My thoughts on TW and the state of PWI

Ah, forgot about the 'no-mention-other-games-rule'. Lol.

Anyways, valid points by all. Some comments though. Ok, many comments. Incoming wall of text, not for the faint of heart.

Perspective. Perspective is a quality you can only gain by taking time away from an activity. Immersed as I was in PWI, I had no perspective. I imagine many other hardcore players like myself may also lack perspective on PWI.

I still love playing my cleric on PWI. I still enjoy a good pvp challenge. I still like the general colors/appearance of the game. I still enjoy talking with many of the people in the game.

What has changed, though, is that I no longer feel its worth my time to spend so much time on 'non-fun' activities just to have brief moments of 'pretty fun' activities.

When I launched my career in PWI to get the best gear I could, I wasn't aware of the myriad of other games I could be playing. I purposely blinded myself to even considering the possibility that PWI was an inferior option. I set goals for myself, and then I worked... and worked... and worked... and worked on them. And after much time and much effort and much conniving, I achieved those goals. And I got to the top of the gear chain and I looked around and I thought, this is a pretty great view. Some of you can probably understand this, but many won't, because you haven't been there yet.

I quickly started to run into some problems. There weren't many people at my gear tier, and even fewer with my skill level. I quickly ran out of people who could pose even a minor challenge to me in terms of small-scale pvp. But I still lacked perspective---I tried to fix my problems from within the box that was PWI. And so I innovated---I would fight while nerfing myself, or I would fight many people at once (see any of my Nation Wars videos for reference). All the while I ignored the sinking feeling in my heart and I kept LOOKING for ways to have fun in this game I'd grown so attached to, the game where my friends were, the game that my girlfriend played.

And then PWI brought out a new patch---neuma, cards, and more. So I started working on that, never questioning whether this was a good idea. But real life interfered and I wasn't able to dedicate as much time to PWI. And, though it was probably gradual, the realization was sudden---I was only half way up the mountain now. Below me was about 98% of the PWI population, and above, a select few who'd worked harder/spent more than I had, and had gear so much better than mine that I couldn't kill them even if they afked.

I admit the proposition of spending another 2 years of farming/merchanting had me feeling pretty depressed. After working hard, one is supposed to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors, right? Must I put in more and more and more WORK to get back to the PLAY I wanted to engage in?

And at this point, I started looking elsewhere, and I even started to question what it was I wanted out of PWI. I tried other games, and I started to gain perspective. I realized that in other games, one doesn't need to work for years and years and years to reach 'near-best' gear. I also realized that, in other games, the differences between gear tiers wasn't as vast.

Let me explain. In game X that I currently play, there are roughly 4 tiers of gear, call them A, B, C, and D. If we set gear A = 1, then, roughly speaking, B = 1.5, C = 2, and D = 2.5-3. Thats right, in the game I play, the 'endgame best' pvp gear makes you about 2.5-3x more powerful than the beginner pvp gear set A.

In PWI though, the situation is much, much different. I can speak in terms of gear that you all know, of course. We have gear sets g16/r9, r9r, r9rr, r9rr + S card in each slot, r9rr + S cards double levelled, and r9rr + S card *set* double levelled (and other variations, but I choose these to express my argument). If we set g16/r9 = 1, then by my estimation, r9r = 2, r9rr = 3-4, r9rr with S cards = 6-8, and r9rr with full S card set double levelled = 12-16.

In other words, there are VAST differences between the various sets of gear used in PWI for pvp purposes. In game X, 'best gear' is 3x more powerful than 'starter' gear. In PWI, 'best gear' is 12-16 stronger than 'starter g16' gear.

For enormous sums of time or money, in PWI, you can essentially be as strong as an entire squad of lesser-geared players put together. Not in terms of total dmg output, of course, but in terms of pvp survivability and effectiveness. For example, with an aoe, I can take out (lets say I crit) half a squad of g16s in a single hit. As another example, with an aoe, Kalopsia can take out half a squad of r9rrs in a single hit. This isn't fantasy---just check any of the videos he or I have posted.

Consider player X. Player X is an average player who has gear better than 45% of the server, so he sh*ts on those 45% (charm bypasses or one-shots) with no skill needed. Perhaps he has similar gear to about 10% of the server (being optimistic here), and from among those people he can have competitive, skill-based fights. The remaining 45% of the server has better gear than him, and those people sh*t on him in fights, via charm bypasses or one-shots.

Now consider player Y. I am player Y---I have gear better than 98% of the server, and those 98% of people stand no chance against me in small-scale pvp. Less than 1% of the server has gear within my tier, hence the extremely limited option for skill-based fights. The remaining fraction has gear better than me, and they beat me with relative ease.

And finally, consider player Z. Player Z is Kalopsia. Kalopsia has the best gear available. Literally everybody else except maybe 2-3 people stand no chance against Kalopsia, because the gear gap is so, so massive. And unless its against the 3-4 people with somewhat similar gear, Kalopsia never engages in skill-based fights. Unlike me, however, Kalopsia likes this situation, and continues to spend his time and money to maintain his position at the top of the PWI pecking order.

What effect does this have? Well, for starters, its really hard to have balanced pvp. Usually any semblance of balance comes only from artificially deciding the groups and swapping out players. Secondly, while low-geared, you have more opportunities to fight equally-geared players, but you also get sh*t on all the time by higher-geared players. Thirdly, if you do climb the gear pyramid, you don't get sh*t on as much, but you very quickly lose the # of people with which you can have fair, challenging fights against. After all, it takes no skill to press a button and one-shot those lower-geared than yourself.

So we come back to what I said in my previous post---PWI caters to the elite few who spend the most ridiculous amounts of time and/or money to get the most ridiculously powerful gear, which, once they have it, guarantees that they will destroy anybody else less powerfully geared. Player Z against 5 player Xs? No problem. Player Z against 10 player Ys? Totally doable.

It took perspective for me to see it, but I realize now that this is never what I wanted. What I always wanted, what I always strived for, was a fight where my gear made some difference, but the true deciding factor was skill. And with the game I currently play, I believe that this ideal has been met. When I achieve the best pvp gear in my new game, I'll still have many, many people to have fair fights against---the many other 'best-geared' players, as well as small groups of 'slightly lesser-geared' players, because, as I said earlier, 'best' is only about 3x more powerful than 'starter', and only somewhat better than the fairly common lvl C gear.

In conclusion. The question I finally asked myself was, do I want to spend 2-3 more years to get to the top of the PWI gear pyramid once more, while further reducing the # of equally-geared players I have to fight? Do I want to sh*t on the 98% and get sh*t on by the 1% above me until I reach that 100%, at which point I'll **** on everybody else? Once asked, the question answered itself: definitely not.

So DarkSkiesx, its not a matter of 'giving up'. It is a matter of values. I get the most fun out of challenging, fair pvp fights. I determined that PWI is not a game worth spending my effort on, because the more effort I spend, the less fun it will get for me. There are those who find sh*tting on weaker players to be fun---I am not one of those people. And this is just the pvp. It goes without saying that PWI has extremely subpar PvE content to many other games out there.

On PWI, I'm a big fish in a very little pond. I've swum the waters of PWI for too long, and so now I've progessed further downstream to a lake, where I have much more room to swim around. Granted, there I'm only an average fish, but I find that, shockingly, I'm OK with that. Maybe one of these days I'll move onto an 'ocean' game, but so far I feel comfortable where I am....ok maybe I let that metaphor flow a little too far (lol).

Again, if you still enjoy PWI and have fun, by all means stay and play. I just want my position on why I no longer play to be clearly understood. Why I want this I'm not entirely sure. Maybe I just want to provide the encouragement someone out there is looking for that there are valid alternatives to PWI, and that you don't necessarily need to lose your friends by switching games. I still miss PWI and the people, but again, the games I play now more than keep my mind off what I've left behind, and keep it focused on all the things I've gained.

Laters!