Fade to Black - Mystic Worlds

Blogging quantity and quality is pretty hard to sustain unless you are a really talented individual. You must be armed with enough learned literacy to get your point across succinctly; as well as creative desire to put to words the topics you feel are most relevant to you and any audience you might think you have. Then you need to do this over and over enough that said audience will take it for granted.

I don't even pretend to think that I am such an individual. I know my quantity is spotty at best and the quality is workmanlike. But Lauren/Saylah/Alysianah/Illianah/Suri of Mystic Worlds is one such individual. Her ability to describe worlds never visited prompted me to try out Wizard 101, a game I still keep installed to this day. She brought her wit and insight to so many posts over the years that we did just take it for granted. Which is why her decision to shut it all down saddens me. But not as much as finding out the real-life details of what prompted her to start blogging in the first place.

I was lucky enough to be in the same guild as Alysianah (that's what I'll always know her as) in WAR. She was one of the first guildies I encountered ingame and on Vent as my (I think level 9) Warrior Priest went on a guild run to get the Shawl of Spring. Her Bright Mage was higher level at the time (level 11 I think) and we ended up running around the Chaos side of Ostland by ourselves before finally joining up with the rest of the guild group. I wrote about it briefly in this post. The memories of this and other Casualties of War events are why I will always remember WAR fondly even if it's a game I doubt I will ever return to.

The final post on Mystic Worlds has comments disabled which is understandable. I felt like I needed to thank Lauren for the many years of quality blogging as well as wishing her the best of luck with any future endeavors. So this post is my way of doing so. Don't be such a stranger, you know where to find my comments page and email.

From Point A to Point B

Round 7 of server transfers revealed a surprise for the inhabitants of Averheim as our server was tagged to be a source server. Coming so soon after being a former destination server and the day after Order had made its greatest advance ever, this came as a surprise to many to say the least. But if there's one thing you don't want to do when Mythic comes to your server's doorway and puts its mark on it; you don't want to hang around there for very much longer. Not if you value having a healthy server population around.

So the decision was made as a guild and alliance to pack our bags and try our luck in Badlands. Basically this is a server consolidation without having to turn off the lights on the abandoned servers. It's what we as gamers have been crying for and what Mythic has too much pride to do so early in the game. Here's hoping Averheim hangs on and experiences a rebirth later on down the line when the game gets popular enough to support having so many servers on the list.

For those of us who have had to watch as friends and foes abandoned this game for one reason or another, this is quite the morale booster to be given the opportunity to play with more people.

Does Your Enemy Own a Keep?

"If their guild initials are CoW, do not rest until the structure is burned and razed and its grounds salted and mixed with the blood of its defenders."

I'm thinking this was on the loading screen of every T3 capable Destro that loaded into Averheim last Saturday. The day started innocently enough. I had finally cleared out all the T3 quests in my Ironbreaker's quest log and was starting on the T4 zones when a guildie, Werit, complained that there was no oRVR to be found as Order controlled everything in T3. I suggested that we claim a keep to draw Destro out and that Avelorn would be a good one due to its proximity to the Tor Anroc scenario loiterers.

After some false alarms with the requisite Witch Elf ninja, we finally got our wish. Boy, did we ever get our wish! During this first assault, a warband quickly formed and grew and I put away all thoughts of questing. No scummy Destro was going to take over our guild keep on my watch. We joined an alliance during this time and they bolstered our meager numbers. Technical difficulties prevented CoW's from communicating in the new alliance chat but we were able to coordinate just fine in /warband.

The next few hours were amazing in that both sides were pretty evenly matched but that Order had the defensive superiority. The amazing thing was even after this was demonstrated several times with the Destro attacks breaking up and eventually being chased all the way back to their warcamp, this did not seem to faze them one bit. They just reformed and did it again. And again. And again.

So I have to give the Destruction players credit for not taking the easy way out. Yes, you can get easy XP and renown by capping undefended objectives. Yes, scenarios are an even more optimal way to get both. But they simply are not as epic as the battles that raged on as both sides seemed to fight without a seeming care for XP or renown that night. One side wanted the other's turf and the other was determined not to give it up. Simple as that. I'd like to thank all the Order players that showed up especially those from our new alliance. Thanks for having our backs, guys.

And, finally, thanks to the persistant Destro players that showed up. We couldn't have had those epic battles without you. My Ironbreaker will most likely be 32 sometime today and finally out of T3 for good. I couldn't have wished for a better sendoff than this.

Work in Progress

I can't help but post this screenshot of my Warrior Priest in all his badass glory. Blizzard could really learn a thing or two from Mythic about designing armor that doesn't look half-bad even if it's not part of a complete set. Judging from the fact they are moving away from specialized gear in WoTLK, there's more possibility for clown-gear hilarity it seems; not less.

I dipped my toe into Tier 3 scenarios yesterday with the Empire-based, Talabec Dam. This scenario has you grabbing a powder keg in the middle of the map and planting it at an objective near the opponent's spawn point. This can be quite difficult to do with 2 evenly matched teams and it's not unusual to win a game without once successfully completing this objective. I was just going to do a quick preview before heading back to do some more Tier 2 scenarios before I completely outleveled them. When I saw the average renown I was getting compared to what I would've gotten from T2, I decided I might stay and play a while. It seems you get more renown from defeating higher level opponents and consequently less from lower-level ones.

Later on in the night, a guild-scheduled RvR event took place. We formed up a warband and some change and headed out to Barak Varr to raise some heck. It was my first organized RvR experience in WAR and it definitely was a blast. The experience was a bit on the zergy side as both sides tried to cram as many people as they could into the keep but we were able to use that to our advantage to send the separate group outside the warband to secure the 2 other PVP objectives in the zone. I wondered what gold sinks there would be once you bought your mount and gear in this game. I quickly found out as I kept visiting the healer after every death and buying the siege gear we could deploy like rams and ballistas.

We were a bit understrength to deal with the keep NPC's along with the players that showed up to face us so we sent some feelers out to other guilds for reinforcements. While waiting on them to mobilize, we decided on a tactical withdrawal to the south and the Marshes of Madness where an Order-held keep was under attack. After making sure it was secure and hearing word that some other guilds had arrived to join in on the fun, we headed back to Barak Varr. The added force was more than enough to secure its downfall and the keep lord was finally slain.

The action was epic with an enemy force numbering at least 40+ against us at one time. All the classic siege tactics were used with a battering ram pounding down the door while boiling oil was poured on us from above. We deployed cannons and ballistas to counter theirs and their range casters continually harrassed us from the keep walls. The melee was furious and the healers were constantly kept on their toes.

After the fall of Barak Varr, we headed out to take over another keep. There was only token resistance and little more than the NPC's to resist us. The keep quickly fell with a whimper. At this time, I had to bade goodbye as it was getting late and I needed my beauty sleep before work the next morning. I'm definitely liking this glimpse of things to come in this game.

Becoming a Casualty

I've joined the Casualties of WAR guild on Averheim. I was concerned about my late application being that my decision to roll on their server was literally made at the last minute. On their forums, they had announced recruitment being closed unless you had a referral from a current member. Luckily, I happened to have one. An interesting tidbit was the guild dinging level 7 with my acceptance of the guild invite. Looks like the XP doesn't go to waste as I thought but is still applied after the fact.

Being a SE pre-order meant that I was still too low-level to group with those that had started 2 days prior with the CE pre-order. No tier 2 RvR or scenarios for my level 8 Warrior Priest. So I had to queue up solo for the tier 1 scenarios. I was able to get in some ad-hoc RvR and scenario engagements with guildies though and was even lucky enough to get into a cloak run with them moments after joining the guild.

I'm really starting to get the hang of PVP with the Warrior Priest. I ended the day at level 10 RR10 with some really sweet renown gear. I hear the class gets even better as far as damage and healing goes in tier 2. I can't wait.