New Castle Wars Armor Costs 1-3 Months
By Omali
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I promised that I would republish all of my Runescape related articles on MMO Fallout here, so here it is.
Back in pre-MMO Fallout 2008, I pondered whether or not Square Enix hired sadists to create the biggest bosses for Final Fantasy XI, and if I remember correctly my verdict was yes. Of course, the barrel of that days gun was pointed at Beyond The Limitation, a Final Fantasy guild that gave a detailed description of their fight against the boss Pandemonium Warden, before they finally gave up and trudged out some 20+ transformations and 18 hours later. Oddly enough, the group left the fight so that their, presumably 20+ hour, victory would not have been picked up by the press and used against gamers. Rather, their defeat was picked up by the press and used against Square Enix, especially the following quote:
People were passing out and getting physically ill. We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible new story about how video games ruin peoples lives.
So Square Enix later altered the boss battle, and several others, to be shorter, but the story still stands almost two years later as one of the remaining reasons why MMOs have some of their less desirable reputations, mind numbing tediousness.
But speaking of mind numbing segues, Runescape launched a pretty substantial update to the mini-game Castle Wars, a capture-the-flag style game where players representing one of two deities fight to take the other teams flag. Each Castle Wars game lasts 20 minutes, and on more populated worlds regularly runs down to who can zerg rush with the most area of effect spells.
The armor Castle Wars provided was something of a status symbol, as despite not being particularly powerful, the armor took a lot of dedication to the game to obtain. For winning a game of Castle Wars, you gain two tickets. A tie results in one ticket, and a loss results in no tickets. At twenty minutes per round, even the most basic set requires almost five hours of game time, assuming you win every match.
The rewards become increasingly ridiculous as you move up to the tier 4 armor, as shown in the chart below:
Rank 4 armor, Profound, requires a minimum of 1,975 games (this is assuming you win every game), which will take 658 hours to complete. This amounts to over 27 days of pure Castle Wars, 24 hours a day, assuming you win every game you ever play. To put it bluntly:
- For each win, the statistic remains the same.
- For each tie, add 20 minutes.
- For each loss, add 40 minutes.
- Every time your win:loss ratio goes down 10%, you waste over 70 hours of pure game time. So a player with a 75% rating will lose over seven and a half days of pure game time. That is an extra 182 hours of time spent making no progress. To top it off, my figures dont include the wait time in between rounds. Factor that in, and you end up with almost 150% of the previous estimation.
The Castle Wars professional cape, which costs 2 tickets, is only available after playing five thousand games of Castle Wars. Accomplishing this would take almost 87 days, factoring in waiting time, playing 24 hours a day. I dont dictate to players how they should spend there time, but there is a fair line between grind and ridiculous that both the Profound armor and the Professional cape crosses. Players who obtain this cape will surely be greeted as they wear it in the streets, but I have a feeling it wont be with the respect they might anticipate.
More on Runescape as it appears.
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