Vol. 1 No. 1
and Weaponry has its own level and
therefore its own Level Differential.
Traditional Raids and Instance content
focuses on the player and his group
versus the boss and enemies. The primaAre Big Battles Tier’d like current
ry goal and direct focus of both sides is
Skirmishes and Raids?
purely to kill the other. In the Battle for
Helm’s Deep the enemies goal is to tear
The Battle for Helm’s Deep only has one down the walls, destroy the fortress,
difficulty tier, however through the new and slaughter everyone within. It is the
Medals system we are able to judge how complete and utter destruction of Rowell you do at a given objective within
han. The players are another enemy on
the space and modify rewards based
the wall that need to be killed along the
on having done better or worse at it.
way, not the primary focus of the eneThis creates a variable difficulty system
mies efforts.
the user can control on the fly as they
are able to attempt more or less of the
Within traditional raids all players are
scoring criteria. The more of the criteria focused on the boss and any adds. This
you do, the higher your reward, but the typically happens with everyone being
more difficult it is to succeed.
bunched up together in the same 20
square meters and the majority of playThey have opt in difficulty as you play, al- ers attacking the same target. The Battle
lowing you to attempt to try to do more for Helm’s Deep requires groups to work
things and spread your resources further together, communicate and coordinate
apart, with greater reward but greater
at a larger strategic and tactical level.
risk of failure. The intent is that getting
platinum on raid objectives is roughly
To find the greatest success and reward,
the equivalent of tier 2 challenge from
the group will have to split up and be
the mid to higher difficulty OD or ToO
in several locations across Helm’s Deep
boss fights.
dealing with multiple goals and a variety of challenges, yet still all be working
What are the differences between Big together and coordinating on the larger
Battles and Traditional Raids?
objectives.
WayBound 30
How are rewards (loot) distributed?
As players obtain Medals for the various objectives throughout the Battle for
Helm’s Deep they will earn class based
rewards. The higher the quality of the
medals earned, the better the quality
of the rewards earned. It will als o utilize
the Marks, Medallions and Seals system.
The overall system keeps track, separately for each quality of medal (bronze,
silver, gold, platinum), how many medals you’ve earned, with bonuses being
added for earning them in group spaces,
earning them on the main objective, and
earning them for the first time.
Each of those is represented by a bar
within the Battle for Helm’s Deep UI.
When a bar fills, based on your selection, you will either get a class specific
piece of set piece jewelry (of quality
relating to the medal quality), or you will
get some points towards filling the next
quality bar (we refer to that option internally as turning pennies into dollars).
The exception to this is Gold to Platinum, where upconverting is not allowed.
Platinum rewards must be earned from
completing objectives at platinum.