My husband has been trying to convince me that the best way to get experience and reknown points in Warhammer Online is to capture flags and take keeps. So I went on a patrolling adventure with him last night. He found a nearly full warband with ~20-members. I was the 23/24 possible members. We captured some flags in the elf campaign and, full of ourselves, we tried to take one of the keeps in the dwarf vs. greenskins campaign. We took out the door guards, then took the keep door down with a battering ram, followed by clearing the 1st floor and then moved onto the second floor. To take a keep, the opposite faction must kill the keepmaster. The keepmaster is a high level hero — HEARTY as a roach!

Taking out the keepmaster and his guards was about all our warband could take. Problems happened when players from Destruction joined to defend the keep. We attempted 4 times and at least four times I found my “tank” character alone on the second floor surrounding by the Destruction crew. Ouch! No exp and no renown points — 2-hours of my time wasted that we could have been doing quests and playing in scenarios. So we went back to taking flags. The warband’s numbers had decreased significantly due to demoralization. We felt that we needed more tanks and healers to actually take a keep. So we decided to take the Unicorn flag with our smaller warband. But alas, the hero bug still existed and when we had done significant damage to the hero, he would retreat and regain all of his hit points. Soooo irritating …

Anyhow, I went along with my husband for a night of keep patrol and I didn’t like it. I think the most irritating things for me were the heros retreating and the lack of coordination of the warband. I don’t blame it on the players, though, because we were trying our hardest. I guess what I would like is for the leader of the warband to be able to decide the composition of the warband and for people to join that fit what is needed — sorta like hiring mercenaries. I think that is sorta what a guild is supposed to be like. So far neither of the guilds I have joined have created a full warband patrol. Perhaps that is something I can suggest … hmmm …