Sleep with One Eye Open - Altdorf Captured on Averheim

I was all set to post that I didn’t have much to tell about my playing time in Warhammer Online this week.  My two week reprieve from working really long hours had come to an end, so my adventures were curtailed.  No pictorial journals to report since I’d spent most of my time when I was playing in Scenarios or farming up some seeds for crafting.

I like to spend Sunday afternoon soloing.  The quiet before the Monday storm.  I find a nice spot that will get me seeds and coin, and then just grind my time away.  This Sunday I logged on to the game much earlier than usual.  I had babysat my two year old nephew over night so I wasn’t able to sleep in until noon or so.  By 9:36 we were up and had already finished breakfast.  After putting on Disney’s Tarzan movie – I know the whole dang movie by heart because he insists on watching it every time he’s at my house and he’s here quite a bit.

Anywho, shortly after he settled into the movie I logged on to my Bright Wizard who was sitting in Altdorf.  I piddled around at the bank for a few minutes pulling out my crafting supplies and making room for the ones I planned on farming, when I noticed the local chat.  I wasn’t in Vent because the baby was here and I didn’t want it to disorient him hearing voices from the PC or ruin the movie.

Someone was saying that Altdorf was under attack.  I was like wah??? They explained that the keeps were gone and to head out to help  I was shocked not to see any sort of warning or notification that it was under attack.  I told the very few guild members that were on what I’d read and asked them to come to defend.  Before long a warband was formed and the VERY few of us that were aware and even remotely of a level to help, were exiting to mount a resistance.

When I looked at the map, all of the local keeps were Destruction controlled.  People didn’t know what to do or where to go.  I was lucky to see a group exiting and followed them.  We made it to Morr but there wasn’t much we could do.  We didn’t have any siege weapons.  We were able to kill Destruction players that we still trying to get into the Keep but taking it back was hopeless.  Small bands of Order tried forming defensive lines at different locations to prevent more Destruction from entering the area.  A few were successful for a while but stuck on the outside of our keeps we got sandwiched in between the Keep and more Destruction arriving behind.

As more Order logged into the game they had no clue what was going on for at least an hour.  You could see people asking over and over why they couldn’t fly to Altdorf and then the shock when they were told that it was under siege and all the keeps were lost. I don’t think people expected even Destruction to be mounting city attacks this quickly after launch.  And I hazard a guess that Mythic didn’t either because the mechanics don’t work so well.  I’m not a sore loser but they’re going to have to put more polish behind this mechanic or risk unhappy customers.

Here are the things I saw that need to be addressed:

• No highly visible indication that Altdorf was even under attack. I was in Altdorf and when I logged on.  The Keeps had to have already fallen, yet there was nothing that told me, “Yo, someone’s sackin’ yer shit go out and defend!”  I’ve had to click "ok" to close announcements about gold farmers being banned but nothing as blatant as that announced that Altdorf was going down??
• Some mentioned seeing a notice pop on the screen once but not at any regular frequency.  If you were zoning or not looking at the screen at that very moment, you wouldn’t have seen it all.  Seems like something on the interface should burst into flames or some shit so that it’s very obvious.  Besides which, large guilds using Vent don’t really read a lot of the chat text so I hope that’s not what they’re depending on to communicate.
• COW is one of the largest Order guilds on Averheim.  When I checked there were only a half dozen of us even on the game.  All of us headed out.  But what kind of defense can be mounted when one of the largest guilds only has six players to offer up for support?
• You can see from the picture not many people were at the gate but the lag was insanely bad.  You were fighting people that you couldn’t even see!!  Someone was attacking me, I could here the melee hits and see that I was taking damage but they never displayed on my screen.
• When opposing players did happen to display, much of the time you couldn’t attack them.  You got error messages saying “Immune”, “Out of range” and “Invalid target”.  The whole end game is about these sieges.  If the game can’t handle two dozen players attempting a siege what the heck will happen with a large, equally balanced battle zone???
• I guess we’re supposed to sleep with one eye open?  I get that MMOs are live 24/7 but when campaigns are planned during the wee hours, how can you reasonably take it back with the enemy already entrenched?  I guess you wait for prime-time to roll around? Once an enemy is entrenched momentum is on their side so not sure how this is supposed to work out.

I never played Dark Age of Camelot so I don’t know how the RVR worked there.  And while there is certainly congratulations due Destruction for the planning and achieving this capture so early in the game, I have to wonder at the glory when part of the plan was to take the city when they knew very few defenders would be online.  I guess I expected more.  I expected the in your face RAWR, we’re so bad we’ll kick your ass prime-time battles.  Not the "wake up to your keeps are already gone" version of RVR.  I’m not sure what to think. I was envisioning massive Eve Online battles of epic proportion, man to man grudge matches. 

I thought this was the fantasy game with serious PVP.  So I’m a bit lost on people purposefully planning them in the wee hours.  Doesn’t that really just make it a PVE encounter at that point???  Isn’t that just a step or two above World of Warcraft’s Alterac Valley, with enemy forces racing by each other to the end bosses?  When COW zerged across the T3 zones last week we didn’t do it in the dead of night  We didn’t do while most people were sleeping.  We did it prime-time in your face come and get some son!  Even then the momentum that swelled around the attempt was virtually unstoppable, but at least Destruction was online to fight back if they choose to do so and they did.  They stopped us from getting the final keep.

Again, I don’t know what to think about how Mythic has this designed.  Hell the original Alterac Valley in WOW could and did, take 4 to 6 hours on large servers like Illidan.  How does an end-game achievement happen in that amount of time and in the mists of the sun rising.

I fear for this game’s numbers if this is the precursor to how this needs to be played.  I’m sure that 750K boxes sold contain WOW players looking for a change and casuals.  I’m enjoying this game plenty but I can tell you without a doubt, I won’t be getting up a 3AM to raid the Inevitable City.  What happens if that becomes the norm?  Will players not interested in that kind of schedule, be okay with their cities being rolled while their asleep?  Will people say it’s WOW’s Alliance (good guys) all over again and switch sides or worse, go play Wrath of the Lich King instead?  Dunno but it’s certainly going to be interesting reading in the next few weeks.

Mark Jacobs is responding in a VN Board thread here

Still not sure what to think about it all.  Not even sure what can be done.  However, I’ll say again, when one of the largest guilds on the server has less than a dozen folks online what the hell are you supposed to do??? Personally, I wouldn’t have been on the game for another five hours under normal circumstances.  If not for a babysitting a toddler, I would have been dead sleep at 9-something AM on a Sunday morning.

Comments

[Grimjakk]

I don't think it was captured... only contested.

Of course, I've been AFK all day, so that might have changed.

[Pete S]

It wasn't captured and by this afternoon it was back to business as usual.

FWIW in DAoC very late night or early morning raids were common among some guilds. Heck when I played MegaWars III in 1982 or so, late night/early morning raids were common. It's just the nature of 24/7 gaming: those who care more about winning than having fun will do whatever they can to skew the odds in their favor.

The only way to combat that is, I guess, to schedule battles, and then they just become bigger scenarios. Which might please some of the population but would alienate others...

[Baatezu]

Having participated in this raid on Altdorf, I can say that I think that the best adjustment that can be made is some minor beefing up of the Keep NPCs based on low zone population. Not enough to make it outweigh actual defense, but enough to slow down a zerg rush in the early hours if it's completely unpopulated.

However, this is a very well coordinated event with approx 150 T4 (levels 30-40) and maybe another 150 T3s (levels 21-29), at a time when the early stages of the newly released game necessitated that there would probably not be much Order T4 population to oppose us. As servers mature, you should expect that larger T4 populations will be around at all hours to defend. In addition, people will become aquainted with the mechanics of city assaults as they become more common.

It would only have taken a small population of alerted defenders to stop us inside the Keeps, and we had the advantage that this was an early game as well as early hour attack. Unlikely to be repeated easily. Doom and gloom regarding this event has spun out of control at this point.

Are some possible adjustments by Mythic called for? Undoutably, especially in the areas of alerts/notifications and undefended keeps.

Is this event the end of the game for Order? I doubt it.

[*vlad*]

At least in WoW, the Local Defence channel will constantly bleat that npcs are under attack.

As for the above posts, according to Tobold, it was acknowledged by Mark Jacobs that it was indeed captured, and not just contested.

[Saylah]

Thanks for clarification. From what I'd read on VN Boards it did appear to me as well, that it was considered captured.

[Saylah]

As to the doom and gloom - People that were online and of a level to help did come to defend. The VN Board makes it sound like Order just went about their business which isn't the case at all. Or were unorganized in comparison which should be obvious since Order being low in numbers and not prepared was part of the plan.

I was there. Minus a global channel, there was NO EFFECTIVE WAY to make a call for help across the server to Order. People in Altdorf barely had any indication that something was a miss. How would people in far away zones know to come assist? I now know about the HUD that can be turned on in the pairing view of the map and have it on. They should turn it on my default.

With so few of us all we could do was die for a good cause and we did. I'm level 23 but I died again and again and again, which is all the support I could offer. People even lower who came on in the midst of the siege kept asking what can we do to help? The answer was and is, very little if you're not level 30. They felt helpless with no options of taking back what's theirs and people do not like to feel helpless.

The inability to do anything at all, left many Order players out in the cold. This will adjust itself as people level but there will always be lower level players and they should be able to participate in some manner to maintain the team spirit and morale.

Doom and gloom will come early for ex WOW Alliance players who in many cases, were rolled on a regular basis by Horde. I suspect that some of them are actually playing Destruction in WAR but those that didn't find a class that suited them on that side or just wanted to play an Order class, are going to give this serious consideration. This is the end game and if they sense there's a chance that Order is WAR's Alliance, they might not wait very long to bail the faction or the game. That's the way it is, time is money, time is precious, working adults don't like to waste either.

What can Mythic do about that? Should Mythic do anything at all? I don't know. It is interesting however, that the more hardcore PVP set tend to go with the "bad" side. I don't think that is a coincidence. It's too prevalent. There is a design mechanic that is facilitating that choice - character models, lore, hype, abilities, something is at work here and if any game hopes to achieve player/population balance around PVP combat that's going to have to be addressed.

They are already giving bonus XP and renoun to Order on certain realms why is that??? That is the fundamental problem. It's certainly not that only skilled players go Destruction/Horde. Player populations are too diverse for that easy answer. It's something about how the sides are designed and depicted impacting these choices and all games of this sort will have this problem until it is identified and improved. Destruction/Horde players aren't innately smarter, more organized or anything of the sort. IT IS THE DESIGN OF THE FACTIONS THAT IS CAUSING CERTAIN TYPES OF PLAYERS TO PICK THESE MORE DOMINATE FACTIONS. The game design is feeding these choices and that has to be corrected to achieve balance. What is lacking on the so-called "good" side that heavy PVP/RVR players don't like or identify with them?

Is there an evil vs. evil game out there?? If so, what is the faction/player balance like?

[Openedge1]

This makes me wonder how Aion will play out with it's 3 way factions War.
Two factions are PC (players) and 1 is NPC and can sway either way in battle.
Anyways, this "let them hit anytime" is going to bring out the weakest percentage of players, those known as the "ganker".
These are the ones who when they start a fight in real life will wait until you walk away and then hit you from behind (this has happened to me twice in my real life actually, with one situation ripping my mouth wide open with a rock and one almost giving me a brain hemorrhage)
And this is their mentality. They can cause the most damage when no one is looking and they get their jollies.

At least in Age of Conan, you must set "windows" of schedules. This may sound silly, but was done in Renaissance times, and prevents this "gank" mentality of this weaker class of citizen.

[saylah]

I think Mythic unwittingly fell into this divide when they had to drop the other cities. The opportunity for lopsided dominance is increased in a two-way competition. I'm not sure what can or should be done. But when this kind of end-game content - where this IS the ALL THAT CAN BE DONE END-GAME by each faction, can be achieved in the amount of time it took to do Molten Core, run old school AV and a bugged WSG I've been in, I see that as a huge problem.

[Blacknimbus]

In PvP, most people will take whatever advantage the environment or rule set allows. So as long as late night invasions are allowed, I'd say they will be the standard tactic.

You really can't 'turn off' the PvP game for those people who work odd schedules and might generally play at 3am.

The endgame has been tapped and the game has been out a month?

[Pete S]

"As for the above posts, according to Tobold, it was acknowledged by Mark Jacobs that it was indeed captured, and not just contested."

Link?

When I logged in later that day, I was able to go to Altdorf and do everything I could normally do. So if the city was Captured, who is this possible? The city didn't lose any ranks or anything. My understanding is that when a city is captured it loses ranks but that didn't happen.

So either it wasn't captured, or having it captured isn't much of a big deal because everything was back to normal in short order.

[Pete S]

Traced back to the link:

http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/108963659/p6

"*Assuming* that no exploits were used and that destruction didn't take advantage of any of the things that will be fixed/tweaked in the next patch, then they deserve congratulations for the first taking of a city. I'll get the full scoop on this this week. " -MJ

[Baatezu]

There are three parts to a city raid:

Contest it, which means that you have successfully locked 2 of the 3 enemy fortresses and now can enter the city attack scenario. The enemy can enter the city scenario to defend as well. The attackers must get enough victory points from multiple scenarios to proceed to the next step within a time frame. The raid yesterday completed this step and proceeded to Martial LAw.

Martial Law, which can be considered "captured" as the Defenders can no longer defend and the city shows as owned by your side. Attackers have a short period of time to complete 2 PQs and then assault and kill the king, with a limited time frame. My understanding is that the raid only completed one of those PQs and failed the other, and never got to attempt the king. When they failed, Martial Law ended and the entire assault was reset all the way back to the starting stages, unlocking the city, both fortresses, and all the way back to the middle T4 zones being contested.

The final stage is supposed to be Sacked, which is if you kill the King. That locks the enemy city for your use for a large number of hours, and I believe will open up quests and pqs.

Yesterday's raid was far from completing Warhammer 'End Game'. The city was put under Martial Law (for the first time in Warhammer), but never completely locked nor was the King even assaulted.

[Saylah]

Pete S. in that link MJ seems to be confirming that it was an official capture. And not everything was available when I was online. You couldn't fly into the city and if you left it you couldn't re-enter. The banks and auction houses weren't accessible according to players in the city. Depending on when you got on, my understanding is that by noon ET, they had gotten the keeps back so that would be why everything appeared normal.

[Saylah]

Baatezu - thanks for the detailed explanation. To me, them controlling the city and blocking our defense constituted captured. Not sure what else you'd call it.

[Baatezu]

I agree, Martial Law (which locks out the enemy players) is captured. The next step is to kill two mini bosses/PQs, and the king, within the limited time (an hour or two). If you succeed in that you sack the city, lock it out for a long period of time, and it loses a rank.

That's a long way off, the T4s in the raid included approximately one Warband of 40s, so they had no chance.

The time to defend is when the second T4 zone is being attacked in 2 of the 3 campaigns, when the fortresses are being attacked (2 of 3 of campaigns), and the last ditch effort by T4 only in the defense scenario. Once Martial Law has been applied there is no further defending, the city has been temporarily captured. After that it's completely on if the attackers can complete the assault.

[saylah]

It's funny to require in a conversation about a game but I think we need a common dictionary/definitions so that everyone is clear. It was captured but bloggers using the terms 'sacked' or 'fell' are less accurate. Again, thanks for the details many of us are still learning how this works. I know that I hadn't bothered reading up on the siege mechanic yet because I assumed it was too early in the game to worry about it. And based on my rank of 23, it probably is but I still went out to die & fight the fight. :-)

[Pete S]

"You couldn't fly into the city and if you left it you couldn't re-enter. The banks and auction houses weren't accessible according to players in the city."

Just to be clear, I was speaking not to what was happening during the attack but that by early afternoon everything was back to normal.

I agree there's a question of semantics here. My point was that Destruction didn't complete the ultimate take-over/sack/did-everything-there-is-to-do to Altdorf, and the city didn't lose a rank. So I guess my saying "It wasn't Captured" was wrong. Let me restate it and say "They weren't able to see it through to the ultimate conclusion."

[Kydonia]

The massive Eve Online battles of which you speak start at 6am and run for multiple days, round the clock. The main difference is that the taking of Altdorf cut into people's sleep -less-.