Curiosity killed the shaman

[cfabr]

So I'm curious ... Been playing destro pretty much from the beginning and really do enjoy it, but lately ... Well not so much. I've seen a lot of my fellow destro players leaving the game, only too pop in once in awhile too see if anything has changed ... but with no luck. I've heard high ranking destro's (WB leaders and RP-lvl's) say this game will die, if nothing chances. There will be simply no destro's left too fight, since they'll all be gone ... and those left will be out-geared and out-leveled and will eventually leave or join the order Zerg. I cannot say if the grass is greener on the "order" side, but as it is at the moment there really seems to be an imbalance in-game, if its gear-wise, tactics, Morales or skill-wise i cannot say.
And since I don't really play any sc. i can only share what seems to be going on in the lakes. Since forts are out i have won a total of ... 2 times! and managed too get 80 tokens so far on 2 diff toons (I know, i know ... that's only like 20 forts ). But it seems a lot of good destro's (who know how too play ther toon) seems to be struggling getting invaders for their main toon, whereas I've heard order players starting lvl'ing AND gathering invaders for alts (and even think it's boring winning forts all the time). If that's not a sign of some kind of imbalance, i don't know what is.

So my fellow ROR players ... especially destro players, please share you're stories.
Destro's ... let me know how many forts you've won so far (And Orders ... It most be boring winning all the time ).
I DO NOT want any mudslinging in here and NO "go make a premade wb bla. bla. bla bla." I've heard it all before. This is quite serious .. unless you really fancy zerging empty keeps or waiting hours for a sc. too pop.

... You're friendly neighborhood Shaman.

[peterthepan3]

The 'imbalance' is Order zerging the **** out of Destro. You'd think some of the Order guild/WBs would swap to Destro to help even out the playing field, but that would make too much sense. However, this will change, eventually, and we will instead be hearing the same lamentations, but from Order players.

[Bozzax]

I bet we’ll see order zerg the **** out of city 24/7/365.

Since it currently a full time job to grind this game I doubt we’ll see ppl switching the weaker side

[Nefarian78]

The 'imbalance' is Order zerging the **** out of Destro. You'd think some of the Order guild/WBs would swap to Destro to help even out the playing field, but that would make too much sense. However, this will change, eventually, and we will instead be hearing the same lamentations, but from Order players.

I've been playing since early T4, and while there have been population inbalances even big ones, there's never been one as big and as continuous as this. It's been what, 10months since this started?

I don't see this changing any time soon, especially when you consider the grind we have nowadays and how much time people already invested into the grind. If anything, it's actually going to get even worse as it snowballs.

[MightyPhred]

from my perspective little has changed, even since before the zerg began - as i spend most of my time solo, i win or escape from the majority of my solo fights, or else get trampled into the dirt by a passing premade or warband, lol

[phononHYPE]

POV as a choppa main.

IMO it all depends on the time you play. I mostly play the NA evenings, where 60-120 AAO is oft the norm, and I see a lot of folks swap over (and a few order come our side). During the 'day', there seem to be about x4 the amount of players with about 1 to 0.8 or so favor of destruction. Those are fun times. My biggest complaint is tanks not guarding, which has nothing to do with this post, but I have all the ones that do guard on my friends list. 'Nuff about that.

I have one toon with full invader (and 8 medals left over, as Forts are just too good rr, and we are so often underdog that it is easy to get in). I have won a white bag with one extra medal in it, and a gold bag with a duplicate piece. That sucked. I think I've won 4-5 times in total, day or night, and I recall those victories (and the leadership that got us there) pretty well. I also see many people (both sides) hiding/afk just to get their medals and split. I have done that at least twice myself when I know its just going to be a stupid steam-roll *shrug*. It gets old so...

Here is my observations: order is... hahah, mostly well organized (ordered!), and that attracts a lot of folks for various reasons. People can "hide" in the organization and have them carry them as they L2P IMO being the biggest reason. Hard to get killed when you swim in a big school. Here might be where you find a statement I see thrown around, that destro are better players. I think we are just more committed to something (friends on dest side, aesthetics, underdog challenge.. w/e).

Now, I get frustrated with being rolled by AM/WL/SWa/parrySlayer or WH/high rank SM&Knights doing 2H spirit or elemental damage (good strategy, I just hate it), BW single-target tree bombing us, sniper squad coordinating (again, good strat just hate being on receiving end). I often tab out and check their gear and rank as I respawn (50% chance or rez with healers about, but this is definitely both sides too) and find I out-rank them by at least 15 most of the time. On this, I have tried both full dps, mixed, and defensive rr skills with similar effect. My take-away from this come down to a few things:

1. I suck
2. My ping sucks (I know this plays a huge part)
3. I choose bad targets (I'm pretty liberal here, favoring softies with no guard but taking what I can)
4. I am average and they are all really good
5. Both sides are average and they play in better organized groups (see my comment about tanks guarding above...)
6. The classes are actually imbalanced (yes, I think there is definitely some of this, it is why our lovely devs are continuously updating and working on things, bless their hard working little hearts, so I don't take it tooooo personally)

Therefor, I choose a combo of 2, 5 and 6 to believe in. Now I compare all of this to my order toons! (yes I have them too). My rr60 knight (where I guard and guard swap A LOT), easy town; rr50 SW (done a while ago, haven't tried new assault OP'ness) was fun, seemed balance of kills:death at acceptable levels; rr48 BW (single bomb and aoe specs), Fireball Barrage is OPAF, especially with procs, and in the single target tree?! Rubbish. 38/41 healing WP, pretty powerful, no real weaknesses.

So what's my take-away from all of the above? I'm a masochist choppa who likes my aesthetics and wants to stick it to the Emperor and his kind because that's what I played on the table-top. Also I don' t play any other games. Also also (and I think a very big important part), how you play. I solo a lot, as it seems that there is little difference in the amount of heals or guard I get in/out of a WB. So my advice, seriously, find a good group of folks to hang with. In a guild or just being chatty with folks and making friends and WORKING WITH THEM, will lead to a great gaming experience. Regardless of how the population varies.

Good luck.

[Martok]

The above post should win the internet.

[Targhor]

119 invader medallions here so far on one toon (snb-BO).
i was in the very first fort happening; won a total of two forts too, best result was one green bag and average roll is somewhere around 170 in ranking.
all great stuff for keeping up the motivation.

ordos dominate destro, since almost two years, when Disco & Ichop took their guilds from destro (who were dominant at that time, but by far not to the current extent) to order.
ordos faceroll destro ever since halloween-event/vanquisher came, it was rare to see a two-digit aao-counter, zero to two zonelocks for destro per day, average of one, almost every open zone got locked down by ordo in the minimum amount of time.
when i asked Nath, if the zonelocks get monitored (which faction wins), he replied they dont and shortly afterwards he made that brute-force maneuver of reducing the gained renown if your side has aao. that nerfed the situation a tiny bit, but destro still has around 60aao average in the lakes.
also, -somewhat miracoulously (if there was a public note on it, i missed it), the reduced renown-gain seems to be removed/not working properly since more than a month; so the incentive to switch to the weaker faction (if you happen to have toons on both sides) is gone again.
more great stuff for destro to keep up the motivation.

if you come up with any post in the forum, pointing out that there is a imbalance-issue / problem, you get ignored, flamed by the "community manager", or shut down in a one-sentence in the style of "nothing wrong here, nothing to see, move on", no matter how much effort you took to work/point things out.
(and i do see that the staff-members do face a crapton of wining, crying and complaining, which makes it hard to judge what is justified and what is rubbish [which i think the most posts are]; so everybody of them has to find a way to deal with this and keep up the motivation to spend personal free time to actually work(!) on this project.)
the result is quite some toxicity in the forums.
this is a great help in motivation too.

the reasonable to good destro-leaders for pugs have almost all stepped back to running private or guildcrews most of the time, since the madness going on in the lakes, because running pugs has turned into coordinating a herd of cats which will only result in bringing lambs to the slaughter; so that only makes the situation worse.
more yay \o/.

the new boxrunning-system in the lakes has made the situation even worse, because now you compete with your own teammates (faction) for the spawned supplies, which turns allies into competitors/rivals and leads to more frustration/toxicity ("yeah sure, go ahead and grab that box, since i/we stood at this battle objective for the time being to spawn, so its perfectly fine if you just run up here and grab it for yourself!")
the reduced guard-efficiency for 2h"tanks" got reversed within a few days because of the complains going on (with that lovely "we will monitor & evaluate the situation further."-sentence and the untold add of/translation to "its buried.")
the keeplord-strength scaling with the amount of controlled battle objectives got reverted because of the crying going on.
these are just two examples (i could give more) of when something didnt work out as intended or recieved a lot of complaints and got reverted; i doubt that there were more player complaining about 2h-guard-nerf than there are complaining about the current supply-system in the lakes (but i dont have any numbers, so this is a gut-guess),but still it keeps being held to and there is no real explanation given (at least as far as i know) for that.
yay \o/

so yes, @cfabr, there are more and more experienced destro-player turning away from this game.
but since the server-population doesnt decrease, im worried that the (majority of) staff doesnt really care.

[MedV]

I have 61 Invader medallions, and I have won 1 fort.
Order is better organized, mirrors are often better, but main reason is their numbers.
Years ago the side of domination would switch often because making a new toon and leveling it to rr40 and getting conq (best gear) was extremely easy.

Now your toon is rr80 with invader youre not going to start maining a destro toon. People always say the side will switch but dont take this into consideration. Its been since last November when destro was winning. And I can say confidently that the status quo or order domination is here to stay at this point.

ATM the only reason to play destro is if you have friends on this side or you like the way certain classes look.
Sadly my goal is the last 2 levels to 80... then im probably done playing for some time. Most of my destro friends are straight up quitting once WoW comes out. Will be scary to see the faction imbalance then.....

[cfabr]

Thank you all for you're stories ... please keep them comming.

... You're friendly neighborhood Shaman.