Back from dead - really great to see this - some questions/comments.

[Kobra]

I played on Live for almost the entire time the game was live (In USA) except towards the end when EA trashed it and it started to lose a lot of fun. I was devastated when it shut down as were my kids who played with me as our sort of 'bonding'. I have almost every character to 40 but enjoyed all of the tiers, especially tier 1 Fest fights.. So joyous! - Prepare for a wall of text, but I think it will be a good read..

Returning last week has been amazing with me and the 'now more grown up' kids playing together. it's been amazing. I have a couple of questions I wondered if I could get answered;

1) One of the biggest issues on live was the extreme gear imbalance at T4. I remember the horrendously OP gear they added to keep people grinding and in some cases the gear totally imbalanced the game. SC's were a matter of who had the top 1-2 geared guys on their team and those 1-2 guys could steamroll the SC. I remember some Slayer armor that allowed the Slayer to outheal any potential damage he could take. Or those unkillable WP's like Herbie that could take on 10, even 15 people at a time.

Q: Does the gross gear imbalance still remain? If not - GREAT! If so.. Will it be addressed?

2) Grind.. I see right away they've alleviated much of the leveling grind. It's actually 'workable' now with some great spawns and good advancement. One of the things that murdered me on live was the horrendous experience gain - very happy to see this has been dealt with. Camping Champ Rats endlessly to get exp was nauseating. But the biggest thing was the incredible gear grind in T4 that was soul crushing and eventually led me down the path of increasing reduction in play time. T4 is 'about the fight' in my opinion, not about dumping hundreds of hours into new gear.. That's Asian MMO logic that fails.

Q: Is the T4 gear grind still horrendous? I'm a bit scared to reach T4 and find myself woefully undergeared and unable to compete properly. If the grind is still there then my soul will be crushed like last time. However if there are options, or perhaps alternative ways to get gear, or 'reasonable' gear that can be purchased then I think I will find a home again. Please advise!


A few things I felt killed the live game; (personal opinions)

1) Twinks.. On live I fell victim to unkillable twinks in T1 to the point I started making my own twinks. Eventually T1 devolved into an unfun mess of twinks vs twinks with newbs in poor gear just there to farm renown/exp. This was a hideous situation made worse by EA's total lack of foresight. For example to stop twinking they did things like remove War-Torn and other shoulder and helmet drops. All that did was leave legions of twinks with better gear nobody else could get from that point forward. The population of T1 continued to decline and it became miserable.

2) T4 Gear grind. Hideous.. You hit T4 and had no way to compete unless you endured a long, tortured grind. Most people quit at this point and the population declined as time went on.

3) Gear Imbalances.. You either had gear and won. Didn't have good gear and lost. There was no 'homogenization' of haves and have nots. I understand giving people with gear some advantage but making them unkillable to everyone else practically killed SC's and RVR. I remember loading into SC's, everyone saw 'that one guy' on the other team that had the top gear in the game and knew there was no point in trying. (trust me, there was no point) This killed SC's and T4 RVR pretty quickly. I always dreamed that if I controlled WAR, I would have done what they did in SWTOR early on which was to give fresh T4 people a 'reasonable' set of gear to compete with. (or make it cheap) T4 is about the fight for the most part and shouldn't be about hundreds of hours of grinding.

4) Economy. Let's face it, LIVE had a broken economy. Goldsellers dropping thousands of gold for a few bucks. Then the AH was filled with stuff that cost hundreds if not thousands of gold.. You either botted for gold or bought your gold from goldsellers to compete or you simply didn't compete. The economy was totally whacked. Good green gear was 50,100 even 200 gold each on the AH. Newb's had little chance to gear up even during the mid levels.

5) Character imbalances.. Tough thing here but let's face it, live had BROKEN toons.. I played them all to 40 and had a pretty good grasp of that. This was the bane of live IMO, some toons stunk and were almost useless, others were dominating. Most toons were shoehorned into single builds everyone followed with identical rotations and almost complete ignoring of a good portion of their powers. (fluff skills)

All for now.. Sorry for the long post but I had a lot of thoughts to share from the last 7 days of play after years of absence.

[CegeePegee]

I'll try to answer some of your questions as best I can

1.) Gear gap - currently Annihilator is the best-in-slot rvr gear, with Mercenary being the alternative set that you can get via scenario emblems, so no there isn't the same massive gear gap that existed on live. Rumor has it that those 2 sets that EA introduced that ruined the game will not be implemented here.

2.) "Grind" is somewhat subjective a term. The medallion gain in orvr can be a bit slow so it *can* take a while to get full annihilator gear but personally I don't feel like its that bad of a grind. Depending on your class and build you can supplement your gear with Ruin pieces that are easily gotten via pve to hold you over while you work on annihilator/mercenary sets.

Other questions:
1.) Twinking in t1 mostly just consists of getting your rvr/sc gear (easy to do) and your influence stuff (from empire only, people STILL refuse to rvr in elf or dwarf in t1) and since the level cap for t1 is now 15, there's really no reason that everyone can't get the best-in-slot pieces during their time in t1. So yes, its easier to get all the best t1 pieces but at the same time pretty much everyone can do it.

4.) The economy was getting a little crazy earlier this year so the devs had to lower the monetary rewards on repeatable quests and added a few small gold-sinks such as increased costs at the flightmaster and the death debuff that can be removed at a WC healer. In general the economy seems healthy and so far I've seen zero gold farmers myself.

5.) Character imbalances are an on-going topic here. The devs are doing what they can to right EA's wrongs. The main obstacle they are currently dealing with is the need for client control which they are working on presently. Once that's available they will be able (in theory) to better balance classes so we're all waiting patiently for that In the meantime there are some imbalances that you can read all about on these forums but in general its not too bad.

Hope this helps and welcome back!

[Natherul]

Moved thread aaannnd:

Welcome, I hope you will enjoy your stay with us!

Read up on .rules and .ror ingame as well as the TOS so you dont get into trouble with us GMs.

If you encounter any bugs please report them to the bugtracker

Make sure to read what to expect from an alpha and what you accept when you play on this server

WAAAAGHH!!!

[Carso]

I remember Herby he would have loved the WP changes, or maybe not as he was a beast at DPS WP to begin with.

[Kobra]

I'll try to answer some of your questions as best I can

1.) Gear gap - currently Annihilator is the best-in-slot rvr gear, with Mercenary being the alternative set that you can get via scenario emblems, so no there isn't the same massive gear gap that existed on live. Rumor has it that those 2 sets that EA introduced that ruined the game will not be implemented here.

2.) "Grind" is somewhat subjective a term. The medallion gain in orvr can be a bit slow so it *can* take a while to get full annihilator gear but personally I don't feel like its that bad of a grind. Depending on your class and build you can supplement your gear with Ruin pieces that are easily gotten via pve to hold you over while you work on annihilator/mercenary sets.

Other questions:
1.) Twinking in t1 mostly just consists of getting your rvr/sc gear (easy to do) and your influence stuff (from empire only, people STILL refuse to rvr in elf or dwarf in t1) and since the level cap for t1 is now 15, there's really no reason that everyone can't get the best-in-slot pieces during their time in t1. So yes, its easier to get all the best t1 pieces but at the same time pretty much everyone can do it.

4.) The economy was getting a little crazy earlier this year so the devs had to lower the monetary rewards on repeatable quests and added a few small gold-sinks such as increased costs at the flightmaster and the death debuff that can be removed at a WC healer. In general the economy seems healthy and so far I've seen zero gold farmers myself.

5.) Character imbalances are an on-going topic here. The devs are doing what they can to right EA's wrongs. The main obstacle they are currently dealing with is the need for client control which they are working on presently. Once that's available they will be able (in theory) to better balance classes so we're all waiting patiently for that In the meantime there are some imbalances that you can read all about on these forums but in general its not too bad.

Hope this helps and welcome back!

Thank you for the lengthy reply.

It's good to hear many things have been addressed. I am especially happy to hear Annihilator and Merc armor is the best all around armor now and those ridiculous live armors are not here. SOV was terribly unbalanced and basically gave you an I-Win button compared to anyone else - and since early on with it's introduction so few people had it.. Herbie comes to mind as being in SOV very early which pretty much guaranteed his dominance. However he was still overall the best player I saw in the game at a DPS WP.

It sounds like this game is on the right path and we're VERY excited about this. I must be honest here - all of the current MMO's other than this one are lackluster. We (me and the kids) really can't stand them! Either they are Asian-Grinders with childish graphics or no-brainer corporate messes like WOW. Nothing much exists with the innocent of Return of Reckoning and it's refreshing.

[CegeePegee]

Thank you for the lengthy reply.

You're very welcome!

I remember Herbie as well...

And I completely agree that there are just no other mmos out right now that compare to RoR when it comes to pvp. Even though RoR is in alpha and there are frustrating bugs/balance issues/etc I still far prefer to play this than any other game. The ONLY thing missing from RoR atm (for me) is dungeons but from what I understand, those are on the horizon. All other "AAA" games that i've played since the release of Warhammer have fallen flat for me, most of the time because the pvp always felt like an after thought like in Rift and SWTOR. EvE is the only other game I've played that has meaningful pvp but it comes at a very steep cost risk-wise haha.

Anyway, always glad to see more people coming back to the War!

[Razielhell]

Welcome back!

Im glad you are here!

Enjoy your stay and make sure to check the PQ lists in my Signature

[Kobra]

One other question.

How do we report players? I had someone sending me racist tells for about an hour tonight in T1 PVP.. Still not sure why, he just started up with the hate-speak. Similar harassment has happened a couple nights in a row. Usually after someone gets killed the hate-tells start up.

[Natherul]

One other question.

How do we report players? I had someone sending me racist tells for about an hour tonight in T1 PVP.. Still not sure why, he just started up with the hate-speak. Similar harassment has happened a couple nights in a row. Usually after someone gets killed the hate-tells start up.

What Torque said but you can also contact one ingame to speed up the process (they will still need screenshots) by typing .gm in /say and then /tell anyone on that list.

[Blasio]

Oi lad! Great to 'ave ye 'ere.