Games Day Baltimore - Land of the Dead Bullets

[PhoenixRed]

Those of you who are looking for a summary of all the great points and footage from Land of the Dead for this weekend's Games Day Baltimore can look no further than this thread!

• The Land of the Dead's access is controlled by competing resource gathering. Resources are gotten through ORvR kills or Zone Control in Tier 4. it is meant for ranks 25 - 40, and the bolster buff will put players to rank 36 in the zone.

• When one faction achieves the required resources, they are allowed to travel to the area and access the content unrestricted for 30 minutes (subject to change). After this, the resource collection begins again, with the winning faction starting from zero and the losing faction starting from where they left off.

• A handicap system, awarding more resource value per resource item, will be in place to assist realms on servers that are struggling to gain resources or are constantly on the defensive.

• The Land of the Dead's main area has 18 different Public Quests, each with their own unique dynamic. For example, one PQ carries you into Carrion Nests to destroy eggs, while another features an Obelisk that buffs or debuffs you.

• The Land of the Dead's zone is roughly the size of Reikland, but entirely RvR-enabled (except for warcamps of course)

• Land of the Dead's PQ's give out glyphs to all contributors. The glyphs determine access to the four different lairs within the main area.

• Land of the Dead PQ's are meant to be solo-friendly, which means Champion mobs won't suddenly force you from the area. You can still farm a PQ if you want.

• The Tomb of the Vulture King is the main dungeon in Land of the Dead. The loot within is roughly on par with/slightly above Lost Vale gear.

• The dungeon itself contains traps which must be disarmed by some of your party members to move forward.

• The Land of the Dead's inspiration was gleaned from action RPGs and Indiana Jones-style encounters.

• When zone control flips to the other side, the invading realm gaining control receives quests and the opportunity to purge the defenders within. Because you cannot get rewards from or otherwise do the PQ's in the main area while enemies are around, players will have incentive to attack enemy players.

• When going to an instance, you may choose to start a new one or invade an enemy one. Invading an enemy instance and participating in those tasks gives out rewards and other benefits exclusive to purging enemy invaders.

• Defenders will have to make conscious choices - they can hold the line outdoors, or if in an instance, they can re-arm the traps and re-direct invaders to trash mobs in an attempt to delay their progress. Because defenders, if they cannot be raised, will respawn in their capital cities, there is a certain element of risk involved.

• Defenders can also choose to log out or use other methods of preserving progress such as pushing ahead as far as possible into the encounters.

• The Land of the Dead's zone control is meant to flip at least twice a night, though again, this is a working number and could change.

• As part of this implementation, the ward system is being overhauled into a sigil system. Wards will no longer be attached to actual armor but instead tied to achievements in the Tome of Knowledge, such as killing the boss that dropped that armor. Wards can then be combined into sigils which have the same effects wards do now. This allows players to mix and match set pieces, and retain wards/sigils even if they don't have the armor pieces.

• The implementation will also revise the lockout system, allowing players with partial or no progression to be able to join up with those that have further progression.

If you think of any more you see from the videos or other coverage about the event, please let me know and I can add them!

[Adaptation]

Hmm, so lets say i have 5/5 DP right now.. would i already have the 5 greater ward tome unlocks when the patch comes around?

[PhoenixRed]

Originally Posted by Adaptation

Hmm, so lets say i have 5/5 DP right now.. would i already have the 5 greater ward tome unlocks when the patch comes around?

That's the assumption, though I can find out.

EDIT: Never mind, Andy got mah back.

[Andy_Mythic]

Originally Posted by Adaptation

Hmm, so lets say i have 5/5 DP right now.. would i already have the 5 greater ward tome unlocks when the patch comes around?

If you already own the gear sets (i.e.; Annihilator, Sentinel, Conqueror, etc...) you will be flagged as having the appropriate Sigil or Ward in the former term. The Sigil system is meant to be an alternate method of obtaining Wards for those who do not have the armor sets.

[Adaptation]

Alright, thank you!

[erloas]

Sounds good so far. I especially like the change to the ward/set-gear system.

[Remmy2112]

I only have one question, and that's about how many enemies can invade an existing instance. If the lairs and Tomb of the Vulture Lord are likely designed for six players, then can only six enemies invade your instance, or can you have a full warband rushing in to overwhelm you?

[Akkuma]

What are sigils? Is it something we have to acquire or is it instantly given once unlocked with the wards? Is it essentially a new armor slot that we "enchant/imbue" with all the wards we have? Is it like a talisman and added to gear directly? If so, is it removable? UPDATE: ok sigils are just on your ToK and there is nothing you need to do, which is awesome.

Now some questions on the Land of the Dead.

What type of Zone Control are we talking about here? Locking a pairing completely, controlling 2 out of 3 zones in enemy territory (meaning for Destro for example, holding Reikland and Kadrin Valley), holding more control of t4 than your enemy?

My worry about Land of the Dead seems more likely than before. As I've previously mentioned in a post what I expect to happen is something like this:

1. ORvR is alive and well
2. Land of the Dead is accessible
3. Winning side disappears from the planet for the next 30 minutes T3-T4
4. Most continue to stay in the RvR dungeon due to large amount of time it'll take for a flip to occur
   1. Due to wanting the flip to occur about 2 times a night, which unfortunately I don't know how many hours constitutes a night to them, I am going to assume they want it to happen about every 1-2 hours.
5. We wind up with less scenarios to queue for and less ORvR. What we trade this for is more small skirmish RvR and a side with a smaller population now fighting on fairer terms while the larger one PvEs.

As everyone experienced during the massive RvE days, I have a feeling they'll be coming back to a certain degree. People would rather just take turns getting access to Land of the Dead than try to hold onto what they have. There will be exceptions, but they'll be a minority.

The only time I see the above not happening is when a side decides they want to push to forts/city rather than do Land of the Dead. However, seeing as the gear is as good as LV, if not slightly better, I think more people would rather take the easy route of getting into Land of the Dead.

The handicap system screams carebear to me, but Mythic created a problem that shouldn't have existed by making only two factions. Is this going to be the next step Mythic takes for all ORvR vps? The smaller side in the zone gets more vps for Scenarios, Objectives, PvE, Skirmish?

[KatzenKratzen]

My prediction is that system will be highly abused once again leading to RvE or it will take so much time to flip a zone to LotD that the opposing side will do what they wanted to do 20 times until that will happen leading to simple PvE stuff all day long. It all sounds good on paper but knowing Warhammer Online population I believe it'll turn into some abomination.

[BluepaiN]

To all the nay-sayers about the system getting to LotD.

Remember, the "losing" sides contribution will pick up from last time. That means, that you can get to LotD pretty fast, compared to the other side, that have to start from scratch.
And when you go to LotD, you can still kick and beat some order/destro.

Of course, there will still be people left in T4. But I would rather have small-scale warfare/skirmishes with only 1 or 2 wb's, rather than all the zergs.

If they improve the endgame/city-sieges, it will really force people to think. Should they go to LotD to get phat lewt and risk reducing their city to rank 1 or should they stay.

Actually, its a quite clever move from Mythics side.

[Snafzg]

Originally Posted by Andy_Mythic

If you already own the gear sets (i.e.; Annihilator, Sentinel, Conqueror, etc...) you will be flagged as having the appropriate Sigil or Ward in the former term. The Sigil system is meant to be an alternate method of obtaining Wards for those who do not have the armor sets.

Any chance this system can be expanded further to actually reward you with the set item and not just the sigil for it? Getting very annoyed at killing a boss 15 times and it not dropping the one set piece I need for a very nice set bonus. Wards are great, but the set bonuses from gear are even better when you only care about skirmishing...

[girlirl]

The Land of the Dead's access is controlled by competing resource gathering. Resources are gotten through ORvR kills or Zone Control in Tier 4. it is meant for ranks 25 - 40, and the bolster buff will put players to rank 36 in the zone.

I'm guessing oRvR servers won't get this bolster buff?

[Akkuma]

Originally Posted by BluepaiN

To all the nay-sayers about the system getting to LotD.

Remember, the "losing" sides contribution will pick up from last time. That means, that you can get to LotD pretty fast, compared to the other side, that have to start from scratch.
And when you go to LotD, you can still kick and beat some order/destro.

Of course, there will still be people left in T4. But I would rather have small-scale warfare/skirmishes with only 1 or 2 wb's, rather than all the zergs.

If they improve the endgame/city-sieges, it will really force people to think. Should they go to LotD to get phat lewt and risk reducing their city to rank 1 or should they stay.

Actually, its a quite clever move from Mythics side.

You fail to realize they are aiming for only 2 flips a night. As I stated this means it should take at least an hour and I have a feeling it'll be more around two hours.

Yes, the losing side starts off where they last left off, but imagine this scenario. It takes 2 hours to hit 100% and the other side is sitting at 75% once it flipped. This means it would take about 1.2 minutes per percent for the winning side, and 1.6 minutes per percent for the losing side. The scenario above equates to about 70 minutes before the losing side can flip it over and gain access.

As myself and Katzen stated, history has shown that players take the path of least resistance. This means they'd rather do the Land for whatever amount of time, wait 30 minutes, and then flip it back instead of get access to the Land, do it for 30, and then go back to try to flip it back to their control again. The reason for this is in their system. The scenario I presented above demonstrates this. I, a player, would rather not bother to try to relock Land if the other side is already sitting at 75% and we have been reset to 0. Clearly, the two sides are similarly matched enough that they'll be locking Land with a difference that large and I will have wasted my time trying to relock it when I could spend it in the zone.

[PhoenixRed]

The x-factor is the handicap system. The prediction of how quick a zone will re-flip will be dependant on how the system determines that a faction just isn't getting to the cap because they are getting dominated in ORvR and Zones. We'll see.

If you're curious about "path of least resistance" playing, go look at the presentation videos if you haven't already, because I ask a question specifically about that.

[Vavara]

Are Sigils primarily attained via PVE or RVR? Am I required to master a bunch of PVE instances in order to attain the wards I need?