A basic background from me, to perhaps understand the idea. I am a loner, a crafter and a raider. I love doing all three. This is not a post to push raiding here. Raiding is a different animal. But that being said, there is very little group/raid specific content. There may be group content like Epic encounters for higher levels, but what about your up and coming guildmates? Some are completely new to mmorpg's in general. Some have never really experienced party content here or in other games. How do they fair in an Epic fight later on? Are they on the class path they really want? So many classes to choose, so many combos to work with. Enter Declaration of War.

Skulks getting out of hand? Golems blowing chunks your way?

With this concept lets say by normal playing, the playerbase agitates the Platinum golems to the point that they decide to riot and declare war upon Istaria (in their location specific areas). Threat level increases serverside and the server determines when this next step happens. A random player kills a golem and loots a "Declaration of War", with a timer on it. This player is able to hand this into an npc in that same area and a mini event is initiated.

Now this is not an event that can be done by one player, unless you you are able to play 15 toons at once, but it is intended for a party/raid.

After the declaration is handed into the npc, all players in group/party must "tag" themselves as part of the event with the npc. Any outside help is disregarded. Group/party avg level is figured out as last person speaks with npc.

A minimum adventure lvl of like 20/30 should be required so that abuse can be minimized. Once the last person joins the party, the party damage/healing/skill levels are averaged out, no matter their level. No skills are unavailable, just downgraded automatically to the party average.

The event is then shown as an emoticon or such. Describing what the event entails. It Might be a kill count, a specific looted item or a named mob. Once the event is completed, all return to the npc that initiated the event. Similar to epic tokens, a token/currency is given. And Similar to loyalty tokens, Specific npc's are able to trade rewards.

To make the rewards more worthwhile, the formulas that are gotten from the npc's are one time use. And the items made are automatically attuned to the user.
Consider these rewards to be like mini epics, but not game changing, just a little above avg.

The point of these encounters are to let players earn a reward, learn to play roles in a party and start to understand endgame mechanics. As well as include lower level players on a level playing field with their fellow guildies/Istarians. Retroactively, players will start to learn which direction they will want to level their toons on when multiclassing..


Suggestions, criticism, followups, etc welcome.