as for homeland defense.. when do we really need homeland defense? albs take a fort or 2 and they get pushed back by 150 mids, are you sure they need 158? homeland defense, or hibernian offense in emain, its all rvr. We decide on where to rvr depending on where the group as a whole wants to roam. Most likely, since all haste bots and 5 buffbots are in emain, why spend 15 minutes porting it back and rebuff, just to have all the hibs/albs dead by the time we're there. Homeland is NEVER in danger.
Not quite Nat. Bulor/Lieph has lead homeland a bunch of times lately where the best zerg we could gather was 30 people against 25 PBAE albs holed up in Fens or Hild. Now the cynical would say it was dumb to attack them anyway, but back 6 months ago and back we'd bring an equal number of mids out and kick their asses. Because it was the high RR players that were willing to defend. There was realm pride. Now, it's Lieph leading the charge of Vatkens.
Mid has to be down 6 keeps nowdays before a true zerg will form up. Of course the albs have done alot of farming by then, so they come back nightly and do it some more. The bad part for the realm is that as the albs have more success and the homeland oriented mids get farmed more, it raised alb morale to be on the attack and discourages those mids from coming back out again. After a while you get to the point where we are now, that homeland defense is tha tough thing to muster.
And nights, it's not like the rp's have to be better in emain. I've run with Ascendancy alot. They RVR homeland first whenever they came. Odins RVR can be good. And when things get slow, then they go to emain. BWC used to be like that. Then some of us old BWC after 5 million rp's or so on our toons took a break and you guys have carried the load of organizing RVR groups. Our point is it doesn't have to be emain only. Homeland can be good RP's too. And at the same time you can help out the realm which isn't a bad side benefit.
Unless Duane is leading, or I'm running with Ascendancy, I won't RVR in emain. I just don't enjoy it. If you guys want to run Odins groups, I'll bring Josh back out, but I really hate emain and the emain mentality. Maybe the RVR is all the same, but I like to at least pretend this game has more depth than running laps and swinging by mileforts.
Different people have different likes. I don't expect everyone to like the same thing.