WAAAGH… RIP.

[Kylashandra]

People pretending 80% of the server enjoy blob are really delusional or have never played the original game. Ironically, the low server quality back then made blobing almost impossible because you would immediately get a server crash or suddenly every player disappear from screen on a big push (made fortresses almost unplayable at start). It made guilds smarter, having to split to push fronts. The zone lock system made it also happen, you didnt have only to win and lock a couple points to lock zone, you had to win lower tiers, you had to win SCs for awhile, effectively splitting the player base though multiple activities...All of thise achieved with a lower player base than current RoR (on prime time you often had a maximum of 2 or 3 warbands on each side and it worked pretty well, even with lower tiers involved). People who remember War Online times know what RvR meant back then, with clutch warband gameplay, smaller warbands or even groups often outsmarting what we called back then the zerg (basically 2 warbands ^^)... So yeah, blob gameplay is the antithesis of actual gameplay, no strat, no smart move, just a RR/Hour counter going up. I have some hope with the recent roadmap announcing changes to RvR and zone lock mechanics, but in its current state, whoever has played more than a month of the current RoR (past the "wow" effect of big numbers fighting each other) cannot be satisfied of the state of its RvR gameplay.

[lydie]

I also feel T4 is being much less fun than it used to be.
I think the whole focus on "massive scale fights" is wrong. Not that i think there should not be any massive battles, it's part of the game's identity, but i feel there is much less incentives today for solo/duo/trio/6-men to have fun than it used to be, less things to do to have fun roaming around.
One of the strength of the original design was the game was not forcing anyone into a specific gameplay style. Every grouping format worked, from warbands to soloing.
Nowadays i feel it is much less the case. Personally, it's one of the key reason that caused me to slowly lose interest into the game, T4 especially. I feel forced to adopt a specific gameplay i never liked (warbands gameplay, where i feel my contribution is much less impactful than it used to be on other formats). It's not how it was in the past, and i'd love if solutions could be found to allow everyone to have fun the way they like, as it used to be.
I have put way more than 20K+ hours into the game, the feeling that it's current design is causing me to slowly lose interest in it saddens me a bit.
I still feel like T1 still retains a bit of this "happy mess" i used to like, where everyone can enjoy their own playstyle, and i'd love if T4 could once again feel like that !
Cheers !

[lumpi33]

One of the strength of the original design was the game was not forcing anyone into a specific gameplay style. Every grouping format worked, from warbands to soloing.

Yes and that was a core principle of WARs predecessor Dark Age of Camelot. It was a huge sandbox with room for everyone and every play style.

In RoR they keep saying: "This is not a solo game, get a group or you will fail."

I personally hate that statement. Nobody of the WAR devs has EVER said that this is the case. Some people here in RoR just made that up. They don't even know how DAoC or WAR was.

If you are getting jumped everywhere by hordes of stealthers then of course any solo and small content dies. It's not the players fault, it's the games fault that has made small scale so toxic that people only stay together and blob.

I think the current meta is just not fun to play. They totally lost it in regards of risk/reward and pros/cons of classes. The last years removed downsides of classes that were there by design and not by coincidence. The mythic devs decided carefully what each class should have and what not. In RoR they seem to be ignoring these concepts and by trying to "improve" certain classes they make the overall balance worse. Like if you give a WE a pounce that might be nice for the WE itself, but it breaks the balance for every rdps that relys on keeping them at distance when being jumped by them. Adding a snare on top is literally a middle finger to them. Same with the disappear. Sure, it is nice to have for WHs/WEs but pisses off everyone else when 5 people are hitting them and they just disappear in front of them. Nobody else has such a strong escape ability. For a reason. These are just two examples of very bad "improvements" that were harming class concepts and overall balance.

And to be honest, the warband play turned toxic as well. Guilds like TUP abuse the current system by running coordinated warbands with coordinated moral drops to farm pugs over and over - for hours, almost every day. They end each session with hundreds if not even thousands of kills and barely any deaths. Why? When you nerf everything down like they did with e.g. BWs damage, then premades like that become pretty much immune to pug damage. Pugs wont kill anything and get just farmed over and over. So basically the minority of hardcore players is having fun while everyone else is suffering. Id call that toxic. Let alone the x-realming where they let one side spawn a ram after they have farmed everything then log over just to prevent the keep from being taken. Super toxic.

So where is the fun now when it is not in solo, small scale or warband play? That's what I mean with the current meta is just not fun to play.