Tier 3 tangent

Over the last couple of weeks my WAR gaming took an unexpected turn. A bunch of long term Kill Frenzy players returned to WAR, but there was a bit of a problem for a couple of the lads, as one no longer had his old account and the other had rage deleted his characters and couldn’t get them all restored. So they had to start from scratch and as a result the other returning players and a few other people also re-rolled to give them some company on the path back to Tier 4. Since it makes sense for them to get as high renown rank as possible before starting on Tier 4, this would likely take some time and so I decided I would join in too with my lowbie Marauder. I dabbled a little bit in Tier 2 and then got stuck into Tier 3 in earnest.

Tier 3 on Karak Norn has been incredible. Mass fights all over the zones, but spread out enough that there has been plenty of opportunity for small scale roaming groups like ours. And it’s been like this pretty much every time I have logged on… It’s strange because a couple of months ago when I had my DoK in Tier 3 it was utter crap, yet now everything has changed. I presume either a lot of people also re-rolled or there’s been a big wave of new players.

It’s also highlighted just how good the Tier 3 zones are, with the broad open landscapes in the Elf pairing, the more intricate multi level zones in Orc/Dwarf and then the hybrid of the two that makes up the Chaos/Empire zones.  And man oh man, the battle objectives in Tier 3 just feel so much better than Tier 4. I think it’s a mixture of their placement and the visuals; the huge tower in Talabecland or the Dwarf village in Black Fire Pass for example. I’m not entirely sure why, but the new campaign system seems to work a lot better in Tier 3 than it does in Tier 4. The way players and fights flow around the zones is somewhat more dynamic and dare I say it, tactical. I suspect it’s because each pairing has it’s zones merged so they’re all open at once, there’s no locking zones in a chain thing which perhaps makes it more of a drag. I often think Tier 4 would be so much better if each pairing had all zones open at once and the Campaign had some kind of domination system instead of the locking individual zones.

Anyway, over the 3 years WAR has been running Tier 3 has been a funny old thing; originally it dragged on far too long and then for a long time it just didn’t have enough players in it. For now out of the blue, it’s rocking, on Karak Norn at least and has been a brilliant distraction for a couple of weeks. However it’s still only a temporary phase as most of the guys are now fast approaching worn sov and Tier 4. When they do hit the top tier, I’m planning on playing my Chosen a lot more again, which I’m looking forward to actually. He’s only RR83 and I really should sort that out to at least 90, but you know how it is… always getting distracted by shiny things.

PS I will get that Black Orc return to WAR post up soon.