Yesterday, I discussed Tier 1’s scenario structure and why it’s so much different than what we find in the later tiers — and arguably, a more successful implementation.
While scenarios are a completely different, instanced beast, reminiscent of battlegrounds in World of Warcraft, the RvR lakes in Tier 1 feel like a combination of the frontier system in Dark Age of Camelot, and the old sub-50 battleground regions. Whenever I get in there, spoiling for a fight, I’m reminded of those “lowbie” battlegrounds in DAOC.
There’s a great writeup describing the battlegrounds in DAOC and how they worked over here at IGN’s Camelot Vault (which I didn’t realize still existed…) Wow. That’s a blast from the past. There’s also a surprising amount of video up on YouTube in case you really want to dig into it.
These battlegrounds were persistent, yet required a separate port-in mechanism and didn’t have their own distinct entrances (some would call this an early form of instancing, but I’m not sure it quite qualified as they were a global instance, and not temporary.) They were pretty well designed and simly laid out: each had a central keep that any of the three sides could attack and attempt to hold in a never-ending, constantly rotating King-of-the-Hill style battle.
Note: Keep in mind that I played DAOC prior to the New Frontiers expansion, prior to /levei (which automatically jumped your shiny new character up to level 20), and prior to any newer battlegrounds requiring a lower level to enter than Thidranki, the lowest level battleground. My experiences with the battlegrounds there are probably a little dated (as things have likely changed in the last five years), and my memory is a little hazy, but the obvious similarities are still there. And I often yearn for the adrenaline rush of the PvP in DAOC when I’m playing WAR, so what the hell.
DAOC’s battlegrounds were replete with choke points like bridges, and ways around them (a sort of canal/moat around the central island that would slow you down if you tried to cross it), and the central keep was guarded by both NPCs and whatever players could make it in. Walls were scalable if you were of the right class (generally of the rogue archetype) and getting into a fight was often quite easy. Unfortunately, when I played, the level range for the first battleground was 20-24, and getting there was which was still a non-trivial accomplishment in a game where levels went up to 50. At the time, characters you got into Thidranki were likely not throw-aways; you’d have to put the time to level your character up in order to play them in the battlegrounds, unlike in WAR where you can jump into the fight right out of the gate (assuming you make it to the RvR lake unmolested.)
Getting back to WAR’s implementation, it’s obvious that Mythic’s learned a lot from their experience with DAOC, and it comes across in the workings of both the RvR lakes and scenarios. I’m going to focus on dissecting Empire’s T1 RvR lake, New Emskrank and the surrounding area between Nordland and Norsca; I think New Emskrank is a perfectly designed example of what makes the game so much fun in Tier 1. And here’s what I like about it…
Tier 1 open RvR (specifically Empire T1)
The good:
- Proximity of starting locations
The fact that the starting locations in New Emskrank are so close together (on either side of the two central battlefield objectives) is probably what creates most of the appeal here. Finding the enemy is simply a matter of running out onto the Festenplatz or the Harvest Shrine, the pair of objectives between the two starting camps, and wandering around until you run into a fight. The full-screen map is also handy for getting the lay of the land and being able to see where the latest fights have occurred (although in later tiers, the “keep under attack” symbol bugs me, in that it could just be someone who ran by and aggroed a guard by mistake.) - A truckload of quests that pull players into RvR lakes
For whatever reason, Tier 1 seems to have way more quests that involve people going into the RvR lakes and putting their virtual selves in harm’s way. The motivation to XP is pretty good (although it’s gone once you reach rank 40), and it’s been tried before by WoW in terms of having a huge pile of PvE quests in Alterac Valley and other battlegrounds. WAR is definitely heavier on the side of repeatable PvP quests, which are all well and good, but I prefer having at least a few quests that are not necessarily repeatable, and simply provide you with the incentive to get out there and fight. I wonder why no games have (as of yet) provided dynamic quests to find and kill certain players who’ve been in the RvR lake for a specific amount of time, or defend a battlefield objective or keep under attack, or to make use of specific siege equipment, etc. Wouldn’t it be cool if WAR had transient quests with high-end rewards were offered while various defensive targets were being sieged by the opposing faction? Something to think about, despite the logistics required… - Two primary battlefield objectives are central
This is pretty important: the two “primary” battlefield objectives are dead center of the two faction spawn points. The other two are significantly more distant, with the Nordland XI parked over at the docks, and Lost Lagoon far up at the north end, well into Norsca. This means that no matter what’s going on, you’re likely to find people in the central town square area. I think the “level design” here (to steal an FPS term) is helpful, in that the in-town layout really encourages people to fight commando-style. It can be compared to Praag in T4, on a much smaller scale. The scale itself deserves its own bullet point, however. - No keeps, and a much smaller landmass
Two points combined, here; there are no keeps to defend, which from a loot perspective isn’t so hot (omg no gold bags!), and the oRvR landmass is much smaller than in later tiers. One could argue that the two distant battlefield objectives are quite spread out, but to be honest the docks are within a quick run and the lagoon isn’t all that much further. In later tiers, in most cases you need to run quite a ways before managing to tag two separate objectives. In Empire T1, you can probably drop all four within 10 minutes with a full group and no defense. If there’s an active defense going on, though, you’re likely to have a good fight bouncing back and forth between the more central objectives, which is much more fun than taking them when undefended. Having no keeps is a bit of a detriment to the whole “epic” feel of open RvR, and scaling keep size from nothing in T1 to fortresses in T4 definitely adds to the game’s character and is part of Mythic’s big selling points for WAR. However, if you’re just looking for a fight and don’t have a full warband together, you’re much more likely to enjoy yourself roaming around Tier 1. Tier 4 generally requires much larger numbers to accomplish anything of value, and running around in a 6-man group looking for an equal(-ish) fight is more of a nice-to-have than anything. I’ve seen various servers try to organize 6v6 strictly in specific zones (on Skull Throne, the Chaos Wastes have been designated by a small portion of our forum-dwellers as the go-to zone for 6v6 fights), but by and large it’s not supported by Mythic and against what they’re trying to do with the end-game. My view on this is that there really should be a place for organized group vs. group fighting in the world, and right now the easiest place to do that is in Tier 1, which limits you pretty significantly if you’re trying to make it a regular event. - Easily attainable influence rewards
RvRing in the Tier 1 gives you some pretty phat loot quite easily. From my experience in Tier 4, it takes a helluva lot longer to attain anything. Obviously, at the end-game, loot should be harder to acquire, and the influence grind in the T4 RvR lakes is definitely a lot more work than doing it in Tier 1. The problem is that any armor loot in T4 tends to be made worthless by the fact that wards are a necessary fact of life for most of the end-game PvE and PvP encounters. This makes any armor attained via the RvR influence system pointless as it’s going to be supplanted by warded gear eventually, meaning that the only pieces worth getting your paws on for the long-term are weapons and jewelry. In Tier 1, the loot you pick up from RvR influence rewards is valuable in that it’ll help you to progress through the next tier, and as it’s somewhat easier to obtain, it’s not as huge of a time investment. I think the RvR influence system is a good start, but it’s going to need some kind of progression once you hit Tier 4, without becoming too much like the honor system reward grind in WoW.
The not-so-good:
- Solo-able battlefield objectives
Okay, I can smell the debate on this one a mile off. The fact that battlefield objectives in Tier 1 are soloable with many classes (I’ve done it with my Warrior Priest, Disciple of Khaine, Swordmaster, and I’ve seen a solo Witch Hunter do it, so I know it’s possible) means that you can pretty much farm renown undisturbed until someone comes and finds you. It also unbalanaces things a little as it’s quite easy to get four people to go out to separate objectives and capture each of them simultaneously, and lock the zone. It’s obviously not renown-effective as each individual would lose out on 3/4 of the possible renown, but it’s possible. I’m kind of on the fence about this one as I’m not sure if it’s necessarily a bad thing to be able to solo effectively in the RvR lake, but it’s something worth nothing, either way. -
Barely any PvE content inside RvR lake boundaries
This is something I’d like to see changed across the board — there’s the odd PvE quest inside the RvR lakes, but it’s mainly of the variety of “pick up item X at location Y“, or “talk to this NPC”, or “scout battlefield objective Z and return.” These are all well and good for quick XP with little involvement (which is great when you’re powerleveling your way through the lower tiers), but what I’d like to see is actually some quest hubs that reside inside the RvR lakes. These quest hubs would provide quests within the RvR regions that give much higher XP and/or cash and item rewards than the ones in the “safe” zones. This would be fun, from my perspective, as it would reward you for going into dangerous regions and effectively provide an in-game form of hazard pay for your troubles. Surprisingly I think WoW was a little better at this, especially in areas like the Plaguelands in the original game (from my recollection.) There just seems to be limitless potential for making WAR’s RvR lakes much more useful and immersive from a leveling-up and questing perspective. - Early class imbalances
This is something that I touched on in my previous post about scenario play in Tier 1, but the fact that many classes aren’t that well developed (and some are overdeveloped) in Tier 1 can cause you some grief in 1v1-type situations. Granted, most of the time you’ll be in multi-group fights, but trying to kill any healing class alone is asking for trouble. From the other side, RDPS classes are very weak the minute any kind of melee falls on them, making life in RvR quite diffucult early on, until they get some of their more defensive abilities (AoE detaunts, AoE roots, shield spells, etc.) I guess you could say that this weakness can be countered by the fact that nearly everyone has low resists in Tier 1, but it’s something I’ve noticed much more in the early going on my lightly-armored classes than later on in the game. There’s no way Mythic can balance out every class this early (although they do a good job), so it’s likely not something that can or even will be fixed, just something to be aware of.
The closest example I can find in Tier 4 to the fun you can find in New Emskrank is probably Praag, yet another Empire zone. Praag is still quite massive compared to its lower-tier brethren, though, and you’re much more liable to run into a zerg if you’re running through it solo, or even in a small group. I had a hard time completing PvE delivery-style quests in there just because of all of the Destruction warbands running around.
Overall, the oRvR experience is definitely smaller scale in Tier 1, but I think the fun factor is there and it’s something to learn from as Mythic keeps refining the end-game and adding/tweaking both scenarios and the RvR lakes down the road. My advice: if you feel the burnout hitting you in Tier 4 RvR, roll a new character on either side of the faction fence and hit up the Tier 1 RvR zones. It’s a great place to vent a little frustration with little time or emotional investment. That’s a win in my books.
