Albions, do not despair :)

[ilum]

Guys, shape up, the situation ain't all bad

Yes, Midgard seems to be the dominating realm at the moment, but lets not underestimate ourselves.

We still have all strength relics and have fended off lots of Midgard attempts to take it. Though they seem determined and relentless in their offenses, they have yet to overcome our defenses, however disorganized and outnumbered it may be.

We may have become more scattered after Servants of the Lake Lords of England became less active and The 30 split into smaller guilds. We should probably think of organizing a bigger alliance for the smaller guilds of Albion, for the purpose of better communication and cooperation of our defenses and offenses. Actually, having all guilds concerned with Keeps, Darkness Falls and Relics in a huge alliance could be one way to do this.

People should be aware of the bonuses a realm/guild gets from having Keeps in enemy frontiers. For instance, take Fensalir or Arvakr Faste, claim it with your guild and get a nice 11% bonus to all PvP melee attacks and speels. (10% goes to your guild only, 1% will go to all Albions).

Just be a constant pain in the butt to the Mids and Hibs - check the web for unclaimed keep, go grab em. If not, take a low lvl one - Try to keep a ram in vault at all times

Situation isn't hopeless at all, we just need to believe in ourselves

 

[Cybwyn]

A lot of good points there. Sure, Midgard has had us on the back foot a bit lately but they still haven't got what they're after.

Originally posted by ilum
Try to keep a ram in vault at all times

This can't be stressed enough. It's so frustrating to go along to an attempted keep raid and see 16+ people hacking at a high level door that will take half an hour to get through, by which time the defenders will either be inside the keep or will have used the insta AE Stun, PBAOE 4tehwin tactic. Good example of the importance of using rams was demonstrated by the Hibs attacking Berkstead earlier today - they had no rams and the attack failed because they couldn't get the doors down in time and about 2fg of defenders got in.

Not saying the way things are currently is down to people not using siege rams but it's indicative of the lack of organisation and preparation that we currently have.

 

[old.Vae]

Originally posted by ilum
We may have become more scattered after Servants of the Lake Lords of England became less active and The 30 split into smaller guilds.

This may sound a bit harsh but tbh this has made barely any difference to the defence of the albion frontier.

Originally posted by ilum

Actually, having all guilds concerned with Keeps, Darkness Falls and Relics in a huge alliance could be one way to do this.

Ah you mean like there is already...

I have to admit Unity has its failings and Saturday nights performance was just dismal but it generally does get things done in the end. Especially if someone takes charge and kicks some peoples ass's into gear

 

[ilum]

Well I don't exactly who is part of Unity - Phoenix Legion, Order of the Knights Templar, Guardians of Power...any else?

I was thinking about Public Enemies, Dark Rage, Seven etc...lots of small guilds there, I think lots of people would contribute more if they were better updated on whats going on.

 

[old.Vae]

FYI Unity are:

Phoenix Legion
Guardians of Power
The Dragon Senate
Praetorian Guards
Shadow Brothers
Order of Knights Templar
The Rigante
Angels of Darkness
Dark Llama Knights
Academy of Honor
Order of the Unseen
Defenders of the Cross
Order of Bahamut (virtually defunct and now Forgotten Legends)
Lionhearts (Mainly joined PL)
The Black Circle (Mainly joined GoP)

Now as for other guilds they tend to fall into 2 categories:
I see Griffin Knights (and now their successor guild/s) in our frontier. I see UP, Seven and Utopia there. Sometimes there's DoA and AoV there too although not so often. I've also seen some LoE there (but admittedly since they are so large they fall into both of these categories as some will defend and some will go to emain).

I very rarely see Dark Rage, PE, Forgotten Legends, SotL.
These guilds are RvR guilds but with the purpose of RP's not with the purpose of defending territory and although I've seen them a couple of times in HW I rarely see them at a keep take or defence.
e.g. Sat night: 17 SotL online: 4 in pennines where they held Eras, 11 in emain. We had 1fg of GoP at Eras and 1 SotL sorceress as its only defenders for a while.

Now of course there are guilds i've missed out or not named especially the newer ones.

Now Unity is far from perfect but it has a track record of caring about our frontier defence and being pretty successfull at it especially on the rare occasions it gets organised. However sometimes like with any group it can be hard to motivate people.

 

[old.Chavez]

Well gee nice speech but how exactly does it change the fact that albion is in a shockingly poor state right now ?

 

[maxgirth]

Originally posted by old.Chavez
Well gee nice speech but how exactly does it change the fact that albion is in a shockingly poor state right now ?

Agreed, and Vae when I done a who /all last night whilst at excal there were 400 ish peeps online, i`m pretty sure after subtracting the pitiful amount at excal all the others did not belong to the guilds you mentioned, and were busy in the enemy frontiers.

Before slating off other guilds, ask yourself this question the last time we done anything worthwhile, was getting the 3 str relics back, who organised it and which guild did they come from?

 

[old.Vae]

Originally posted by old.Chavez
Well gee nice speech but how exactly does it change the fact that albion is in a shockingly poor state right now ?

It doesn't and I wasn't attempting to. I was responding to comments by Ilum.

As for the shocking state of affairs at the moment I believe a lot can be put down to lethargy and people getting bored with the game. It is like a vicious circle: Mids take Ren, Albs try to retake and get farmed. Mids take another keep, Albs can't give a damn since they were farmed last time and the lethergy builds up. Something has to be done to break the mold. When myself and Belcar led a Unity raid on Renaris about 3 weeks ago or so we took it back in about 50 mins from leaving sauvage and it gave people a boost. However since then Alb is falling back into the usual rut of what's the point in defending our frontier. A lot of the old people who did organise things have left and the upcoming people who have the enthusiasm to do so aren't able to get the help and response they need.

Albion has a lot of ups and downs depending on its recent successes. At the moment we are on a downcycle and will be until someone takes the lead to motivate people and leads a successfull raid or few.

 

[old.Vae]

Originally posted by maxgirth
Agreed, and Vae when I done a who /all last night whilst at excal there were 400 ish peeps online, i`m pretty sure after subtracting the pitiful amount at excal all the others did not belong to the guilds you mentioned, and were busy in the enemy frontiers.

Before slating off other guilds, ask yourself this question the last time we done anything worthwhile, was getting the 3 str relics back, who organised it and which guild did they come from?

I'm not saying everyone who wasn't at Excal was busy in the enemy realms e.g. emain. My observations are purely based on spending a lot of time in the frontier and guilds I mentioned are ones that are significant or have drawn my attention to them. As I said there are a lot of guilds I didn't mention and the majority of people were probably doing PvE anyway. I would bet that a lot of people in a PvE group would decide that they would rather stay there than turning out to defend their frontier especially given the lackluster performance of the albs recently.

I hope you noticed that I haven't slated/slagged off any guild in my above post. I just posted what imo seems to be a guilds priorities. Now they are perfectly entitled to do whatever they want. Ilum was making the point that a lot of smaller guidls would participate more if they knew what was going on. I was making the point that frontier defence is not a priority to some guilds who concentrate on other areas e.g. TLW is a mainly PvE guild and other guilds are mainly RP focused e.g. I believe the30 had sections in their guild who competed to earn the most RP's.

Regarding the last relic capture I believe, from what I have read here, that it was Krillin of LoE who led it at easter. I have no 1st hand knowledge of it since I was on holiday. In my above post I made the clear point that LoE have people who care about both realm defence and also RP's etc. My personal view looking back on LoE is that they make a good offensive guild. You could rely on them to be taking enemy keeps and harassing the enemy. There would be less of a focus on defending the frontier. Please note this is NOT a criticism nor an invitation for flames. They simply have a different focus and outlook on their activities.

 

[old.linnet]

I remember that Krillin did a great job with organising relic raids, but I believe that the last one was led by Lochlyessa

And I carried the scabbard back, which is why I remember.

(<coff>3am</coff>)

 

[maxgirth]

Originally posted by old.Vae
I'm not saying everyone who wasn't at Excal was busy in the enemy realms e.g. emain. My observations are purely based on spending a lot of time in the frontier and guilds I mentioned are ones that are significant or have drawn my attention to them. As I said there are a lot of guilds I didn't mention and the majority of people were probably doing PvE anyway. I would bet that a lot of people in a PvE group would decide that they would rather stay there than turning out to defend their frontier especially given the lackluster performance of the albs recently.

I hope you noticed that I haven't slated/slagged off any guild in my above post. I just posted what imo seems to be a guilds priorities. Now they are perfectly entitled to do whatever they want. Ilum was making the point that a lot of smaller guidls would participate more if they knew what was going on. I was making the point that frontier defence is not a priority to some guilds who concentrate on other areas e.g. TLW is a mainly PvE guild and other guilds are mainly RP focused e.g. I believe the30 had sections in their guild who competed to earn the most RP's.

Regarding the last relic capture I believe, from what I have read here, that it was Krillin of LoE who led it at easter. I have no 1st hand knowledge of it since I was on holiday. In my above post I made the clear point that LoE have people who care about both realm defence and also RP's etc. My personal view looking back on LoE is that they make a good offensive guild. You could rely on them to be taking enemy keeps and harassing the enemy. There would be less of a focus on defending the frontier. Please note this is NOT a criticism nor an invitation for flames. They simply have a different focus and outlook on their activities.

Agreed, and some very good points, my point being the last RR was in fact led by Lochy, love em or hate em, but if an sotl member was organizing something, ears pricked up and people listened, which in turn done more good than harm for our realm, as more times than not a large enough amount of bodies would turn out.

Now this is missing, the bull needs to be grabbed by the horns, there is a huge vacant space atm just waiting to be filled, and my guess at why it isn`t as yet filled is fear of failure, but to whom ever steps forward and gives it a go, we must always remember, that he who makes no mistakes, will nothing ever make.

 

[old.mattshanes]

Well we can't put out a good defence force like we used to sadly,AND YES WE DID go to frontier often with about 2fgs at least so all those whiners can shut the hell up.

To be realistic some albs are in frontiers often nearly all the time,some go there now and then and others in emain 24/7 no matter what.Well people can play how the want though so....

But if albs do lose str relics to mids they would be terrible in rvr,or do i mean even more terrible in rvr?

If 2fgs albs see fg mids in frontier they will just stand there get aoe stunned then pbaoe to death WITHOUT thinking to go round them and hit them from side/back.

Then again i am probably an elite cunt being in LOE ,well actually you do see me in frontier fairly often and some others of LOE it's just we aren't a force like we used to be.

 

[old.SadonTheGrey]

Personally I think our foray into Odin's last week proved that Albion is quite capable of mounting an assault if the machine of war can be mobilised. The fact that Midgard could only take back Nottomore at 3.00 AM proves that we still have the capability of repulsing a head on assault.

 

[Kahland]

I dont think we'll be the ones to help take a fensalir/avakr 3 am :>

 

[ele]

http://www.urme.com/fellowship/bilder/raids/rrdagda.jpg

This is how organised midgard can be..(these are publicly posted plans so not spying btw)

Until albions can organise themselves we will all continue to suck in RvR..

a) Someone needs to be appointed leader who has proven tactical skill (1 leader only).

b) More importantly this person has to be listened to by everyone and instructions followed..sadly i've seen this all too often ignored.

c) Attitudes need to change in albion, cos i for one have come across some downright rude people recently, so c'mon guys quit being idiots and start supporting your fellow realm players. (I just quit if i come across people like this and play excal).

Maybe if the core problems are addressed we might get halfway to being organised enough to get a decent force going.

 

[Kerram Darktyde]

Originally posted by ilum
We still have all strength relics and have fended off lots of Midgard attempts to take it. Though they seem determined and relentless in their offenses, they have yet to overcome our defenses, however disorganized and outnumbered it may be.

Hehehe albs Outnumbered?? what system do you use to determine that 1 mid = 3 albs ??

And as for the comment in the thread about late night raids
<cough> albion relic raids <cough>

but as far as keeps go why give rps to the enemy when you can defend the rest of the frontier and take the keep back later??

 

[Scunner]

Re: Re: Albions, do not despair

Originally posted by Kerram Darktyde


but as far as keeps go why give rps to the enemy when you can defend the rest of the frontier and take the keep back later??

Exactly what we did with Renaris this weekend. Not much we could do against the defending mids so planned a raid at certain time and retook.

 

[old.Morchaoron]

Originally posted by ilum

Yes, Midgard seems to be the dominating realm at the moment,

aha haha HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Nightchill]

Originally posted by ele
http://www.urme.com/fellowship/bilder/raids/rrdagda.jpg

This is how organised midgard can be..(these are publicly posted plans so not spying btw)

That was from Excalibur.

 

[Traia]

Having being involved in quite a lot of Servants of the Lake activites recently, and reading a few of the posts here I thought I would offer my input.

We have been active in Hadrians Wall, Pennine Mountains and Forest Sauvage in the recent few weeks of relic raids on excal and keep take/hold (usually at Renaris). I don't think some of the comments here are entirely justified and are more just a stereotypical view of SotL.

Although it is not our prefered field, I think if you took a look around you would more often than not see SotL members at keep sieges, and any attack on excal would definatley see us out. Keep in mind SotL only have 16 active members so providing a zerg force to conquer a keep held by 40 mids won't come from us. What you can expect is pinpoint strikes and timed attacks. Ask people at Benowyc recently which saw a SotL group defend it against attacking hibs.

Any guard death spam in from our keep Erasleigh is noticed in guild chat and we will always respond to defend if the threat is justified, and presume other guilds do the same with their keeps. I can assure you we care about losing our keep which we have spent money on upgrading doors and spend our guild bounty points keeping at level 10. Eras being a key patrol keep on the route mids and hibs take to Sauvage I can only assume this is a benefit to the realm.

The stereotype SotL Emain is old and should be forgotten, we constantly assess all frontiers and the threat to albion and the relic keeps. We are not bound to Emain, and move to where the action is best, for our own enjoyment and the benefit of the realm.

Perhaps its time you stopped blowing your own trumpet and always puting us down. More often than not we are there when needed.

Thats all.

 

[old.Vae]

Traia I welcome anyone who is willing to defend our frontier. My example of SotL above was simply because it was the info I remembered from wondering where SotL were when Eras was the only keep in Alb hands. I let the facts speak for themselves without flaming anyone regardless of any particular guilds priorities.

 

[Jenkz]

to my knowledge it was lochy of sotl who recaptured the hib str relic within 12 hours of them taking it.

one of the most successful relic raids on mid was run (arguably selfishly, i critisised it i know) by nilo, of sotl

i used to be a long term member of GoP and its predcessing guild GoA, i used to critisise SotL+other guilds once, one day long ago, just like some people on this forum.

you know what i learnt when i joined sotl? some in the guild do not give a rats arse about certain random keep takes, that is their choice.

...but i can guarentee ALL of SotL online + in IRC WILL BE THERE when excalibur is under threat, and they WILL BE THERE on relic offences if requested to do so. what the guild does in the rest of the time while the rest of albion is playing "big boys" (so i heard it called) RvR, is up to them

as traia pointed out, sotl have been about in HW and the albion frontier in recent weeks, and we have an important keep bumped to lvl 10, providing strong relic guards for excalibur.

sitting around in albion frontier, making out you're doing your duty to albion is all well and good, but thats your choice, it makes you NO BETTER or NO WORSE than anyone who choses to play the game another way, by PvE raids, or Emain, and it sure as hell makes no difference to how albion is lead. Play the game how you like, leave others to play the game how they like, and let albion continue to do as well as it is.

 

[Col|]

Originally posted by old.Vae
Traia I welcome anyone who is willing to defend our frontier. My example of SotL above was simply because it was the info I remembered from wondering where SotL were when Eras was the only keep in Alb hands. I let the facts speak for themselves without flaming anyone regardless of any particular guilds priorities.

I know for a fact there were about 6 Lakers in Erasleigh at several points over the weekend along with more than a few others, waiting to surprise the Mids taking the keeps, unfortunately, no one seemed to know or never said where the Mids were.

 

[punchy]

Originally posted by Traia
Having being involved in quite a lot of Servants of the Lake activites recently, and reading a few of the posts here I thought I would offer my input....

<snip>

/agree with Traia, who is awesome kthx!

 

[Scunner]

Yeah all over the weekend sotl were in HW defending near beno removing threats at the Mgs.

 

[Balbor]

its good to see some 'real' discution about the defence of our realm. I been reading a lot of forums including the VN boards and the catacomb boards. The truth is that despite how thing seem we are one of the Top Albion realms on all servers across the globe. On many servers, Albion are without any releics, yet we have been able to hold onto all three strenght relics for a long time now (except for a few time we let hibs have it back so they can remeber what it looks like). Over all (on all GOA/USA servers) Relic stats, Ablion are in 3rd place with mids/hibs about level. Knowing the resion will go part of the way to defending the realm better. I'm trying not to make this sound like a moan but it probably will. People think relics reams nothing but they help show how organized a realm is at taking and they defending a there relics. Many people put it down to 'Albion not caring about our relics but i don't to beleave that is the reasion across the world, and if it was then it will be down to something 'ingame' that has caused it. This may incruded our Power Relic keep being to far away compaired to other realms. Albions frontier being harder and more dangorus to navigate compaired to other realms, due to it hilly, ruggish landscape.

When mids took and held Ren a few weeks back it took a well organized Unity event to get it back. Those tactics learnt that day are not becoming pritty standard practice for taking a well defended keep. I've taken to holding Catapult parts in my vault at all times and getting lifter RA so i can carry a full Treb when needed. Siege weapons are no longer restricketed to Rams and they odd few that go up when defending a merchant keep. Many classes are deemed useless during keep defence, mainly tanks, so get yourself a Treb in the lord tower and become a GTAE that nukers harder than a caster. 1-2 Catas just forces people out of an are for a while, 6+ make a mass killing zone that nothing can get past, 10+ and you have already won .

 

[Jenkz]

"defence of the realm" is really debatable issue as well. it's clear to me that quite a large proportion of the mid+hib keep takes in albion are nothing more than farming exercises. they park 40+ defenders in one keep (eg. ren the other day) and dont budge - thats no threat to albions relics.

some people find it fun to try and retake a defended keep like that, others find it tedious, pointless, and will achieve nothing apart from feeding the mids RPs, which is what they want.

some guilds will only come out when excalibur is under thread, or their own claimed keep is under threat, but even then i've seen 70 people attack eras with 5 guildies online, nothing more we can do apart from /send unity 70 at eras.

as you said balbor prydwen-albion is doing pretty damn well. excalibur has held the three str relics for a long, long time, and appears to be staying that way for the forseeable future. people crying "albion leadership is non existent" are probably people who want to lead ALL of albion when 40% of albion dont want to be lead to retake a keep defended by 70 gtae/aoe/pbae mids.

 

[hrodelbert]

it annoys me somewhat that generally albion is getting so much stick over "the state of the realm". More so i'm sick to death of people whining about "RP whores". We have kept hold of the strength relics for ages and i am fairly sure if ever we were to lose them again we would probably have them back within a couple of weeks , which is more than can be said for the other realms. Altho some of the RVR guilds are regularly critisised for not helping the realm. it almost always seems to be people from these guilds that get the realm organised when we need to get the relics back , which tbh is the important thing , not keeping DF open for more thid infs to be Pl'ed. From my large experience of relic raiding in the past , SotL , LoE and other "rvr" guilds full of "RP whores" have led much better raids than unity and other alliances/guilds who always seem to be moaning about the state of albion.

 

[Generic Poster]

That is the trouble with the majority of Albion, as much as they bitch about 'RP guilds', they're still going to take them more seriously than other guilds. It goes with the perception of 'Uber guilds', and the 101 people who joined sotl, realised they didn't gain superhuman powers, so left with the sticker (I was in sotl for a day!).

Obviously players are more likely to follow a high-ranking guild. Like LoE's morning raid which was executed perfectly, because the people attending were there on time, organised, and moved to the plan. Now this is partly because of LoE's organisation, but also because those attending were willing to follow LoE. You cannot have a RR without the latter, and that's mostly where Albion losses out. Unless a topRP guild has planned the raid, there's less enthusiasm and the raid instantly suffers from low morale.


P.S. If hibs couldn't defend at 3am that's their problem, but a Relic Raid is a different game when defenders are at home.

 

[hrodelbert]

we got the relics back, job done.