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Another siege weekend has come and gone and once more I have had the privilidge of standing atop a castle wall for 2 hours without seeing one competitor approach the gate. There are no words to express the sheer boredom that ensues during this time. You sit in Vent listening to people prattle on about their sexual prowness and you read pointless innuendos in clan chat. Yesterday, I just unplugged my headset and plugged in my speakers and started washing clothes and cleaning the house. I was listening for someone to say that there were incomming attackers or that a dragon landed on the castle...something...anything really. But no, all I got out of the last siege was a spotless house and some fresh scented clothes.
I play on Sayha. I'm in the RR/IS/PC alliance and we now own, either directly or indirectly every castle on the server with the notable exception of Oren. As of last count, we have over 540 members in our alliance and on any good siege day, we have about 160 members online and ready to fight. We also have, for some reason I can't understand, 5 or 6 other clans that like to lend us a hand during sieges. This extra help causes us to be an unrelenting zerg force that rolls over any and all opposition on the fields in no time at all. We are deathly afraid of losing any power we have achieved and our main mantra for overdominating the server like we have is: "if other clans were in our position, they'd do the same thing".
So why don't smaller clans just ban together and really push us? Usual political reasons, I suppose. Some clans don't like to work with other clans because they've seen them openly bot. Other clans like our main opposition Catalyst were jerks when they were in charge and either they don't want any help for pride reasons or people won't help them because of old grudges. So what happens is that the server sinks to a form of passive aggression and just no longer directly engage us. The point to this strategy is to make us bored to death and make us leave. Hey, it worked well on Nova when they were running things on Sayha. We bored them to death, they left, and then the fighting ensued for a while until the new masters were crowned. Then the mad cycle of "crush, crush, crush" started anew, and the suckage blossomed forth.
I assume this is the pattern on all the servers. One group gets into power and they have no idea how to wield it responsibly. If you want Aden, fine. The top clan should be able to take the biggest castle, and it's allies should be able to help defend it as it's potentially the largest moneymaker on the server. The owners of Aden should then funnel some of that income to it's ally members for their support in maintaining that castle. If any of the allied clans own other castles with the exception of Aden, they should be able to hold their own in fights to defend those castles without having to call in the troops. If this requires side alliances with or payments made to other clans outside of the alliance than so be it, but the idea of allies running to the rescue when your going down the tubes is dull, boring, and used up.
And don't get me started on Territory Wars. I firmly believe that each ward should be reset at the end of the seven signs competition period. It is so very, very, very, very boring to run wards to town. As far as Sayha goes, there is no need to run any wards anymore cause no one that's going to cross us owns a castle. Maybe I'm missing the fun in this, but who the hell wants to win everytime? Who wants to compete if they know they can't lose? For that matter, who wants to compete when they know they have no chance of winning?
We have got to learn how to use power on servers to keep the server healthy and keep the competition ripe. This is a very old game and not that many newbies sign up like they used to. You pretty much have what you have and chances are it won't get any better population-wise (unless we have an unwanted server merge). In another month, my clan would have held it's castle for a full year without losing it once. It was great when it started, but now it's just unending tedium, I don't think I'll make it to the next siege unfortunately not that it matters much anyway.