Eka’s Tier 5 Layout

Today I’d like to discuss the highly unlikely idea of T5 – a great idea that if implemented at launch would have divided the game more evenly, but in its current state would be hard to support at current population levels. Irregardless, one can dream!

So if I was a developer how would I make tier5… question of the day! Well let me start with my argument for a tier 5; tier 4 is too polarized – a lvl 32 rr32 has no chance against a rr80, yet they are lumped together and forced to fight. This far into the game’s history each server boasts a great population of rr80s on both sides who still play for whatever reasons. I cannot speak for every rr80, but for myself I like a challenge and killing a lvl 32 gives me no joy. Solution: separate the lower renown ranks from the higher renown ranks by giving them their own tier (especially if the decision is made to up the renown cap to 90 or 100). I’ll break down the rest into steps/requirements.

1. Step one would be to break apart the current tier 4. For me an ideal split would be tier 4 is lvl 32 to rr49; tier 5 is rr50+. This way the best gear anyone would have (at least for RvR sets) would be conqueror – if Mythic truly wants to make this game RvR focused they could slap RR requirements on dungeon sets too, but that is no concern of mine.
2. Step two is to reintroduce the forts – to access t5 you must have either taken 2/3 forts or defended your forts x amount of times. Until you’ve proven to be a fort-ified player (pun!) you’re stuck in t4. I know many would whine and say ‘what if you’re on a fail server’, but somehow I doubt it would be a huge problem considering how often the city is pushed.
3. Step three is to bump the cities to t5 since it makes little sense to acquire your gear before hand OR to only allow people in t4 access to anni/conq gear in their city.
4. Forth, mainly because I’m a geography nerd, falling back to the geography posts we look at three maps which are more or less jumbled up (with the exception of the HEvDE pairing) so the task would be to place t5 somewhere where it makes sense in the story. T5’s story doesn’t have to flow with the pairing war, it could be a new threat – potentially from new races added to the game.
5. Lastly, construct t5 zones, and here is the meat of the post – how I would construct those zones.

Eka’s Tier 5 zone layout

Proportionality – So as we progress through the game the zones are divided into PvE lakes and PvP lakes. Each tier the PvE gets progressively smaller, as the PvP gets bigger. Pulling numbers out of my arse we’ll say t1 is 20% PvP and 80% PvE, with only 4 B.O.s to take; t2 is 30% PvP and 70% PvE, with a home keep for each faction and 4 B.O.s; t3 is 30% PvP and 70% PvP, with a home keep for each faction with an outer wall and 4 B.O.s; and t4 is about 40% PvP and 60% PvE with three zones of three home keeps per faction and a total of 12 B.O.s and a home fort capping each pairing. For me T5 needs to be leaps and bounds above its predecessors- it should be where you want to fight. Ergo, t5 is 80% PvP and 20% PvE.

PvE – Yes most people hate it but there’s got to be some storyline for the zone so we take Mythic’s typical formula of having the RvR lake be in the middle of the zone and turn it on its head – the PvE lake is in the middle of the zone sandwiched between a sea of RvR. Not only that but both story lines run parallel with only conflict PQs, this way the struggle is even apparent in the PvE lake (something which no other tier really has). Since technically ToVL is a dungeon with gear of the equivalent of T5 gear a dungeon wouldn’t be necessary.

RvR – The heart of the zone, the reason you wanna be out there fighting! We’re talking epic here. You’ve got good gear – make good use of it!

• You know having done every PQ on the Order side I always had one huge grief with Mythic – why did they make such awesomely looking PQs and locations in the PvE lakes but give us such lackluster RvR lakes. Solution: give us those epic locations as BOs. Imagine fighting up marble stairs winding up to an elven town where the flag is. Or fighting through an Empire fortified town like Castle Grauenburg or Castle Reiksguard. Make BOs more than a rock, or a group of trees, or an island.
• Second, don’t pigeon-hole our strategy. Huge open maps like Chaos Wastes and Eataine are bland but make for epic fights, while small winding roads such as in Dragonwake or Black Crag make for predictable army movements. Mix both elements! In many player’s minds, Praag is the best zone because it does offer both elements – twisting streets with enemies lurking around the corner opening up onto wide plazas where the armies clash.
• Third, you gave us keeps with outer walls in t3 and t4, give us a new element to our keeps, perhaps with more customization. In fact you can scatter elements of all tiers across a single map. You can have a splattering of bastions across the map (t2 keeps) overlooking key points BUT keep the doors incredibly weak and non-upgradeable – I’m talking like a few thousand hit points and no ram necessary. This is not going to be tier-door-hammer. More or less they would serve as fortified BOs and drop conqueror gear for those who missed out in t4. These bastions can ring a keep (t3/t4 model) – each bastion you hold the defenses are weakened (door hp/guards/lord health) and these would drop our invader gear. And the keeps would circle a fort which would drop warlord gear, and the forts would have greater degrees of customization and again would be weakened by the loss of a keep. The effect is you have two or more defensive zones with a fort in the middle, circled by keeps, which in turn are circled by bastions. You lock a zone you move to the next map – the tug-of-war between cities would be a slower process, not the nascar event it is now.
• Last, if you’re going to make this a tug of war between the cities give us more than 3 zones to claw over. Add the remaining cities to cap each pairing and make each struggle important. Lets face it, none of the capitals are right up against each other, they’re far apart and deserve more than 3 zones separating them.

To keep this post from going pages and pages on I’ll save my locations for t5 in the existing geography of the world for another post!