; you don’t need to be worrying about group management.
5. Warn people well in advance what you’re going to do. Let them know the tactic well in advance.
6. Repeat yourself, repeat yourself
7. Where possible be nice to people.
8. Explain to each class type their exact role, have a reliable rep from that class confirm what the best strategy for them is. Tanks should know where they are going, Melee DPS too, Ranged DPS should know their role and when to commence bombardment, healers should know their placement.
9. Use a count down, start on 3 minutes and go 10 9 8 ....2 1 GO
10 Stick as closely to the same approach on each keep(tweak for improvements) This gets everyone into a habit.
11. Thank everyone afterwards, emphasise the positives
12. The more Fortress attempts you run, the more people will be familiar with you and therefore the more likely they will listen to you.


Trying to organise a mass attack can be frustrating and tiring but it can also be very rewarding. Don’t try and do it when you’re tired, hungry or cranky