Logged in last night at around 6pm with Aria, hoping to get some Dark Elf chapter 11 quests done, and perhaps have some better luck with PQs. The night before we had two full groups, but ran into a bugged chapter 10 PQ that required us to tag 12 flags, yet only 10 flags were clickable. Slight problem, and our dummy group (lead by me) tried the PQ twice. Tonight we were able to quickly gather a full group (god I love our full server, but more on that in a bit), and after only a few quests, we found the first PQ and got after it. In short order, we completed all three PQs in chapter 11, including a very entertaining one that required us to protect a necromancer as he summoned his army of skeletons. Wave after wave of champions attacked us, only to be repelled by our group and the necromancers minions. Rather epic stuff, especially at the end when the necromancer transformed into a demon and escaped. I wonder if there is more to that storyline…

I believe all of that took as about an hour, perhaps 90 minutes. We took a break for dinner, and later at around 9pm I logged back in to play with my old guild Forsaken (hopefully allied with CoW soon, Genda…), hoping to do some PQs in the Greenskin T3 area. I encountered a login queue of 178 people, and while the estimate wait was 18 minutes, I believe it took no longer than 5 or so to get in. Again, yay full population server, I’ll gladly take a 5 minute wait over empty PQs. Flying over to the Badlands, we noticed that the Order controlled Keep was under attack, and that the warcamp had a large number of players gathering.

Sure enough, Destro was planning a Keep siege, and it seemed we arrived just in time. Quickly taking two objectives with little resistance, we arrived at the Keep to find some Order players waiting for us in front of the door. This was the start of a rather epic battle, as Destruction had over two full warbands of players, and Order seemed to have a good number of defenders as well. After a good fight in front of the Keep, we pushed the Order group back and set up siege machines to work on the first door. Spells and arrows flew, the area around the door itself was a meat grinder of AoE, but eventually we got the door down. So far so good, but what happened after was a bit shocking. I fully expected our large group to rush into the keep and start working on the NPC guards, making our way to the second door. Instead, we found the narrow entrance completely blocked by Order tanks, and a nasty array of Bright Wizard and healers behind them. We charged, they held, we wiped. It was a slow grind at first, but inch by inch Order pushed us back, until we were fully pushed out of the door. At that point, 30+ Order players streamed out, completely rolling what Destruction players were still standing near the door. Running back to the keep, it was clear Order had won the day, scattering the Destruction warbands and leaving us all in disarray. Further attempts were made, but none got very far. Congrats to the Order players of Monolith, a job well done.

While performance was not perfect, it was rather amazing that I experienced only very slight lag considering I was staring at 60+ players throwing spells and whatnot. This is with the game maxed out and at 1900×1200, so no shortcuts were taken to increase performance at the expense of graphics. This was also the first time I witnessed a siege go basically point-by-point in design. Battle in front of the keep, siege engine phase with both sides shooting and destroying machines, battle at the door with attempts to break the siege, and finally an epic battle within the tight confines of the keep doorway, where collision detection and line of sight were in full force.

Perhaps it was just a rare case of everything coming together, but the optimist in me (or perhaps fanboy, depending on how you look at it) would like to think it’s a sign of things to come. Players are still adjusting to what WAR offers, and it’s going to take some time for the majority to play WAR ‘like it’s meant to be player’, rather than forcing old MMO habits on it. I’m starting to see this in scenarios as well, with a greater variety popping, and more advanced tactics being used. Already great stuff, and its only improving daily.