This morning, I woke up really tired and sluggish. I was a bit annoyed, but my mood quickly lightened up after remembering my experience with last night’s impromptu but memorable WvWvW session with the Goat Knights.
I started off jumping into the Gate of Madness Borderlands on the WvWvW screen (by pressing B) and I asked if I can join the rag-tag party of Joey, Raze and Loroke. We tried to go around with the “zerg” and help out as best as we can. But it felt meaningless and futile right until the other Goat Knights came in.
We were now a party of 6-something and moved with the zerg swarm that was trying to capture a tower at Dawn’s Eyrie. It was a succesful attack that drove the the defenders away. One of the invaders literally jumped out the tower when our mob came face to face the Tower Lord. It was quick and one-sided and I thought the Goat Knights deserved to claim the tower in our name. The Tower Lord agreed and our banners were soon flying around our new property. It felt awesome.
Soon after holding the Tower for a while, more Goat Knights jumped in to join the campaign. We were now about 12 men strong, and seperated into 2 parties. The Goat Knights were hungry for more action as Dawn’s Eyrie was a bit far off the front lines. We decided to head to Askalion to check out if there was any fighting going on.
Upon reaching Askalion, we scouted around to see what we can capture. While moving about and driving off some invaders, we saw the Tower of Greenlake. It was lightly fortified but had a lot of invaders from Sea of Sorrow posted up. Our initial wave of attack was fumbled by the invaders of Maguuma, who were also trying to attack the tower. It was like a Mexican stand off, with so much chaos outside the gates of Greenlake tower. We had to pull back and rally back to Askalion and plan from there.
Zarc mentioned on Teamspeak how he really wanted now to cap Greenlake, but it felt impossible since we had to deal with two other worlds. We now made it our goal to do so and were able to time an attack on the tower while the Maguuma invaders were away. A ballista was constructed with the help of the Goat Knights and for some reason I was left to man it. Zarc and Loroke were organizing the guys on the ground to keep me alive. I kept bombarding the Tower wall with the ballista while also firing at the defenders’ sentries. With dumb luck on our side, the wall of the tower collapsed and our people rushed in the tower. I stayed outside with some of the Goat Knights still hitting the tower defenders who were left up on the wall. Suddenly, Zarc yelled at me that he couldn’t protect me because the Maguuma invaders were at our rear. At this point, we were able to claim the tower and it was a perfect tiem to rally inside and defend it.
And defend we did. Slowly and steadily, we pushed back the Maguuma invaders who were knocking on our gates. After seeing how they were thinning out, everybody cheered and roared and congratulated everyone on the good job we did. It was an estatic feeling on how we turned the battle to our favor. I then again quickly spoke to the Tower Lord to claim it for the guild and then we started to dig in.
At this point we held the tower for a few hours. We kept upgrading it until midnight arrived. Slowly but surely, people began to log off because of real life commitments the next day. I was one of them. I logged off after a huge wave of attack from the Maguuma invaders. They really wanted that tower after so many failed attempts to attack it. I didn’t stay around to know what happened and I guess it’s for the better.
Nevertheless, my experience with WvWvW with the Goat Knights was a positive one. I honestly, cannot wait to get the whole guild on this and claim a keep or even a castle for the Guild. I will be looking forward to be telling that story when it happens.
Go Goats!
P.S.: I’d like to encourage those who were participating last night to come and post your experiences as well. Details from other points of view would be an interesting read! (seconded -ed)
My party and I had a blast going around securing objectives near our beloved Greenlake. Toohdles, Hecklez, Tyr and I even went as far as to set up an arrow cart in the middle of Greenwater supply camp to mess with the invaders.
Excellent. 8) I hope I can join you guys in WvWvW soon. Total PvP newbie here, but I’ll serve well enough to absorb some extra damage — not unlike the way a slab of tofu makes a good shield against a steel two-handed sword bearing down from overhead.
It started off pretty random, with Joey getting bored of pve. “Lets go WvW!” he says. And sure enough, we hopped onto the GoM borderlands without any set objectives but to just join in fights. Inque then came on board and things started rollin’.
From claiming farms in the previous run, to capping a fort with only 2 groups (and a bit, i think. can’t remember) deserves a high five all around (though others would substitute ‘high fives’ for something else). I’d have to say that despite the lot of us being a bit lost in prepping for a siege, the guild did quite well in supporting each other with siege weapons, supplies, back-ups, rezs, and so on. It was also great to see that each group automatically assumed roles in defending or attacking or even going on a supply run (Kudos to Zarc’s group for bravely opting to be the runners). Oh, and Loroke for his strats on siege placements.
Initially we thought that the run would only take us an hour or so but I guess we had too much fun! The little recognition that the guild received after capping the fort was nice, and people were quick to come to our aid when the invaders started to press in.
It doesn’t matter if our world is winning or losing.. but for those haven’t joined in on the run, I highly recommend you to do so as you’d find out how really fun the people in this guild are.
Here’s to hoping that more guild members join in on the fun.
Can’t wait to finally claim a castle! GO GOATS!
Good Job Goats. When the opportunity presents itself, take the leadership role should there be non.
Military tactics do apply. Mobility, guerrilla tactics. We’ve been playing arma and some of those tactics can help. Been a blast commanding troops and actually holding ground and gaining some with some low amount of forces.
JUST A FUN FOLLOW-UP: Our September 4, 2012 game
There was a lone dolyak lumbering down from the pass when I thought to check out the view from the north. It was a relief, to say the very least.
Last night, I got my first real taste of Guild Wars 2 PvP. I was in a party with Inque, Toohdles, Blitzio, and Canyon. After a successful by-the-numbers takeover of the tower of Sunnyhill — and after taking an obscene amount of screenshots featuring the famous and much-celebrated goat flying high on a repulsively green banner — our party headed down to the nearby supply point to grab some supplies. We met with zero resistance and the most exciting thing that happened to me was when I slid down that giant wooden beam and I fell flat on my face, taking massive but ultimately non-lethal damage.
We grabbed some supplies, took them back to the tower, and built things. We climbed up to the very top of the tower via the worst staircase ever designed — by a charr engineer, no doubt — and plunked down the requisite amount of mysterious tiny barrels to set up a mighty trebuchet. We had arrow carts and a fully repaired gate and COME ON. WE HAVE AN AWESOME FORTRESS HERE AND NO SEA OF SORROWS CHUMP IS EVER GOING TO GET IN.
Then the green icon over the supply camp turned blue and my memory of the succeeding events can only come back to me now in flashes, not unlike a slickly-edited highlight reel after an exciting sporting event.
FLASH! The handful of SoS baddies, jumping around like mindless drones around our captured camp. FLASH! The horde of red names that soon followed. FLASH! The hasty retreat. FLASH! The line of valiant warriors lined up along the ridge, flinging bullets, arrows, and fireballs at our enemies far below. FLASH! InvaderD’s heroic — nay, Gandalfic — last stand in the narrow, rock-lined path, as we watched the carnage from above. FLASH! The mad dash to the tower gates. FLASH! The silence.
And then the lone dolyak did come lumbering down the mountain pass from the north, and the way was clear. It had supplies. We were going to make it.
“Want to escort it in?” Inque asked.
“Eh. I think it’ll make it,” I answered.
“You get experience from escorting the caravan,” said he.
“Great. I’ll head on down,” said me. And so I did, along with a bunch of other Goats.
The dolyak was just a few meters from our gate when the telltale sounds of battle reached my ears, and to my dismay, ten or so invaders leaped up the natural, slow-covered slope leading up to the tower. The timing and execution couldn’t have been better if we were actually in a cartoon and we were armed with guns that shot blue lasers and they were screaming “Cobraaaaaaaaaaaaa!” while flinging red lasers every which way. Except, of course, that these guys actually hit something: the dolyak. It went down hard and fast, and we all retreated to the safety of the tower.
What followed was a furious, prolonged battle that seemed to be swinging in our favor. People called out the hot spots as they developed. Left! Right! Men at the gates! We flung the requisite chunks of metal and balls of sizzling energy at them, and all was good. It was all going well until the blue, non-goat SoS menace brought in the catapults.
Within seconds of its appearance, the first catapult was already busy sending loyal Goats and their allies flying all over the fortified area of the tower. I got knocked out in plain view of the catapult, and it took the combined effort of Inque and InvaderD (at least, I think it was InvaderD) to get me back on my feet. I had no idea how to fight the catapults, though, and in the end, the wall crumbled and the enemy came streaming in. Even up to those last moments, I thought we had a chance of pushing them back — they were bunched up and headed towards the central area, making the blob a juicy target for a well-placed AoE spell. No such luck, though; we got wiped out. The final cherry on top was me falling from the wall down into the now-hostile encampment. As expected, the baddies tore me to bits in seconds.
A right rambunctious bunch of savages if you pardon my saying, good sirs.
That was how my first WvWvW game ended. With companions like you guys, it surely won’t be my last! It was fun, and we did lose spectacularly. I declared my intent to retreat to PvE — that comforting controlled environment of heroism, leveling up, and high adventure.
“Adventure time?” someone (was it Supah?) asked with a weary but eager voice.
“Adventure time.”
Why isn’t there a tale about how Lord Desmond single handedly pushed back a ravaging horde of barbarians ?
I devoted one sentence of my story to the epic exploits of Lord Desmond! Unfortunately, I was only able to snap the “after” pic of the legendary battle:
I’m sorry. :TT-TT:
Thanks for all your war stories guys! This thread is really shaping up to be a good read!
@Sharky
I agree that coming from ArmA has been helping me a bit on leading a group, but I still have ways to learn on how to be an effective leader on the field. Fong called me out on my Arma moments: “Just checking the maaap, Break break break!”.
EVEN MORE FUN WITH WvWvW: Our September 5, 2012 game
So last night, Stonemist Castle was rechristened OMGk Castle and adorned with countless blue banners featuring the big old goat.
I had been looking forward to a quiet, restful evening. I watched the latest Grimm, planned out some time to lie down and maybe finish the mystery novel I was reading, and popped into GW2 for a nice, relaxing round of PvE with Blitzio.
An hour after that, we were running for our lives against a bloodthirsty mob of Yak’s Bend invaders, and I had just led Blitzio down a wrong turn into a riverbed. Moments later, they fell upon us (like stink on a monkey, like white on rice, etc etc) and tore us to pieces in mere seconds. Everybody’s fair game out in the Eternal Battlegrounds, which for its epic name looks more like an idyllic fairytale vacation town instead of the site of unnumerable acts of violence, heroism, and sacrifice.
Welp. We tried again, and successfully reached our destination. Gaming is just full of these little anticlimaxes.
We had been on our way to the giant central castle on the map to gawk at the OMGk emblems flying and draped all over it. The people who were present during the claiming — Zarc, Supah, TOOH™, and anyone else I might not have noticed, apologies in advance — will know the gory details. All I know is that the OMGk banner flew high and proud for an improbably extended amount of time since the castle’s claiming.
We fought off invaders from opposite sides of the castle, patched up numerous holes in the walls, and ventured outside to quickly cap the outlying territory. People talked about trebuchets and arrow carts and other siege weapons I couldn’t be bothered to think too deeply about, because those things cost money and I had four silvers in my pocket. More and more people showed up on all three sides, and the fighting grew more and more in frequency and intensity.
In the end, I made the mistake of maybe walking into a stray meteor’s path, or maybe I attempted to headbutt a moving arrowhead. I forget. Whatever the reason, I got downed after an unusually good run of running back and forth and protecting the castle on two fronts, and quit to go to bed (skipping my mystery novel) soon afterwards.
I was happy to discover that the Goats and our allies successfully held the castle all night against all odds. Congratulations — I’m proud to fight alongside all of you!
Desmond was there as well. We still had the castle when I got home late this morning.
Desmond that’s right! MY LORD.
[quote='desoh87' pid='4971' dateline='1346812715']
Why isn’t there a tale about how Lord Desmond single handedly pushed back a ravaging horde of barbarians ?
[/quote]
More often than not, you’d find transformed necros always being the first to rush into a zerg. Maybe it’s the confidence in their ability in having brief moments of invulnerability, or maybe they’re.. no, sorry.. we’re just nuts.
There we were retreating to higher grounds on 4th September, trying our hardest to push back the flock of red tags by frantically mashing hot keys that seemed like would surely break our keyboards (or mouse).
While carefully taking aim on placing dots on the ground, I noticed something that just didn’t fit quite right.
A gigantic green lich lunatic.
Oh Desmond. You so crazy.
Sorry, I took this screenie at the very last minute.