The Storming of Stonetroll Keep

In which we indulge in what might be described as “RvE” action and answer the question, “What happens when you hold a war and only one side shows up?”

We did not have a full crew, Earl being hamstrung by a lack of power in his abode.  We had:

Bluelinebasher – Level 10 Ironbreaker
Denrohir – Level 14 Archmage
Chicken – Level 14 Shadow Warrior
Varsoon – Level 14 Warrior Priest
Meclin – Level 16 Ironbreaker
Stardoe – Level 17 Warrior Priest

The night found us quickly into the game and in search of action.  Denrohir and Stardoe were already off in Troll Country/Ostland with a budding warband when the rest of us logged in, capping control points and ganking the occasional red name unfortunate enough to wander by.

By the last control point was reached, we had formed up and the warband consisted of a little more than two groups worth of players happily following the leader and gaining little bits of renown.

All Us, No Them

Once the last point was capped all eyes went to the last sore red point on the map, Stonetroll Keep.

The mob decided to give it a try and off we rolled.  Siege weapons were at hand, but all we really needed was a ram to help knock down the door, as the place was only defended by NPCs.

Unfortunately, we did not have critical mass, nor enough experience amongst us, to actually take the keep.  So after a couple of wipes at the hands of the keep lord on the second floor, we decided to go back to capping control points.

We wandered the lands… or at least the tier 2 lands… in search of control points to cap.  We found that Destruction owned the iron clad and the lighthouse in Barak Hussein Varr, so we headed out to cap those.

Nautical Control Point

And as we traveled, our warband slowly grew until it was a full four groups of fury.

We decided at that point to go give Stonetroll Keep another try.

Still undefended by any but NPCs, we set to work.  Getting entry to the keep was easy, but the battle with the keep lord on the second floor was still seemingly beyond our grasp.

Then Chicken noticed that if healers and ranged DPS people stood on the third floor that overlooks the keep lord’s area, they were spared all that AOE damage that the keep lord puts out.  With the healers no longer dying or healing themselves, the tanks stayed alive.  With the tanks alive, the DPS guys were able to whittle down the NPCs.  And with that the battle went from annoyingly hard to very easy.

So there is your tip for the day, if you didn’t already posses that bit of information.

And with that… well… we were kind of done for the evening.  We took an undefended keep and stood victorious.

Dandies in Victory

Order owned all of the control points and keeps in tier 2, while Destruction did not seem to want to come out and play.

We Win?

We found a few of them around the Monestary of Morr and got a small battle going, but it did not last long.  They went off to something else and we were left in control of the field.

During that skirmish, Varsoon got hit with the ice trap spell and the graphic seemed to stick to him after the effect faded.  Everybody else was able to see it, too.  So we tried using Varsoon as bait while everybody else hid, but nobody was fooled.

Oh no, I'm stuck! I hope nobody comes to get me!

We left the warband and grouped up to find something else to do.  We realized that we lost Bluelinebasher somewhere along the way.  He turned out to be having trouble with WAR and his computer again, and he wasn’t on Skype to let us know.  Meanwhile, without a real goal, first Meclin (for whom it was 2 hours later) and then Stardoe decided to call it a night.

Denrohir, Chicken, and Varsoon stayed on to do a bit more PvE questing.  Varsoon finally hit level 15 after three Saturday evening’s worth of play.  And that was about it.

But there, at the end of our fifth weekend playing WAR as a group, I think we all made a decision individually that perhaps, as it stands now, this is not the game for us.

Open RvR is a blast when it happens, but it does not happen often enough.  We got into one good keep battle as a group, then haven’t seen one since, despite playing at what I would call prime time on a Saturday night.

With the play budget I described previously, having to depend on the other team coming out and play to have any fun isn’t working out.

Part of the problem is that we are a casual group.  We haven’t kept up with the competitive pack in the game.  The fun is happening in tiers 3 and 4 we’re told, and we’re stuck in tier 2.  I am told that the good group dungeons don’t start until tier 3.  And the decent lairs.  And probably the free candy and ice cream for all I know.  Unfortunately, at our casual rate of progress, some of that content is months away.

And part of the reason we are so casual is that the game really hasn’t really drawn most of us to play at times other than Saturday night.  During the first days there was a fury of activity and we saw each other several nights a week.  But that tapered off after the second week and now there is almost no activity outside of Saturday night.

So an email went out earlier this week.  Opinions were expressed.  Options were explored.  Consensus was reached.

It looks like this coming Saturday night we will not be playing Warhammer Online.