Make WoE more of a battle.

[mahawirasd]

@1st Ellie comment:
no guarantees on any of that happening, BUT consider this: if you break your big guild into small raiding parties, how many castles will you be able to hold efficiently? As i said in my previous comment, a big guild will probably be able to hold 4-5 of the 20. Furthermore, when you break into smaller parties, the OTHER big guild will focus on the castle that they want to concentrate to get a specific god item ingredient, leaving your split guild unable to contest them for said ingredient. And what happens when you recall your smaller parties to defend your "main" castle (the one with the god ingredient you want)? Some noob sinx will come in and swipe that castle off of you... Then the "big guilds" can tell their "elitist thugs" to go on their sinXes and wipe the floor with those noobs but this will again break the guild's focus which allows for the other big guild to siege those prized castles... and so on and so forth... basically, if they try to hold too many, they really risk getting steamrolled by the other big guild. In the meantime, all the other noobs can have a blast trying to swipe the other castles that the big guilds seem to not put interest in. WOE announcements FTW!

TL/DR: IF the big guilds don't split, they probably can't effectively hold more than 5 castles at a time. When they do try, they'll get steamrolled by the other big guild. Therefore, the "uninteresting" castles will oft times be up for grabs for the peasants looking for a good time.

@2nd Ellie comment:
just say that after 2 months (IF we are indeed reverting to woe as it is now because there was no increase to player participation) that we are keeping the 2/3 castles with the most eco. IF there are 20 100 eco castles, then we have either successfully cemented the stranglehold of a big guild or we have successfully spurred the creation of 5-6 new "strong" guilds. Personally i feel that the latter is more probable than the former.

@deviluke:
the main reason i +1 the notion of opening ALL 20 rather than just adding 1 castle is because opening 1 castle will AT MOST split 2/3 guilds into 4/5 orr (like teh old days when we had 3 castles open) have one big guild split into two big parties holding two castles, the other big guild holds payon and try to siege pront every now and then, and the 3rd guild either try to sneak-steal payon or geffen depending on which one is less-guarded. Then at the last 10 minutes, each big guild recalls to focus on a castle and the biggest gets pront, the 2nd goes for payon, and the 3rd tries to oust whoever is holding geffen.
Opening 20 will allow for much much MUCH more permutations of the above power struggle.

Let's say big bad guild A has 76/76 in their ranks. There are 20 castles with un-randomized chests. Which castle(s) will they focus on?
How will you split your parties?
20 parties with 3/4 ppl per party for each castle?
10 parties with 7/8 ppl for 10 castles?
7 parties with 10/11 ppl for 7 castles?
or 6 parties of 12 with the remaining 4 go as sinXs and get 4 castles?
or perhaps 7 parties with 10 with the remaining 6 go as sinXs to 7 other castles?

In the meantime, what would the other big bad guild B be doing?
I wonder which castles they would focus on
I wonder how they will split their squads to thwart big bad guild A?

(copy paste the aforementioned paragraph about possible squad-splitting permutations)

The main point is: 20 open castles will overload guilds, woe participants, as well as the rest of the player base with options.
Should i join the big guild and get my war funds, some equips, etc. or should i hold one of the "lesser" castles and farm up some god item ingredients for myself?

And yes, people ARE reward-driven. Be it "fun", "camaraderie", "mvp-parties", "item-lending", "levelling-help", "you're-not-the-boss-of-me-i'll-go-make-my-own-guild", "hey-i'm-a-social-player-but-with-20-castles-i-can-prolly-try-to-swipe-a-castle-hmm" or simply "meh-i-wanna-be-an-emp-breaking-hw-so-i-can-defend-my-own-castle-solo-rather-than-be-a-boring-sinX-time-and-time-again". The number of possible permutations grow exponentially with every castle you open. And the big guilds focusing on 1 or 2 main eco castles mean that the casual players can go swipe the other ones... Hell, even if a big guild sends out 10 sinXes to hold 10 castles, the rest of the server will still have 8 to fight over...

The main idea here is to entice others to join woe. Give them a taste for blood, let them have their fun. Once they get sick and tired of wools and odins, they'll probably start amassing numbers and go for them god-item-ingredients-bearing-castles. Then the cycle starts again, because as these guys gang up, they leave those 3rd rate castle up for grabs by other newbies...

Hell, other guilds from other servers might be interested to move if they heard that in HeRO the woe is not monopolized by 2 big bad unshakable guilds...

again, i personally have nothing to gain from woe changes (except if perchance a woe time change ever comes), but all these ideas are about luring NEW people in. Sure it's kinda pandering and pampering, but if we truly feel that we need new blood, the question is: why not?


W

PS: if you want the old folks to have bigger, funner battles and you guys really are NOT reward-driven, then prove it by splintering your big guilds into X different guilds with a decent power-share of 6-12 ppl each and have a free-for-all melee in those 2 castles and see where that goes. If you guys are such buddy-buddies who could care less about rewards, surely you'll still have fun splitting into X different guilds without fostering animosity? WOE is all for the fun battles, no?
So if what you want is to farm god item ingredients effectively, then by all means let it stay the way it is. But don't say that you are not reward-driven, and don't ever complain again about lack of new blood or lackluster battles.