These are some impressions I had of a walk-about I did on TC1 very late last night. Was too tired to assemble them last night. Sorry they are a bit random and disjointed.
I found it very, very annoying while I was looking around last night to not be able to recall into a town while it was apparently being used as a battleground. Britain was blocked when I first logged on and wanted to check out the TB base. So I recalled to Minax, SL, and COM bases; scrounged around Occlo for a minute or two; and then wanted to see the Minoc sigil post and found that it was Minoc that was blocked. Got to Minoc via the moongate and a run and looked around (saw no one but did find one of the altars). Was checking out the guard zone and using field spells (they didn't work), only to go back to the altar to see if it was still there so field spells should have worked, and found the altar was gone and so a new city must have become the battleground.
Because I was using a character that had not joined the VvV system, I was not seeing any kind of messages whatsoever regarding battles, blocked towns, etc. It was absolutely quiet in chat and no system messages. I had no way of knowing where to not go and apparently because I was never in a city that was about to become a battle ground, had no way of knowing if there were any messages of any kind to warn me to skedaddle because the guard zone was going to disappear and I also wouldn't be able to make a hasty return if I needed to leave to get something and come back.
I have some real concerns about how this system is going to affect Siege in the long run. It would also be nice to know how long the towns are blocked for a battle. Are they blocked for as long as it takes someone to win the battle? Are they blocked for a specific time if no one shows up and then things move on to another city?
Also, I was able to walk all over the altar in Minoc with my blue non-VvV character. Just seemed wrong to be able to do so.
Edited to add this paragraph: I've also been wondering how many different VvV guilds have to have at least one character logged on in order to get the battles to start and how difficult/easy it would be for someone to just farm the heck out of the system by having characters on various accounts and in different guilds just log on and stay in a house while the character that is in the guild that you want to have rack up points just pops around and "takes" cities just by standing altars for a requisite amount of time? Seems like on a very quiet shard, that might be extremely easy to do and make the point system become pretty meaningless very quickly, especially if there is any kind of ranking system that controls rewards/gear availability or use depending on your guild or your character's total points out of the whole shard's points.
Edited to add another paragraph: If there are going to be three altars in a town, what if you have three guilds show up and they each just concentrate on holding one altar. Who wins in that case? (Maybe it's a clearer situation if you're actually in the system and see messages. Next step for testing, I guess.)
With regard to the altars, I think maybe some new artwork is coming with symbols for the various anti-virtue dungeons. I think they are going to display two virtue tiles and two anti-virtue tiles, which we won't be able to see until there's a patch. Can't help wondering if that means new anti-virtue tiles will eventually be available in the cleanup system.
I saw the trade quest NPC in Minoc near the stables and wondered how obnoxious it's going to be for someone trying to start or finish a quest if there's a battle going on at the time. Also, what if they decide to take a quest using a stealther and they just park themselves right there to let the monsters spawn in the town? Ick. For some reason I was kind of surprised to see the trade NPC there at all anyway. Kind of thought they were only going to be in Trammel and the fence NPCs were in Fel. Or maybe they're just there on TC to show where they'd be on Siege? I'm confused. Guess I need to reread the old notes to figure out what's going on.
While I am really bummed about losing factions, one thing I kind of wish would disappear is the CoM stronghold. Never did like its looks (Malas-like black void tiles around the edges, the bright colors, the sparklies, etc.) and ever since it went in, there's a huge mess of weird lines all over the water in Trammel in the same location.
For anyone who plays in Fel, you'd probably better mosey off to TC1 sometime soon and do some looking around both with non-VvV characters and VvV characters just so you have an idea of how this system is going to affect your gaming even if you choose to not participate in it. And if you made it this far reading, sorry this is so disjointed.
