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Controversial: Is cryptic alienating their playerbase?
denvald
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 702 Arc User
Before anything, make sure you dont miss the quote at the bottom of the post! So lets get down to it...
This is a serious player, giving their opinion, because I feel the state of the game is unnaceptable. This is a legitimate debate on what cryptic does wrong in my opinion, you are welcome to give your opinion and say that I'm wrong, because we all have our own opinions, and I'm interested in hearing your replies
So in the past and more recently, there have been changes, some were good and some were... not really. So let's take a look down of what didn't work and why it didn't. (I won't be adressing every issue, just the ones that I really didn't like)
The game progression is completely unrealistic ever since mod 6 was created. It was very grindy and long before, with the recent changes it's even worse. The game progression is so tedious and difficult/not fun that they are pushing away their players/customers and encouraging them to bot, or buy from them. Let's crunch down some facts.
First, the exp overflow and 60-70 level'ing progress. It's very very tedious, and it isn't fun. I recently tried to level up one of my alts that was level 60 with greens and honestly the difficulty, mixed with the enormous exp requried to level up is insane. I was using 100% exp bonus gains and it still felt like eternity, and it wasn't pleasant because of the game difficulty. The same is also true about lv 70 content and overflow rewards, not to mention running a tier 2 dungeon is unrewarding at best. I don't know if the idea was to get people to buy exp boosters, but it's not working.
Second, the RP required to progress. I don't know who in their right mind would pay SIX HUNDRED (4.5mil/150k = 30 blood ruby packs x 20$ per pack = 600$) for a legendary piece of gear that will outright be obseleted 3 months later. No matter if you keep 40% of it it's still over 300$ thrown in the garbage box. Even the people who ARE wealthy or crazy enough to buy these things with real money would not do it for this price, rising the demand on botted supplies, do you remember what happened when dragon's hoard foundry farming happened? Did people buy from Zen market? no? Yeah everyone was buying botted supplies, and they still do, rank 4 enchant stacks are for sale at 2k on the AH. The idea of making it so expensive and hard to acquire only makes people more likely to buy from bot websites
Third, AD progression. How do legit players even make money in this game? 3k AD dailies? Perhaps in 3 years you'll have the enchants you want at this rate. Even myself, I have to admit I have 70 characters split over more than one account because I couldn't get more than 50 on my account, to do leadership with... because it's the only way to progess in this game. End game PvE is unrewarding, tier 2s have no purpose once you're geared, tier 1s are the only thing that can potentially reward you if you're just really lucky about it. The fact it's so ridiculously tedious and difficult to make AD in this game turns people to...? Yeah, they bot, because who in their right mind would pay 320 dollars for a rank 12 negation enchantment? Especially considering they will get it for much cheaper elsewhere. If the strategy was to remove all possible ways of making money in this game and we still call this Free To Play then something's really wrong
At this point you get the idea, so I won't aleborate on everything, because it just rolls the same machine over and over, and it doesn't work. So I'll just list out the other things that simply didn't work, and contributed to alienate the playerbase. Because really none of these changes stops botters they'll keep doing it, if they can't do it on gateway they'll do it in game. It's only a matter of time.
-Dragon's hoard enchantments, alienating playerbase - one of the only reliable ways to actually get a little bit of RP yourself is now not so useful anymore
-Having to invoke twice on first login, another useless change that only annoys player and doesn't do anything to stop botting. Much like delaying tasks in game, it just doesnt work, why do you keep trying the same mistakes?
-Nerfing foundries, so much potential wasted by not giving it attention by the way
-Making players unable to use the gateway for their professions on the go. Another one of the unique aspects that were great about neverwinter was taken away. That's great, now botters will move to in game bots and players wont be able to do their leadership on gateway anymore because.. reasons (Don't believe me? Look on the internet outside of these censored forums you will find easily) I'm not encouraging people to bot, I'm just pointing out it's not working because they're still going at it and it's still easy to access, so why taking it away to begin with?
-Making the current healing potions useless is not making players want to buy stones of health, either
I believe Cryptic is really not solving the problem, but they certainly are alienating the playerbase
Add this all up and you get the current state of the game, it isn't very fun as it is, not rewarding, very difficult and frustrating overall. A player who isn't having fun, cannot make money nor progress the game, doesn't want to play it anymore. Because players play games to have fun, and progress their characters. In neverwinter, there is neither. Because it is so slow and the hurdles get changed every mod, that people just give up trying, and for all the above reasons.
Cutting off all ways to make money will not make players buy Zen to progress, it'll make them give up.
Slowing down the level'ing progress to ridiculous extents and still getting rewards like r5s at the end of the climb makes players not care anymore.
Now what do you think Cryptic will do about it? Do you think Cryptic will do something about it? Do you think they will keep making the wrong decisions? Do you think I'm bull and you believe I'm wrong?
Discussion open
So somewhere down the page 3.. A brilliant post was made, it is so good that I feel I should highlight in the main post. Nice one man.
This is a serious player, giving their opinion, because I feel the state of the game is unnaceptable. This is a legitimate debate on what cryptic does wrong in my opinion, you are welcome to give your opinion and say that I'm wrong, because we all have our own opinions, and I'm interested in hearing your replies
So in the past and more recently, there have been changes, some were good and some were... not really. So let's take a look down of what didn't work and why it didn't. (I won't be adressing every issue, just the ones that I really didn't like)
The game progression is completely unrealistic ever since mod 6 was created. It was very grindy and long before, with the recent changes it's even worse. The game progression is so tedious and difficult/not fun that they are pushing away their players/customers and encouraging them to bot, or buy from them. Let's crunch down some facts.
First, the exp overflow and 60-70 level'ing progress. It's very very tedious, and it isn't fun. I recently tried to level up one of my alts that was level 60 with greens and honestly the difficulty, mixed with the enormous exp requried to level up is insane. I was using 100% exp bonus gains and it still felt like eternity, and it wasn't pleasant because of the game difficulty. The same is also true about lv 70 content and overflow rewards, not to mention running a tier 2 dungeon is unrewarding at best. I don't know if the idea was to get people to buy exp boosters, but it's not working.
Second, the RP required to progress. I don't know who in their right mind would pay SIX HUNDRED (4.5mil/150k = 30 blood ruby packs x 20$ per pack = 600$) for a legendary piece of gear that will outright be obseleted 3 months later. No matter if you keep 40% of it it's still over 300$ thrown in the garbage box. Even the people who ARE wealthy or crazy enough to buy these things with real money would not do it for this price, rising the demand on botted supplies, do you remember what happened when dragon's hoard foundry farming happened? Did people buy from Zen market? no? Yeah everyone was buying botted supplies, and they still do, rank 4 enchant stacks are for sale at 2k on the AH. The idea of making it so expensive and hard to acquire only makes people more likely to buy from bot websites
Third, AD progression. How do legit players even make money in this game? 3k AD dailies? Perhaps in 3 years you'll have the enchants you want at this rate. Even myself, I have to admit I have 70 characters split over more than one account because I couldn't get more than 50 on my account, to do leadership with... because it's the only way to progess in this game. End game PvE is unrewarding, tier 2s have no purpose once you're geared, tier 1s are the only thing that can potentially reward you if you're just really lucky about it. The fact it's so ridiculously tedious and difficult to make AD in this game turns people to...? Yeah, they bot, because who in their right mind would pay 320 dollars for a rank 12 negation enchantment? Especially considering they will get it for much cheaper elsewhere. If the strategy was to remove all possible ways of making money in this game and we still call this Free To Play then something's really wrong
At this point you get the idea, so I won't aleborate on everything, because it just rolls the same machine over and over, and it doesn't work. So I'll just list out the other things that simply didn't work, and contributed to alienate the playerbase. Because really none of these changes stops botters they'll keep doing it, if they can't do it on gateway they'll do it in game. It's only a matter of time.
-Dragon's hoard enchantments, alienating playerbase - one of the only reliable ways to actually get a little bit of RP yourself is now not so useful anymore
-Having to invoke twice on first login, another useless change that only annoys player and doesn't do anything to stop botting. Much like delaying tasks in game, it just doesnt work, why do you keep trying the same mistakes?
-Nerfing foundries, so much potential wasted by not giving it attention by the way
-Making players unable to use the gateway for their professions on the go. Another one of the unique aspects that were great about neverwinter was taken away. That's great, now botters will move to in game bots and players wont be able to do their leadership on gateway anymore because.. reasons (Don't believe me? Look on the internet outside of these censored forums you will find easily) I'm not encouraging people to bot, I'm just pointing out it's not working because they're still going at it and it's still easy to access, so why taking it away to begin with?
-Making the current healing potions useless is not making players want to buy stones of health, either
I believe Cryptic is really not solving the problem, but they certainly are alienating the playerbase
Add this all up and you get the current state of the game, it isn't very fun as it is, not rewarding, very difficult and frustrating overall. A player who isn't having fun, cannot make money nor progress the game, doesn't want to play it anymore. Because players play games to have fun, and progress their characters. In neverwinter, there is neither. Because it is so slow and the hurdles get changed every mod, that people just give up trying, and for all the above reasons.
Cutting off all ways to make money will not make players buy Zen to progress, it'll make them give up.
Slowing down the level'ing progress to ridiculous extents and still getting rewards like r5s at the end of the climb makes players not care anymore.
Now what do you think Cryptic will do about it? Do you think Cryptic will do something about it? Do you think they will keep making the wrong decisions? Do you think I'm bull and you believe I'm wrong?
Discussion open
So somewhere down the page 3.. A brilliant post was made, it is so good that I feel I should highlight in the main post. Nice one man.
You know...it's interesting. A while back I watched a video about Linux and Red Hat. If you don't know who they are, they're a company that publishes a packaged "install and go" version of Linux. Which is odd since most Linux is open source. But in the interview they mentioned that they realized a long time ago that they key to success in their industry wasn't trying to sell a product that others were offering for free...but it was to sell their support and services. and make their package of free stuff better then everyone else's free stuff.
And it worked. Google did something very similar with their search engines, as well as their OS (android), and they literally changed the market. Literally. Multi-national communications companies are now following suit...Its not about product anymore....That's not good enough. What you have to do is sell your services, and make your product so polished and so inviting that people want your selection...even in a free market.
MMO's that have figured this out are growing and profiting. Marvel Heroes, GW2, and SWtOR are a few I can name personally that I've experienced that understand this concept and are delivering. and their customer bases are growing, not shrinking. PWE needs to get the point too...or they will become a dinosaur like the others that have come before them.
Heck, even Microsoft is labeling their future as the future of services, not selling a product. Windows 10 is free right now...and they don't plan on building another OS. A company the size of Microsoft has actually figured this out too...I'm hoping that PWE gets it before it's too late.
I am the monk, martial skill transcends the battlefield
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
Post edited by denvald on
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Comments
Accusing Cryptic of making the wrong decisions. That's probably enough to get a mod to send it to the depths based on past similar postings.
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
On topic / the OP:
I think you subsumed the situation nicely. You can add in other stuff causing even more alienation, but as far as I can see the game currently, Cryptic's aiming at the 10 or 20% of players contributing 80-90% of their turnover. And all the while shamelessly urging these to spend even more RL money on the game, to get the things that so far were doable or available without paying, or - Gateway changes - more regularly and with less fuzz than before.
In the meantime newcomers are either sidelined for a long, long, and grindy time or/and compelled to buy stuff from the ZEN market to accelerate their progress into the cool kids' part of the game. Which many of these refrian from, and rather move on to more open-armed games...
2. XP
3. Bugs/exploits fixing
should be the first 3 items on the Devs to-do-list. Anything else, even new modules, should be behind that.
About progressing your character... just stop.
As long as it is more or less fun and easy to do, do it.
The moment it turns into a huge grind, or the need for massive amounts of real money, stop.
Plain and simple.
No one is twisting your arm to upgrade your character... and with the next module, you might even have to do that upgrading all over again and again and again...
There is enough feedback in the "official" feedback thread, but there is nothing taken from it and turned into updates/patches this far.
Probably because the Devs are too bussy working on Strongholds, and of course blogging about it... and after Strongholds, they will be too bussy working on Underdark and blogging about that.
In the end, it's just a game... play it, as long as it is fun for you.
Look at the player count on Steamcharts and you'll see many players - especially those not using multichar LShip for AD generation - have taken a slightly different way, quite similar to yours...
....they stopped crying and started playing - other games.
Worst, and undeniable symptom: There's almost no weekend peak anymore. Casuals - who might have spent to compensate for their playtime low during the week by spending - mostly left.
Also: Playing is grindy and rewardless. Unless you're like me and bring set-aside chars back to life to bring them up to par again. Or others who focus on their one main char where they spend three months to squeeze out the last few percent of its potential with an enormous effort of highly repetitive grinding.
Apparently neither is that pleasing to that part of the playerbase that has more time to play on the weekend. Which by default is one of the lifelines of the cash flow in the F2Ps/Freemiums I know so far...
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
With the advent of module six, leveling 60-70 became a hell of a grind. Punishing but somewhat achievable.
Introducing changes to the XP requirement subsequently is IMO the true moment of alienation.
I look through the guild roster at those who have returned for brief time only to leave again when the leveling experience became too much. Speaking to friends offline who also played the game, this is their main reason for not being around, and it's my main reason for not leveling any more characters. It is simply not an enjoyable experience.
They were aware that the vigilance quests were an unpopular and grindy experience, and yet a change was made that subjects leveling players to more pain.
I'm not sure what the thinking was behind that beyond the cynical idea that XP booster sales needed a push.
I believe there is an opportunity here, Players will return for the coming module, and when they do they will experience the expansion which (from what I've seen) is well put together. They will also likely see that despite the outcry over it, that the vigilance line's XP remains pitifully low. Players will see that the SH quest's xp is reasonable, but beyond that leveling in the other areas is a chore.
My fear is that those returning players will again feel that the experience is tedious, and this time round leave for good. There are plenty of other MMOs out there that would be glad of their money, and if the trend continues they'll likely get it.
That being said, i think the Devs should remove all professions from the Gateway, and instead offer some small "mini games" in there, that require people to actually "play", and then reward them with something nice and usefull in return.
The bots itself are not hiding somewhere, they are in plain sight at the known locations, and if the Devs want to fight the bots, then that should be the place to start.
After that, GMs should start banning people, that get massive amounts of AD from those goldseller sources. If the Devs can see the AD created in the Gateway, then it should be no problem getting the AD flow information ingame as well from those Leadership farms.
In short, shutting down the bots, that create the goods for goldsellers, and also making a clear statement to the players, that they go after buyers from those goldsellers as well.
About earning money from players... XP boosts for the price of a new game or nearly a year subsctiption time in any other games, is way out of line. And they should alter this course, before even more real players just move on to another game for good.
They have also way overpriced packs, and it really amazes me, that they removed the AD from those packs, but have not changed the prices on them too, to sell more of them.
The same goes for companions in the ZEN shop, way overpriced, and those are not even account wide, but just for a single character.
The only items in the ZEN shop, that are worth their money, are the epic account wide mounts, and the character slots... until you have a slot for each class.
Anything else from the ZEN shop can be just ignored...
I bought the mount and a few character slots, but why waste spend any more money on anything else?
The Devs hardly listen to any player feedback...
The last changes only add more grind or problems to the game, but no real content...
The game is less and less rewarding for the time you actually play...
And Strongholds will gate solo players from good equipment and xp rewards...
I still invoke and do the profession tasks, but i'm losing good reasons to log in and play again really fast.
Now, it is 8 characters barely supporting 1 character. I was forced to play one character.
And, I consider myself more lucky than others because I joined in mod 3.
Agreed. Especially when it comes to dungeons. At the very least, make some T1.5 dungeons we can run, so we can actually get to the point that we can effectively run the T2 dungeons. Well, the ones that don't lag out out.
2. XP
I'm not sure where this new XP system came from, but I honestly don't like it. Overflow is WAY too high (even with the generous XP that will be given out in the SH mod, and no, I don't want to start a "Cryptic is forcing people to join guilds" debate).
Currently, I have 4 alts that I don't play for whatever reason. All four of them have leveled from 13-20 to over 60, only by invoking. I have a four day-old CW that is already over level 30.. and that is just from a few hours of playing her. My level 70 GWF, on the other hand, has fake-leveled ONCE since the change took effect. He gets played 3-4 hours a day.
All my guildies who are in the 60s are now struggling to level up in Elemental Evil.
The XP system is broken and in need of a serious re-hash.
3. Bugs/exploits fixing
Agreed. We're SUPER fortunate that the devs are listening to the bug reports on the preview forum, and the SH mod should be *very* well-polished before August 11th. I expect that with all the changes the company has made will show us continued improvement in the game quality. Unfortunately, I think that with so much new content coming over the horizon, that the old content, bugs and exploits and all, will remain untouched for awhile.
In addition to the above...
4. "Lag"
Whatever it "technically" is. Lag, FPS, rubberbanding, space aliens. It needs to stop. A couple of my guildies have just gone over to ESO and they've reported incredibly smooth gameplay and absolutely no lag anywhere... even on higher graphics settings.
There has to be a simple solution to the lag issue.
5. Botters/exploiters/cheaters
Lifetime ban for them. Ban their MAC address. I'm 99% certain the new team is working on a way to get rid of the ne'er-do-wells, but for me, there is only really one option. Swift and severe penalties. Let them go bog down someone else's servers.
"...I grab my wiener and charge!" - ironzerg79
http://steamcharts.com/app/9900
They are doing the worst in history of STO. I know, go and bash on me because it are only Steam numbers.
I bet half of you fruitcakes already installed ARC 2 years ago.
And yeah... Guess why they screw up so badly. The prediction from a few years ago about PWE's quick money grab technique is starting to come to fruition.
Result: Dead Gaem. Soon the servers will shut down. This game wont live for more than a year.
Good game Gecko, Borticus, and all the others
But hey, at least you still 'love' this (minus -Trek) game right?
On my desktop, I have the game installed without using Arc or Steam, from back when you could do that during the Beta. Steam numbers do not accurately reflect active players. And I am fairly certain that Neverwinter will be around in several years.
Any of my comments not posted in orange are based on my own personal opinion and not official.
Any messages written in orange are official moderation messages. Signature images are now fixed!
/sarcasm
I perfectly agree that the game is lively enough to persist - if I didn't believe so I'd be on the move, too - but the current policies do IMHO alienate as well newcomers as weekend warriors. And in the MMOs I've played so far this was almost always been a bad sign. Weekend warriors are likely to spend a certain amount on a regular basis, their weekday focus is elsewhere and the shutdown of the LShip interface on Gateway has hit many of them hard. Also, it hits them doubly - because, after all, LShip isn't only generating AD on a regular basis, but also XP...
The numbers do show a trend, and it's either up, or in the cases of STO and NWO... down.
And when that downwards trend continues over months by a game, then anyone working on that game, should really take a moment and start looking for the reasons for this trend.
And if the officials of that game ignore that trend and do nothing, the game might be still around after some time, but how many real players will be left still playing the game at that point?
Neither STO nor NWO are the only F2P MMOs out there, and players are leaving for other games, no doomsaying here, just stating the obvious.
I understand this is a touchy subject, but I feel like we can have a real discussion and keep it civil, thanks for keeping it up, and I hope it doesn't get derailed
It is interesting to see all the different opinions. So far mostly everyone agrees that the EXP change is one of the worst effects on the game's fun level
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
You may be right, but having a server running, and a healthy population with a thriving game climate are two separate conclusions.
It is my belief that the development team needs to take some form of remedial action now, and that they can not afford to wait until the launch of the next module. Even if it is just an in depth discussion as to what things are going to be changed.
But to your point, I bet the team at SOE we're confident in their choice to move to the NGE version of their game. Their deliberate choice to disregard player concerns, cost them. It was a decision that, that game never recovered from. Yeah, there was a server running right up until the launch of SWTOR, but it was little more than a living memorial to a game that once was.
For some time now, the NW team has focused on inducing scarcity, time gaited tedium, and maximizing micro-transactions to the point of disenfranchising the majority of the population.
Conversely, they have chosen the blanket approach to realigning the economy, at the great disservice to the legitimate player. It appears that they now are more focused on building 'against' exploits, as opposed to 'supporting' legitimate players, instead of investing in the necessary personnel and infrastructure to actually, really, address the problem set. That is failed thinking, to be very blunt.
I no longer play, myself. I just keep checking back to see if there is some positive news, and to see if its worthwhile coming back to a game I used to have so much fun in, in a franchise I grew up loving.
Some words of advice for the development team:
"If you place the metrics of money, over the relationship with the customer, you will ultimately loose both"
Let me write that again, because it bears repeating...
"If you place the metrics of money, over the relationship with the customer, you will ultimately loose both"
I actually think this is pretty interesting, in your case you think the end game is satisfying because you do not care about end game progression much. In our case, I think both sides would win to have a better end game progression because alot of players like me care alot about progression. For me MMOs are all about character progression, and for many others. And it's not a pleasant experience as the current state is. For people like you who think differently and don't care as much about progression, you are more or less unaffected that's why
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
Extremely well said, I work for a company that places ultimate emphasis on customer service (and sometimes to our disadvantage, simply to maintain good relationships with our customers). And we are the leading industry in our field, because a well served customer is not tempted to take a bite elsewhere, they stay home! And overtime, all these customers add up, and the more the merrier. And well served customers are also great advertisement, ultimately making your player base grow as they draw more players in, and the more players the more opportunities you have to make a coin. I talk with experience, from my own work field - and I believe it applies here as well!
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread
Longer answer : for me personally, Neverwinter has shifted from a game I was actively trying to get my gaming friends to play so that we would have a fun, relatively un-monetized MMO to play together to one I absolutely cannot recommend to anyone. The experience pre-60 is still absolutely fantastic, but once you get past that, all the reasons that have been discussed to death make this game incredibly unappealing. This is an MMO, not a single player RPG. The endgame is what makes or breaks the game because that's the nature of MMO's nowadays.
That is hugely disappointing to me as a player and a fan of the game - I *want* to be in a position where I think, "Man, this game is fantastic- it's not perfect, no game is, but this is one I want to try to get all my friends to play with me". Instead, I'm in a position where unless my friends are already incredibly invested in the game the same way I am, I'm actively looking for other games to play with them and slowly but surely cutting my Neverwinter time back.
The endgame should be hard. Progression shouldn't be handed to you. But it also shouldn't be the cliff legitimate players run in to in this game. Content should be added, not removed for the better part of a year. Most of all, it should be just as fun once you've hit the level cap as it is getting there. With Neverwinter, that's no longer the case, and that's a sad, sad truth for me, and for many, many other players it seems.
To be honest if it wasn't for the foundry I would be long gone, more than a year ago. And it's still the only reason I periodically come back, just because there's still hope in me that they'll eventully realize what a tool they have before it's too late.
Sadly, lately I feel like it's maybe already too late for Neverwinter to be what it once was, the trust with the playerbase has taken a deep damage already, and it's not easy to recover from that.
From what I've heard the new module seems to be pretty good, but still hasn't fixed most of the stuff everyone is complaining about.
I still haven't given up on NW though. I'm currently playing another MMO and I have to say the difference shows, you can do anything within the game without having 10+alts to be able to get good equipment, every character is self sufficient, and more importantly, it feels like the company actually care about the players, and tries to keep good relations with them.
I think the main problem with cryptic is that they haven't really adressed ANY of the things people have been asking since forever, and the situation will keep on tightening until they either give in or people leave.
The foundry was brought up many times in the Neverwinter main issues feedback thread. I think they fear bots that's why there isn't much work done to it.
...If they can get it right they'll have an amazing tool no other game I know has to their advantage
It is my my life style, my doctrine and my state of mind,
You fight well, but without focus and discipline, you will fall.
More threads by me / Click on it
My Support Warlock/Temptation Thread