‘Warpforged’ T5 – Empire T1

Time for the beginning of the last leg of this journey. Today we enter the realm of the Empire v. Chaos T1 pairing and reshape a portion of it for the purpose of a T5 battleground for players who are RR91+, and what better place to duke it out than where it all began. Because the maps in this tier are so small, I have reduced the amount of BOs down to 6 per map, but have kept the amount of chapter hubs at 2. In these small maps the battle will be smaller, more frequent, and more fierce. Let’s take a look at the sites.

‘Doomflayer’ T5 – Empire T2

Today we begin the journey into the realm of the Doomflayer portion of T5, taken out of T2. This tier is open to players 81+, although these players may return to the Sovereign tier and see slightly diminishing returns in their renown. The BOs and Chapter hubs from this tier will drop Doomflayer crests. Also because the maps are getting slightly smaller I have reduced the amount of BOs per pairing down to 18 (instead of 20 like in T3). For a special contest, look for the guest appearance in the Troll Country screenshots! See if you can find SamuelJackson in all the pictures.

‘Sovereign’ T5 – Empire T3

Today I begin my journey of the project I’ve dubbed ‘T5 Parasite’ – the name because T5 is being a parasite on existing T1-3. If you recall from yesterday, T3 will now be the Sovereign bracket tier – so killing heroes/lords and locking it will yield Royal crests. Additionally, the bracket is open to RR71+ players, though players over RR81 will see diminishing returns. To reiterate some points from past posts – PQs will operate as BOs (stg 1 will be eliminated with the stage 2 mobs acting as champs and stage 3/4 mobs as the BO hero); Chapter hubs within the T5 RvR lake will operate as ‘keeps’ with the Rally Master acting as the lord; players of the ‘home tier’ will not be flagged for RvR while moving around the region flagged as the T5 RvR lake. Additionally, resources from BOs will operate to ease the assault on chapter hubs and generate siege weapons there. Because there are no walls or doors to break down, there are no rams; however, recall that the chapter hubs are ringed with 55 Champions – these resources could help weaken them. If I was to implement this system, I would require 4/5 BOs from that storyline to assault that faction’s Chapter Hub (with perhaps 3/5 of your own).

Without further ado let us enter the realm of the Sovereign Empire Tier –

Expanding Existing T4 – Empire v. Chaos

Today I begin my last thread of how to expand the PvP experience in T4. There is one opinion that might as well be declared fact and inscribed in stone and that is – People want to fight and kill other players in new places. WAR has been out for going on 2 and a half years and we still are contained in the same 9 T4 zones + 2 cities. We did get LotD about a year into launch, but the zone had no RvR elements in it, in fact it locked out one realm at any given time so fighting there cannot be sustained. There are several approaches to expanding this arena into a larger field which I have approached –

• Adding a new racial pairing and by default three more T4 zones
• Add the missing capital cities (I incorporated them as high end PvE instances, but they could always be done as PvP)
• Expand existing T4 RvR lakes into the PvE lakes

Naturally adding a whole other pairing is the hardest task. Adding the remaining cities would be a difficult task depending on the state they were left at when they were pulled out. Expanding the RvR lakes would be seemingly the easiest of the options. But there is one more solution which is probably at a scale of difficulty between the cities and expanding the RvR lakes in existing maps, and that is to expand the T4 Campaign.

Eka’s Tier 5 – Empire v Chaos

Ok I admit it, I’m totally hung up on an additional tier OR hell just new maps in the existing tiers. New lands to explore please! So today I shall present the map of the Empire again, but this time with new additions!

A Lesson in Geography – The Empire v. Chaos

Today I’d like to go over something which digs under my skin. As a geography nerd, one of the first things I did once I started playing WAR was explore the world and try to see every location, and then further delve outside of the Warhammer Online atlas and look at the actual maps. It was then that I noticed Mythic’s complete disregard for geography. Here is a map of the empire with the locations of the different tiers (the locations are based on the locations of the major land marks in those maps, mainly cities) –

For those with a vague concept of the Warhammer World’s geography, it is based on medieval Europe with the Empire being The Holy Roman Empire; Kislev being a combination of Poland/Lithuania/Russia; and Norsca is Scandinavia. With this in mind we tackle distances and common sense loctations.

• Tier 1 – Nordland and Norsca compose this pairing, a pair of maps everyone is familiar with. My main qualm here is how distance is trivialized. Traveling from Nordland to Norsca would require passing through Kislev and Troll Country, instead its just a hop and a skip from Nordland.
• Tier 2 – Now we move to Troll Country and Ostland, Ostland being Nordland’s neighbor so that makes sense but Troll Country is so far to the north, past all of Kislev that it seems very odd to jump past that entire Tsardom.
• Tier 3 – Talabecland is Ostland’s southern neighbor so again a logical step, sorta, but High Pass is so far from Talabecland that it makes little to no sense that these zones are paired together. You would have to cut through all of Kislev to reach its eastern border of High Pass. Additionally Bastion Stair is on the eastern side of High Pass so its location makes sense in regard to being off of High Pass but it is access via the T4 maps of Chaos Wastes and Praag, slight but reasonable stretches.
• Tier 4 – Now here is where the map falls apart.

1. First of all The Inevitable City has no location in any army books I’ve read, and the Chaos Wastes is the entire northern chunk of the world, so I slapped the dots randomly on the top of the map. The point however is that if you are in Troll Country or High Pass, why would you go so far south to Ostland or Talabecland only to come back to CW later?
2. Secondly Praag is located between Troll Country and High Pass, but why would you by pass Praag from tier 2 to tier 3 only to come back in the middle of tier 4?
3. Lastly, Reikland is south of Altdorf, why would the invading chaos armies bypass Altdorf to take Reikland and then turn back north to hit Altdorf? Not only that but Reikland is eons away from Praag. You would have to walk through Talabecland on your way to Praag.

Looking at the Empire v. Chaos pairing on this map one has to ask what kind of general would ever drag his army in this muddling mess. The amount of backtracking is mind-boggling. ‘Lets go north almost at the doorstep of The Inevitable City, and then lets go ALL the way south again!’ It seems that justice would have been served better if the maps were larger to represent distance at least slightly better and if the pairings were reworked.

Lastly, in the hypothetical scenario that a t5 was introduce, the question is raised where in this mess would it go? Ideally in a t5 some of the existing zones would be bumped up to t5 to help even out the campaign. In truth there are large chunks of the eastern provinces of the Empire that could be utilized for a t5 but all things considered this map is a mess!