Open a WoE 2 (WoE:SE) castle on a Sunday
[14:41] Haru: about the WoE:SE, we'd like to introduce them at some point, but we (well, at least I personally) lack experience with it, and with the changes they'd require for a server with a population like ours - so if you feel like it, would you please open a ticket in our gitlab suggesting it, detailing the kind of changes you think it'd require?
People on Discord encouraged me to make a new ticket for this, rather than the years old one.
One thing a lot of the guilds here have stated they'd like is replacing the current Sunday WoE1 with a WoE2 castle.
It wouldn't be too difficult, make the castle-realm map accessible via an npc (at least the Rachel one) nerf the guardians to roughly half of their default damage, block the treasure and GD and then open one castle and let people go ham. It doesn't need fantastic rewards to be fun.
https://irowiki.org/classic/War_of_Emperium_2 for more info on mechanics.
During WoE:
In more detail. Required changes for this server: The Barricade and Guardian Stone HP is probably fine. iRO classic apparently just left it as it was (150k on guardian stones, not sure on barricades, we could probably get numbers if needed) and they didn't have issues, we also had a few non-trans woe2s on restart, and the HP wasn't a big deal.
The summoned guardians would have to be nerfed. At default settings, they will mow down entire unprepared guilds. Replacing them with woe1 guardians is an option, although a sad one, as the woe1 guardians are useless at best. The SE guardians encourage teamwork and sticking together, as lone and under-geared players will quickly get picked off. A better option would be to start off at the top and then slowly nerf them down to a point where they still hurt and will take out single targets, but they're not unassailable killing machines, and where they're relatively harmless to a guild working together well.
You don't have ice picks or god items here, so the emp is fine and balanced not being a plant type.
Time-wise, it may need to be the full 2 hours to work. I'm not sure 1 hour is long enough if you're leaving the barricade and guardian stones at default HP, as they take a while to bash through for non-trans, and it may not be long enough to break one guild that's trying really hard to defend. Especially with no speed-pots on this server to combat slow grace and such.
After WoE:
Castle treasure drops would need to be replaced with a woe1 drop, or disabled. You could go custom and maybe some throw cool costumes or tickets or obbs something in there for the winning guild, to make it feel worthwhile? By default, it drops trans stuff, which is a no-no, never mind being completely useless.
The Guild Dungeon would have to be either disabled entirely, or replaced with a woe1 GD (either random or voted on?) Implementing Juno or Rachel GD at this stage of the game is not an option.
It would need tweaking, certainly, but what have you got to lose? WoE2 is very resource intensive, especially if you do the full 2 hours, so it'd be good for the economy too!
We were doing this as a 12-25 person group back on Restart (depending on the turnout) and if not always getting a castle, we were at least holding our own and having a ton of fun. WoE 2 works fine for small guilds as long as they're organised, and the added mobility with flags, bigger areas for fighting in, lack of internal-portals and the whole barricade mechanics just make it a ton of fun. Just opening one castle would make for some really fun fights.