I remember hearing beta testeres talk about how much fun RvR was. Once I was able to pick up the game, I found that most players were in scenarios because that gameplay type had better rewards. The only RvR that was to be found was hugely ring-around-the-rosey keep capture where players were taking empty keeps while the enemy was away taking a different empty keep. I don't know, I sort of blame the playerbase. I think WAR had a lot more potential that was never realized (in the time that I played it.)
Ring around the rosey Keep indeed, it is how it literally was. And people would change target when enemies were spotted.
It was very peculiar to experience, here you have a game that makes an honnest attempt at having Epic meaningfull Combat, and a player base that wants nothing to do with it. I went back to give it a second try a year later, by that time many servers were closed down and Subs were at most 120k, things had changed, now people were actually looking to find out which keep was defended and scrambled to attack that keep.
But you know, one could have expected that somewhere allongthe line the behavior of people could have been anticipated anyways. It is a given that people will always choose the path of least resistance, with that in mind, all of the RvR aspect of the game could have been implemented much more differently.
Then, the performance of the game was still poor, the responsivness of the UI and Animations still frustrating, the Crowd Control Combat mechanics were out of whack, and many people would still crash in the middle of combat.
And on top of it, a major new Expansion, which added more ..PVE...that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I have not looked back since.
I have immersed myself in Warhammer Lore for years with the table top games, but WAR was not able to recreate the environment of the IP to any satisfactory level.
I beleive, indirectly WoW is to blame, because in many ways WAR was designed to appeal to WoW players, when in reality it did not need to do so. On top of it, it also lost support from DAOC vets. So in reality it lost all around, even the WoW players it initially atracted, as they went back with the release of the Lich King which was 70% a rip of WAR features anyways, but within the familiar setting for all these players, where they could just continue playing with their already lvl 70 characters, and the UI/Animations responsivness they were used to.
So for me WAR failed, as a Design and Implementation all together.
- Duke Suraknar - Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
"The game has since gone into “Endless Trial”, which allows to you play your Tier 1 character as long as you'd like and there's been whisperings (for months, seemingly) of the game finally biting the bullet and going F2P. Would this help the game? Does the game really need the help?"
Perhaps next time, the writer will have actually ever played the game.
Originally posted by Deleted User
So much of the game is centered around forced grouping that soloing is not an option, major design flaw in my opinion.
I like WAR, I really do and am currently playing it again alongside AoC. But, Mythic have done everything wrong since the games release to the point that the decisions are what drive the customers away, especially new ones. They try to expand the game with 20 new levels for example which seemed great in theory, but in practice it did nothing more than force people to reroll and grind out excruciating RR levels in order to be even slightly competitive when they reach end game and go up against the RR100's. Even then they still mostly don't stand a chance.
Scenarios were one of the best part of the game but they've killed them off and no one does them anymore in fear of gaining more XP than Renown.
The main reasons i still like it despite it's flaws are that i love PvP and being able to do nothing but PvP in WAR in order to advance is a huge plus to me. Also, the combat in the game is fast paced and steps ahead of the WoW and Rift types, it reminds me a little of the combat in City of Heroes to an extent.
This is the only MMO I quit within a matter of days, before even getting to level 10, despite paying full box price. I just couldn't stand it. I'm not even going to get into specifics, but for me, personally, that makes it a huge failure.
For them though, well, they got my $50, so I guess they can call it a win.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Drew, perhaps next time, before you write one of these articles, you could define your benchmark for failure. Without knowing that, the agument for and against will rage back and forth for millenia.
In my opinion, when a game shuts down completely, especially within it's first year of release, then it's a failure.
WAR has been going for what, a couple years or so, now? I deem that successful.
Whether the game has features that I like is completely irrelevant to success or failure measuring. Surely the only measurement of a MMO's success is it's continued existence?
WAR was a great MMORPG that just need more depth to its PvE...However, Once EA got its hands on it, they put it into LIMBO because they fear the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K IP.
With the exception of THQ, all other publishers and devrelopers have wasted this great IP.
Hopefully THQ will buy Warhammer, fix it, re-release it, along with their new Warhammer 40K MMO coming out next year.
Many people forget that both the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes came out long before (1980) Blizzards Warcraft and Starcraft universes.
Whether the game has features that I like is completely irrelevant to success or failure measuring. Surely the only measurement of a MMO's success is it's continued existence?
In what part of real life is just exsisting or sliding by called success? There is stuff between black and white.....
They are down to 4 servers, no content updates and no expansion pack..........what a success....
I think the biggest problem WAR had was expectations. Everyone expected DAoC with warhammer characters. Nothing will ever live upto DAoC, NWN, EQ, UO, and all the originals, because they were original. I would say that WAR wasn't a failure, it wasn't a success either, more of a push. I've gone back to it a couple of times. This last time I went back with a fresh view, and finally (somehow) stopped expecting DAoC or the preconcived notions I had the several times I played it before. It's actually not that bad now. I spent about 8 hours (time flies when killing goodie-two-shoes lol), in Tier 4 and was actually having a good time. The only problem I have with it now is that there are better games out there, and I limit myself to only 2 subscriptions
If any game should go F2P it is this one. Open up the entire game for everyone and just sell the each area as an expansion pack. I still think the Public Quests were one of the coolest things I ever experienced in an MMO and wished the game had enough players to finish them in the higher levels.
If Mythic had the resources they could launch this game F2P and set it up so each area can be purchased for a small amount of money.
On the failure side did anyone mention how they took all the starting areas and combined it into one starting area because the game lacked enough people to play with? Each area was so unique and they basically took it away by combining everyone into one area.
I don't think WAR was a failure. EA was-is the failure of this MMO. Be warned SW:TOR fans. EA has their mittens on this MMO also. EA should be banned from having anything to do with MMO.
Jymm Byuu Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
If any game should go F2P it is this one. Open up the entire game for everyone and just sell the each area as an expansion pack. I still think the Public Quests were one of the coolest things I ever experienced in an MMO and wished the game had enough players to finish them in the higher levels.
If Mythic had the resources they could launch this game F2P and set it up so each area can be purchased for a small amount of money.
On the failure side did anyone mention how they took all the starting areas and combined it into one starting area because the game lacked enough people to play with? Each area was so unique and they basically took it away by combining everyone into one area.
I have to agree. But before they do they would have to sort something out to get rid of the massive gap between RR100's and RR40's for example so the players stop avoiding normal levels. Even creating a tier 5 for RR70 - 100 and increasing RP /reducing XP in SC's would go a long way to sorting out the mid tiers. Otherwise the F2P players would quit for the same reasons as the subscribers, gear > skill.
My only question about Warhammer going free to play is what problem does that solve? I don't think the problems of the game are that it is to expensive and making it free will somehow fix what has been keeping players away.
Unless the problems are fixed that originally drove all the players away, then changing the access fee won't really do much. Perhaps get a rush of people to try the game, but the outcome will most likely remain the same.
I have not played the game in a while, so I'm not making statements of the games current condition. Perhaps tons of things have been fixed and more people would stay. Perhaps it would just disrupt the game for the remaining players who have learned to live with the problems and find enjoyment.
The game was well made, and a lot of fun. However, in the end it wasn't successful. I don't know whether that makes it a failure or not, but I enjoyed it for a time.
I don't think WAR was a failure. EA was-is the failure of this MMO. Be warned SW:TOR fans. EA has their mittens on this MMO also. EA should be banned from having anything to do with MMO.
+1 and your already seeing things that resemble war in sw:tor..i shutter to even think how this will play out
Where are the faction cities promised at release? Never appeared.
Where is the inter-factional conflicts? Not even in the game....Elves and Dwarves skip around hand in hand as do Dark Elves and Chaos....this is NOT Warhammer.
Where are the Forts? Gone.
Have they fixed the bugged PvE raiding yet? No. It's still a case of group vs bugs instead of group vs mechanic. Pathetic.
PvP balance? Nope, broken. 2 faction is BORKED, it means the ONLY way to keep Chaos and Empire with even numbers is instances, open world pvp is about numbers...DAoC got this right with the third faction, EA threw the baby out with the bathwater with WAR....it does NOT work.
Population? In the toilet.
Biggest large IP flop of all time? Arguably yes.
For the sake of argument I would call the failure of STO the biggest IP flop of all time, now there was a truely lost opportunity.
But your points are all valid, and in my mind, they made WAR too much like a combat game, and not enough like an MMORPG. They even bragged about not caring much for crafting or other PVE amenities because it was all about WAR!!!!!
DAOC was all about RVR, yet was a vibrant virtual world and Blizzard spent too much time designing WAR around WOW features and forgot the best of what made DAOC really great.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It was very well made, now if they only finished it before they released it. (backpack helicopters for empire flight, just the most stupid example) I played this for 2 years and it was never really 'worked on' or finished. I had the idea that they fired all the developers and had Earl from matainance do updates. If something broke, (/special) it stayed broke.
Being the Devil's advocate is a thing but defending WAR is plain kamikaze approach. I was a Closed Beta tester and I can confirm that after a promising beginning, the devs'approach to the game became erratic and often arrogant. I suppose we'll never know the background details of the story. Anyway, at a certain point, it became obvious that it would have been an awesome flop.
Oh, by the way. Men are condemned to repeat the same, old errors. Take a look at WH40K Dark Millennium. Guess what ? PvP-centric game with 2 factions with different allied races. Does that remind you anything ?
Financial success as compared to WoW? No. But then again, neither is any other game.
I left Warhammer to play Aion and came back in 2 months. I left Warhammer to play Rift and came back in one and a half months.
The lakes are full of people every night on Badlands. Scenarios pop almost instantly and I'm having great fun with friends again.
To me, Warhammer is a success. Nothing out there touches it for RvR/PvP with the exception of DAoC. Yes, that game is still around and plenty of people still play it as well. I just prefer the newer graphics of Warhammer.
Well Drew, I have to disagree with you again. Without the 3rd faction the game was an also ran from the start. This statement caught my eye:
" The RvR was near-revolutionary and brought some exciting changes to the industry"
Now you might be able to say that about DAoC, but NOT about Warhammer, the pvp it offered was nothing new to the genre or the company.
Another problem that Mythic has always had, far too much crowd control. I suppose there are some that like that feature, but for the vast majority of us nothing worse than sitting in a fight and not being able to do anything.
So failure, probably not, but it is also not what I would consider a successful game either.
Drew, perhaps next time, before you write one of these articles, you could define your benchmark for failure. Without knowing that, the agument for and against will rage back and forth for millenia.
+ former Daoc studio - check altough many where gone when €A took over
+ huge IP
+ tons of PR cash
and all they could come up with has been a rushed wowlike game with an atrocius PvP system.
Hell they only needed to take Daoc and fit it with the WAR IP but they became greedy thinking they could get millions and millions of subs if they are staying away from the "niche" Daoc just greedy and stupid if you ask me.
War's biggest failure will also be Tor's biggest one: €A just like Activi$ion they should be banned from gaming.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I remember hearing beta testeres talk about how much fun RvR was. Once I was able to pick up the game, I found that most players were in scenarios because that gameplay type had better rewards. The only RvR that was to be found was hugely ring-around-the-rosey keep capture where players were taking empty keeps while the enemy was away taking a different empty keep. I don't know, I sort of blame the playerbase. I think WAR had a lot more potential that was never realized (in the time that I played it.)
Its become pretty much the exact opposite now. The only time you will find people doing scenarios is in T1 (because of all the trial players) and T4 (to get emblems/crests for gear). But in between, and even when you first get into T4, its all about the RvR and avoiding scenarios like the plague. Theyve changed a lot of things, including better rewards for RvR and increasing the Renown Rank cap to 2x your level (used to be capped at your level). Scenarios give a much higher xp vs rr ratio, and everyone is focused on gaining RR to max it out before they hit 40, so they stuck to open RvR.
The entire RvR system has changed as well. Rather than just hopping from keep to keep and avoiding enemies, you are forced to take and hold all of the Battlefield Objectives for an extended time whil resource carriers travel from them to your warcamp/keep. Each time they return it adds some points to your keeps rank, and you cannot get a ram (required to take enemy keep) until your own keep is rank 4. Ive seen people complain about the new system, but IMO its much better. It prevents the old "lets zerg this keep asap before anyone shows up to defend it" mentality and forces people to work as a team to keep all objectives controlled and since it slows the progress of taking a keep it gives the enemy plenty of time to recognize there is a threat in that zone, get their warbands there and mount a defense. Ive seen much better RvR since the change with 1 side ranking up a keep to rank 2-3 before enemies start showing up, and then the defenders hold them off long enough to let a small strike force go out and take the objectives and rank up the defended keep and turn it around to a full on assault on the side that was originally attacking. Much much better than the avoiding a fight zerg that used to be there.
Comments
Ring around the rosey Keep indeed, it is how it literally was. And people would change target when enemies were spotted.
It was very peculiar to experience, here you have a game that makes an honnest attempt at having Epic meaningfull Combat, and a player base that wants nothing to do with it. I went back to give it a second try a year later, by that time many servers were closed down and Subs were at most 120k, things had changed, now people were actually looking to find out which keep was defended and scrambled to attack that keep.
But you know, one could have expected that somewhere allongthe line the behavior of people could have been anticipated anyways. It is a given that people will always choose the path of least resistance, with that in mind, all of the RvR aspect of the game could have been implemented much more differently.
Then, the performance of the game was still poor, the responsivness of the UI and Animations still frustrating, the Crowd Control Combat mechanics were out of whack, and many people would still crash in the middle of combat.
And on top of it, a major new Expansion, which added more ..PVE...that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and I have not looked back since.
I have immersed myself in Warhammer Lore for years with the table top games, but WAR was not able to recreate the environment of the IP to any satisfactory level.
I beleive, indirectly WoW is to blame, because in many ways WAR was designed to appeal to WoW players, when in reality it did not need to do so. On top of it, it also lost support from DAOC vets. So in reality it lost all around, even the WoW players it initially atracted, as they went back with the release of the Lich King which was 70% a rip of WAR features anyways, but within the familiar setting for all these players, where they could just continue playing with their already lvl 70 characters, and the UI/Animations responsivness they were used to.
So for me WAR failed, as a Design and Implementation all together.
Order of the Silver Star, OSS
ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
"The game has since gone into “Endless Trial”, which allows to you play your Tier 1 character as long as you'd like and there's been whisperings (for months, seemingly) of the game finally biting the bullet and going F2P. Would this help the game? Does the game really need the help?"
Perhaps next time, the writer will have actually ever played the game.
Originally posted by Deleted User
So much of the game is centered around forced grouping that soloing is not an option, major design flaw in my opinion.
^
^lol
I like WAR, I really do and am currently playing it again alongside AoC. But, Mythic have done everything wrong since the games release to the point that the decisions are what drive the customers away, especially new ones. They try to expand the game with 20 new levels for example which seemed great in theory, but in practice it did nothing more than force people to reroll and grind out excruciating RR levels in order to be even slightly competitive when they reach end game and go up against the RR100's. Even then they still mostly don't stand a chance.
Scenarios were one of the best part of the game but they've killed them off and no one does them anymore in fear of gaining more XP than Renown.
The main reasons i still like it despite it's flaws are that i love PvP and being able to do nothing but PvP in WAR in order to advance is a huge plus to me. Also, the combat in the game is fast paced and steps ahead of the WoW and Rift types, it reminds me a little of the combat in City of Heroes to an extent.
This is the only MMO I quit within a matter of days, before even getting to level 10, despite paying full box price. I just couldn't stand it. I'm not even going to get into specifics, but for me, personally, that makes it a huge failure.
For them though, well, they got my $50, so I guess they can call it a win.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
WAR was not even rated "M" like it should have been, it had a outdated graphics engine, it was trash
Drew, perhaps next time, before you write one of these articles, you could define your benchmark for failure. Without knowing that, the agument for and against will rage back and forth for millenia.
In my opinion, when a game shuts down completely, especially within it's first year of release, then it's a failure.
WAR has been going for what, a couple years or so, now? I deem that successful.
Whether the game has features that I like is completely irrelevant to success or failure measuring. Surely the only measurement of a MMO's success is it's continued existence?
WAR was a great MMORPG that just need more depth to its PvE...However, Once EA got its hands on it, they put it into LIMBO because they fear the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K IP.
With the exception of THQ, all other publishers and devrelopers have wasted this great IP.
Hopefully THQ will buy Warhammer, fix it, re-release it, along with their new Warhammer 40K MMO coming out next year.
Many people forget that both the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes came out long before (1980) Blizzards Warcraft and Starcraft universes.
In what part of real life is just exsisting or sliding by called success? There is stuff between black and white.....
They are down to 4 servers, no content updates and no expansion pack..........what a success....
I think the biggest problem WAR had was expectations. Everyone expected DAoC with warhammer characters. Nothing will ever live upto DAoC, NWN, EQ, UO, and all the originals, because they were original. I would say that WAR wasn't a failure, it wasn't a success either, more of a push. I've gone back to it a couple of times. This last time I went back with a fresh view, and finally (somehow) stopped expecting DAoC or the preconcived notions I had the several times I played it before. It's actually not that bad now. I spent about 8 hours (time flies when killing goodie-two-shoes lol), in Tier 4 and was actually having a good time. The only problem I have with it now is that there are better games out there, and I limit myself to only 2 subscriptions
If any game should go F2P it is this one. Open up the entire game for everyone and just sell the each area as an expansion pack. I still think the Public Quests were one of the coolest things I ever experienced in an MMO and wished the game had enough players to finish them in the higher levels.
If Mythic had the resources they could launch this game F2P and set it up so each area can be purchased for a small amount of money.
On the failure side did anyone mention how they took all the starting areas and combined it into one starting area because the game lacked enough people to play with? Each area was so unique and they basically took it away by combining everyone into one area.
I don't think WAR was a failure. EA was-is the failure of this MMO. Be warned SW:TOR fans. EA has their mittens on this MMO also. EA should be banned from having anything to do with MMO.
Jymm Byuu
Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
I have to agree. But before they do they would have to sort something out to get rid of the massive gap between RR100's and RR40's for example so the players stop avoiding normal levels. Even creating a tier 5 for RR70 - 100 and increasing RP /reducing XP in SC's would go a long way to sorting out the mid tiers. Otherwise the F2P players would quit for the same reasons as the subscribers, gear > skill.
My only question about Warhammer going free to play is what problem does that solve? I don't think the problems of the game are that it is to expensive and making it free will somehow fix what has been keeping players away.
Unless the problems are fixed that originally drove all the players away, then changing the access fee won't really do much. Perhaps get a rush of people to try the game, but the outcome will most likely remain the same.
I have not played the game in a while, so I'm not making statements of the games current condition. Perhaps tons of things have been fixed and more people would stay. Perhaps it would just disrupt the game for the remaining players who have learned to live with the problems and find enjoyment.
The game was well made, and a lot of fun. However, in the end it wasn't successful. I don't know whether that makes it a failure or not, but I enjoyed it for a time.
+1 and your already seeing things that resemble war in sw:tor..i shutter to even think how this will play out
For the sake of argument I would call the failure of STO the biggest IP flop of all time, now there was a truely lost opportunity.
But your points are all valid, and in my mind, they made WAR too much like a combat game, and not enough like an MMORPG. They even bragged about not caring much for crafting or other PVE amenities because it was all about WAR!!!!!
DAOC was all about RVR, yet was a vibrant virtual world and Blizzard spent too much time designing WAR around WOW features and forgot the best of what made DAOC really great.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It was very well made, now if they only finished it before they released it. (backpack helicopters for empire flight, just the most stupid example) I played this for 2 years and it was never really 'worked on' or finished. I had the idea that they fired all the developers and had Earl from matainance do updates. If something broke, (/special) it stayed broke.
Being the Devil's advocate is a thing but defending WAR is plain kamikaze approach. I was a Closed Beta tester and I can confirm that after a promising beginning, the devs'approach to the game became erratic and often arrogant. I suppose we'll never know the background details of the story. Anyway, at a certain point, it became obvious that it would have been an awesome flop.
Oh, by the way. Men are condemned to repeat the same, old errors. Take a look at WH40K Dark Millennium. Guess what ? PvP-centric game with 2 factions with different allied races. Does that remind you anything ?
Financial success as compared to WoW? No. But then again, neither is any other game.
I left Warhammer to play Aion and came back in 2 months. I left Warhammer to play Rift and came back in one and a half months.
The lakes are full of people every night on Badlands. Scenarios pop almost instantly and I'm having great fun with friends again.
To me, Warhammer is a success. Nothing out there touches it for RvR/PvP with the exception of DAoC. Yes, that game is still around and plenty of people still play it as well. I just prefer the newer graphics of Warhammer.
Well Drew, I have to disagree with you again. Without the 3rd faction the game was an also ran from the start. This statement caught my eye:
" The RvR was near-revolutionary and brought some exciting changes to the industry"
Now you might be able to say that about DAoC, but NOT about Warhammer, the pvp it offered was nothing new to the genre or the company.
Another problem that Mythic has always had, far too much crowd control. I suppose there are some that like that feature, but for the vast majority of us nothing worse than sitting in a fight and not being able to do anything.
So failure, probably not, but it is also not what I would consider a successful game either.
Have to agree with this statement.
Lets see:
+ former Daoc studio - check altough many where gone when €A took over
+ huge IP
+ tons of PR cash
and all they could come up with has been a rushed wowlike game with an atrocius PvP system.
Hell they only needed to take Daoc and fit it with the WAR IP but they became greedy thinking they could get millions and millions of subs if they are staying away from the "niche" Daoc just greedy and stupid if you ask me.
War's biggest failure will also be Tor's biggest one: €A just like Activi$ion they should be banned from gaming.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
WAR wasn't as big of a disaster as AoC, but it certainly was a failure for all the reasons previously mentioned.
Its become pretty much the exact opposite now. The only time you will find people doing scenarios is in T1 (because of all the trial players) and T4 (to get emblems/crests for gear). But in between, and even when you first get into T4, its all about the RvR and avoiding scenarios like the plague. Theyve changed a lot of things, including better rewards for RvR and increasing the Renown Rank cap to 2x your level (used to be capped at your level). Scenarios give a much higher xp vs rr ratio, and everyone is focused on gaining RR to max it out before they hit 40, so they stuck to open RvR.
The entire RvR system has changed as well. Rather than just hopping from keep to keep and avoiding enemies, you are forced to take and hold all of the Battlefield Objectives for an extended time whil resource carriers travel from them to your warcamp/keep. Each time they return it adds some points to your keeps rank, and you cannot get a ram (required to take enemy keep) until your own keep is rank 4. Ive seen people complain about the new system, but IMO its much better. It prevents the old "lets zerg this keep asap before anyone shows up to defend it" mentality and forces people to work as a team to keep all objectives controlled and since it slows the progress of taking a keep it gives the enemy plenty of time to recognize there is a threat in that zone, get their warbands there and mount a defense. Ive seen much better RvR since the change with 1 side ranking up a keep to rank 2-3 before enemies start showing up, and then the defenders hold them off long enough to let a small strike force go out and take the objectives and rank up the defended keep and turn it around to a full on assault on the side that was originally attacking. Much much better than the avoiding a fight zerg that used to be there.
Do people even understand what a "devil's advocate" is?