Well, I have to say my vacation was fairly decent. Spent a lot of time drinking, made my way down to Key West for their Fantasy Fest, went snorkeling a handful of times to check out the various sea-life. I spent a lot of time out of the sun though, you can get burned pretty easily down there if you’re not used to the light. Coming home to WAR was disappointing at first.

The first night I logged in guildies were absent. I think there were about 5 online. I solo’d my way through scenarios to rr55 on my Engi and finally polished off my full Invader set. Yay 10ft range bonus! Alas, no one to share it with. Monday was another disappointing day as I logged in to find 5 people yet again, which dropped of to just me and one other within minutes. Where had everyone gone? We usually field at least 20 on weekdays! This was probably when I noticed that Altdorf was sitting at two stars…

I found out some time later that City Sieges had been more than rampant, but the defenses had been solid… during prime time at least. The de-ranking of the city came from late-night/early morning sieges. Somehow, Destro is able to field 4 warbands at any given time of the day, and used this to spank Altdorf silly. I kinda understand where everyone went. The same place everyone goes when they’re losing against a force they can’t fight on even ground, somewhere else. Well, at least last night our glorious guild leader returned from about a week of the flu and pushed the buttons to get us into the premier alliance on Badlands.

Ah, what a fresh change of pace. Immediately we went from 5 online to about 20, and out alliance numbers changed from our guild plus one or two other members, to around 90. There was a huge RvR push as we started coordinating multiple warbands, we pushed out of Kadrin Valley and Eataine (Empire had been locked down previously to this), and even took the Elf pairing all the way up to Caledor before the Destro zerg was summoned. I found a new addon earlier called Whom. It gives a count of how many players were online for each tier and spits out the totals for you. At the height of our push, Whom was reporting 112 r40’s and 34 T4 (r31-r39) players. At the same time however, the keep spam was showing 130 Destro, and they were also flipping a second zone at the same time.

What are we supposed to do at that point? When it’s taking us every available player to fail at defending a single keep, and another zone is dropping almost uncontested,  morale drops VERY quickly. Sure, the fights were good and hard, but there was no progress, and very little in the way of slowing down the opposing side. While Order on Badlands can show up and rock it out when we really try, it didn’t take more than an hour before Destro could outzerg us and flip the tables. I believe Altdorf was under siege shortly after I logged out for the night.

So it’s a mixed bag for me. New alliance, lots of people to run with on one hand, then getting outzerged and consistently losing on the other hand. It’s a breath of life for our guild, and Order on the server that we settled into a much larger alliance, I just fear that that breath may be getting knocked out of us awfully fast. I don’t really mind being outnumbered to be honest. Scenarios pop faster, there’s always a fight waiting for you, typically the amount of bad players on the opposing side far outnumbers the good. For the sake of Order as a whole however, I get a little worried.

Highlights last night include soloing a Chosen, Sorc, and Marauder at the same time in Dragonwake with my Engi. Getting pulled off a keep and dying in mid-air to a zerg. Killing off a line of 20 Destro that were running up to defend a Keep we were attacking. Soloing multiple Witch Elves that kept trying to gank me (thank you 3s KD on self-destruct). Still racking up top damage in most of the scenarios that I run, without any specific assistance… The list goes on, I enjoy my time in WAR very much, even if we are losing as a whole. Then again, that’s the real issue isn’t it?

This really is a Realm v Realm kind of deal now. If your faction isn’t playing up to par, no one is going to survive. You might be the biggest badass on the field (not saying that I am, plenty are better), but it’s still just a drop in the bucket when facing a hoard that outnumbers you by at least 20. WAR has very little room for meaningful personal achievements, everything is overshadowed by the fact that if your realm is losing, than everyone is suffering. This is something that I really don’t have an answer for, some sort of balancing for an outnumbered realm is obvious. The feeling that one man does not make a dent however is a product of design. If it were intended, it was done very well.

So a breath of life for my guild, and myself to a degree. I’ll always enjoy being a wrecking ball on the open field and being crafty enough to solo classes that I probably shouldn’t. There’s plenty of opportunity to enjoy the game, but also enough to get tired of it. RvR isn’t everyones cup of tea, at least not out on the battlefields. Too many people in one area and it just turns into a sea of bodies dying back and forth until one wave crashes over the other and victory finally rushes in. I am content. We’re on a losing slide at the moment which causes more people to disappear, but at the same time, it’s just another crash of the wave. The tides rise and fall, winning comes and goes. It might end up being like this for a month or two, but it won’t last forever.

It never does.