Choppa reroll, LFG!

So I finally caved in, after not playing for a few weeks. I’ve been sick with some kind of nasty stomach flu and off work for the last 4 days. Thus, feeling sorry for myself earlier in the week, I rolled a Choppa.

FOTM ftw.

Of course, the same could be said for the reams of Slayers you’re seeing on Order right now. I don’t think I’ve seen so many dwarves in one place before… ever. Reams and reams of those crested, frothing, red-haired, tattooed midgets running around, whirlwind axes beating the tar out of you the minute they wade into the front lines.

Now, as most of you who read this blog regularly probably know, I’ve been playing Order pretty steadily since the game launched. I have a 40 Warrior Priest, a 32 Swordmaster, and a variety of 20s over on Skull Throne. I’ve played a few Destruction alts over that span, getting a couple to the Tier 1 cap on Monolith. I had some cash banked from my multitude of lowbies on Monolith, but I decided to try something new, this time around.

Since the server merges earlier in the month have consolidated the action pretty nicely onto a few distinct US servers, I figured I’d start fresh with my newly-minted mean green choppin’ machine. After a quick glance at the current server population situation, I did what any self-respecting, self-centered player would do and rolled my Choppa on the most populated Destruction server I could find, Iron Rock.

Sorry, Mythic. You won’t bait me onto a low-population server again. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice… yeah, uhh… that.

A few hours of mucking around in Tier 1 for the first time in a while provided a good refresher on how the low tiers were rollin’. I gleaned a few interesting facts from this ongoing experiment:

1. People in Tier 1 are still dumb. For whatever reason, in Tier 1, most players don’t seem to know their role, or just don’t want to play it. I can understand people rolling alts just to muck around and have fun, but losing repeteadly due to plain old stupidity isn’t fun. I don’t know how MDPS can decide it’s awesome to just engage the tanks and other MDPS repeatedly while Order beats down our back lines, and no one on Destruction aside from me wants to rush the Order back lines. Warrior Priests, Rune Priests, Bright Wizards and Shadow Warriors are just standing there completely untouched, while Destruction attacks the reams of Slayers, heavy tanks, and the odd White Lion in droves. And that’s in scenarios with at least double the number of MDPS I’m used to seeing in Tier 1 on Skull Throne (Order). It’s like their brain fell out somewhere by their spawn point and they forgot to pick it up and shove it back in their ear. Sigh. Maybe it’s all the new players from Mythic’s 10-day free trial offer. That’s gotta be it.
2. On Iron Rock, no one speaks in (or reads, apparently) scenario chat. At least, in Tier 1. I’m not sure why. And yes, I have my chat filters setup properly. :)
3. Camping spawn points in the RvR lakes still seems to be the only thing to do. Why no one breaks up into smaller 6-man groups is beyond me. It’s a lot more fun than 30-on-30 at the Order guard line.
4. Mythic’s new (old? I dunno…) “Welcome back” quest line is actually pretty handy for getting through those first few levels. The quest rewards are pretty good — +5/+6 talismans (with several stat choices), good XP, centrally located (same areas as other quests in the RvR lakes), and trophies. That said, out of the three trophies you can get from the first set of quests (sub-rank 11), only one (the beer stein) is worth wearing. I don’t know what Mythic’s fixation is with making lameass trophies. I still recall that YouTube video of Justin Webb giving an internal trophy presentation that blows what’s actually been implemented in-game out of the water. Where are the really cool trophies? Where’s that extensive character customization players were promised before release? I’m still waiting…

Anyhow, just a few random observations from getting back into lowbie RvR after a little bit of a break. Oh, and I’m looking for a guild on Iron Rock, too. Happen to know of an active, casual guild that’s recruiting? Drop me a line or post a comment and I’ll check it out.

So, how are you all liking the Choppa? I’ll be posting my thoughts on the class itself once I’ve gotten mine to a bit higher of a rank — it doesn’t feel right posting a review of a class based solely on the first eleven levels. ’Course, this is my blog — I can brag a little, right? ;)