Dec 12, 2008

Death of a Carebear

I had a very well worded, poignant post about the state of ORvR in WAR written in my head. But then I stopped to make the best damn spagetti I've ever had and totally forgot it.

So this will be less poignant, but from a happier viewpoint since I am now full of pasta. 

The past few days have been a roller coaster when it comes to RvR. I've seen the lows, times when I'm so angry at my teammates that I mention to my guild "I almost wish I were Order, just so I could beat the shit out of our allies." And times where... well, we didn't exactly rise to occasion cause I did have to leave one WB (but managed not to call them cowards this time. IC I swear! >.>) but I did have the most fun, challenging and longest lasting RvR battle that I've had since the week after launch. 

So lets start with the lows. A few nights ago in a rare moment of activity Sevren (the smexy pokey witch elf) decided to take part in some keep taking in Dragonwake. It was a fairly mundane, boring run. The sort I've come to expect of ORvR, we took the first keep with no oposition. Hum drum, we claimed a few BOs on our way to the second. Took the second again with little to no oposition. At this point the WB leader declares that we're moving on to Chaos lands. That came at the exact moment that I spotted a group of five or so Order on the outside walls. Being me, I immediately put the word out and stealthed at the bottom of the stairs upward. I stood and watched a dozen people pour out of the doors without a care in the world but two or three others came with me. The order group was obvious organized and balanced in classes and pretty flately owned our hodge podge of DPS in the face. The most amazing (but not so really) thing happened. 

Destruction didn't give a crap. Order continued to pour in through our already open doors, I warned my group that there was enough there to take the keep back. The response was "Who cares, let them take it. Means more loot when we come back through to reclaim".  I and a few members of WB reacted less than friendly, calling them out for avoiding a fight. There was a few minutes of arguement before the WB leader finally spoke up and said, "Ok, Let's forget CoF. Move on to Chaos lands." I saw red, promptly told them "Forget cowards." dropped WB and went back to attempt to at least take out a few while order tramped all over our newly claimed keep. They took it of course, didn't even have to drop a ram. I ended up logging off. I don't get angry during PvP any more, I use to, but I don't any longer. If a member of Order takes me down, good for them. If I run into a group of them, my fault for not paying attention to where I am. How do you fight the conflict avoiding, shiney carrot seeking tendancies of your own side? 

Fast forward to last night. 1.1 brings in the RvR influence rewards. They are, absofreakinglutely awesome. Serious, Sevren's purple set has so much +crit chance that I almost feel sorry for Order. I ended up however, on my low t3 alt (20, just barely. but she's a healer! Deal with it) fighting in Avelorn. And I had a BLAST. Order was really kicking butt, in fact they could have claimed Ghrond's but elected not to. Instead they just stood on the bottom floor and let us come to them. They were very much there for the fight and I LOVED it. It was back and forth for nearly four hours. Things only really trickled off because everyone needed to go to bed. I heard things like "Doesn't Order have to go to work in the morning? Ugh!" a half dozen times in regional. Beaten by bedtimes, feh. It was as a whole, exactly what WAR is suppose to be ... war. And yet, in the middle of the tug of war my warband wanted to play musical keeps again. At this point we'd never lost Ghrond's and had taken a chance after pushing Order back to dash south in Saphrey to take The Well. Apparently, even when Order is still there, still fighting, still pushing and in vast numbers it STILL means that it's time to move on. "Going to Chaos now." my WB leader says. My leveling partner ask, "Why would you leave when there's a fight still raging here?" The answer was of course "More loot." I polietly told them no thanks and found another WB.

I'm ok with it. While they're fighting NPCs and singing kum by ya I had the most fun, intense, long lasting keep defence battle I've ever seen and I really got to push my limits as a healer. It was a beautiful moment. I've PvPed very rarely with my DoK and I really only squeeked by on years of prior healing experience as I frantically tried to keep up with the damage. I'll take that to the Tour de Keep Lord Smashing any day.

People keep saying that Mythic needs to do something to make ORvR more inticing. I think at this point that they've done just about all they can do. At some point, it becomes the the community's fault for not taking part. Honestly, I've been a "carebear" for six years of MMO gaming while playing things like EVE and Lineage2. I was under the impression that the PvPers were blood thirsty, always looking for a fight, always eager to "ruin my fun" by blowing me up while I'm trying to level. Come on now, WAR is currently only proving my long standing point that most of the fun people find in PvP is griefing. If it's concentual, you all would rather avoid it completely? Or is it honestly that people need the carrot? You can't get a gold bag by killing Order, so why should you stay and have fun if it doesn't mean phat loots for you? 



No comments: