I took part in my first siege since returning to DF:UW last night, and good times were had. The siege was over an ally’s hamlet, and the enemy included my old clan the Old Timers Guild, so it was fun to see and kill some old faces/names.
The siege had close to 100 players total, with our side outnumbering the attackers by a few. Scroach groups were at a minimum, and didn’t impact the siege. I didn’t experience any ping or FPS drops, everything stayed at my normal 50ping, 70FPS. Siege performance had been a hot topic on Forumfall of late, so either the last patch greatly improved things, the people complaining are playing on welfare machines, or Forumfall was once again making a mountain out of a mole hill. My guess is all of the above.
The action of the siege came in two parts. The enemy initially charged into the hamlet, and while the attack somewhat caught us off guard, the push wasn’t coordinated enough and between our numbers and the guard towers, they were repelled quickly. I was fine with this, as the brief skirmish was a nice little warm-up. Between just having returned, changing over to using the Slayer role as my secondary, switching from greatswords to polearms, and still being terrible at FPS games, an ‘easy’ fight is a-ok in my book.
The second battle happened just outside the hamlet. The enemy was stationed on top of a mountain, and as the siege stones went live, we pushed into them. We had a group of warriors on mounts flank them while our main force drew their attention from the opposite side. It worked, they broke quickly, and the cleanup commenced.
Once the enemy was dispatched, our clan group went off to search for scroach groups, and we found one not too far away. That provided the most even fight of the night, with our 7-8 taking on a similar sized group. I certainly wasn’t the deciding factor or anything close, but having warmed up I was able to at least contribute here, forcing warriors off our primalists in melee and preventing others from chasing after people with some archery.
So all in all a good night of siege and small-scale action, and a quick remember of just how great the combat really is in Darkfall. It will be interesting to return to ESO for the next beta after this refresher with DF. I suspect, much like going from DF to Skyrim in the past, that I’ll be a little disappointed. Ignorance is indeed bliss sometimes.
Hardcore Casual 
The siege had close to 100 players total, with our side outnumbering the attackers by a few.
I wasn’t there, but based on my experience, this statement roughly translates to we had 50 and they had at least 30 but no more than 40. :)
I poke fun, but only because talking numbers in Darkfall has a lot in common with a fisherman talking about the one that got away.
“We had even numbers” = we outnumbered them 2 to 1.
“We had slightly more” = we had 15 and they had 10.
“We were outnumbered” = we had even numbers.
“We were zerged” = we lost badly (actual number doesn’t matter).
Fixed.
“We had even numbers” = we had 15 and they had 10.
“We had slightly more” = we outnumbered them 2 to 1.
“We were outnumbered” = we had even numbers.
“We were zerged” = we lost badly (actual number doesn’t matter).
Funny thing happened on comms; the siege leader told us they had 80, which got everyone excited for the last push. He was of course joking, but knowing we had more, he still didn’t want people to drift away.
I love a good fish story, keep em coming.
Off-topic, but since you mentioned the game at the end, and you’ve been happy about increased DF resource sinks: any thoughts on the lack of central AH in TESO?
Throttles a faucet, at the very least.
How would an AH be a faucet? It’s a tool to exchange goods, not create them.
That aside, I’ve really only played ESO in beta enough to like it in terms of core systems and the ‘feel’. Don’t know a lot of details like the AH. If anything, it might be interested to have a themepark without an AH. Funny how that’s a rarity now.
He didn’t say the AH was a faucet, he said the lack of an AH throttles a faucet. Why it ‘throttles’ one faucet, but not other faucets, is the puzzling question here.
Why does the AH act somewhat like a faucet? If you look at faucets strictly as goods being created in the virtual world, then it doesn’t. The AH increases the exchange rate of goods, lowering the barrier to entry to the market. If you look at faucets and sinks as things affecting goods entering the market, then suddenly the AH is both a faucet and a sink, as it increases both the number of buyers and sellers. However, another effect of the AH is that an inefficient market encourages hoarding, especially in a world without time-based degradation. Decreasing hoarding also has the effect of increasing supply to the market. Overall, the effect of an AH is to increase the amount of available goods, which makes it mimic the effect of a faucet, at the market level.
p.s. to understand how powerful the effect of these ‘virtual’ faucets and sinks can be, remember that the biggest sink in EVE, in terms of items leaving the market, is people quitting EVE with billions of ISK and assets thereby leaving the economy. CCP has stated that more titans are on inactive accounts than have ever been destroyed, I believe this was after the recent titan killfest. Of course, this ‘sink’ is reversible to an extent, as these people do reactivate accounts after a period, sometimes.
“The siege had close to 100 players total” – Wow, that’s incredible, all Darkfail players logged in at the same time!
Hey now.. don’t forget about the 200 farming alts that were also logged in and gathering mats to support the new 10% gear sink on all those siege ganks!