2 > 6

With Patch 1.2, the first stage of a city siege had its time changes from 6 hours to 2. Over the weekend, I got to experience my first city siege at this reduced time. The result is it is a much better fit. I was actually able to stay the whole time.

The six hour system was just too long. I'm sure some people managed to park themselves there for the entire time, but I sure couldn't. A side effect of that was that I really lost interest in the goal of the fight, to defend Altdorf. The Victory Point numbers became meaningless, as so much of the fight would go on while I was gone.

In the new system, I do actually care. Two hours is about the upper limit of my playtime (at one sitting), so it ends up working out. The city defense actually felt like an urgent matter this time around.

The city siege still needs work though. As Mythic has admitted, the PQ bosses are a bit out of line. It sure felt like it when I got hit for 30,000 damage on my warded Engineer. Hopefully we will see a fix for this soon.

We also had the problem of the enemy leaving our instance (1165 in this case). The Echelon warband was here the whole time and say Destro come and go. We had many good fights and were able to defend our PQ (with the help of the OP lord). There were times when the instance was empty though.

State of the Realm reported Destruction had 87% of the Victory points. Was this for just our instance or all of the instances combined? It would be nice if there was some built in feedback for how things were going. I can't imagine it was that high, unless Destro was able to beat the uber-Lord in other instances.... because they were not doing it in ours.

I only walked away from this city siege with some Renown. It would really be nice to be working towards my Invader gear rather than be at the mercy of the RNG. Overall though, it was a fun time.

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Battle for Altdorf - Part 2

Continuation from Part 1.

We left Part 1 at the beginning of the Altdorf invasion...

Altdorf was packed with defenders and most everyone was pretty excited. This was a first for many of us. Even though we wished it had been their city, we were looking forward to something different.

I was still with my Sigmar's group, so when we got the popup about the invasion our party leader had to choose what instance we were to join. As I was not the leader, I'm not sure how many instances there were to choose from or how full they were. So into our instance we went.

We were greeted with an Altdorf under siege. It was dark and ominous with most of the light coming from fires. I thought to myself, I really should have read up on this first, as I had no clue what to do. We decided to head to the docks and capture it. This is useful in securing the zone and completing the competing Public Quest.

I had heard stories about empty city instances where one side just farms the PQ. This is not one of those stories. Destruction was well represented in this instance. Over the next hour, we took turns getting to Stage 2 of the public quest only to defeat (or be defeated). The 2nd stage is to defeat the opposing general (hero mob).

What ends up happening is that all forces on both sides rally at their general to defend him. It turns into a massive fight. If the general is not defeated in 8 minutes (I think), the PQ resets. I can see how this would be boring if there was no opposition.

There was also a scenario here, but I never bothered to join. Why would I? There was non-stop fighting in the city already. The fact most people were doing this for the first time probably contributed to how hectic it was. No one had a plan to win, it was more "lets go kill destruction!" There is nothing wrong with that, as it was quite fun.

After an hour or so, I was just too tired to continue. I retired from the battlefield and went to bed. When I awoke, Altdorf looked liked it had always looked. Was it all a bad (good) dream? It appears the invasion failed, this time.

Some thoughts:

Fortress Doors. They seem paper thin now. Destruction absolutely steamrolled the forts in the morning, and it was not even that early. This is why the Zone Domination, coming in 1.2, makes me nervous.

Locking. We were waiting for Destruction to lock Reikland for at least an hour Saturday morning. They really should have been able to. In contrast to my above statement, this is why I am looking forward to Zone Domination.

Exploit or not? Why was Destruction in between the fort and the city? This is not an area we were meant to defend... so should they be able to attack? Kind of defeats the purpose of the mighty fort.

City Instances. An empty instance would have been quite disappointing. However, a full one is pretty fun. We did have issues getting our party members back into the instance when they were disconnected.

City PQ. repeating the same PQ over and over (for a possible 5 hours) would get very boring. More PQ's should be added in order to mix things up a bit.

Tokens. I would love to see a token system in here, so we can work towards the advanced armor sets rather then being at the mercy of a gold bag.

Atmosphere. Altdorf's invasion atmosphere was great.

Even though it was my city getting raided, it was a lot of fun defending it. I hope next time we can give Destruction the same fun experience, but in their home.

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Battle for Altdorf - Part 1

Saturday was a very interesting day for me in WAR. I got my first look at a city siege and I took my first trip into Sigmar's Crypt. I will be saving the dungeon run for another post. The city siege was the first one on the Badlands server, at least since the server merges. Destruction had gotten close before, but this time they actually broke through.

I logged in around 9:30am to find that Eatine was just about locked down by the forces of Destruction. Using a guild recall scroll, I got to Altdorf and took the south exit to Reikwald. From Reikwald, I took the Northern path to Shining Way. Once at the fortress, I took a position on the middle wall just as Eatine fell.

Destruction was on the door almost immediately. Sadly, there was only a handful of defenders at the fort. In approximately 3 minutes, the outer door was down. I was pretty surprised by the speed, so was caught off guard. I had to take the long way around the inside of the outer wall to get to the inner keep. I was not quite stealthy enough and was killed near the inner keep postern door. A kindly Warrior Priest rezzed me.

As soon as I was rezzed, I was being attacked. The door to the inner keep had already fallen. It was only about 3 minutes since the outer door fell. I ran up to the Lords room, but it was just delaying the inevitable. The fortress fell a few minutes later. Shining Way was owned by Destruction.

Order was now starting to get organized, so we all descended upon Reikland. We found Destruction was here in force already. We were pushed away from their keep by overwhelming numbers. Reikland looked like it was going to fall as well. So the call went out to man the Reikwald fortress for a final defense. This time we would be ready.

We waited for an attack that never came. Destruction was not able to lock down Reikland. It seemed as if they were 1 victory point short. There was some excitement, as Destruction had found their way to the rear of our fortress, between the fort and the city. This seems like an oversight on Mythic's part, as they should not be back there.

Fast forward 12 hours. I logged in for a Sigmar's Crypt run. During the run, Destruction made another push. This time they set their sights on the Dwarf fortress of Stonewatch. They had to hurry though, as Shining Way was close to being reset. they managed to defeat a full defending force of Order, but not before Shining Way reset. Undeterred, Destruction attacked Reikland and locked it.

Reikwald was the last stop before they gained access to the city. We listened to the defense reports on the regions channel and it did not look good. As we finished our crypts run. Reikwald fell. Not many of us knew what to even expect next. The invasion of Altdorf had begun.

Continued in Part 2.

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