Campaigning in MWO

So, currently there's not any support for any faction / community battles or ladder, but it's coming.  The Gatekeepers are experience wargamers, and for us, MWO is really just Battletech.  We've done plenty of wargaming campaigns at the Wargate.  So, the natural extension of that is to create campaigns for MWO.

So how do we intend to do this?  Well, it's already underway.  The game itself records individual statistics on your Profile page, but that's just individual statistics.  What we already know is that you can have a great individual record, and still be a hindrance to your team.  You can also score low, and be an invaluable asset to victory.  Maybe they will change the scoring system to reflect some of this, maybe they won't.  Our campaigns, however, will focus on collecting data based on lance or teams rather than individual records.

All of this will be wrapped up in a nice Battletech narrative, such as the current Operation Dread Harvest, which you can check out on Facebook as well.  These campaigns will track progress and development, and help us decide what the best configurations for us are.  We don't intend to stop campaigning after the launch of any Community Warfare features, but if they make it easy for us it might change how we collect our data.

A more detailed explanation of what those numbers mean and how we collect them will be forthcoming, but today I want to touch on why we are doing campaigns.  Obviously, to collect battle data and make good selections as noted above, but there's a greater community aspect even than just filling out a compelling narrative.  At it's core, the Gatekeeper's campaigns serve to bring us together.

Each campaign will revolve around a number of "drops".  These drops will be coordinated and times will be given as a "drop time".  This is an agreed upon time we meet up on Teamspeak, generally given at least two days in advance.  We'll get you in a lance quick if you're there at the start time, but we need at least 4 men for it to count as an Operational Lance.  Since we'll be rotating folks in and out of the lances, show up in the TS whenever you can, even if you're late according to the drop time and we're good to go.

I certainly am happy to see everyone playing MWO.  It's high time we've found a computer game that everyone seems to enjoy.  Blending our wargaming leans with our PC gaming bents is a nifty idea that we really should have thought of earlier.  We don't like PC gaming in our Tabletop gaming (the Wargate is strictly devoted to traditional rather than digital gaming), but we are seeing more laptops and devices being used at the game table itself.  Bringing tabletop gaming conventions into the PC gaming forms a nice bridge for us, and sets the stage for some great roleplaying - especially since this fiction is considered canon for any Battletech/Mechwarrior tabletop gaming that may or may not occur at the Wargate! 

So, everyone seemed to enjoy the idea of treating MWO as just another wargame (albeit a PC game with it's own blog and Facebook).  The drop times are a convention we will use to practice and compete - the days of waiting for a guild to assemble together randomly for an instance are over.  These campaigns are a tool we can use.  Not only do they let us develop our mechwarrior narratives, but we get the chance to be social on a regular basis and return to the good old days of gaming.

Which are these days, by the way.