Good Morning Friends. It was a bit of a rough weekend with my asthma troubles starting on Friday and continuing through the weekend at least on some level. Then of course we got back our long lost missing hour of sleep… which never actually leaves me as refreshed as you think it would. I’ve been in a bit of a stupor and so far this morning doesn’t seem to be any different. I am largely doing fine and I am hoping at some point the coffee kicks in and I can get on with my day. My gaming this weekend was largely limited to New World as I continue to chase a large number of competing objectives. I’ve most recently been farming Orichalcum ore in a mining set in the hopes to getting Void Ore that I can at some point turn into Voidbent armor. With everyone trying to gear up, there has been a bit of a landrun on the stuff and finding an area that is not actively farmed is a pretty significant challenge.
Eight days ago when I posted a picture of the server map, Syndicate held five territories, Marauders held five territories, and Covenant had managed to get back a single territory. Unfortunately things are continuing to go downhill for my purple family, because as of last night we hold three territories, Covenant are up to two, and Marauders are up to six. How did this happen so fast you might ask? Well I talked about this the other day but two of the most PVP focused Syndicate companies defected to Covenant and in doing so left Everfall in shambles repair wise. Apex and Planet X were both at the core of much of the war planning for our faction and them betraying us has left not only a power vacuum but also a debt of knowledge.
I spent Saturday night in a three hour long meeting of the leaders of various Minda Syndicate companies, trying to determine the best course of action in how to “unite the clans”. Essentially what is left is Blades of DaTang that hold down Brightwood and Ebonscale Reach, and I think for the time being there is no real threat to those territories falling. DaTang are great folks, but the problem is that they don’t blend super well with other teams and tend to do things in their own way in large part to the majority of that company does not speak English. They are willing to assist as they can but aren’t really in a good place to be leading a larger war effort.
Once you get past DaTang, there are a bunch of scattered smaller groups that can each field a squad or two which means there is going to need to be coordination at a level that we are just not used to. With Apex and Planet X gone, they also took with them a lot of the folks that had the mechanical knowledge in how to put together a winning team and how to call the shots during the heat of battle. That is not to say that there will not be folks stepping up to the plate and learning, but one single act essentially set us back a month in PVP progress. So I expect in the coming days to see more shifting around on the map with Covenant making a serious bid for Windsward tonight. I would love to see Everfall purple again but in truth we are going to have to accept occupation until forces can be geared and trained to take it back.
I guess for now I am thankful that when Everfall was previously occupied, I shifted to using Brightwood as my hub of operations and ultimately that is where I purchased my first Tier 4 house. It is my hope that DaTang can continue to stand as a bulwark against the other two armies. That said the truth is as a completely PVE player, all of this shifting of tiles on the map is more about faction pride than actual functionality. Sure I can’t transfer items from my banks… but I never actually did that because I am too cheap to pay the transfer fees. Sure teleports are more costly… but I rarely ever teleported with Azoth and instead used my housing and inn network as a way of getting close enough and then running the rest of the distance. With a house in Windsward, Brightwood and Weavers Fen that gave me a cheap teleport to get pretty close to whatever content I happened to be doing.
Currently my Inn is in Everfall but that might shift significantly in the coming weeks… especially once the linked Marketplace goes into the game. Currently there is a bit of an Ironforge and Orgrimmar problem happening in New World, with two cities being the hub of all commerce on the server. Brightwood does a fair amount of trade as well, but nothing compared to Everfall and Windsward. Once the Marketplace can be accessed from any town, there are significant more reasons to spread out from the central corridor of the map. As I get to doing more endgame content it might make sense for me to move my Inn to Shattered Mountain, just to have rapid transit into that zone.
