There’s a 15-minute Realm vs. Realm (RvR) scenario in Warhammer: Age of Reckoning called “The Mourkain Temple.”
It’s basically like capture the flag (or magical artifact in this case) and you get points for capturing the artifact, points over time for holding the artifact, points for player kills and the artifact holder gets bonus points for player kills.
While a portion of the scoring involves getting player kills, the real key to winning the scenario obviously revolves around maintaining control over the artifact and supporting the artifact holder— especially when there isn’t a lot of time left. But that concept seems to be beyond some players.
I was in a pick-up group (PUG) playing Mourkain temple, and we started out with a huge lead. We were first to get the artifact, held onto it for a while and even kept the artifact holder in play with proper support.
But that lead quickly dissolved when Destruction took control of the artifact and our team lost all focus and chose to try and rack up their player kills instead.
We could have won that scenario (or at least not lose it so badly) if players didn’t become skirmish fixated. If the team had just opened their eyes and looked at the battle as a whole, they would have immediately realized that the vast majority of the Destruction team had rushed so far forward, there was no one guarding their artifact holder. He was wide open and alone.
Upon respawning, I simply flanked right, went around the Destruction team’s front line, and reached their artifact holder unhindered. I managed to get him down to just about 50% health before dying— which wasn’t easy considering he’s a Marauder, eventually got some help from his teammates when they realized their quarterback had been sacked, and I was playing a Warrior Priest.
My healing abilities kept me in the fight long enough to reduce his health before I eventually succumbed to their superior numbers. But if I had just two more players with me to increase the DPS (damage per second) rate, it was very possible we could have killed him, regained control of the artifact and won the game in the time left.
In scenario chat, one of the players was being sacrastic, saying they’ll “just ignore the 20 people between them and the artifact holder” in order to rush him.
That is precisely what they had to do in order to get the artifact back!
Before you start saying “You’re expecting too much from PUGs…”, this article isn’t a rant about the disorganization in PUGs. I don’t expect PUGs to operate like well oil machines such as guild teams.
The purpose of this article is to point out to players by example, that in RvR scenarios, they need keep their eyes on the overall objective. Look at the battlefield in its entirety and not just on the enemy player in front of you. I think that if a few players are “on the same page,” the teamwork naturally follows.
Racking up kills undoubtedly helps, but you’ll give up the battle if you focus too much on the skirmishes. Don’t lose sight of the forest because of the trees.
Tags: mourkain, rvr, scenario, temple
The trees in the neighborhood only just started to turn recently and the tree in our front yard is now shades of yellow, orange and mostly red. That means it’s almost time to break out the rakes.
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