I broke into the second tier of the Dark Elf vs. High Elf pairing last night. I was elated. Right off the bat, the Shadowlands have an eerie, dark feel to them. As you break into the quests of this area, don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting turned around in the fog. Personally, I thought it was a lot of fun… even though I died twice from wandering champion level PQ mobs.

About five minutes after I popped into the tier, I queued up for the scenario Pheonix Gate and quested for about the next ten minutes. The ten that followed were an absolute bloodbath.

Unfortunately, it was only my blood that was spilled.

I give myself a little leway because it was my first time in the scenario. Even so, I did exceptionally bad. I tried to rush in from the front. I died. I tried to flank from the side. I died again. I tried to run on top of a hill, doing some kind of high ground flank attack… but a lion mauled me and left me with only one good hand. Damn… holding a staff is friggin’ hard now.

So, at the end, I only did better than the afk’er who sat at the spawn point the whole time. I know… it’s pathetic. I kid you not, I died about seven times and didn’t get a single death blow.

Needless to say, I walked away with a bitter taste in my mouth. I tried to bear in mind that I was only rank 12 going against a bunch of rank 16-18’s, however.

I resolved at that point to level and return to the scenario to seek my retribution. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

I queued for the scenario the next night at level 13. I didn’t pop in right away, so I quested… and quested… and quested. At the end of the night, I stayed in queue for over three hours.

The way I see it, there are three options:

1) I’m not the only person who got irritated in the instance; it must not be fun, even for those with the level advantage.

2) There was some glitch in my queuing up. After 20 minutes, sure… it could be just a slow moving scenario. After 120 minutes though, something is F’d up.

or

3) People just are outlevelling the content.

Out of those options, I would say that it’s probably a mix of all three options.

No matter what’s going on though, if players are stuck waiting three hours to battle, there’s going to be a problem.

A while back in WAR’S development, Mythic announced the prospect of featuring the “Dogs of War” to prevent such long delays.At some point, though, they decided they couldn’t do this on a level they would consider great.

I’d like to give Mythic a big head’s up though: NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE DOGS OF WAR. No player should be stuck waiting three hours for a scenario. Ever. Such a situation will undoubtedly lead to the failure harsh criticism of the game.

Thus far, I’ve been very supportive of WAR. I’ll tell you this much though, if a game that promises RvR can’t deliver RvR without having players give up their progression in other realms of play, WAR will struggle more than it should announced a failure .

This is the single most pressing issue I’ve encountered in the game.

It’s well and great to give people quick access to RvR in the first tier, but Mythic needs to provide those same opportunities throughout every gamer’s experience.

This all begs the question, why aren’t the Dogs of War in the game now?

I, like everyone else, have no true answer to this. I can only imagine that designing AI at a level competitive with human players is more difficult than Mythic first anticipated.

I have to ask though, in a game designed around RvR, why didn’t they plan for this exact situation? Maybe they did and dropped the ball. Maybe they just didn’t see this situation as a possibility. Either scenario is unacceptable.

I call on Mythic to bring in the Dogs of War. Will they be perfect? No. As a matter of fact, compared to human players, computer AI will probably suck. Despite that, I’d rather join a scenario as the underdog than not join at all.

What do you think? Is it time to bring in the mercenaries, albeit their potential skill gap?

Edit: Alright, maybe I was a little bit harsh. Long day. Sorry.