I must admit that WAR is turning a bit dull for me. Days has gone past without I felt the old urge to log on and play a few hours, and that’s pretty bad considering that feeling grew in my mind first after months and months in World of Warcraft. Tier 1 was fun, tier 2 was also fun, but somewhere in tier 3 it all went wrong. Nearing the end of tier 3 I started to do PvE less and less, and when I actually logged in the first thing I did was find out where the RvR warband was and joined them. Questing was incredible dull, there were never any PQs running, and scenarios were also rare. I have run Gunbad twice, the Altdorf instance never. That’s all the PvE instances I have done so far in WAR.

So I guess I took the joy where I could find it, by capturing objectives and Keeps (before the XP on capture mind you) in every area. More often than not it was incredible dull and you could watch TV with one eye while watching a Hero die with the other, than it was just mount up and on to the next objective (with a few minutes of dead time standing still waiting for it to be captured). It became a habit to tab out of the game and browse the forums because I knew there wouldn’t turn up any Destruction while we were standing there. There were no incentives to defend anything, and now two months into the game there still isn’t. Meanwhile the incentives to attack Keeps and Objectives has increased with XP, renown and gold bags. The rewards for defending stuff really have to increase or warbands will capture Keeps and objectives on time schedules in the end.

But there are days, like the last Thursday and Saturday, where the game completely turn around and becomes the game I waited so long for. I guess it was the same people I always play RvR with, and around the same time, but what was different was that there was opposition. They had a warband, we had a warband, and it was war. No rules of engagement here, if you were fighting a Hero when we attacked your rear you just had to improvise. And I had so much fun. I think they had too, and everyone else in my warband judging from the overflowing emotions that bubbled to the normally calm surface in forms of outrageous outbursts in the chat.

The last Thursday it was on the streets of Praag, and while I cursed every other tier 4 RvR zone I had even more fun in Dragonwake on the Saturday. Usually we had half a warband, give or take, and the opposition was about the same. They had more tanks than us (duh!) but we had more healers, so it turned out pretty balanced. It never became so many people that it turned into a zerg, so tactics and personal skill really came into play. We could be beaten in the middle of the zone, and as Destruction was chasing the survivors they crashed into our respawn and we beat them. Then we crashed into their respawn and back it went. There was good times, and bad times. I even recorded some of the fights and if I can just get some more of it I could throw together a movie.

The next day on Sunday when I logged in we captured every single Objective and Keep in all tier 4 zones (Destruction held it all) without any opposition. That really made me think on why I do it. Taking Keeps and Objectives serve no purpose; we know they will just be retaken when we have logged off. So far no side has been able to capture a single tier 4 zone, all we do is trade Keeps and Objectives between ourselves. I agree with Keen that claiming a zone is too complicated. When I became interested in this game my view of the campaign was that you took all Keeps in a zone and then you were able to move on. Oh no. You need to do scenarios (or queue for them because we get one tier 4 scenario average per day), to kill players in the zone (but there isn’t any), to do quests and PQs (huh?). What effect does capturing a lower tier zone have on the higher? As far as I know, not much. Why should you care to capture a lower tier zone when what really matters is tier 4?

Back when Altdorf was captured (or almost) many was concerned that the game would be balanced around players that could stay up during night when there were no defenders. With all the restrictions to capture a zone it’s very hard to capture a zone even with a full warband on prime time, because there won’t be opposition in the zone or in scenarios. Hardly the game I imagined. If all you would need to capture a zone is the Objectives and Keeps you can be damn certain that the entire Destruction population will stand on the walls when you get to the last Keep in a zone. Just make Keeps harder so you actually need a full warband to take one in the middle of the night, even without defenders. With enough time and no defenders a single group can take a Keep, that’s just silly.

Sometimes this week our server is eligible for server transfer and my guild are taking our stuff and moving to Karak Norn. Hopefully it will be better there (scouts have said it is) so maybe the game isn’t completely lost yet. If only we could get some server mergers, it would solve so many troubles. I guess the game is losing subscribers every day because on low population servers the game isn’t no way near what has been promised - it isn’t fun.

I checked and the name Cara is taken on the server (damn you!) so I’m torn between getting a completely new name or just try something similar to the original. Anyone got suggestions?