1.2.1 Firsst Impressions

Ok, I know I’m a bit late to the party. Last night was the fist time I’ve been able to sit down and have a good session on WAR since patch 1.2.1 went live and I thought I would share my thoughts on it. Seemingly I’ve found it rather different to most of the other bloggers- looks like the problems are mainly in the T4 areas. I was only doing RvR when I played, and as it is my main focus, I'll write my impressions in relation to it.

Combat Responsiveness:
Seemed a definite improvement, there is still some slight lag before abilities fire, but that’s probably the server lag that comes with oRvR. I didn’t get any of the crazily long pauses before the odd ability would go off, all in all a good improvement.

Medallions:
Great idea but not sure about the drop rate for these, or the fact that the ones from enemy players are rolled for. I was playing for close to 3 hours last night and I ended up with 12 medallions, which doesn’t seem very many at all considering how much the phat gear costs. Most of those (or possibly all) I got from locking down 2 zones and keep captures. Definitely a good idea though. I don’t feel nearly as hard done by for not getting loot bags because, even if it isn’t much, I’m still getting something at least.

oRvR focus:
The RvR lakes were buzzing last night. The reduction in renown and influence from keep/BfO capture looks like it has shifted the focus more on flipping zones. It’s still pretty pointless trying to take a keep when it’s being defended by 2 Warbands though, as we tried to do at the start of the night. It did mean that when we went to try and flip other zones order actually followed us and tried to stop it happening. Compare this to pre 1.2.1 where order would be happy just sitting in Mandreds Hold farming us for renown and then follow us round re-capping stuff as we left.

Last night was different. Last night actually felt like a conflict. After wiping several times trying to take mandreds we went to help out another WB defend Dok Karaz. There weren’t many order attacking and after sending them packing we decided to try and lock down the Orc/Dwarf pairing. It was the first time I’ve ever actually had to fight over a BfO! Order kept turning up, harassing us as we tried to take down the guards. We managed to hold them off and get the cap but props to them for putting up a fight. It was definitely the most fun I’ve had in oRvR.

Eventually over the time I was playing we managed to cap both the Orc/Dwarf and HE/DE pairings. I wasn’t actually in the HE/DE pairing when it flipped so I don’t think I got the ren/inf bonus which is annoying but just from the other pairing I earned a nice amount of both.

Order seemed to be concentrating on locking down the Empire pairing but we left a WB there just to try and stop them and I don’t think they quite managed it. If they had sent a few more people to defend the orc lands they could have done the same to us.

Overall for the lower tiers this patch seems to have done the world of good for oRvR. I’ve not had chance to check out how any of the PvE content’s changed (if at all) but ill probably write up some more thoughts after I’ve had a bit more time to experience it.

Mythic sure seem to be taking baby-steps in fixing issues with each patch but (discounting the reports of T4 players and the problems they’re having) I would say that it’s going in the right direction. I think I recall Paul B (but it could have been Mark Jacobs) saying they wont be doing knee-jerk reaction “FIX EVERYTHING NOW!!” patches. I agree. If you introduce too many changes in one patch, and something breaks or doesn’t work as intended you have a much tougher time figuring out where the problem lies. Was it A, or B…… or perhaps A and a bit of B (but I could just be C, or D, or E?). see what I mean?

Definitely a thumbs up from me, seeing as the instability and lag issues in the top tiers don’t seem to be affecting me at present. Now I just think there really, REALLY, needs to be alternative entry points into heavily defended keeps (more on that later).