This post brought to you by Elmenstor of Gorfang


Oh man, I just got a brilliant idea!
 
If new players want to avoid twinks, why don't they just pay for the game and hit level 12? BAM! No more twinks bothering them, and they get a metric waffle-load of more content.
 
I am a genius. Clearly, I should be president.
 
Fact o' the matter is, Mythic is a business, and businesses have no reason to listen to people who don't want their product. See, the inherent logic of people complaining about "twinks" is flawed:
 
1.) "I want to play WAR"
2.) You go get the free trial.
3.) "This game seems like a lot of fun!"
4.) "Oh wait, I keep getting killed by people who are stuck at level 10 because they don't pay for the game."
 
Then there are three possibilities:
 
5a.) You like the game, and because you're not an idiot, you understand that twinks can't follow you once you hit level 12. So you buy it, and enjoy the rest of the game.
 
5b.) You don't like the game enogh to pay for it, but you don't mind the free trial. Nobody has any reason to care what you think about the trial, because it's clear that you wont buy the game.
 
5c.) You refuse to buy the game because twinks just make you so angry. Nobody has any reason to care what yo think about the trial, because it's clear that you don't understand that there's more to the game than level 10.
 
 
Clearly, if you fall into categories 5b or 5c, you aren't going to buy the game no matter what, and catering to you is a catch-22. If Mythic caters to your whining and somehow eliminates twinks, then all they are really doing is eliminating a reason for you to actually pay for the game. Ergo, if you are playing the trial and complaining about twinks, and still haven't paid for the game, then you aren't going to pay for the game, and you should really stop wasting everyone's time by pretending that you are.
 
And if you do pay for the game, and just make endless-trial accounts because you "like Tier 1," then there's especially no reson for anybody to care what you think, because Mythic is already getting your money. If you cancel your subscription to only play endless-trial, re-read this post from the beginning.
 
You cannot say that more people would be encouraged to pay for WAR if there were no twinks, because there would be no more twinks anyways if they paid.
 
If you don't pay for the game, there's no reason for anybody to care what you think. If you do pay for the game, you will notice that all of your complaints about twinks are already fixed.
http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/board/message?board.id=newplayerdiscussion&message.id=15106#M15106

Take a gander at the ongoing thread here.

Now, it seems to me that generally when a few posts in a forum are made, that's the minority of the population speaking on behalf of the majority. If this is true, it appears the Endless Trial is bringing a whole lot more people back to the game, along with true noobs, than many have given it credit for. Sure, T1 isn't as balanced as it used to be considering the number of twinks involved (haha!), but for the most part this hasn't stopped people from subbing to the game one bit. Honestly, when you think about it, having a heavily twinked out free trial is more representative of the end game anyway. One does not walk into T4 and pwn, after all. You're subjected to the same sort of twinky nonsense that you currently get in the Endless Trial.

That being said, populations are growing. Like any recent game WAR had it's super-highs supported mainly by marketing and propaganda, with a dash of WoW/EQ/LotRO apathy, which then took a pretty sharp decline over the next 9 months. I believe after Aion was released that we hit the subscriber base (all those layoffs were a bit premature) of about 45k. Now, with the 1.3.x patches, MOST of the issues with Warhammer have been all but squashed. Yes, Bright Wizards and Sorcs still dish out STUPID amounts of damage (it's their job), and your Warrior Priests and DoK's are nigh-unkillable (again, their damn job), but class balance is working itself out as people L2P and spread the common knowledge around willy-nilly. Indications like this forum post are a spot of brightness in the blood and gore spattered fields of WAR we commonly know.

I'll just get it out of the way, WAR is on an uptick. T2 and T3 have had more action in them than I've seen in a long time, hosting 30-40 players in RvR during prime hours. Development has slowed down, but is far from stopped or going into maintenance mode. There's even some whispers of change coming with the next patch that further compliments changes to the T4 experience. WAR isn't the all-out success that many of us hoped it would be, but it's starting to become the PvP/RvR niche game that it's been aiming for all along.
I love twinking! For those unfamiliar with the term, it stems from WoW describing a character decked out with the best possible gear at a level transition. In WoW this was every ten levels on the 9's. There were level 9, 19, 29, etc, twinks for each tier made for dueling and battlegrounds. Now, like most things I'd imagine this didn't actually originate in WoW, but being the largest game in the world, most MMORPGers probably understand references to this the best.

The Endless Trial has really made twinking come out in full force. For the LONGEST time I've heard players and guildies alike pine over the dreams that one day we would be able to /xpoff, and stay in T1 forever. Here gameplay is simple and killing is gratuitous. Crowd Control is extremely limited and mostly set aside for Tanks, Morale abilities are effective without being overpowered, and every class fills a role on the battlefield without being overshadowed. I've seen pretty much every class excel at its focused archetype when left in the hands of skilled players. Although I prefer taking a class well out of it's archtype, i.e. melee Runepriest, an equally skilled and geared player will easily be able to rock out significantly better numbers that I would ever be able to, but it's fun!


First off, and most importantly is getting your level up to R10. Fairly simple, and every player will have no issues doing this over time, although a few tips will get you there slightly faster. You're only going to have a handful of abilities, and typically at r10 you'll receive your archtype defining ability. For Tanks this is Guard and Hold The Line, Healers get Rez, MDPS get Charge and an AoE Detaunt or Stealth+Sneak Attack, RDPS is a mixed bag of damage or utility abilities. 

Don't forget to also use all of your renown points as well, for ranged classes go with Ballistics or Intelligence, Healers feel free to take your Willpower, but melee I would recommend Weapon Skill as the abundance of players stacking Armor talismans will make this worthwhile and by the end of the guide, your STR stat should be really damn close to the soft cap.


Your second goal to achieve is gear. Oh sure, most players will be more than happy to run around with their Decimator set and Vengeance gear, along with 4 of the +10 wounds accessory pieces, but the real twinks are going to value the blues with empty slots instead, and blue accessory pieces too. Are you running around in T1 with a +% crit chance weapon? No? Well then...
 
There are four main ways to go about collecting your uber-gear.
  • Zone influence rewards, gained through RvR and taking battle objectives
  • Lair boss drops, who drop a helmet, main hand weapon, and off hand weapon/shield/book/chalice
  • Random mob drops, new to the Endless Trial are repairable slotted drops.
  • PQ rewards, both bags and influence rewards

Influence for EvC will be the easiest to attain by far. If you're an RvR kind of person, you'll most likely get all three of these by the time you hit 10/10 anyway. This gear is some of the best, but not in every instance, you'll just have to figure that out on your own. I'll come back to this in better detail later.


This is where the third step comes into line. Once you have figured out what gear is going to give you the most return, you have to balance around stat caps. The stat cap is something T4 players are more familiar with being 1050, but for each Tier it gets lower and lower. The trick to working with the cap is simply to get as close to it as possible, and dump the remainder into other stats that enhance your survivability. Oh, and I should probably mention the cap for stats is 320, armor is set at 75% (anything more pads against attackers armor mitigation), and resistances are capped around 40%. These are just "soft" caps, so you can dump significantly more into them, it's just you'll  be getting half the return value, but sometimes this isn't a bad thing.

Once you pass a soft cap, any additional points dumped into it will be cut in half, excluding armor which works a bit differently. The benefit to this is the small handful of abilities that can reduce your stats and resistances. Even though your contribution to stats is cut in half, the debuff still takes from the total amount of points you have spent in the first place. Example, your STR is at 340 (20 over cap), and you're debuffed by 60, instead of losing the full 60 points of stat, you only lose 20 (doubled from being over the cap), and another 20 (bringing you under the cap). Even so, it's something I try to avoid as those stat points are better spent in defensive stats (INI or TGH) for casters/ranged or WS for melee armor penetration.

Having nicely balanced stats is what separates a well twinked toon from someone endlessly dumping everything into their main damage stat. If you aren't understanding why from the explanation above, leave a comment and I'll do my best to enlighten you further.

   
The fourth point to make is the necessary crafting to get all of the potions and talismans you'll need to nicely polish off your game. Being on a trial account, you simply won't have the opportunity to use the auction house and snatch up the overabundance of loot available. Sure you can grind out a few gold and beg a full account players to run there and retrieve items for you, but chances are there's gonna be a markup, and that won't come cheap.

Talisman Making and Scavenging will get you the talismans you'll need for both DPS (STR, BAL, INT), HPS (WIL), and Armor. You'll be missing out on Salvaging along with Weapon Skill, Wounds, Initiative, Resistances, and Magical Essence (mat for tali making) but those aren't really that important. The reason I say this is because you're going to need to break down a LOT of gear to attempt to get these blue mats, and beyond that you'll need a "special" crit to convert it fully into a purple talisman. Surely it's possible, but nowhere near as efficient. Your talisman making agenda should consist mainly of your prime stat, and armor. 

Stats cap out at Rank 6 and +17 or +127 for armor. Use everything else during your quest for the epic drops, and save up enough +17/+127's to throw in your final set. Once you have all these in place, you can respec to your longer term crafting profession. Alternatively, if you're like me and have a 200/200 Talisman maker, you can down-convert all your high rank materials to R1 mats, and pump out tons of pretty much anything you need. This would really be the only viable way to get your hands on those Salvaging-Only +17 talismans. Also to note along that line of thinking, you can just as easily downgrade Crit talismans to T1 levels as well...


 
Apothecary and Butchering will get you everything you need for potions buffing stats and armor, along with heal, HoT, and absorb potions. The alternative to Butchering is Cultivating, which will only net you the seeds you can find from a standard merchant. These are GTAoE napalm or snare, thorns, and a couple other utility effects. Nothing in Cultivating is really worth taking at any tier, and short of them all getting massive buffs in the future, currently they're rather useless. With all that being said, Cultivating had in previous patches seeds for damn near everything. These seeds still exist, but you can expect to pay quite a bit to get your hands on them as most players don't recirculate them freely. They no longer drop out in the wild, making them excessively valuable.

Potions come in a variety of different crit levels and effects. You can also buy potions from the RvR Quartermaster by using up Recruit Medallions. DO THIS. The RvR Quartermaster heal potions do not use the same cooldown timer as the crafted potions. This means in a tough fight, BOTH potions can be used in quick succession which should be able to take down any other player not doing the same, or let you survive long enough to flail at a healer to give you some love. The blue stat potions can boost you around 30 points for up to an hour (and with the right mats you'll make 5 of these at a time), armor is similar boosting up to 260-ish for an hour as well.

One thing to keep in mind however, stat potions will overwrite other stat potions. You can only have one running at a time. Armor shares it's slot with Resistance potions, so you can only have one of four defenses running there as well. This is something to keep in mind depending on your class and stats. Are you a tank? If so, you don't really need a whole lot more armor, so use a resist pot. Are you a healer? Chances are you may have a resist buff you can hit yourself with, so use an armor pot. See how that works? Now, if someone hits you with a buff, it doesn't remove the potion, just the stronger buff standing takes precedence. Also, potions persist through death, while buffs do not. If you're separated from your buffer, or the effect wears off, you'll still have the potion keeping your stats floating high.



Right then, enough of all that nonsense. Let's get into specifics about where to find the phat loot. Well, for Order anyway, it probably translates to Destro just as well.

Norsca!

For the Endless Trial players, you're going to be very limited in the various amount of ways you can attain gear. For the most part, you'll want to be hitting the Ch 4 PQ's in Norsca. The actual rewards from finishing the PQ's are lackluster, and the influence rewards aren't all that stunning either except the purple bag, but the real loot you're looking for is the repairable Prudent, and Worthy gear that drops at random from the mobs. Champions, Heroes, and Lords have a significantly higher chance of dropping these pieces which makes advancing the PQ to further stages worthwhile. You won't be able to find these on the more common database sites, or at least I haven't found any yet. They're new additions to the loot tables for T1, and they drop all over the place. All of them are slotted, and have considerably better stats that the renown gear merchant Vengeance items. The blue weapons can even rival RvR influence rewards in overall power as well.

You'll also want to keep an eye out for
Gale-Runners and Wanderer shoulders or helms, or if the stats on those aren't worth your time you can go with War-Torn for an empty slot and great resistances. One of the WH's in my guild has a full set of War-Torn which give him resists way past the soft cap and mitigation into the 50% range. There are also blue versions of these, Storm-Coursers and Intruders, and purple versions, Tempest-Riders and Interlopers. Don't worry too much about these however, the difference between the greens and purples are a mere 2 stat points, and 8 resists. Hardly worth the time to grind when you could be killing people instead.

 
So that's it? Well no, not really, that's all the Endless Trial players can accomplish unfortunately. To finish out the rest of your twinking you're going to need access to the rest of the game as well. Of course, that isn't going to stop me from sharing a few more secrets!

Next up are two lair bosses found in Ekrund and The Blighted Isle respectively. Obviously if you're on a trial account, you won't be able to get over there, but for the rest they're easy enough to do with 3 people.
 








As you can see I'm not only a novice at youtube-ing, but these bosses are really not that intensive when you have decent gear. The drops are probably the best possible for T1 unless you're trying something aside from your normal spec, like a DPS healer, or a BAL stacked axe-throwing Slayer, or something like that. However they're not the last bit of gear you'll be looking for.

If you've got a toon that can make their way to Altdorf, then you're all set for some bargain hunting on the Auction house. Okay, really there aren't going to be any bargains at all. Everything in there is going to be marked up to the moon (because people are greedy), and it's just a fast way to get geared. However, some people LIKE fast and have LOTS AND LOTS of money to blow on it. Well, I've done my share of poking around the AH, and you will occasionally find a pretty good deal on something that you haven't seen dropped yet. I would actually make this my last stop after a night of whatever just to give a quick look-see what's inside. Not something everyone can do, be it lack of gold, or lack of sub, but it fills in the slots decently enough.

The final stop on this trip took me out to the Shadowlands for the Chapter 5 influence reward. There you'll find a r10 blue chest or gloves with a talisman slot in it. The stats are quite good, and the empty slot seals the deal. I haven't checked to see if every character has equally good stuff coming from there, but for my RP it was a chest, and Slayer it was gloves. I found the below PQ to be fairly easy and rewarding to get influence without getting owned. Also, if you have butchering it's a real treat.




So that should do it! Everything that I've gathered (except the super secret Fallout Guild secrets), whilst running about in the T1 Endless Trial should be here. Take what you will and apply it to your own experiences. I'll be on the Badlands server ready to rock out some angry Firerunie DPS with ya.


Cheers!
Ah, well there's the second video. At the moment I don't have any annotations done, and I'm sure I'll add some sort of music to it eventually, just nothing really strikes my fancy at the moment.


Of course, with the second video done, that does mean my guide has come to an end... I suppose I'll have to post that sometime this week. Hehe...

Figger I'd post something! I blame the twitter for stealing my normal posting thunder... ah well.

Still working on getting the Blighted Isle boss on video, this little project is taking me a while to smush together.

Okay, I've been spending far too much time killing in T1, and (although not as much) farming for gear in T1. However, it's not without fruition. I've been playing my melee Runepriest in the Badlands T1 trial...

Yeah. Like, up in your face, beating you with a stick kind of melee.



That being said, and shown, I'm working on a Tier 1 Endless Trial Twink Guide. A lot of things are fairly easy to figure out, but with so many people out there having no idea what they're doing wrong, it should help. Keep an eye out for it in the coming days. I'll be building as contextually as possible for a new player coming to the Trial and having absolutely nothing in their pockets. Things to do, things not to miss, where to go, and how to kick ass in every fathomable way. It should be a fun one to break my drought of posting...

Cheers!
I think people could easily muck about in T1 for three months.

So it takes about 2-3 game sessions to hit the R10 cap in pretty much any given class. Scenarios are non-stop at any given time of the day, PQ's are lit up like christmas trees across the map, and warbands roam the beaches of Nordland in waves of blood. I figure three months would be about the length of time that one could level up 10 different classes on each side to the cap and get a feel for them. So far I've got 4 finished out, and working on a fifth.

Normally, I'd be more than happy to bounce around in T4 with my Slayer or Engi, but some guildies that are returning to the game hit up the trial first to see if the performance enhancing drugs from 1.3.2 had kicked in yet. They're far from disappointed. However, reluctant to sub to the full game they're hanging out in T1 for the time being. It's a nice break from the constant full scale war of T4, and when they get online for the night I usually kick out 2-3 hours with em. So far I've got a Marauder, Chosen, Choppa, Squig Herder, and Witch Elf rolling around. It's safe to say I prefer the deeps.

I might even be switching over to Iron Rock Destro when these guys finally re-sub to the game, at least part time. The Witch Elf is the first stealth class I've touched since... ah... I guess ever. I had an Assassin in Shadowbane, and a Rogue in WoW, but neither of them really felt like their stealth was really useful. The Witch Elf is just something else. You're pretty much guaranteed a kill when you mosey into the backlines and pick yourself out a nice juicy Bright Wizard for the devouring. It's so damn satisfying, even though I'm usually slapped to the ground immediately afterwards.

It'll only be a part time deal I'd imagine. Most of the guys already have fully ranked and geared Order toons on Badlands, and when we get together it's a flurry of steamrolling, blood spilling, utter madness. I think the rekindled interest mostly stems from our very first server on Chaos Wastes where we all met up in the first place. Playing Destruction at the time, we formed the largest guild on the server (Chaos Wastes) as Dogs of War. Now that I look back on it, we were kinda scary. We played the oRvR/RP server, and when the guild was online, we all rolled around in a huge 2-3 warband deep mass of bodies. Didn't matter what your level was, if the guild was running in T2, everyone came to T2. If we were rolling around in T3, you could find at least a group of players ten levels lower. Crazy times.

Maybe it's rediscovering all the nostalgic moments throughout the game, or just wanting to get into our enemies heads. Destruction was our first choice when the game released, it's how we all met and formed deep gamerships (gamer relationships? like a bromance? lol). Normally in games, I'm a faction purist. One side or the other, no looking back. However WAR has so much to offer in their non-mirrored mirror classes it justifies things a little. Sure a Borc is equivalent to a Swordmaster, but they're so different at the same time. 24 classes in the game make for an incredibly diverse environment, and playing for one team the whole time means your missing out on easily half of the game.

Much as I prefer a one-sided approach to my gaming, WAR has too much to offer. It won't be a perfect split, but playing Destro may take up about 25% of my time in WAR. Should be interesting. =D
You've done well Warhammer. The Endless Trial and the New User Journey are something of a hit. Anytime during the day or night I can jump onto my Destro toons on Iron Rock and spank out some deliciously simple RvR. The changes to Empire and Chaos are well done, and laid out nicely. It makes me feel like the very beginning of WAR, over a year ago now, with the amount of population running around. The battles are epic flowing waves of bodies crashing into each other over and over again.


Now lets talk about what you COULD be doing that would revitalize the game. Oh, and this is going to have some evil naughty and hated words in it, but it's for the best.


Microtransactions. Seriously, we can all feel it coming, but how can you do it right while still enticing people to get the full subscription? An expansion of the Endless Trial is in order and perhaps a small expansion to the game as well.


Right now the game is limited to the Empire vs Chaos pairing in Tier 1, this is fine. In fact, I like everything about how this is set up initially. Sure, we miss out on the other two pairings, along with all the flavor, but no matter. Let's get the population booming first, shall we? The thing that bothers me is that no other tiers get anything out of the Trial itself. Sure, T1 is booming, but hasn't it always? Once you level out by hitting rank 12 you're introduced to the same cold and desolate world that T2 and T3 are infamous for. Occasionally during primetime there will be a warband running around, but aside from that, nada.


Expanding the Trial to T2 and T3 is a necessary must for me. However, it needs to be done in the right way, and with microtransactions in mind.


  • The level cap should follow the same ideaology as T1, R20 and R30 respectively.
  • Templates must be created for starting toons, R12 and R22 should have a set of R11 and R21 green gear.respectively.
  • The Starter Guilds should be expanded to R30 so players have an opportunity to commune until T4 begins.
  • A new Instance for T2 needs to be put in place. Currently the T2 equivalent is in the Capital City which would still be restricted.

These little bullet points hold a good amount of weight to them, but aside from the new instance, it's just rulesets so far. We know from the test server that it is more than possible for Templates to be made and work flawlessly on a large scale. The have the level restrictions in place for advancing past 10 implemented already, so that shouldn't be an issue either. Copy, Paste, Modify, done! Yeah yeah, not that simple, but whatever, should be simple enough.


Another thing would be to break up the Tier access to give a flavor of each pairing. T2 seems most appropriate for High Elf and Dark Elf, and T3 would work very well for Dwarves and Greenskins. An expansion on the New User Journey upon entering the T2 warcamp for an explanation on Keeps could be done, and the T3 warcamp tutorial for an explanation related to Advanced Keep sieges. This also breaks up the storyline for those who are interested in it, which adds replay value for anyone that wants to go through the full pairing later on. It's a lot of PvE, but lets be honest, some people just enjoy it.


Another thing that should garner some consideration would be a pairing shift every month or so. Even playing for free, doing the same area over and over will still get some players logging off as they've lost the taste for the game. For this it could be a single pairing from one tier. Say for example T2 shifts from HEvDE to EvC and at the same time T1 could change from EvC to DvG, and T3 could change from DvG to EvC. The battlefronts changing dynamically as the focus of the entire (free play) game changes. Over time, all the Endless Trial players will of course have the full T1-T3 experience, but never at the same time. A sense of disconnection and curiosity will hopefully bring in full subscribers along with other things.


Of course, these Endless Trial players would have to unlock each Tiered character slot by maxing out their previous Tiered character. It would defeat the purpose if someone brand new to the game instantly started at R20 in T3 and had no idea what they were doing. The journey is half the fun, and hopefully by the end of T3 they would be interested enough to sub for a while and give the game the padding it needs.


Now you have all three tiers populated with additional (although not paying) bodies, at least in designated zones, it brings players back to leveling, brings RvR back to the lakes, and brings PvE back to the PQ's and instances. This makes it a much more enjoyable experience for players that are paying for the game to level and interact with people in all tiers. T4 doesn't have a problem with population as much as it's the final destination for the paying base of the game, a base that I'd imagine Mythic won't be losing anytime soon. Everyone that drops their 15$ a month is going to end up there anyway, hence it's exclusion from the free trial. The game won't feel as lifeless and empty as it was only a few months from launch. People that jumped in from the start were well on their way to T4, and anyone new to the game faced tons of leveling just to catch up. An MMO needs to feel massive, and influx of free players to each tier can bring this back.


However, this is a business EA demands to be run, and therefore profits must be made. Enter here the evils of microtransactions for trial accounts...
  • Set gear, both PvE and RvR, should be limited per account with a MT cost.
  • Influence Rewards, both PvE and RvR, should be limited per account with a MT cost. (and adjusted across all tiers so they don't suck)
  • Mounts should be limited per account with a MT cost.
  • The Capital city should be limited per account with a MT cost, this should include the AH
  • The Bank, Guild Vault, and Mail should be limited per account with a MT cost
  • The Guild Hall, along with guild scrolls and guild mounts, should be limited per account with a MT cost (although not included in the R2 starter guild).

These are all things current in the game that could be affected by microtransactions, set gear and mounts would be the most noticeable. Yes, they do incur a serious advantage over players that don't pay for them. For me, anything aside from that concept would be contradictory to having a free trial in the first place. It's something that I think DDO didn't quite understand. If people can play your game and NOT feel disadvantaged for not paying for it, then what serious incentive is there to pay for it at all? WAR needs to be careful about this. They have THE BEST system for instant hardcore MMO-style PvP that exists. Giving that away without giving a reason to pay for that could cost them BIG. Paying players should absolutely have an advantage with no questions asked, and if a trial player wants a piece of that, let em buy it, just like we do every month. It'd all be bound to player anyway and non-salvageable, so it wouldn't really hurt the economy of the game much I'd imagine.


Moving on with the microtransaction frenzy of course there could be a shop with any number of blues and purples available for whatever price, along with healing potions, buff potions, etc and so on. These are pretty standard fare and I don't think tons of people would go crazy for them, but hey, It's not like it's physical product here. Let people shell out cash if they really feel the urge. The only mistake to avoid making here is giving out items that cannot be attained in game by subbed players. 


Things out of the ordinary could include..
  • A full package ticket to T4, decays over 3 days of game time (could be up to 2 weeks), along with a set of Annihilator gear, a mount, advancement to R40/RR35, a stash of Liniments(bound), and 50g.
  • A full package ticket to the Land of the Dead unrestricted, decays over 3 days of game time, along with a set of Conqueror gear, a mount, Advancement to RR45, a stash of Liniments(also bound), with a handful of scarabs and money.
  • A City Siege package that gives a number of uses (5?) while a Siege is under way to be teleported there to defend or attack, this would also grant a full set of Invader gear, a mount, advancement to RR55, a stash of Liniments(bound), and 50g.

These would give players a taste of what the end-game is like without ruining it totally. Putting a reasonable price on it would make money for Mythic, and give subbed players fresh blood every now and again. The decay timer would either keep people coming back, or entice them to subbing to the full game anyway. Enough mixing to keep the game fresh will have free players constantly getting shuffled around and never quite settled, all the while providing full subbed players to go back and play through the game without worry of having an entirely dead game waiting for them.


After the first few glorious months of WAR, all replayability had gone flying out the window to be replaced with a monumental task of grinding to reach high enough level to participate in the T4 campaign. With the Endless Trial expanding to cover three of the the four tiers, a new life could be brought back into the game. If the intent is to leave the trial restricted to T1, you're just going to have the same trickle of players slowly making their way through the game and eventually calling it quits when they can't get any action as they progress through T2 and T3. 


Mythic, the Endless Trial was a good move. You needed it. Now lets go full out and make it a GREAT move.