Why pug.

[adzcriz]

I pug lower levels, I work in healthcare so stressful days, nice just to RoR and chill, to unwind, mess around, do SC's etc. on my 40 Zealot healer i tend to run more organised or sometimes open warbands, but lower levels im mostly pug, too few warbands and tbh after 15 hours on my feet, not really wanting to listen to some hardcore guy yell down discord, actually by that point im distinctly anti social.

Just RoR and chill, enjoy the nostalgia and my love of Warhammer. I suspect this is true for a lot of us, the hardcore side of most games has usually always been niche interest groups, vast majority just wanna mess about and have fun, plus its a free game so theres that aspect of the player base.

[lifeson]

Sometimes play in pug (relaxing), sometimes lead pug (not relaxing), sometimes in premade.
pug can be fine - can get a nice set of people most of whom try and work together and follow.
.... but those solos/randos that continually whine in region if things go wrong, criticise people trying to lead when they never lead anything themselves, direct others to make a ram when they never do it themselves etc etc are pond scum ignore list fodder

[Wam]

People pug because they are afraid of having to perform well, or the polar opposite dont want to group up with bad players if thats all they have available.

Premades usually also require some level of communication via discord, so you need a mic and you need to listen.

A lot of people are really lazy if you havent noticed haha.

Exactly this.

And as a PUGer, I think balance is way out of whack in this game, and tossing all T2+ together is frankly quite **** stupid. We have two groups of people here, those that can twink and those that cannot. Unfortunately, people that say its fine, are those that have been here for a long long time and can afford to roll alts and twink them. I can't even afford a mount until I hit lvl 20, and people telling me to get full talis at 16? WUT?! Bro I Can't afford armor. We playing the same game?

As a new player, I follow the zerg, not learning a god damn thing. No idea how to play my class. Not gonna commit to a small group, because I'm mediocre at best and don't want to earn a bad rep because I never had to play my class properly, my gear suck because I can't afford better. I'd love to learn and skill up, but as a lvl 16-20 non twinked character going up against lvl 40 in sov? Yeah ok I'll just die now. Where is the fun? Where is the challenge or the excitement of learning how to play?

I haven't logged in in weeks, I hang out to see if there is any significant balance changes. I keep checking the forum less and less. JoIn a GuiLD they say.... guilds want 40+ in good gear. That leaves us new players out.

Class balance is not the issue, its your lack of knowledge and experience working against you, even more so depending on the class and if you solo vs a team on comms... but you can level up relatively easy without much need of gold, gold is icing on cake to buy talismans and more potions for a bit more min max, you can still find good deals on auction house and buy talismans cheap if you know what you are looking for.

Spoiler:

https://wiki.returnofreckoning.com/inde ... pic_Quests

farm 2 epic quests... one for helm, one for shoulders and pick the correct reward + crit chance, + ap ideally. (ELF/Dwarf lands)

If you farm Sc's you can get tokens to buy other gear (weapon) boots/glove/chest

can buy sc weapon aprox lvl 10-19-25-29-35-39

optional to buy the boot/glove variant from auction house...
only cloak and jewlery you literally have to pay money for at your level... and you rarely have to upgrade these.
you can go 10 levels without upgrading gear if its BIS for that level...
if you was farming sc's you would be up against similar people in the t2-t3 range (16-39... no sov enemies here... although you can maybe face a few semi twinked groups if unlucky but you can also form own team for leveling.
then you can buy devastator from auction for high lvl 20's... (boot and glove) farm sc for emblems to buy others and a weapon, or farm orvr for medals to buy what you need

in the 30's you can run epic t4 quests, do lair bosses (gutslime in greenskin t1) ravack cloak t3 (BFP) depending on archtype you can do tome unlocks for free jewlery and collect via city NPC (winds jewlery is good starter for tank/healer) DPS varies torment strife is okay...

you can also farm PQ's for ruin gear (caledor is good zone if destro) reikland/eataine/kv depending on team is good for order. Ruin is solid for tanks, filler and not so great for healers, filler and okay to be mixed for dps as a stop gap (pre conq, beastlord mix etc)

also you can pick up a secondary proffession like scavenging for ease of use, and just loot mobs for more materials when you kill them and sell at vendor to make more money...

Invest gold in faster mount at lvl 16...

to make money you can also do all the warcamp travel quests as they general rewarding... the higher the tier the more rewarding, depends if you like to travel (very bland but easy listening to music or podcast)

Don't worry about the 100 gold for lvl 38 mount until you are 40 and have solid newbie gear... the 100 gold aint hard to accquire with some pq farming and selling at npc mixed with t4 travel quests.

Also my old guide might be a little bit outdated for some classes but alot of relevant info...

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29796&p=341370&hili ... de#p341370

if you type similar title but order instead of destro to find similar info ... its more based for freshish newbie 40-60's in older times... than leveling guide, info above about scenarios could be more refined but should help put you on the right track.

There is also a boost mechanic for lowbies, which if used right can be very potent despite the gear/level disparity

[Starx]

"Pugs are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get."

Keeps things interesting.

Except in this game every chocolate is filled with toothpaste.

I play a lot of other games like csgo,squad,HLL etc... and when I pug in those games 80% of the people have mics and communicate, and all the pieces we need to succeed are there. It's is fun and interacting with random people is great. In RoR there is absolute ZERO communication in pugs, when I que ranked if I dont ask who wants to MA no one will guaranteed and beyond that what else can i really say?

To make matters 10x worse warhammer online isn't a game where 1 person can carry a team, i dont care if you are a god on earth #1 NA and EU BIG **** slayer, you aren't going to do **** without a tank and healers. You also aren't going to be able to have pressure to kill anyone in a good group with a decent assist dps. If you tanks dont swap guard when they need to when one gets punted into africa etc... Thing is 95% of the time in pug scenarios you arent going to have anything resembling a proper group, its why I deleted many capped MDPS characters ive made, if you dont have 6 on then its a shitshow and not fun at all. I just was in twitch looking at echos stream watching him play WE for 5 mins... he loads into sc with no tanks and guess what he does? Ya he sits back and does nothing bc mdps dont function without guard. Especially since many people have over the years found out that RDPS is just much better solo/pugging for that reason, its why you see 3 engineers, and a dps AM in that sc mentioned above.

Pugging in this game isnt fun unless you are playing a self sufficient RDPS class or a RDPS with a pocket. Maybe why my only 2 classes after deleting about 30+ different characters is a magus and DPS AM. Either way I recommend finding a guild with people you enjoy being around, i've been in the same guild with a core of the same players since t2 and I think at this point its also the longest running NA guild unless shadows is still around.

[MonkeyHead]

This game runs on Pugs. It burns them for fuel. If the power gamers had to fight other power gamers more than once a day they would quit.

[Sofong]

the randomness is the beauty of this game and causal players sustain the game not some 6 man rage quit after getting rekt.

[RathBrand]

And as a PUGer, I think balance is way out of whack in this game, and tossing all T2+ together is frankly quite **** stupid. We have two groups of people here, those that can twink and those that cannot. Unfortunately, people that say its fine, are those that have been here for a long long time and can afford to roll alts and twink them. I can't even afford a mount until I hit lvl 20, and people telling me to get full talis at 16? WUT?! Bro I Can't afford armor. We playing the same game?

As a new player, I follow the zerg, not learning a god damn thing. No idea how to play my class. Not gonna commit to a small group, because I'm mediocre at best and don't want to earn a bad rep because I never had to play my class properly, my gear suck because I can't afford better. I'd love to learn and skill up, but as a lvl 16-20 non twinked character going up against lvl 40 in sov? Yeah ok I'll just die now. Where is the fun? Where is the challenge or the excitement of learning how to play?

I haven't logged in in weeks, I hang out to see if there is any significant balance changes. I keep checking the forum less and less. JoIn a GuiLD they say.... guilds want 40+ in good gear. That leaves us new players out.

I guess I was lucky. I started the game in mid August. When I hit level 17, I accepted a random guild invite during my first keep siege. The guild was new and had a lot of newer players leveling up along side a few veterans and good leaders. We all leveled and geared up together and helped each other learn. We used discord voice to coordinate. We worked with alliance guilds. That made all the difference or I'd probably have a similar opinion. An organized group of bolstered lowbies with a good leader can still get some stuff done.

However, like you said now that the guild has grown and is more established, they prefer people with max level characters that are already geared which makes sense because the focus is on being competitive in cities. However, I know many of the organized guilds will still consider a lower level player if they ask nicely and ideally play one of the classes they need.

[Dury]

I never played WAR on live.
I am an old MMORPGer, EQ1 being my first love (still play it on progression servers occasionally), not found another game with the immersion of EQ (in my opinion).

I played DAoC, adored it from 2001 to 2005 or so. The RvR aspect captivated me, and I think other than this (WAR/RoR) no other game really gave it serious thought . The DAoC 3 way fights are still my best memories - though was a lagfest and disconnect drama.

Thing for me is, I enjoy ingame music and sounds in most MMOs (with some exceptions - in old EQ1, the MIDI thunder sound will make you jump out of your chair - and Karanas always had stupid raid and thunder).

EQ and DAoC were never big into Voice Chat - I do understand voice chat is like a 100 times more effective/efficient than dinosaur-age typed text. BUT, for me, I really, really dislike listening to strangers drone on about cheesecakes, or whatever (no disrespect - but still, no, I am not in discord for your speaking abilities!) - probably because I am 50 years old.

I do use discord when grouped with friends I made in-game (in general, in other games like EQ) - but the main issue for m is that Indeed to almost mute game sounds. Which, again for me, reduces the pleasure of the game drastically.

I made a lot friends RL from EQ and then DAoC - many of them I am still in touch with. Newer MMOs, I cant even remember names of someone I grouped with last week - guess the whole play 15 hour sessions every weekend is not happening for me anymore (how I miss 2000/2001/2004 haha).

Essentially - I am yet to get used to voice chat over ingame sounds - don't think I want to either! I dont mind PUGs

[Dury]

Essentially - I am yet to get used to voice chat over ingame sounds - don't think I want to either! I don't mind PUGs in oRVR or SCN, but can't stand the moaners who join expecting some magically super-efficient setup and wins, and when that doesn't happen pout, berate and demean everyone else.

Many of us - out of necessity - IRL have large teams and responsibilities @ work etc. Some like to lead in games also - I am lazy, I just want to relax, win some, lose some

[Nekkma]

I would guess alot of players are a bit past their gaming prime. Kids, wife, house, work etc makes it difficult to commit to a game like many of us did 10 years ago when AoR still was a thing.

Personally, I typically play one evening a week with my friends in a 2-4 man. That's the only time I play for more than 1h or so. Not really viable to find premades when you play as casually as I do. Then again, I mostly run solo when not with guildies.