Testpig posted an amazing way to add relics to Warhammer and utilize the dead fortresses.

I love his idea so much. Please watch the Youtube video. Trust me, it’s worth the nine minutes:

I like everything about this video.

• Add influence as a main currency instead of the current system is a great idea because it doesn’t encourage one type of influence gain over another (ie. scenarios vs ORVR).
• The underdog system in the video would be a great addition to the current underdog system (reduce guards/keep door health)
• My one reservation: In Fortress attacks Testpig suggests that we add defender and attacker respawn points within the Fortress zone. I am not sure what to think of this idea, because when Order was underdogs at the beginning of the game we would often cut off their warcamp and kill stragglers. Testpig’s idea would work well if the realms were equal.

If Warhammer were to change to this or a similar solution I would have lots of hope for its future.

One question though, would Games Workshop flip out of this were to happen? I have no idea if this is against the game lore or not.

If you wanted to get into some of the minutae, Bootae has a few good ideas, also taken from DAOC.

EDIT: Werit thinks adding relics is a bad idea because it only makes the powerful realm more powerful. WARAyleen said relic raids were mostly alarm-clock runs anyway. Is nostalgia getting the best of me?

Are you a former FOTF member from either Warhammer, Warcraft or Dark Age of Camelot (we were Legacy of Storms on Albion/Bedevere)? Please drop me a line at fightontheflag@gmail.com and I’ll invite you to our Facebook page. Include your in-game name and in which game you played with us.

Those aren't all rocks, they're corpses.

Yeah killing a bunch of lowbies wasn’t terribly challenging or brag worthy, but watching renown (albeit very little renown) falling from the skies was pretty entertaining.

This map represents Friday night at about 6:30 p.m. Pacific time. FotF is headed into the fray!

As we slowly accumulate Annihilator and Conquerer gear, we are getting less squishy. We stood toe to toe with one of the better Bright Wizard bomb groups on the server. I am confident once we get equivalent gear that they won’t stand a chance.

Apparently our guild is getting a bit of a reputation (if only for the guild name). I discourage bragging on forums. It’s sometimes hard not to provide advice without seeming like you’re bragging. I don’t want to come off as arrogant (oh but on this server we did it this way and it worked).

But sometimes you really can’t help it. We had a keep defense that everyone thought we would lose. The tank wall was rather massive, though, and I had every confidence that we would prevail. That is, until the people on the tank wall left the wall to chase down people who got past /facepalm.

We steered them (in a not-so-nice way) to get back onto the wall and hold fast. We prevailed and chased them out of the keep!

I anticipate more fun today and Sunday.

Welcome back Kuvasz! She played an armswoman in DAOC and ran with our 8-man gank squad. After New Frontiers, we all quit because we were tired of keep humping (sound familiar?).

We had exciting times on Saturday in Praag, whipping up several groups of Destro into tasty batches of renown. I managed to get RR71, so I guess I drop Royal Crests now. With the number of Destro who zerg around me now, I probably should hire a Swordmaster to guard me :p

Unfortunately it seems Doorhammer is all we do now if we want to see RVR. Destro is too wary of our group (unless they have 150 of them defending a fortress and all we have is eight people, like on Monday night).

Yes, underneath the hooves of the Destro warhorses is a dead ginger-headed freak (Bright Wizards is what we call them on Order side). We couldn’t find any RVR until we realized a fort had been taken and Order left to go somewhere else. We investigated and found tons and tons and TONS of Destro outside Fell Landing.

I would be lying if I said our first attempts were anything but utter defeat. In our defense we were missing a couple of key players, but we managed to kill equal to our number before we died.

I’ll be honest, we didn’t have our A team for much of these fights (sorry Vidbranna). We had a badly geared BW and we still beat them. Then, we went to Fireguard once to prevent a Dragonwake lock. Khaevil was waaay out front, and I was practically at the warcamp. About two groups of Destro were at the BO but they scattered at the mere sight of Khaevil running in by himself.

He cant kill you if he’s alone. /sigh

Here’s to hoping the PVP is going to be better the rest of this weekend. And happy Fourth, everyone!

We had a merry time chasing Destro in Dragonwake. FOTF guarded objectives. Here we are defending Fireguard. I would guess it was an even fight, numbers wise, with FOTF’s two groups and another half warband against Destro’s full WB. The only way I could have been happier is if a scenario had popped. None did in the two hours I was online.

But not all are happy, Bright Wizards to name one. It appears during certain situations, the BW spell Rain of Fire does zero damage. That’s right, zero. Read all about it on the Bright Wizard forums.

I tested and confirmed this last night on the test server, and indeed as I expected, when more than one BW target the same enemy at the same time with RoF, only one of the BW does damage. The other BW does a grand total of 0 damage, but still wastes his AP and time, and gets to wait 10 more sec before being able to cast again (assuming he isn’t running in the conflag line, and therefore doesn’t have Fiery Reserves.

The thread is seven pages long, with lots of whining and little constructive information (to be fair I stopped after page three). I don’t think it was ever intended for BWs to do zero damage when two of them targeted the same people (remember, ROF is a ground target spell. Who you target should make little difference).

Here are the thoughts of Gorfangers… Gorfangians… Gorfangstons? on the new patch.

I will reserve my judgment until this weekend. Also we’re going to do some Lost Vale runs early in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. If non-FOTFers want to join in we might be able to form a second group.

But just as we logged in, we found our alliance warband was leaving the zone. Boo! They said there were too many Destro to fight. It makes me wonder if any of them remember how we fought when the server was new, Destro was overpopulated and Order was demoralized?

My bright idea to attack them when they were in the tunnel didn’t go as well as I planned. Instead we rushed to the north keep to take it. We waited for a minute or so, and once I thought they were well on their way to Gromril Junction, we started in on the door.

The Destro took Gromril Junction and we continued working on the door, sweating as the timer on the battlefield objective ticked down. Meanwhile I was trying to get the alliance warband to return. They showed up when the door was about 10 percent and we started in on the second door (at this point the keep flagged for the first time. Bug maybe?).

We took the keep. Destro finally showed up and basically stopped dead. I noticed a slew of names I had never seen before, and it seemed most of them had just arrived in T4. They got wiped at the north keep and we pressed south to Dolgrund’s Cairn, wiping Destro as we went. I ordered my WB to press on the south keep, while the alliance warband stayed to get the BO.

A quick note: Destro had at least two warbands, although the members were rather low level. We had Blazeric’s full WB and my three groups, plus a few stragglers here and there.

Once we bashed down the two doors, we set up under the lord room. My oh my they had a lot of Sorcs!

We wiped twice or three times to the Destro at this keep. I will admit the two warbands did not communicate as well as we could have. Charges, for instance, were sometimes announced in shout instead of region. Shout has a limited range. I also strongly suspect that the other warband did not have enough healers, or that the healers died first for some reason. I say this because my warband’s two groups that had two healers each all lived until the other warband died, then my warband was eventually wiped as well.

Oh well, live and learn. It was the first time I’d RVRd with my Archmage in at least two weeks. I was glad to be on her again. I also thank the Order for listening to me. I hope you all don’t think FotF has abandoned you. Far from it. We just want to give Destro a fighting chance so they will fight us another day.

Despite wiping so many times, I still had a blast. I hope Destro did too

After much debate, we’re sticking with Gorfang in hopes that the new zone domination rules will help the RVR. We hate doing RVE. It bothers us to the core. I am hoping the changes will encourage more people to fight each other instead of fleeing to another zone when the enemy shows up.

Recent circumstances dictate that I reroll to play a White Lion instead of my Archmage. For me, it’s a disappointing turn of events, but a necessary one. I like my Archmage but my White Lion is great fun, and I am sure I will learn to love her as well. With me rerolling, that means Khaevil will now play the Archmage. There could be other permanent changes, but for now those are the big ones. (We are also hoping one of our members will reroll to a Warrior Priest, hint hint. Maybe when you get back from vacation?)

The upside to me playing a non-healer is it will allow me to lead warbands more effectively. Before I was so focused on healing (or getting yelled at because I let someone die, sorry!) I couldn’t relay orders well enough. This led me to either not lead a warband at all or do it in a half-assed fashion. I am looking forward to being high enough level to RVR with the big boys again.

The little RVR we did participate in this weekend was a lot of fun. Destro had a mighty zerg, almost like old times. We assaulted a keep in Eataine and they held the Lord room well. We ran back after a wipe and they were ready for our assault.

Needless to say we didn’t take that keep. Maybe another time!

I didn’t take the threat seriously until they flipped Caledor.

The rest of the night I can only equate to how a battered woman feels when her abusive boyfriend returns after a long period away from her: skittish, excited and afraid at the same time. I remember the days when Destro zerged the server so hard that Order were demoralized and weak. Then a few server transfers brought more people to the Gorfang and the Destro had some infighting

After Caledor flipped, I put out the rallying cry in alliance chat and told people to join my warband and get in vent. At this point the Destro had already claimed Covenant of Flame. When Destro hit Drakebreakers we had a whopping two groups.

So we did what we FOTF tries to do best. We queued for Serpent’s passage.

The beatdown was humiliating and awesome.

What happened next is something that hasn’t happened in a long time. We got stomped. It’s hard not to get stomped when you have a full group of PUG in the scenario. Somehow Destro made everyone who was not level 40 stay out of the scenario queue and only let the pro players go in preset groups.

After our beatdown, we went to Drakebreakers, but Destro rolled through us like we weren’t even there.

Destro flood the inside of Drakebreakers Scourge.

They flipped Dragonwake and we were then fighting in Eataine. By this time Order had I think two warbands trying to defend. The group of Destro had grown so large that we really had no hope of attacking the main force, so I ordered my warband to skirmish and cut their reinforcements. We tried to take defensive positions, but in the end it was just prolonging the inevitable.

Order tries to defend the Chillwind Manor battle objective in Caledor.

Our last-ditch effort to try to prevent a zone flip failed because the battle objective was bugged and we couldn’t claim the flag. It wasn’t long before we gave up and ran to the Shining Way Fortress to lick our wounds. For whatever reason they couldn’t take the fortress, but it was a mighty attempt.

After the Fort defense, I looked at the clock and three hours had whizzed by. There was more action to be had, but I had not yet eaten dinner. This morning I see Destro has pushed all the zones to their side.

I admit I am in awe of that type of organization, and I sincerely hope this is a sign of better fights to come.

I know as the underdog realm we must use strategy. That’s why I employed a new, radical strategy that is sure to help us win more battles.

FOTF started out the night with about a group and a half of people. We refused to admit anyone into the warband unless they were a healer, a tank, or brought one of those classes with them. I’m sure I ruffled a few feathers, but the wins we accumulated were worth the ire. We were unstoppable.

Now this is not to say that I won’t res or heal people outside of the warband, because I do. I support the realm. But I think the best way to support the realm is with a balanced warband. Would anyone PVE with an unbalanced group? Why should we PVP with any less?

The screenshots on which the above montage is based were the culmination of three attempts by Destro to take our keep (which they finally did at 12:30 a.m. Pacific time)

I hope Order will continue to support the balanced warband.