Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Strand of Ancients



Larísa once wrote that "PvP is a good, though frustrating way of training your awareness of the surroundings. To see your character isn't as important as to see what may occur to her". Completely true.

While it's far from the complication and preparation requirements of raiding, PvP need some skills. And it can teach you much more than just character management. Strand of Ancients, the new BG is an extraordinary place for observing the basis of riches.

While it's true for all BG-s that killing enemies help very little to wining, on Strands, it's more true than anywhere else. For those who have not seen this great BG, please take a look on the map:
  • Attacker side starts at the white dots. There are 2-2 catapults there.
  • These catapults are the most effective way to break the gates at green and blue
  • At green and blue the defenders have 2-2 stationary cannons
  • Blacks are graveyards, originally defender sided. When attacker captures them, cannot be recaptured
  • If attackers take graveyard, the nearby shops (black-white) start to spawn catapults
  • Attackers have to break through purple and red gate, defended by 2-2 cannons
  • Finally they have to break yellow gate, than orange gate to win.
Holding green and blue gate is impossible, the attackers can always break through (unless 15 vs 3). So defense must prepare for this situation. Yet, I've barely seen any attempt for such preparation. All the defense players happily PvP at green and blue, while the attackers take the graveyards and using the new catapults at white-black to march all the way up, meeting little to none resistance.

It's most obvious that (assuming equal gear and PvP skills), defense can hold the fort forever. As long as they have the graveyards, the attackers spawn at the beach and have to move their catapults from the white dots up to the red and purple gates, while defenders spawn nearby and supported by their cannons.

Still, attackers usually win in no time, since there are barely gunners at the red and purple gates and never-ever any guards at the graveyards. The latter is extremely surprising, since the graveyards are great place for PvP for honor. If you stand on the southern side of the graveyard, the cannons can shoot at your enemy, but they are too far to get honor for their kills.

If you are not attempting to win, just watch this zoo of stupidity, you can laugh a lot. If you want to win (for marks or honor), I'd highly recommend to not enter alone. With even a couple of buddys who know where to fight, you can chain-win.

Before we would forgot, one can find lot of amusements in the dumbness of the attackers too. While it's less destructive (the attackers can't win if the defenders are not morons), it's even more ridicolous. There are 4 typical attacker stupidities (but they never get old):
  • Attacking both sides instead of concentrating the power of all 4 catapults on one side. The HC version of this is when all people rides to the proper gate save for 2: the two catapult operators.
  • When gates broken, not destroying the cannons, so the newly spawn catapults pass the gates with 50% HP, due to the happy cannoners.
  • Ignoring undefended graveyards, spawning at the beach, riding up to the red and purple gates where they are grinded by nearby defenders.
  • But the winner is undoubtedly: catapult-PvP. It's hard to believe that someone who is capable of turning on a computer would try to kill enemy players with the catapult, but you see it all the time. They rotate and backtrack in a futile hope to outmanuver a rouge or a warrior with a huge and slow machine with 20 yards dead zone (can't fire closer than 20 yards)
What this has to do with business? Most of the income comes from buying low and selling high. Such activity cannot be continued if the people have more brain than a vegetable. The biggest obstackle before a sucessful business is the thought: "It's stupid, no one will fall for that, not worth trying". For example "nobody will buy crystallized fire for 15G when eternal is 60". You, a thinking, calculating, theorycrafting, blog- and forum-reading person would never do that and it's hard to imagine that fellow human beings would do. We know ourselves and our friends and we believe that the rest of the people are like us.

No they are not! Watch them PvP-ing by the green gate while a single catapult is breaking yellow! Watch them wandering aimlessly with their catapult, trying to shoot at somebody! Watch them until you realize: they are not like you and your friends! And there should not be a day in your life when you miss thanking God/nature/luck/your parents for this.

After you realized it and thanked to the proper target, go and sell some crystallized fire!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great blog. Just a comment about the whole crystalized vs. eternal thing. Are you selling them in stacks of 10 or in smaller stacks. If the latter, it is not so unreasonable that people are paying more since they pay for the convenience of getting exactly the amount needed for the craft they need done.

Gevlon said...

The conveniance explains something like 1G profit. But here we are talking about double prices.

Anonymous said...

I cant wait to try this BG out as i love to PVP.

Im waiting till 80 as i alway like to have a pvp set for doing dailies with (the joys of a pvp realm).

Liokes good i hope it stops the "i need honor ill go farm AV" mentality.

Gevlon said...

@Esdras: there are 70-79 and 80 brackets. You can play in the former!

Larísa said...

Oh thank you Gevlon! I've been to this field a couple of times now, as attacker and as defender, but I'm still utterly confused what to do, even worse than I used to be in AV (where I just "followed the stream", which used to work decently well). Now I got a little bit more of an overview, though I still would like to see some more advice for the newbie-pvp-er where to go and what to do - as attacker as well as defender...
But it's a good start, thank you!

freddyboomboom said...

I stuck my toe into the eternal vs. crystallized lake last night.

Bought an eternal fire for 38 gold since the crystallized were going for 4 to 4.50 on my server.

Put the crystallized up for a bid of 4, buyout of 4.50.

The first 7 sold within 15 minutes, and the last 3 sold within an hour.

I should have done more since the eternal fires were sold out when I wen back... Lesson learned.

Kinzlayer said...

I'm just laughing inside whenever you bring up the crystallized vs eternal example. After reading your rant about that the other day I decided to look at the AH for the price difference, lo and behold there are indeed idiots. Funny thing is that only fire carry the price difference, no other types. I really wonder what is going through people's heads in term of their reasoning. I can't see it as earth, shadow, and life are super cheap yet fire are still way high. earth and shadow, as well as fire are supposedly all can come from mining and there are a lot of people mining away. So why the big difference? more use?

Gevlon said...

Good question, though I make nice profit from crystallized earth too.

After looking for where they are used, I found no reason why fire has this price difference

Anonymous said...

Maybe the supply side? Fire can only be mined from titanium nodes and is dropped by few mobs. Some of the mobs can only be seen if your fraction controls Wintergrasp.