Vengeance

Mythic may be trying to address the disparity between high RR players and the n00b 50s in epic by instancing RvR content in their upcoming expansion Catacombs.

Interview with Matt Frior, copied and pasted into a thread here:

http://vnboards.ign.com/Fans_Round_Table/b5176/67570282/?16

"Question 2: The Catacombs press release talks about PvE (playing fighting monsters) instanced content, but doesn't mention RvR content. Are you planning on implementing instanced RvR dungeons in the expansion?

MF: Yes, we are planning on doing RvR instanced content in Catacombs. That being said, we want to wait until the launch of our upcoming free expansion Dark Age of Camelot: New Frontiers until we make any firm decisions about how we will implement RvR content in that expansion. As you know, New Frontiers - which is due early this summer - overhauls Camelot's RvR system. We want to make sure that this system is working properly and assess it
before we really start designing the RvR content for Catacombs."

It's gonna be the 8v8 arena everybody wants. Will be pretty cool.

Or maybe it'll be like instanced missions. PROTECT THE VIP

TERRORISTS WIN

I think this could be a good idea; depends on how the implement it. If there is some way the game checks for balance before porting you, it would be a start in the right direction. Perhaps a ranking system that's based on a combination of level and RPs or some such.

They must've saw what Blizzard is doing with WoW.

Something tells me most of these teams who claim to only like 8v8 fights will avoid an arena like this since they lose almost all of their inherent advantages, not to mention farming potential.  I think most of them really would rather run across stragglers and/or single pickup groups.  It's only when they're facing drastic numerical disadvantage or similar levels of group optimization that they really have any decent chance to lose, so why would they voluntarily choose to do battle in a place that's built to remove most of the advantageous situations?  Most of them have proven over time that winning at any cost is their goal, so I'm not very optimistic.

I disagree - this will become the defacto test for claims of superiority. No claims to uberness will stand unless they are backed up with wins in the arena. Posers need not apply.

Mythic should have done this a while ago - would have helped them balance along the lines of 8v8 (which is where they should have been from the beginning).

They'll have to make them big enough though to where speed remains an advantage or it will skew the group makeups. I'd like to see it a microcosm of real RvR. As representative as possible.

Knowing Mythic though, thought and foresight won't make it to the bottom line.

I forsee instanced dungeons or outdoor areas with environmental constraints and limited numbers of enemies. The Zerg is one of the biggest complaints right now. Opening up an instanced dungeon the size of Catacombs and letting people start in one of 6 spots would be pretty sweet.

And no bots.

I wouldn't mind bots in this case, because it would count against the number of bodies on your team. Assuming of course the balancing equation takes number of people into account...

As someone who's been in the type of group ross describes for several months, I can tell you that's not exactly 100% true. As much fun as winning is, it gets old after awhile killing people that provide no real challenge to you. I hate to use this analogy, but it's almost like going back to mithra's and beating up on all the greys.

Now granted there are some groups who's only purpose is to farm noobs all day (ie, PBAE bombers) but they generally don't run 8v8 very often and mostly just  leech off zergs. Also, these groups don't seem to stick around for very long either (longest I saw on MLF was about 1 month).

You're right about one thing though ross - the majority of the uber 8 man group's RPs come from noobs so they're generally more inclined to fight them. From a pure farming standpoint, it's much better to fight against 20+ noobs than it is to fight against 1 group of high RR's. Perhaps some change could be suggested to scale the amount of RP's someone is worth (right now, anyone above RR3 is worth the same amount) so lower RR's had a chance to catch up.

Anyway there does come a point where in which getting RPs don't matter as much as having fun does - if I had to guess at a specific point, I'd say anywhere above RR7. It takes like 100k RPs per level and generally the skills you buy at that point are double digit costs so it could be a month before you get another upgrade.

An RvR arena would at least takes these groups out of real RVR areas for a few hours a day, giving the rest of us noobs a chance to compete.

Hmmm... new classes. Considering Mythic's concept of balance, if it's only one class for each realm, then each new class will be of the same type: caster, tank, light tank, healer, or hybrid.

SI introduced a new caster and a new hybrid for each realm (assuming Savage is a hybrid and not a light tank). That leaves healer, tank, or light tank.

Of the three, I'm betting on light tank.

i bet alb gets another caster class

how about another archer class - this time a good one.

Are you saying you would re-roll a new archer? As much as you hate PvE, I find that hard to believe.

Another group-based hybrid.

hehe, if you look at the RA's, it almost seems that the savage is a pure tank.

good points, you guys.  Obviously, much of what I wrote is just my opinion, but I don't spend too much time in uber groups (Monday nights aside, of course, hehe).  I guess the point I was expressing is that I think the majority of these 8v8 teams are motivated by achieving higher RR, and they accept that they don't always win against other high RR teams.  If it were me on that team, I'd probably be in that arena every day.  It's all about having fun for me.

Artist's conception of Ross's previous post. (http://veepers02.budweiser.com/service/RetrieveCard?id=8D61D32C-9317-11D8-AB1D-B3EE4054966E)

omg! that's awesome!

LOL where the hell did you find that?!!  That's some pretty funny shit.

haha!  Nice!

creepy indeed...