WAAAGH… RIP.

[chookette]

I’m going to speak like a tired old soldier, because that’s kind of what many of us are becoming after watching the same things happen night after night.

We knew a living RvR.

A real one.

Fights where positioning mattered.
Welltimed pushes.
Clean disengages.
Mistakes being punished.
Flanks that could turn a fight around.
Small groups that had a purpose.
Warbands that won because they played better, not just because they had more bodies.

Today, far too often, all of that disappears under one single thing:

mass.

Not a warband.
Not a well organized fight.
Not an epic battle.

No.

Warbands glued to other warbands, themselves glued to other groups, until they form one huge ball of players that moves forward, crushes, pulls back, comes back again, and repeats.

A blob.

A big pile.

A soulless meat grinder.

And the worst part is not even dying to it.

We all die.
We’ve all taken hits.
We’ve all been rolled over at some point.

The real problem is that this kind of gameplay makes RvR poorer.

When everyone stacks together, nothing can breathe anymore.

Small groups have no space left.
6man and 12man groups have no room to play.
Organized warbands have to choose between joining the mass or avoiding the mass.
Pugs follow without really playing.
Good fights become rare.
Decisions matter less.
The level of play drops.
The motivation drops too.

And everyone eventually ends up thinking the same thing:

Why even try to play better, if the best answer is simply to bring more people?

That is what kills RvR.

Not one class.
Not one realm.
Not one guild.

That logic.

One side blobs, so the other side blobs too.
Then you need to blob even harder.
Then nobody splits anymore.
Then the rest of the map becomes empty.
Then the whole zone becomes nothing more than a corridor where two huge masses try to crash into each other.

And we still call that RvR.

But deep down, we all know something has been lost.

RvR should make you want to move.
To think.
To try a flank.
To hold a position.
To punish a mistake.
To take a risk.
To win because you played better.

Not just follow the biggest ball possible and hope it rolls over the other one.

I’m not asking for large fights to disappear.

Large fights are part of Return of Reckoning.
When they are well set up, when they come from real map movement, they can be incredible.

But permanent blob gameplay has nothing incredible about it.

It wears players down.
It makes the game poorer.
It discourages those who want to improve.
It turns RvR into a simple contest of density.

And honestly, for many of us, it is becoming boring.

Not difficult.
Not challenging.

Boring.

And maybe that is the most serious part.

WAAAGH… RIP.