The Campaign start: 23th of August.

Introduction.
Hello there, I am Rargnasha, Im the Organizer behind the event and the responsible person Horde side.
To start this out, I'd like to thank everyone participating in this event, both alliance and horde side, and a special thank you to Gogol for helping arrange this alliance side and to Drakenhoof for inspiring me to the intro of this campaign with his Bleeding Vale idea for a PvP event.

As all present witnessed, there was some trouble with the battles, that is what I'll be getting into, afterwards, people can discuss what went wrong and what can be improved for the next time.
To list the things I noticed and have spoken about:

Ganking OOC'ers.
The long wait - (Alliance side)
Fighting the Ressers.
General Ship Confusion.
Preparation.
PvP Strategies.

Ganking OOC'ers
We'll start out with the easiest- First, the Horde had some trouble with three alliance OOC'ers who kept slowing us down, standing untop of buildings using AoE, picking off our lowbies etc. It added a tad to the "Grarh!" Factor for me atleast, reckon that's one thing experience with event leading teaches you to deal with.

The Long Wait.
Next we have the long waiting time, as scheduled on my calenders (Both alliance and horde) the event was to be at 20:00, The Horde was ready to attack at 20:30 (Split the raid between Kristeas, Thenkar and myself). Half an hour late is ofcourse also a certain amount of time, even more given the certain amount of stress and low morale that seem to have been about (Due to some of the boat rules, that I'll explain later). I've heard from alliance side though that it was somewhat like three hours of waiting? (Overestimating perhaps?)

Fighting the Ressers.
Something that futher made the wait between the first and the second battle upon the boats. When the horde was to ressurect the fallen, we kept getting under attack and even killed. This is ofcourse not a display of ill will towards anyone, but a critical error of lack of communication, though I've heard that Gogol was spamming in his raid for people to stop. This is also the reason why one of the ships was Zerged, first the kept attacking the ressers, we spent about 10 minutes trying to get them to stop, me calling at Gogol to tell 'em, Gogol getting more and more frustrated (Possibly beacuse they didn't listen, that I don't know) Finally when I had my bit of this, we zerged the ship, killed all onboard, ressed our dead and told Gogol that he could send an alliance resser to get the dead on the ship up.

General Ship Confusion.
Now, this is one of the parts where there've been alot of confusion and have wrecked alot of raid morale on both sides, if my speculations are correct.
First, the Horde meant to have been doing a mini event to halt the alliance ships, unfortunantly, we had alot of people who were showing up in the last moment, plus additional late runners. So the mini event didn't get off the ground, which added futher to the stress factor of both myself and, I think, Gogol, when there was a very sudden change of plans in the 'story'.
However, we tried to adept as well as possible, though I fear that alot of miscommunications came across at this point.
Now, for the battle part of the ships, my plan was to have the Alliance wait inside the ships while the horde boarded the ships, once both factions were ready, there could be had propper naval combat, there were several major flaws with this tactic though and it'd need better thinking through, should another naval battle come to mind.

Preperation
-Will be added later-

PvP Stragtegies.
The next one here is something that was the biggest bone to pick for the dwarves, if I understood it correctly out from the talk I've had with some of their members.
The night before where Gogol and I were discussing PvP rules for this battle we agreed that it should be fully PvP-geared and with PvP tactics, so when The Horde was attacking The Alliance at the stranded camp, there's a large, very mean barricade. Which we the Horde knew was going to be used, so we decided to, without any warning (Other than our warcries in /y) to use our shamans to Water walk across the water and flank the dwarves in the back.
This was seen as cheating by some and as logic by others.

So- Time to kill off the trouble with communication! Hopefully for the prosperity of the Defias Brotherhood Realm!

Regarding the killing of ressers -- I'd just like to offer an apology on behalf of the Arathor contingent. Gogol was indeed saying 'Let them res!' in the raid chat, but we were very few on our boat and just saw a couple of warriors land, and thought 'warriors, not ressers!' and so we leapt in and killed. Nervous trigger fingers, I guess you could say, and, as foolish as it might seem in hindsight, we didn't realise that anyone was trying to res near us.

So yeah, a heartfelt 'erk sorry!' from the Arathorians who were there for that moment, and a thanks to everyone for the rest of the event!

Yeah. My /shoo and /point at corpses spam didn't do the trick either. I landed without attacking anybody afterwards and got zerged like an icecream truck by a couple of fat kids.

Anyway, I had fun. The logistics on this scale are massive; something is bound to go wrong. You just have to roll with it and adapt in my opinion.

Getting the group up, explaining the situation and the pre-RP always takes time. I don't know how you arranged it, but perhaps next time we should begin the event and the RP a bit before the arranged PvP starts. That'd give some time to the late people too (they always irk me, because I like to be atleast 10 minutes early >.<). Still, I played my own part in stalling because I failed to notice Rarg designating my ship on the first time. Sorry for that!

I remember my ship having a couple of OOCers, two druids and something I think. But I don't think they were such big nuisance after the first fight. Also they did their share of ress killing.
Forgetting that, I think my ship had little trouble in ressing. One (I think it was a DoL member?) did attack me, when I ressed after the OOCer had killed me, but he stopped quickly, so it was clearly an accident. Don't remember your name, but I lashed at you too. Sorry for that, I thought the druid had gained a friend! xP

About our PvP strategy, I didn't know if it was planned or not, but I can see the point on the both arguments: cheating and logic.
We usually arrange the starting climate very carefully. "You stand here, we attack from there." Predictable and safe. It's easy (and even somewhat logical) to see the playing with rules as cheating.
On the other hand thought, war's chaotic and things get unpredictable at times. The point was also raised in the last campaign I participated in planning.
Of course, we can't make utterly realistic battles, I think that in the future it'd be enough that we draw the line together. Some think that the battle must be well orchestrated, for some it's enough that they don't know who'll win it. In the event, I suppose what happened was that the Horde side thought "We did attack from here, but with a surprise route!". Valid tactic in war, but the problem was that some on the other side had different concepts of our 'Rules of Combat'. That's what I think, atleast.

Also, final thing about the ships. I can see this would've worked better as a minievent. With our numbers the ship was very crowded and the battle chaotic.

Nevertheless I had immeasurable amounts of fun in the event. I thank all the participants and especially Rarg an' Gogol, I think you did your job well!
I'm sure we'll be able to smooth out these little things by the next events, hopefully this post's useful for that goal.

Huh! I didn't know there was such an event.... Where it had been announced ? It's a bit hard for players who are not in "BIG Rp guild" to get involved, as we only have this forum to beeing updated :'(

Maybe we should have a calendar on this forum, would be useful...

There IS a calendar. Not that it's used though!

Well I was a bit confused with the ressing part on the ships as well. Suddenly I hear clangs of fighting behind me and guildie's healthbars dropping. I reacted instinctively. You have my appology, but I also have a question. Why exactly did the ressers chose to ress 'on' the ship? (And how did they get up there?)
It would seem to me there were safer 'waters' to ress, no? Then again my lack of experience with boat fights might hide the reason from me but would seem the ress range might be sufficient to ress in the water, no?

As for the charge in the back... well, I don't think there's any point in calling it 'logic' or 'cheating' either way. There was no clear agreement on it, and it caused confusion.
Whether this is accepted strats or not is irrelevant for future events, as long as there is clarity.

Simply put -- try mounting your flying mount in the water.

Jeanpierre/Jeanclaude wrote:
It would seem to me there were safer 'waters' to ress, no? Then again my lack of experience with boat fights might hide the reason from me but would seem the ress range might be sufficient to ress in the water, no?

I think it was a mix of reasons, among them would be that unless someone spammed water walking stuff (like path of frost) the whole time, it would be hard to get away fast. Also the fact that water rezzers did get killed, if not by stray arrows it was by the oocers, water form D:

Gnash wrote:Simply put -- try mounting your flying mount in the water.

A team clever enough to use water walking to outflank proves resourcefull enough to handle that. There are many ways to overcome that inconvenience.

Still it does not solve my riddle of what happened to the rear deck of our boat. How does one get 'on' the boat? If not by mount, then perhaps using the Charge ability of a warrior? At least, I only saw a horde warrior on our deck that was unfortunately killed. Don't get me wrong.. you have my appology for the kill but if indeed a Charge was used, then I doubt the confusion can be blamed on us.

As for the attacks on people in the water, I can only mourn that occurring. Water was clearly 'out of bounds'. I can assure you, however, that I did not contribute to that.

Not with one shaman you can't. Or well, I don't see why we need ress in the water just because you guys can't keep your trigger-finger from the left mouse button.

And I really don't know which boat you're speaking of. I was refering to a little miscommunication with the Kingdom of Arathor earlier.

I think we had a dk somewhere, but i think path of frost is one of the things that should not be spammed, or am i wrong?

It was a fun event, the boat idea was really good and provided a nice change from the same old land pvp. I'm sorry if I killed a resser somewhere but the enclosed spaces was hard to judge who was doing what.

My little problem was with the battles at the wreckage site. Now I have been waiting for some pvp there for quite some time and have suggested it countless times for ages so thanks for using it. It is of course an epic place for a battle - you got an accesible wall to put ranged units onto and a single bottlneck entrance into the wall where defences can be made. Also you have the NPCs firing arrows before you and you cannons flying at you too so it is indeed a wonderful place for a battle. But then when you stand there waiting for half an hour for a frontal charge it is really a let down when the enemy totally bypasses it and attacks from the rear. It completely ruined the setting and caused some of our guys to leave. This was our problem and not the tactic itself

I know three classes able to provide the necessary utility to mount up on water but that was hardly my point. My claim is that we ended up getting a warning for killing ressers. An action we had no intention of doing intentionally. The DoL appologised, as appropriate, but I want to make sure we know what exactly it is we appologised for. If it was a man ressing in the water trying to get his mount up, then sure, but I do not recall DoL being aggressive against people in the water. If it was a warrior using Charge on our members to get on the deck of the boat, then I'd like to know if that could be considered common practice in 'boat events'.

Usually, a charge implies an attack, you see?

All in all great idea and good fun, as pointed out there were some issues but nothing that cannot be corrected/improved to the next battle. I loved the ship idea!

Jomir/Nastor/Gannas wrote:It was a fun event, the boat idea was really good and provided a nice change from the same old land pvp. I'm sorry if I killed a resser somewhere but the enclosed spaces was hard to judge who was doing what.

My little problem was with the battles at the wreckage site. Now I have been waiting for some pvp there for quite some time and have suggested it countless times for ages so thanks for using it. It is of course an epic place for a battle - you got an accesible wall to put ranged units onto and a single bottlneck entrance into the wall where defences can be made. Also you have the NPCs firing arrows before you and you cannons flying at you too so it is indeed a wonderful place for a battle. But then when you stand there waiting for half an hour for a frontal charge it is really a let down when the enemy totally bypasses it and attacks from the rear. It completely ruined the setting and caused some of our guys to leave. This was our problem and not the tactic itself

Haha, funny you mention that since I regretted it aswell. We bypassed the only obstacle that made this particular skirmish stand out.

Next time just put brain on zero, target infinity and charge that wall of wood and dwarves It would have looked more awesome aswell.

Jomir/Nastor/Gannas wrote:But then when you stand there waiting for half an hour for a frontal charge it is really a let down when the enemy totally bypasses it and attacks from the rear. It completely ruined the setting and caused some of our guys to leave. This was our problem and not the tactic itself

Dat's bekoz da warboss wus all triksy-like.

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:Next time just put brain on zero, target infinity and charge that wall of wood and dwarves It would have looked more awesome aswell.

Isn't that standard Sin Belore "tactics"?

Sinnadrin wrote:

Kristeas Sunbinder wrote:Next time just put brain on zero, target infinity and charge that wall of wood and dwarves It would have looked more awesome aswell.

Isn't that standard Sin Belore "tactics"?

Noncense, they are blood elves. The tactics are to sit and wait for the green ones to become meat shields! Or so I suspect. /nod

Anaei/Vezullia wrote:Noncense, they are blood elves. The tactics are to sit and wait for the green ones to become meat shields! Or so I suspect. /nod

That'd be ours.

Or, as in this conflict, flying above the battlefield like scavenging birds, scrying the outcome and preying on the weak and isolated.

Sinnadrin wrote:

Or, as in every conflict, running away when faced with the tiniest chance of getting cut.

fix'd for ya.

The mobs in Westguard keep should be nerfed.