Happy Fun Guyz had our first scheduled keep siege this evening! The event was planned in cooperation with Executions at Dawn, our allies in-game, and it went off without a hitch. We formed up about 20 players + some pubs who were already causing a ruckus at the keep and some who followed us and stormed the castle.  With our guild standards waving high we rushed up the hill and through the keep doors destroying everything in our path right up to the keep lord’s room.
When we arrived in the room we were met with moderate resistance but they really stood no chance against our groups who were all working in decent coordination via vent and alliance chat. I was able to snag the Keep lord with my taunt (I’m playing a Black Orc here) and tanked him pretty darn well given that I was level 15 bolstered to 18. The great thing about taunts in WAR is that they are really ‘snap aggro’ and will pull the aggro to you immediately for some odd seconds.  We ran into a little bit of trouble when the keep lord kept running out and disappearing… I was under the impression that it looked like a pathing error with the Keep lord. After a few resets we finally got him pinned under all of us and brought him down. Had our guild been level 14 instead of 11 I would have been able to claim the keep for HFG, which would have been really amazing, but no such luck.
It’s really important to note here that my system performance during the siege with about 30 people in the room was flawless. Easily about 40-50 frames in close quarters all beating on the keep lord. I was expecting a little stutter or some form of hitching but it was remarkably smooth. That’s the sense I got from most people on vent as people said “Wow, this is pretty smooth”. There were a few who had issues and their system configs are unknown to me, but I am pleased with how well the game holds up on max settings for me.
After the keep siege our groups went to the Marshes of Madness and took all the battle objectives then we went to Troll Country/Ostland and defended our objectives. We ended the night with a standoff with Order outside their Warcamp which was… honestly annoying! The Warcamp guards interfere too much for my tastes and make it feel like a LOTRO player vs. monster standoff.
Overall a fantastic night with lots of guild cooperation and fun. For those of you wondering what server we’ll be on, we’ll be announcing that information in a few days. Right now we’re sitting back and observing where some of the large well-known guilds and beta communities go to so that we can choose the best server (theoretically) for us. It -WILL- be an Open-RvR server (and no, please don’t start a debate in the comments about open-rvr vs. Core. Save that for a blog post coming later).
Well done my good fellows.
Haha, I’m in that Executions at Dawn guild. I was in class and not even in t2 anyways so i wasn’t there, but was strange to see the guild Im in on your blog.
I’m thinking of getting a new computer. I was wondering what you system setup is. My computer in open beta right now is jerky but I think its due to my single core 3 year old processor. This is off this subject but my G15 keyboard now tells me if I’m in que and a cool graphic. I wonder if it will show your stats and everything like wow here soon.
Wish I could have joined but the game would not let me join a group or even chat in guild chat last night. 🙁
Can we get Order to capture all the keeps so we can do this more 🙂
As far as system performance, I should hope yours was good Keen. Don’t you have a brand new high end computer?
I’m still wistfully hoping for some optimizations before launch (unlikely, with 2 whole days before the headstart) since I have to turn too many effects off to maintain a decent framerates in RvR, and that makes me sad 🙁
Get a Core 2 and one of the ATI 4850/4870’s and youll be set for a long time
Agreed on the OPEN – RVR! ALso with th keep seiging, the low number keep seiging seems to be fine but on Crag Mere probably 3-4 nights ago there was atleast 50 on 50 on a keep and it got pretty laggy, obviously its easily fixable with some optimizing though. Currently running a computer that ran conan flawless(lol conan I know) and on keep seiges its a bit laggy at those numbers but nothing that deters me from playing the game.
I am loving the open world RVR. Every keep siege that I have participated in has been a totally different experience. Each keep, and RVR objective, have completely different layouts. This changes the strategy that is required to capture the various keeps and objectives.
The Chaos/Empire zones are a bit laggy to me. I have participated in a few keep sieges in Greenskin/Dwarf & Dark Elf/High Elf zones with little to no lag issues. Could be because of the higher population in the human based zone, but I am not sure.
My server is down for maintenance as I am typing this comment. The Herald said that the maintenance will improve server stability. From what I have seen, each patch has greatly improved the gameplay and graphics, but there are still some kinks to work out. I am optimistic that Mythic will iron out these issues and that this game will be a success.
While I am not drinking the WAR kool-aid just yet, I am absolutely not drinking the hater-aid either. The game has been fun for me.
> The great thing about taunts in WAR is that they are really ’snap aggro’ and will pull the aggro to you immediately for some odd seconds
Just curious – as opposed to? Since the words “are really” seem to imply that this is not the case in… that other game ;p
In many games the aggro works by adding points to a pool of hate. Let’s say the tank has 20pts of hate and the healer has 30. If taunt were to add only 5 points of hate then the tank would not have aggro and the healer would still have it. In WAR the aggro goes onto the tank after a taunt regardless of how much aggro others have. After the taunt wears off the mobs may revert back though. I have not tested this beyond t2.