Make WoE more of a battle.

[raphael.cruger]

If everyone who currently WoE'd in other guilds would get BG gears and pot npc fat whites on vit builds there would be no problem at all imo.

Lack of interest in the competitive aspect of the game is to blame for the most part. People go to WoE against a guild that's armed to the teeth with 1 vit builds and no pvp gear you can hardly expect much. IMO BG has already balanced everything. If everyone gets these gears and learns how to play their classes and >POTS< woe would be a very different scenario. That's based on the belief that WoE is organized intelligent combat rather than a will to die by jumping on a stake. BG gears are ridiculously easy to get and IMO just start naked don't even bother with basic gear lmao, get a thara shield and a feather beret and go BG with that. Sure you'll suck but who cares? People will rage and you should laugh at them cuz lets face it they are stupid. A few hundred points in you'll be geared like a pro and much wiser too.

Allies accessing guild dungeons one way or the other. I don't see how it makes much difference, a small char swap and you are there.

As for retro WoE well people like to win but often they like to be in a situation where it requires the least effort to do so. + Raising a pure retro char is not a small effort. Raising a guild of non trans from anything other than a guild already full of trans pvp lovers is not what you'd call easy you know.

[Aaronock]

Hell Batu, even going oldschool and having stuff like Marc Silk Robe/Coat, Beret/Poo Hat, Thara can help a freaking ton, you don't need BG gears to WoE well on the server. BG gears are great though, and should be considered if you plan to play super competitively.

Retro WoE I feel is actually harder to setup for in the long run, because when you first join a server, you probably plan to have the character go trans (exceptions of course to SG, SL, GS, Ninja, and SN). So retro WoE almost is something meant to vets to enjoy to begin with. xD

[ChrisJ951]

So- for your suggestion on making only one castle- THAT is what happens when there is only one castle. One guild stays in control, nothing happens, and no one is involved in WoE.

As a referal back to an old idea: here's my view. Retro WoE- one castle, one guild in charge of it. Normal WoE- 3 castles and just about 3 guilds (possibly 4) that play in it. If you want more WoE active guilds and more people involved with WoE, open up all of the castles. Open season on castles means more people trying for them. Assuming that we open up all of the castles, and assuming that tradition stays the same- we'd suddenly have 20, or more, active WoE guilds.

Retro WoE is a non-trans WoE which is why it's like that. People don't want to make a dedicated non trans char.

Opening all the castles sounds like a terrible idea. Even if you had 20 active guilds there would be 1~3 people in each of them. The server population is not nearly large enough. A sinx could easily solo them with that many people spread, or we'd see a large majority go unused (Even now, one of the castles is generally unused and not guarded.)

[Adrillf]

Is the reason people don't participate the lack of desire or the lack of bonuses?

I'm arguing that the reason that there aren't more people involved is because they do not see the benefit of doing anything. Why try to make a non-trans character if you know you're just going to get steamrolled by the single major non-trans guild every WoE? Why would you try in trans WoE if you know for a fact that just because you haven't been on the server for years and don't have mvp cards and god items, or perfectly geared characters, that you don't stand a chance?

I say that people don't get involved because the investment of time and effort is not anywhere close to the benefits that can be obtained. Give it a shot one of these days that you get bored. Start a new account, and without donations of items and gears try to gear a character for WoE that is useful. You'll start to see how that new people to the server can't be involved in WoE, and by the time that they can be a useful participant in WoE, they're so uninvolved, that they don't care.

If we want more people involved we need it to be accessible for people early on in their playing careers, which means, more opportunities to be involved, which means more castles.

Let's assume that this happens, and I'll show you what I think will be the result.

All of the castles open.

Within the first week the major power-house guilds will be torn to shreds, leaving only a handful of people in each guild.

The next few WoE's everyone will try to get a castle. There will most likely be two or three castles that are highly defended with strong Eco's on them, but everyone else will start fresh with nothing.

The next few WoE's will be basic at best, with most people trying to defend their small eco castles with nothing much else going on.

Once rumor gets out about a higher eco castle existing, interest will peak and people will want to get in on the higher eco castles for free chests that they didn't have to build up.

This will lead to people attacking these castles, with the thought of either trying to hold the castle that the other guild couldn't, or destroying the eco, screwing another guild out of the rewards.

As soon as one guild starts to screw over other guilds and being selfish, this will start rivalries.

Rivalries, especially rivalries with people that can actually challenge and push each other at lower levels, creates interest and desire to keep leveling. Suddenly, a single level, a single card, a basic guild skill, can actually make the difference between killing your rival or getting killed by your rival, and the power of a single new member to your guild can be earth shattering. Suddenly, your guild recruiting a bard is monumental, a trapper is priceless, and anything that you gain is a much higher chance of besting your rival. Rivalries = excitement = activity = fun. The best times of WoE that people always go back to when they want to be nostalgic is when there were strong rivalries, and everything was important. Currently no one really cares, no one has a guild that they absolutely have to kill, absolutely are driven to destroy, or anything like that.

What opening up all of the castles would cause is simple- those veteran players who have put in the time and effort to be well geared and silly broken, would still have the power to do so. They get to be silly and broken and laugh at whoever tries to AD them while they sit there and /bingbing in their valk GR armor. Those people who are new would have a location in which they could be new, but also receive a bonus for their efforts. If you're new, you're not going to get too many rewards because the higher up people won't allow you to keep a high eco castle. Before you even mention it, not a single guild at the moment could actually monopolize all of the castles in the game. They might be able to send in one sinx after another and try to keep breaking over and over, but one sinx is one sinx and can only be in one place at a time. They might be able to get in and break, but that means stretching out super thin, leaving their main home, their highly prized eco castle, with one less person defending it. Each person leaving is one less person defending, which makes it that much easier to break in. Even if you combine KoJ, DoE, and Behe into one force there isn't a single way those people could actively and efficiently defend all 20 castles at once (that is unless there's 20 wizs, 20 bards, 20 trappers, and 20 priests stretched between those guilds that would be willing to set up a basic precast). It's a win-win situation. The veterans get more activity, which is what they keep complaining about, and the new people are able to participate in WoE, as well as actually gain rewards for participating, instead of what's happening right now where they participate and gain nothing.

In short there are a few reasons why people aren't involved:
1- No rivalry, no motivation.
2- Lack of accessibility to pvp. There are some things like BG and WoE points trying to fight this, but I say that you could make it really accessible if you allow anyone in.

By opening up the castles, you get rivalries, motivation, accessibility, and most importantly rewards for WoE participation as opposed to now where you can participate and try your hardest and the most that you get as a reward are a few WoE points.

As a side point to the GM's that are always trying to work in zenny sinks- what would be a better zenny sink than 20 castles, even if they only have mediocre eco? Hello zenny sink, my name is castle eco.????

[Demogorgon]

nice novel you wrote there, can only speak for myself,tho i guess lots of people share that opinion.I do have the gear,the funds and the high level trans chars to woe but the thing that most guilds force you to woe once a week (understandable from their pov) cuts me off.

There are tons of people,especially on this "carebear serer" that view this just as a game and if rl knocks ill most definitely go to answer over a game.
I just cant stand feeling obliged to a video game.

In short: friendly non competitive atmosphere > casual gamers > quite small population of serious WoE'ers

[Adrillf]

A novel, that is not.

THIS is a novel.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18ItH...wM0GI/edit
Feel free to read and edit it, I'm trying to polish it up for my masters class in creative writing, and an extra pair of eyes on it are always welcome.

If you don't like the fact that a guild requires you to WoE once a week, or whatever it may be, think about if all castles were open and there were 20+ guilds to choose from? Suddenly guilds would be less picky for extra bodies to help out. It'd turn from required 1/week to 1/month or even less. And what's even more amazing with the set up is that if you're dealing with 20 or more guilds and you don't like it, in that set up, you'd actually be able to pull off making your own guild, making it have loose requirements, and still occasionally being able to hold a castle for chests.

The all castles open solution even makes the casual gamer happy because it gives you a fighting chance to do something in WoE, and get something from it.

[Aaronock]

The chaos that would ensue for many months after opening all castles would be absolutely awesome to experience imo. *-*

[Merellis]

When I was in Behe/FNP/KoJ, we always had a section of the forums for those times when you had to go "Well shit, exams are next week and my marks are down, skipping WoE this week to study," or "Birthday, heading out with friends to drink the night away!" or even "Guys, I am throwing up all over the place, no way I can stay up to WoE today. The drugs are making me sleeeeeeeepy."

As long as you put in the effort to try and show up, level your character, and gear for WoE; most guilds won't even be bothered by the occasional week missed due to real life circumstances.

@Adrillf:

That sounds like fun actually, strike teams to attack every castle while a small force stays back to defend.

Might as well throw in WoE SE as well so the guild can leave 1 person behind to watch the Guardian Stones while the rest go raiding.

[Incarn]

i can vouch for koj not giving much of a shit if you don't show up for woe, as long as you're active in guild and party with people and possibly troll the forums like i do


edit: as for the actual topic itself well, i'd much rather have all the castles than only one castle. can also go for any number in between since i don't care as long as it's not just one castle
as much as my opinion matters since i'm pretty much determined not to woe anymore! :U

trying to break an overgeared/overstaffed precast the entire woe isn't fun. skirmishes, however, are, since they actually encourage pressing more than two buttons

if you like being required to overgear yourself and get claw fingers potting as fast as humanly (or even inhumanly if you cheat >:|) possible, one castle go ftw

[mahawirasd]

to some extent, what adrillf is getting at makes some sense

HeRO has tried various solutions to solve the "dwindling woe pop" problem, perhaps this is one that could just work...

oh and in regards to my previous wall of text in that older woe thread, perhaps changing woe times as a way to "re-launch" the server might net some new blood...
Panda said that woe times are one of the main things ppl should look at when choosing a server and changing it might not sit well with the vets. I totally respect that, but perhaps we could turn that train of thought on its head and say that perhaps a change in woe times will make the server "more accessible" to a wider audience...

No rush for any of the above changes imo, but they do look good enough as a last gambit if ppl keep complaining about dwindling woe pop


W