We now had a positional advantage. With the Order defense committed to the west keep, the defense at BOs *should* be much lighter. But we didn't have much time left now. We only had a few minutes before the zone was captured. As we were grouping up at the south warcamp, we noticed some Destro flying in. REINFORCEMENTS! Apparently most of the Destro were in other zones, waiting for them to lock. That was why we were outnumbered here in Thunder Mountain. We spammed region chat to tell everyone to hit C. We didn't have much time left to try anything fancy. With about 1 minute left on Zone Domination, we managed to take and hold C.
It looked like the Order force was demoralized --- BO after BO was taken easily, followed by the Keeps. Dv was nowhere to be seen, and there was little Order resistance left in the zone. As expected, Dv probably took his zerglings to PVE elsewhere.
After all that fighting, we congratulated everyone and thanked them for their support while they PVE'd the rest of the zone. It would probably be one of the most epic battles we would have experienced in WAR, from the scrappy fighting to the winning against the odds and the final push with a minute left on the clock. But that got a few of us thinking. What did we get from the few hours of fighting? What were we hustling for? To chase f***ing timers! We spent a few hours trying to stop some silly "timers" from handing the zone over to Order. One of my buddies commented that it would have been more beneficial to not defend the zone and let the zone flip so that we could work on a fresh zone. He was right. And even if we lost the next zone and Order unlocked our Fortress, Fortress defense was much easier than offense, and it would have been free RP and gear for us if we let Order flip the zones to a Fortress. We virtually got nothing for working so hard to defend the zone. Just piddly honor from the few player kills we got, and the measly 500 RP for the 2 or 3 times we flipped a BO.
The people who got rewarded more were the Destro in the other zones, who PVE'd the other zones with little resistance, then received rewards for locking the zone. On the other hand the Destro who were furiously fighting to prevent Thunder Mountain from being locked got little, compared to the effort that was put in. Those who were rewarded were also the Order warbands that we demoralized at Thunder Mountain, who went to PVE in a fresh unlocked Zone instead of staying where the action was and fighting to retake Thunder Mountain.
And these are some reasons why WAR's RVR system fails. The reward/motivation system is screwed up. PVEers are rewarded; people who run away from the fight are rewarded. Players are not rewarded for confronting each other in the battlefield and fighting. And I shall refrain myself from going on a rant about the silly "Zone Domination timer" bandaid.
That was the last time I led a warband, or joined one for that matter. That was also when I started giving up on WAR's rubbish PVE endgame and decided to look for PVP fun elsewhere. It was just too zergy, and everyone's motivations and the game's reward system were all messed up. Although I had fun leading a guerilla warband against the zerg, when it comes down to PVP, what I really want to do is fight. I didn't want to spam heals in a zerg. I didn't want to PVE, or try to motivate zerglings who would rather PVE objectives because it was the most rewarding thing to do. I didn't want to PVE in order to unlock even more PVE: more doors to destroy and more horrendously laggy/crashy, population-capped PVE encounters. NO THANKS!
Anyway, possibly to come in the distant future: commentaries on each RVR zone, based on my roaming experiences. This will include my favorite hunting spots, and my opinion on the unique features of each zone from a RVR perspective. It'll be chance for me to relive some of my fondest moments in Failhammer, when I had to break away from what the game was designed for to find some fun for myself.
Memories like these remind me that no one really leaves Warhammer because they do not like it. I feel that the majority of the people who left the game saw tremendous potential in the game and really wanted to like it, despite all its shortcomings. It's a shame that for whatever reason, the Mythic team kept making bad management and design decisions, and could not deliver or turn things around.
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