The current state of Warhammer on Iron Rock is less than appealing. People are leaving for other games or other servers left and right, and it really leaves the server to be dead at most times. Another issue is the severe population gap between Order and Destruction. I cannot remember the last time Destro outnumbered our Order counterparts, and often we are outnumbered 3 and 4 to 1. Yes the AAO is nice, but let’s be honest here; eventually you get tired of being rolled due to numbers alone.
Yesterday afternoon was a prime example of our server population, or lack thereof. Order, with relative ease, pushed IC with no real resistance at all. So, in the hopes of me winning a gold / purp bag, I joined my first city instance immediately after the zones locked. Obviously I zone in and check out the scenario scoreboard to find that I had been put up against the usual Order premade of high renown ranking characters. I waited a few minutes for a few more Destro to show up, but only a handful did. Just enough to fill out two groups, so I left. After returning to the Maw, I waited about five minutes and joined another scenario. I was placed in a completely new instance, but it was much of the same. Destro could only manage to fill a few groups against another Order premade. So again, I left. Rinse and repeat several times over, and upon entering three completely different city sieges, it was the same story in each. I even wound up in the same instance on two separate occasions, and neither was nearly close to filling a single warband. Clearly, it is evident that the population is completely out of whack. Do you really expect a Destro player to sit through a city siege for 30 minutes (estimate) for a single Royal Crest? Hardly worth it. At that rate, it would take roughly…..oh I dunno…..100 years to complete a Sovereign set.
Much to my chagrin I hopped on my DoK alt and played around in T3, which low and behold was rocking with action. But that’s the problem; T3 was filled up with great action while a freaking city siege was taking place. It’s sad that no one even cares anymore. It’s just another day on Iron Rock with Destro being beat down. People have grown tired of it, and could care less about IC.
I think something needs to happen that would make it so it is more beneficial to defend your city, rather than to just hop on an alt. Maybe if the opposing side is victorious, you cannot gain access to LoTD for a full day, or you gain a reduced amount of XP for your realm. Maybe even close off IC for more than a few hours, something like a complete day. Right now there is just no incentive to defend your realm on Iron Rock. Hopefully this changes with the implementation of 1.4 and the RvR changes, but unless there is a major population shift I can’t see it.
Even if they put in harsher more restrictive punishment for letting your city get sacked, it's not going to fix the population issues, or rather, the renown gap issues. Being outnumbered isn't as big a deal until you're outnumbered and consistently outranked as well. As much fun as it is to take a solid premade into RvR and drill into an Order zerg for a few minutes the few groups of high ranked Destro that we do have simply pale in comparison to the dozens and dozens of regular Order players.
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