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.

Life After 40

Yes, I'm still playing WAR. No, I haven't been grinding Renown on my Warrior Priest. I figure I'll have plenty of time to do that once the rest of my guild gets into Tier 4. I'm taking this opportunity to roll alt #1. Originally, my plan was to roll a Destruction alt to run through the Destruction content but the lack of tanks in the guild and Order in general made me reconsider. Between the Swordmaster and the Ironbreaker, the IB won out for now with its mechanics and general Dwarven cool factor. But I can see myself rolling a SM alt sometime in the future to explore its own unique gameplay.

The trouble was everyone else was rolling out their own IB alts so mine would be lost in a sea of shorties it seemed. So I decided that just like my old Dwarf Hunter in WoW, mine would be the fabled female Dwarf. So was born Thunda the Ironbreaker. So far I have been enjoying the class. I found that it's more suited to the PVP playstyle I was trying to go for with my Warrior Priest; that of harrier and defender. I find I'm able to live a lot longer and more heals go my way when I'm charging into a mess of enemies. I still find it amazing that tanks actually can make a difference in PVP after my experience in WoW.

I have also decided to remove the need to sign up for an account in order to post comments to this blog. It's one of those things you don't realize until it's pointed out to you since it's an option that's enabled by default and an account is something that I've had since day one of this blog. Since it would be impossible to even start a blog without one on this site, it never occurred to me that there might be others out there who might not want the added hassle of creating one simply to leave me their two cents worth.