What was The Old Crown?

Fights for the Crown were brutal.


But you always could count on having a good fight there. So people were always ready and willing to go there:


The bad part is that direction of the fight was obvious and predictable:

Is a ghost cap something where one person capped a base, or where a lot of people couldn't be bothered to go see what was happening?

A ghost cap is just someone/a group of people capturing a base without the defending faction really fighting for it. In the case of the open hex system it were usually small squads/lone wolves capping bases by themselves while all the "REAL AURAXIAN SOLDIERS" (caps is mandatory for that) fought for the crown. These days you see plenty of platoons ghostcapping though, but that's because nobody wants to fight with one squad against a 100+ force.

My motto is: Bring back the crown or redesign it, but make it a true jewel on the face of Indar! An enormous base able to hold hundreds of players, THE fortress, the kind of things that would get you up at night so your outfit can ghostcap it before the day comes, and you will hold it for the whole next day. Not another step on a lattice. Make it count! Make an alert of it! Tweak the rules of the game so the symbol created by the players isn't watered down!

"fun" is subjective, if your idea of fun was being the meat in the grinder, sure, it was "fun" like a server running the same cod map over and over again was fun.

So which one is it? You described both, and only added a pejorative for flavor.

Could it be that there is no such thing as "ghost capping", and that what apologists call ghost capping is simply the enemy taking advantage of a lax enemy?

I never gave you my opinion of ghost capping, I simply explained the term as I was under the impression that you were new and were unfamiliar with it. Sure, one could call it taking advantage of an unaware enemy, but ghost capping is generally seen as something that isn't fun and is even nearly useless in the current game due to a lack of reasons to capture and hold territory, hence my negative tone when talking about ghost capping. Ghost cap would apply to both of the things that I explained, as long as a base switched sides without any battle for it it is considered a ghost cap as far as I know.

Isn't it fun for the capper?

Herein lies one of the greatest flaws of today's gamer.

"Fun" is by their definition, none other.

it was amazing, it really was the crowned jewel of Indar.
funny how they made it just another bland base because they thought it was too hard to attack,
yet now they've added ridiculously frustrating bases like Bloodworks (impossible to attack except over several long open bridges which are ridiculously easy to defend.

edit: see this if you are un aware of bloodworks, it is a ridiculous base that lacks everything the crown had, crown was impressive, defending it was amazing, successfully conquering it was even better.

It was so bad that it wasn't uncommon to see it held by one faction, with zero links or adjacent territory held by them. An island of red in a sea of blue and purple.

it was actually the epitome of a good base, almost unassailable.

agree that doesn't always make good 'game' base design though

It was one of the best or worst bases in the game, depending on how you play the game.
Like grinding? The crown is your nervana
Hate grinding? The crown is your personal purgatory
It was also a black hole for whatever faction owned it. If the TR owned it for example, they would loose every other base on indar. That's how much pull it had. That is the legacy of the crown.

I miss Crown syndrome sometimes. I was really funny taking a look at the map and seeing this.

I used to have a pick of the NC holding the Crown and not a single other base on Indar despite pops being 33/33/33. That one was even funnier. But it's lost to the depths of the internet now.

Yeah, everyone here has pretty much filled you in. It was the Crown, literally a goal to strive towards and a prize in itself when captured. Back in the day, it was the ultimate achievement if you and your buddies managed to steal it from a rival faction.

Everything led to the Crown. Whatever faction held it was doomed to have the rest of his territory conquered, it was such a pride to have it that it was worth the faction's very own warpgate.

When the Crown was neutered... It was a bloody mess.

The Crown (as you know) is a base in the very middle of Indar. The "Old Crown" is a term referring to The Crown in the period following launch, before various major changes were made to it and the game. The Old Crown was essentially a really well designed 3-way "king of the hill" map running over and over again.

The "King" Faction would occupy The Crown, and then the other two factions would first take 1 or more of the 5 surrounding bases, and then attempt a massive logistics siege from their setup. The other 2 Factions would also periodically attempt massive logistic attacks to bump the other non-Crown faction off one of the surrounding bases, often catching the defender fully committed to The Crown and vulnerable to flanking.

Because the 3 Cap Points were around the base area (as opposed to now, when 2 of them have been moved very far out from the base itself), it was a real grind to get to, take, or hold Cap Points for The Crown as an attacker. Also, because there was no Lattice System (which now requires players to take certain bases in order), any Faction could get to the Crown by just finding the most doable route to it and charging. And also, since any Faction could take any adjacent base (no Lattice), then Factions would shift sideways to take different Base next to the Crown, so they could both (1) change their direction of attacking the Crown by moving their operation base to different basses (or various advance bases setup at key Sunderer points), or (2) (as mentioned above) totally surprise attack the other non-Crown Faction by flanking them at their overexposed base while they are stuck in with their siege forces committed to The Crown.

As has been said before, it was Bio Dome like because the sheer number of troops (or all Factions and attacking from all sorts of different approach routes) made it brutal for most vehicles to linger in the area. Vehicles could setup very well farther back at terrain line-of-sight protected advance positions between The Crown and surrounding bases. Though the Crown could be quickly Tank zerged if it was a dead period there and defenses were light. The game itself was much more Infantry heavy back then, many people like that as well.

Another thing that made it great was the terrain design of the approaches to the Crown and from each base to each other (and even each base beyond that to each of the bases around the Crown) is very, very good. With the weakest being the North base, which was modified to make it better (with that path up the hill added). Some of the great fights were just massive battles between a base 2 spaces away from The Crown and trying to take a base to get next to The Crown.

Some people loved the Old Crown. Some people hated it. And some people hated that nobody would play with them on the other Continents/Bases and wanted people who liked The Crown/Indar to be forced off it, so that they could have someone to play with in those other areas. You can see this in Continent Locking, where players want to force others off the Continents they like, so they will play with them on the ones they don't like. It's this kind of "forcing some players (usually more) to do what they don't want, to make some other players (usually fewer) happy" design approach perpetuated in PS2 design ever since.

In many ways, only SOE could think creatively enough to make the Old Crown. And in many ways, only SOE could think narrowly enough to want to kill it. They did both.

And what you conveniently ignore in your cry for the "glory days of old" is that 90% of the time, if you were not fighting for the Crown then you were either zerging or being zerged - and your zerg and the opposing zerg went to great pains to make sure, they never ever ran into each other.

It was terrible. People loved the Crown - and hated it - because it was a reliable fight - there was always action there - just not action you had much chance of winning either way, and often laggy as hell.

Lattice killed the Crown's function, but enabled zergs to meet on a regular basis, by not giving them much choice in the matter.

Lattice was a massive improvement, regardless of what anyone want to say about it, this is a fact. PS2 is about fights, and the lattice provided them.

That is all there is to it. The Crown lost it's position and the players gained something much better in trade.

What was the old saying, He who owned the Crown lost Indar.

It was heaven and thus a hell no man truly owned it but many demanded it. When the thirst for blood came only the crown would provide the satisfaction and in return it took from you your insanity and dignity.

Truly it was the jewel of the damned to forever lust for on indar!

It was one of the only places in central Indarside in which infantry actually had a good time...
But that was back in the day.