It was only last week that I did a post stating my concern with the Destruction popularity on most servers. Now we are one and a half week into WAR since release, and apparently Destruction has already captured the Order Capital. This fact not only somewhat confirm that the balance is seriously skewed, it also give me a bad feeling in the gut over the epicness of WAR’s endgame. I had the impression that waging a campaign and finally lay siege to a capital would be something monumental that would take the effort of a entire realm over a long period of time - “months” is the word that has been used from Mythic.

Are we just seeing some minor flaw in the system in that small groups can work without opposition during night time, or are we looking at some badly miscalculated and untested endgame?

A Order eyewitness reports:

I dont know how many of you have seen reikwald fortress or the dest equivalent, but it is a massive and imposing place. A true fortress. A large keep occupies the centre of the map, complete with terraces, battlements, pads for siege weaponary. Outside of the keep there is a town, with buildings, guards, and a fair old walk to the large outside wall encompassing the area. It is on this wall that I stood as I counted the forces of destruction approach. There were around 30. It’s okay I thought to myself, they have no ram, they are mostly sub-40, they are not a particularly large group. Despite the lack of player defence, there is no way they will get through this place. And if they can, it will take so long that we will have a sufficient defence force ready by the time they get to the lord. Five minutes later they were through the wall’s door. I thought that was quick considering the lack of ram, but nevermind, they’ve a whole town to fight through now. Twenty seconds later they were at the main keep, having had to fight no guards that I could see, guard patrols being too spaced out. The door on the keep should hold them back a bit, and maybe last longer than the outside doors. Surprisingly, they ran around to the back of the keep and clicked through the rear door to enter the keep in the same way that order do. No need to bash down the front door at all. Makes you wonder why it’s there and why they bothered to put a ram pad infront of it. Anyway, they strolled up to the keep lord and took him down in another 5 minutes.

And I’m in no way exaggerating. The whole thing, for a small group of sub level 40s with probably very poor gear compared to end game, took 15 minutes tops.

I mean, it’s obvious that some people will rush to max rank and try to get the first Capital sieges. And it’s also obvious that some will try to do it during weird times when there are no defenders, but you shouldn’t be able to do pull it all off in one day. Blitzkrieg might be a good way to wage a war, but it’s not really fun in a game. I want slow progress, not a Blitz in my war!

Age of Conan promised things of the same epic proportions, and we all know how that turned out. I’m not going to compare WAR to AoC - the developers actually played this game - but it does make you wonder if they didn’t promise more than they delivered. They cut out the other four capitals and I assumed that meant the last two would be pretty epic. And not just questing in them, but to burn them.

As Destruction is burning their way across all servers, Syp is calling from reinforcements to Order, and I think I will join them. If I was a animal in my last life, I probably was a salmon.