Week of WAR – Day 2
After taking the day off gaming for my birthday on Tuesday, I was able to get a full night of WAR in last night (well, a full night minus and hour for Lost).
Tier 1 RvR is boring. Simply that. The XP is slow and the fights are boring. I can understand why people do the scenario grind. We had a warband and a half of Chaos against a warband a half of Order and the XP and renown came at about 1/4 the speed of scenarios, if not slower.
Not to mention, the fights themselves are boring. We stand on a hill and slaughter them, pushing them all the way back to their warcamp and then slowly they muster and push us back to a field while they are standing on a hill. I did this for about an hour back and forth until I could not take anymore so I grinded scenarios and public quests for the rest of the night.
Why even have Tier 1 and 2 RvR lakes if they are not enjoyable?
I am enjoying my Zealot more since I got my level 8 heal, but still fighting in PvE is just slow for this class. Holy priests in WoW kill stuff faster than I do.
I ended the night at rank 10, renown rank 8. I probably would have hit level 12 or so if I had just did scenarios all night. Even when losing, I get more XP than open world RvR (and that is even in the times when we are wiping the floor with them).
Public quests are alright. They are neat but I do not think they are the savior of PvE they were heralded as pre-launch. They are a nice distraction, but do not really make up for the lack of exciting quests. I have always been a man to read all the quest text in games but in this, I cannot seem to muster the excitement to read quests. It breaks my heart to think of all these zones and the lore behind them that 99% people are just basically ignoring.
While the quest indicators on the world and minimaps (the red circles around where you need to go) are a neat idea, I almost worry they are hand holding a bit much. I have always been against the mods like QuestHelper and Carbonite and enjoyed finding the location myself as quests are already simple enough nowadays. But this could all just be the explorer in me. With the unimaginative quests, the grinding is more evident and the PvE of the game feels one step away from an Asian MMO.
I think the entire playerbase would have been happier if the entire world was just one giant RvR lake or if the entire world was about 10% of the size it currently is. All the players seem to want is "Deathmatch: The MMORPG."
At the lower tiers, this game feels like it is in the middle of an identity crisis. It does not really have a solid aim or focus. I have heard this improves in tier 3 and tier 4 with more of an RvR focus but if the endgame of taking keeps and cities is what this game is all about, why even have level 1-39?
Just strip the game down to all the content in tier 3 and 4, remove tiers 1 and 2, have no levels and the only line of progression be the renown ranks that do the same things they do right now.
Also, Wilhelm of The Ancient Gaming Noob put up a good post regarding the accusations by a certain someone. I have some thoughts of my own which are somewhat of a medium between the two but I will save that for another post.