Return of Reckoning

This thread is a champion of insanity. (A) cost, (B) population

Vast majority of RoR population is just a bunch of old bored veterans progressing through the same well known content with yet another alt or sitting on their BiS toons where gameplay is more like a moba rather than mmo without any sense of progression
whatsoever. Sure, there are people who love their same old routine and can repeat it for years, but I think OP suggested this as a sign of deep boredom with the current state of the game, regardless of the controversy surrounding it.

Spreading that low game population for 2 servers sounds like a great idea to kill this game. Claps

kpihuss wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 3:59 pm I hope the old campaing system come back soon

The old campaign was even worse than what we have now as it incentivised PvD even more than the current system.

What was it? A solid year or more of Order PvDing to IC two to four times a day, with Destro going months at a time without an Altdorf siege. Is that really the “campaign that matters” that people keep asking to return?

Remember, the campaign system was changed to set times after many, many threads asking for it, because it was so hard to organise warbands for city. And what did guilds do when they were finally able to organise the good city fights they had been asking for for so long? They queued up as late as possible to dodge other organised warbands and farm pugs for easy rewards. Then the currency changes came into play not long after, and city died altogether, as 99% of players are only concerned with rewards and city stopped offering anything they couldn’t already get through content that requires less effort.

The campaign will never matter as a mechanic in RoR because players can play both sides. On live there was real realm pride, as your opponents were always your opponents. There was a real sense that they were “the others”, and stopping them from progressing the campaign was something each side actively did because of that. Having your alarm go off at 4am for a multi‑guild city push, only to find out that the other side found out about it and also organised a 4am defence, is something we will never get in RoR. The player base is just too small to ever make it work.

Culexus wrote: Tue May 05, 2026 5:07 pm

kpihuss wrote: Mon May 04, 2026 3:59 pm I hope the old campaing system come back soon

The old campaign was even worse than what we have now as it incentivised PvD even more than the current system.

What was it? A solid year or more of Order PvDing to IC two to four times a day, with Destro going months at a time without an Altdorf siege. Is that really the “campaign that matters” that people keep asking to return?

Remember, the campaign system was changed to set times after many, many threads asking for it, because it was so hard to organise warbands for city. And what did guilds do when they were finally able to organise the good city fights they had been asking for for so long? They queued up as late as possible to dodge other organised warbands and farm pugs for easy rewards. Then the currency changes came into play not long after, and city died altogether, as 99% of players are only concerned with rewards and city stopped offering anything they couldn’t already get through content that requires less effort.

The campaign will never matter as a mechanic in RoR because players can play both sides. On live there was real realm pride, as your opponents were always your opponents. There was a real sense that they were “the others”, and stopping them from progressing the campaign was something each side actively did because of that. Having your alarm go off at 4am for a multi‑guild city push, only to find out that the other side found out about it and also organised a 4am defence, is something we will never get in RoR. The player base is just too small to ever make it work.

The previous campaign wasn’t perfect, and I’m sure it could have been improved. But it was infinitely better than what we have now.

There was organization in RvR. People grouped up with the goal of pushing for city and getting Sovereign/Warlord gear, which was a major motivation for many players. People even tried to coordinate simultaneous pushes in different zones to get there faster, and there was a sense of realm pride that gave the campaign real meaning. Not to mention the adrenaline you felt when you saw that your side was pushing for city and started calling by phone to our guildmates who were offline so they could get ready for city later. That feeling of check soronline.us all day to check the state of the game and calculate whether city might pop at a time when you could actually play. That whole sense of campaign, of team play, has disappeared.

I agree that many people complained about cities because they couldn’t get into organized groups, but as with all content from that era of the game, parties had to be 2-2-2 to work properly. Many people were left out either because they didn’t have the level, or because there were too many players of their class. And let’s be honest, this still happens today, because the surplus of WE/WH and Engi/Magus SG/SW is still there, and those were classes you didn’t need many of in city in this momment. Not to mention people running non-meta builds, without talismans or potions, and with no intention of changing spec to fit the party. Every character should have its own role and specialization in the game, and sometimes that meant some people had to be left out of organized groups and go to pug cities instead.

I organized many 24-man warbands for city sieges then, and I can assure you that the best fights I’ve ever had in RoR were in 1- or 2-star cities. Without a doubt, the best one was a 1-star IC we played against Zarbix. I still remember him on stream asking why we didn’t just surrender already, since it was only a 1-star city and it wasn’t worth investing so much time for so 1 Royal Crests. And although we lost the first two stages, we won the third.

Right now, we don’t really have RvR with any meaningful sense of progression. Instead, it’s just spending nine hours in Praag killing people to show up on the killboard. And cities are barely played anymore; those of us who want to play them can’t because of the fixed schedules.

I think the only great city sieges era was then they were just introduced and there has been ultra sweety fights because everyone needed gear. Ive improved so much playing with so many different people back then, it was what i love in ol' but gold AoR/RoR PvP, fast pace, intense action and deep coordination with team mates. Splitting channels for ST party, different shotcalls, rotations, dodging bombs, ahhhhh. Those were great times.

Which sadly last for like what, half a year i guess? Ive got 2 or 3 items on my first city in RoR thru bags iirc. If im not mistaken some folks had full set in first week or two. Quality dropped step by step then most of population gear up. First wave was then oRvR Kings, guilds that mainly did large scale surprisingly realised that they are not coolest folks around and rarely seen 6v6 teams merged and completely destroyed some famous oRvR guilds so they started dodging. Second wave was then most skilled players geared up, got tired of dodges and had nothing to fights. Third wave then everyone somewhat active and somewhat organised geared up at least one main char with all three sets and "The Great Pug City Era" (or "ill join on my alt bro, it needs royals") began, which was like mentioned above "everyone dodge each other". This was a last nail into a coffin so since then it turned out into "gear my toon" simulator literally everyone stop to care. The only cool city sieges were preorganised, then skilled players communicate to q the very first second to get great fights, but that was very rare due to obvious reasons (for newcomers it means: go gather up beforehand 23 middle age people you trust, who know what they are doing, come prepared, know their role etc, gl)

I completely agree with Culexus, whole oRvR campaign was hide and seek, so many "tricks" have been used, aka "THROW THIS FORT YOU ****!@#!@#", was especially cool then some geared organised great force denied city just because for their own realm This unexpected "xrealming" was just lmao, all the tiers it cause hahahahaha.

So, no, kpihuss, mate, i full support oRvR overhaul, giving a campaign a meaning and all. But not reroll into what it was. Its not great experience to sneaky ram empty zone and dodge actual fights. And thats what was happening so often, much more frequently then realming priding...

As for the current state - its just domino effect, a mantra of "nobody cares" so its insanely hard to gather up what was previously done on a move, merge x2 6mens, merge x2 12mens which was so common back in a day, now even LFG is mostly empty... Ive got few groups of friends i play together, im completely sure nobody would bother to form for city but rather just do some chill scs or zerg surf as ranged. Even considering that city siege is still best possible way to farm crests...

Surely, you can see things like this happening https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com ... 26531166cf
But its now so rare, while before there was at least one such instance for each siege.

Glorian wrote: Sun May 03, 2026 6:18 am

Adapa wrote: Fri May 01, 2026 2:52 pm I'd love to have these t2 zones for people below 40. You know, those areas with no outter wall. It would be more small scale and less zerg vs zerg type of shhhhh

The T2 zones were ghost towns. On Live and on RoR before the merge.
People were running resources and hitting empty keeps. As soon as there was an enemy they switched to their t4 or t1 Character.

live is a long time ago but i cant remember those zones were ghost zones.
but i am not saying i want seperate t2 and t3. T2 zones should be for level below 40. meaning t2t3 combined and oh no you wouldnt have 3 warbands vs 5 warbands or whatsoever. you would have some decent nice little fights along your way to 40.

but yea. people can enjoy the zerginess of this game, i just cant

T2 and t3 were indeed ghost towns on live, that is why they introduced rats spawns so ppl to farm fast exp and lvl up.
Merged tiers is a good move, just the whole campaign need major rethinking and changes. More importance on bos to disperse the blob and some goals for small scale beside kill farm

OMG I can imagine all the crying. Yes, a lot of players now are older and we used to play on live, but a lot more are younger who never did. And more are even people who never played live.

You think WH and WE are OP now? My partner played WH main WE alt ... he had +55 crit with just normal rvr and tovl gear set on the WH. I played a WE main with a WH alt. My WE could get as high +80 crit with crit proc from tactics.

On live we had crit talis and there was a higher crit base. The crit bonus was at 3 pieces of an armor set back then and we could all grow and make our own purple seed str/crit linis.

Sorcs and BW's could burn you down faster than you could detaunt. SWs and RSH were roaming death sentences, especially fester bomb SWs. Slayer based pain trains ruled in scens.
And let us not forget the RR 85, 90 and 100 gear.


YES, both of us LOVED WAR live. Would play it again just for nostalgia. But most of you would quit before you got out of t3.