War of Emperium Changes

General Information

In Aug 2022, heRO server plans to make a major overhaul to the Guild vs Guild scene in the server. We'll be introducing War of Emperium Second Edition along with series of sweeping changes to introduce changes to the server. War of Emperium Second Edition is rarely added to pre-renewal servers, and just like with PvM content, heRO server will be customizing aspects of it to fit our pre-renewal environment. Here we will list out the series of changes that the GM team plans to make, along with some explanations to why the changes with a mini-FAQ for each section. These FAQs also involve the summary of DMs, questions, suggestions and grievances that players (current and former alike) have submitted to the GM team throughout these years.

Our Philosophy of The Changes

One major question in everyone's mind is: why the changes now? We think that it is quite obvious that the status quo in heRO prior to this is not working out. GM team (and some of our players) have made the following suggestions before, especially in the summer of 2021, but it was always met with resistance and pessimism. The typical response is that heRO is a low rate, and people need to work for their gears and hard work ought to be rewarded. However, it's plain to see that WoE is extremely inactive, and it's unwise to pretend that the 15th year will be the year where the server's WoE scene will magically fix itself. We always say to ourselves that the server only needs motivated players to join who prefers low rates where it's expected to work hard for WoE. However, even with the high fluctuation of players who try out the server in the past year, not a lot of them stayed and almost none of them showed interest or the motivation to join the WoE scene as-is. WoE is not going to change or improve without changes.

heRO's playerbase as a whole is also aging, and we have less time than we used to 10+ years ago. It is demanding of players to grind for things that are consumed on a weekly basis. Even though we are a low rate server, we want our players' time to be spent on things that are permanent. Therefore, we want to focus on removing the weekly "maintenance" aspect of WoE on the server. The threshold to be "WoE ready", even for a low rate, has to be a lot lower or at least only uses gears/cards that aren't heavily time gated. This way, players who value effort is still rewarded, but they don't have to wait for any real life time cycle: as long as they are willing to play, whenever they can, they are working towards their goals and be WoE-ready.

Even when items and preparations are solved: WoE:FE itself in renewal is a very clear known quantity. It is more than 15 years old and people know what to do relatively well. Without changes, heRO doesn't offer anything outstanding in this regards, and you are mostly replicating known strategies to carry it over to heRO. It is true that heRO has custom items that may change some options, but heRO traditionally tries to preserve the default WoE scene so a lot of items are purposely made to minimize the WoE impact. Part of WoE's charm is in its strategy: planning to come up with a team setup and gear builds that tackle the problems that the guild face. Finally, the atmosphere and what players are looking for now in 2022 is very different compare to when heRO first started. Nowadays, players are a lot more receptive to customized changes by each individual servers. heRO has made some customized class balances and players did not have a big problem with the changes. Instead of just mimicking what the main game has been doing, we would much rather take the balance of the game into our own hands and make periodic changes to address problems as they show up, be it in class balance or item changes.

While the current iteration of the changes will definitely not address all the problems, we'll like this to be a good step forward and focus on changing/improving the game, one step at a time with routine changes for the WoE scene, similar to what heRO has been doing in the PvM side for so many years.

Therefore, our changes that we'll do from this point onward:

• Eliminate the need to farm any items that aren't permanent in usage for WoE (remove "maintenance" cost)
• Reduce the need or eliminate the centralization of time gated rare items that are "mandatory" or over-centralizing the metagame
• Embrace periodic balance changes, via both buffs and nerfs, for classes and items alike

With that said, here are the details of the first wave of changes!

War of Emperium, Second Edition

WoE:SE will replace the Saturday WoE:FE session at Saturday from 11 AM to 12 PM server time (see here for timezone conversion). The base mechanics of the WoE:SE is the same as official (which you can read about here: iRO Wiki WoE SE), with the following exceptions:

• Guardian Stones do not require a list of items to fix. Instead, they require a single "Guardian Stone Repair Kit" with 1 weight to repair them. However, you are still expected to know the proper repair prompts as if you have the proper items to repair it.
• Barricades do not require a list of items to fix. Instead, they require a single "Barricade Repair Kit" with 1 weight to repair them. However, you are still expected to know the proper repair prompts as if you have the proper items to repair it.
• "Guardian Stone Repair Kit" and "Barricade Repair Kit" are sold for 1500z at the WoE Supplier shop (before discounts)
• The Emperium of WoE:SE castles is identical to the pre-renewal WoE:FE Emperiums
• WoE:SE will share the same customized ban list of items as heRO's WoE:FE
• Warper will be available to warp to each WoE:SE castle

Similar to WoE:FE, the god item quests will only be a series of item collection. Contact a GM to trade said items for your new god item.

Changes to heRO's War of Emperium Mechanics

The following changes will also be made to both WoE:FE and WoE:SE.

The following items will be banned in both WoE:

• All God Items
• All MVP Cards (all cards with golden color)
• Deviling Card (Newly added)
• Ghostring Card (Newly added)
• Selkie Card (Newly added)
• Nemo
• Dory
• Yggdrasil Seed (Newly added)
• Yggdrasil Berry (Newly added)
• Costume Fools Day
• Costume Jack Mask
• Costume Tormenting Spirit
• Costume Cute Octopus Balloon
• Costume Santa Poring Balloon
• Costume Birthday Balloon
• Costume Big Wedding Veil
• Costume Guild Recruiting Hat KOJ
• Costume Deviruchi Balloon
• Costume Rainbow
• Costume Rain Cloud
• Costume Lightning Cloud
• Costume Tiraya Bonnet
• Costume BF recruiter hat
• Costume GF recruiter hat
• Costume Twinkle Little Star
• Costume Blazing Sun
• Costume Banshee Master Kiss
• Nobility Mount (see note below)

In addition, all skills will no longer consume any items as a skill catalyst. As long as you have the proper amount of items in your inventory

Q: Why ban the Deviling Card?

Q: Why ban the Ghostring Card?

Q: Why not ban the Angeling Card?

Q:

Changes to BG Items

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