Alliance Battles: In depth(ish)

During most of my posts, I assume that you the reader have an equal or greater knowledge of the things I talk about. This is in part because it saves me time, and I figure that if you read my blog, there's a good chance you share my interests, be it Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Counter Strike, or whatever (for the record, people who share none of these interests, yet still read this blog, I salute you).

However, even if you play City of Heroes, you may have never heard of the Paragon PD, or ever played an Assault Rifle blaster. Even if you play CS: Source, you might not have heard of CS:2d. And, even if you play Guild Wars, you might not partake in Alliance Battles. Maybe you don't like PvP. Maybe you find vanquishing in Hard Mode gives you better faction. Maybe you're an elite GvGer, and ABs just don't do it for you. So, I decided to explain a few things about ABs, just in case. In any case, enjoy (And as a warning, the word "faction" gets used a lot. It's not my fault, I didn't make the game).

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In order to join an Alliance Battle, you must own Guild Wars: Factions. This seems obvious, but it's more complicated than that. You must also be part of a guild, where your guild leader also owns GW:Factions, and has chosen and allegiance for your guild. You can pick the Kurzick faction, or the Luxon faction. It's mostly an aesthetic choice, but your guild can only form or join an alliance with guilds that hold the same allegiance. There seems to be a consensus that Kurzicks are immature, while the Luxons play cheap. I don't really notice a difference, except I see many more R/N touchers on the Luxon side than I ever do on the Kurzick side.

So now that you belong to a faction, you can go fight in Alliance Battles. Visit the NPC contact for your faction located in your guild hall, and you will be taken to the staging area of one of five maps. Two maps favor the Kurzicks, two maps favor the Luxons, and one is neutral. Winning on a map favored by your enemy grants you bonus faction points. Faction points are used to increase you, your guild's, and your alliance's standing with the faction you belong to. Alliances with enough faction points can have entire in game towns given to them, granting them special bonuses and perks (that, and everyone who enters that town or outpost gets reminded who's house their in). You can also buy crafting materials and PvE only skills. The more faction you transfer into alliance, the higher your "rank" gets. It's tracked in the form of a title, letting everyone know that you've toiled away. That, and it's easier to get a team for an AB when you're known as "Hero of the Kurzickz" rather than "Kurzick Supporter."

In this staging area, you join a team. You have control over who you team with, but quite often, you're teaming with strangers, which isn't that much of an issue, to be honest. Each team has four players, and each side in a match has three teams. On a good day, you'll be teamed with three friends, playing with eight strangers, competing against twelve other strangers. On any other day, you're playing with eleven strangers, against twelve strangers, one of which might have a grudge from a previous match and try to make your life hell.

Each map has two bases, and seven shrines. You respawn in your base, or in a rez shrine. Shrines are captured by moving within range of them, which causes a gauge to fill or deplete. If you completely deplete the gauge, you've stolen it from the enemy. If you fill it, you've captured it. The more people present, the faster it empties or fills, but the speed is capped at four people, so anymore is a waste. Because of this, you are constantly on the move, trying to capture more shrines, as the ones you already control are being captured by your opponents. When you capture a shrine, it spawns up to 3 allied NPCs, which will stay and defend it. The type of NPC (warrior, ranger, monk, etc) is consistent, and based on the type of shrine you've captured. Every 7 seconds, your team gets 1 point for each shrine is controls. Every kill you score earns your team 3 points. The first team to reach five hundred points wins. In the event that either team captures and controls all seven shrines for one full minute, they win automatically.

Upon winning, you receive 1000 faction, plus one point for each point your team scored. Since it takes 500 points to win, you usually receive 1500 faction for winning a match. There is an underdog bonus for teams that win on a map favored by the enemy; +500 for a slightly favored map, +1000 for a deeply favored map. So, a Luxon winning in Ancestral Lands gets 2500 faction simply for winning on that map. In addition, in the course of the match, you earn 10 faction for each kill. You also earn 10 Balthazar faction per kill (PvP only faction, earned in any form of PvP). So, you can earn 500 to 1000 extra faction by virtue of kills alone.

I'm sure you knew most of that, and could have phrased it more concisely or at least, in a more approachable manner.

But for those who didn't, now you know why I disagree with the "don't fight cap" crowd.