Fight on the Flag

First off, happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Destro wanted to give us a hug today so we decided to give back in spades. FOTF and Obliteration’s morning crew rolled the few Destro that were in Altdorf this morning. It was incredibly coordinated. Bright Wizards were grouping up as if they had a hive mind.

Cleanup, aisle 5!

It’s too bad we didn’t have better attackers. I would’ve loved to have seen what our organized group could have done against organized Arsenal. We have faced them before, and whenever they lose resoundingly they tend to leave to find easier pickings. At least we know we can put up a good fight.

Order also downed the King at a fairly reasonable time Saturday night. I was so hyped up afterward that I could hardly sleep. Andora, our SM, got his final piece of Warlord gear and will be able to tank the king as soon as he gets one renown rank. Woot!

Now, in a completely unrelated rant, please inspect the following two screenshots:

See the difference? In both screens, I took a screenshot of the moment the zone was taken by Order. However, in the top version, I only got 192 renown for taking Praag, even though I had been there for both keep takes and a number of Battle Objectives (see above: I had just helped take Armory when the Scenario popped for us). It appears that after joining BFP that I had the idle hands debuff (seven seconds left before scen starts, see ss). This reduces the renown you can earn.

In the second one I was in the Maw when Chaos Wastes flipped. You will notice I got a ton of renown. So in short, there is no incentive to take a scenario when you stand to gain so much from having taken BOs and keeps earlier in the day. This is really something that Mythic ought to fix. ~13,000 renown vs ~200 rewnown? There is really no choice there.

I’ll take the larger figure, please.

Destro’s Sunday morning Altdorf push is like the tides — constant and predictable. We know they will storm Altdorf to kill our king and thus become better geared.

A few Fight on the Flag members were about to log off. The city is not very fun when we keep getting stomped into the ground. Usually there are only six of us and it’s hard to make a difference when the PUGs keep pushing center and keep getting owned.

FOTF only had five people online that early in the morning. We decided to open up the warband to alliance members with Ventrilo. I helped form the warband and make sure everyone was in vent and Pylith led our tiny zerg of three groups around.

Usually when we have led Vent-only warbands a lot of people just run and do their own thing anyway. This time, Pylith was patient yet firm. We stayed together and started catching up in Destro’s PQ stage 2. Then we pulled ahead and won the stage. Then we won our stage and got some points on the board. Because of our wins, the Destro did NOT get what they wanted.

All of us envisioned the tears they were crying. They had to plan so much to get up early to push zones just to get to the city. All of that effort, wasted.

In my glee I posted a thread on WHA about the situation, where Destro went on to minimize our victory. Either way it was good clean fun.

We had a lot of fun this weekend. Lots of fights, good scenario battles (so good that I didn’t take screenshots, doh!) and of course city defenses… OK the city defenses weren’t quite so fun.

Destro on Gorfang pushes the city on weekend mornings to farm our King. During those attacks, you’re either in the instance with the warlord/sov geared Destruction (I don’t care who you are, that hurts) or you’re getting in the instance with few or no Destro and left to ponder what we can do to end it all (the city PQ I mean):

Sadly killing the mob takes longer than playing hokey pokey on the objectives (another rant entirely).

What would be really awesome is a scenario that people could run in T4 instead of doing city defenses! It was great when Kegs End was active because those of us who dislike city defenses could run Black Fire Basin. I can’t tell you how many people I see log on during the day, see a city defense and then log out. There should be another option for those of us who don’t like being in the city for 2-4 hours a day.

In every game the members of FOTF play, no matter what realm or race, we notice similar things about the underdog side.

The unending complaints and excuses for why they are not winning bind them all together.

First, blame the other side for:

• Hacking
• Cheating
• Using cheap tactics and/or OP classes
• Alarm clock raids to avoid a fight
• Cross realming
• (This is contrasted with our side’s desire to play legit and get a good night’s rest)

Second, dehumanize the other side because:

• They are in school and have nothing better to do than play a video game during their ample free time
• They have no social lives and/or live with their parents
• They don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend or spouse or are too fat to get one
• They don’t have a job or are on unemployment
• They have cancer or some other terminal disease that allows them to play so much
• (This is contrasted with our side’s ability to get jobs, have social lives and families, and we also don’t live with our parents, have good hygiene and work out)

Finally, criticize your own side, shift blame and minimize the helpful things that could cause you to perform better

• It’s everyone else’s fault but yours
• Class balance favors the other side
• Developers don’t play our side so the other side is OP
• The uber guild won’t let us join their warbands, therefore we can’t work together to win
• Perle is a big meanie and won’t let us join her warband because we don’t use Vent. Vent doesn’t really help anyway (actual conversation during a city defense):

Do you know of other excuses people use for why the underdogs lose? Feel free to post them below and I’ll add them to the list!

To kick off this post, I wanted to share a screenshot of the text message after Order kicks Destro out of Altdorf:

(Just in case you cannot read the text in the picture, “Altdorf stands strong! The city is Recovering. No mercy for the straggling Order.”)

For those who haven’t surfed the forums relentlessly, Istaflyiii on Gorfang discovered a bug that basically hands Destruction the keys to Altdorf three times a day. By just respirating oxygen into carbon dioxide, Destruction can flip zones and get to Altdorf.

And order can do nothing about it. In fact, if Order tries to do something, it actually works in Destruction’s favor.

Wow. What a disincentive for RVR if you have any shred of realm pride. Fortunately, Mythic says they are working on the bug, though the timeline for a fix is sketchy at best.

One player on Gorfang wanted to try to quantify the gear and renown haul due to the VP bug, and Destro of course, say it’s not a big deal (though there are the few who are calling attention to this).

Case in point: Cald noticed that Order owned one keep in Thunder Mountain. We claimed it, noticed we had about six people and called in T4 channel for help. Anyone who wanted to defend with Ventrilo could join our warband and we could try to prevent Destro from taking the keep.

I wish I had taken screenshots of what some said to me (and I would blur the names to prevent too much humiliation). I got several tells from people saying “Don’t defend it only flips to the city faster” who were actually ANGRY at me trying to defend our lands!

Of course I didn’t listen, and we led about three groups from TM to KV to try to defend. It was all in vain. We were up against 5 warbands at one point (90 on the keep and another warband defending BOs).

Morale on Order side is very low. Let’s hope they fix this bug soon.

That pain in my neck is not the new Pilates routine, it’s Destro stomping all over my about-to-be-dead corpse:

They got into our city at least two times Saturday, but it was probably more because they were pushing pretty hard to get there again when I logged to make dinner.

FOTF had a really fun time in scenarios though. It almost feels like we’re getting some of our groove back. After not playing Order side since July 4 or thereabouts, it’s a rough awakening going from best on the server (several of our guildies were #1 on the leaderboards) to complete nobodies.

Oddly enough the people who seem to remember us most are the new transfers from Phoenix Throne. They were some of the elite Order guilds that we fought against when we played Destro over there. I am glad to know we were more than just a speed bump to them!