Power of Towers Realm Event (is kinda weird) [Day Zero post]
I was asked a couple of times, so yes, I'll be tracking the Power of Tower Realm Event. Ordinarily I start posting scores after the first day (or week), but I'll start this one with a day zero post, because what the heck is even going on in this event?
Milestone 60 is 25,000 points, milestone 61 is 3,900,000,000 points. The last milestone is milestone 70 at 5,250,000,000 points. Is that some weird glitch?
Probably not. My guess is the milestones were originally sketched out similar to other realm events, and then someone decided that for the launch of towers they were going to make the first 60 milestones basically automatic. The realm milestone is actually equal to the solo prerequisite to get that milestone, which means in effect there's no thought necessary to wonder if a player should strive for that milestone. In previous realm events there has often been a discussion about whether a player should push to reach a certain point total, because it was not certain whether that milestone would actually be reached by the player base. Some players did not want to risk the effort. Well, now that thought process is negated (and I don't have that much to do) for the first 60 milestones. If you reach the solo prerequisite, of course that milestone will be unlocked. Heck, they are all already unlocked.
It is really milestones 61 through 70 that are the "kinda stretchy" milestones that we almost always hit, but it is sometimes a very close thing. They are the only ones about which there is any doubt. Is there any doubt?
As I write this, I've done enough of the two class towers to collect all the objective rewards, and the first level of the saga challenge tower. That's sort of one third of the minimum effort to "complete" everything - there will be four more class towers and I believe the chase piece is on level 3 of the challenge tower (I might be wrong there: that's just what I heard - weirdly you can't preview the rewards at higher levels of a tower, something I consider to be a significant flaw in the implementation). As of now I have 9420 points. Extrapolating that, I should end up with at least 28,000 points assuming I continue doing the minimum grind to "complete" everything. To reach the top realm event milestone would require about 187,500 players putting in similar effort (or some combination of more players doing less effort on average). That number is comfortably consistent with other realm events where we hit the top milestone.
Another early indicator is scoring today appears to be closing in on over a billion points on launch day. Since only the first two class towers are out, it is a good sign that we're well on our way to scoring about a third of the top milestone, which would be 1.75 billion points. I think if we are in the range of 1.7 to 2.0 billion by the end of the first week that bodes well for hitting the top milestone and the Warlock ascension. It appears to have been put in a high but achievable score.
Which means players who want it need to score at least 35,000 points. My guesstimate is I will land around 28,000 if I just do the minimum necessary to collect all the objective rewards and the chase piece, so there will need to be a bit more grinding after that. Of course, my points are governed by things like my prestige, as that determines your starting tower tier. But 7000 more points is 700 more floors (10 points per floor) aka 700 more fights. Across three weeks, that is about 34 tower fights per day, over and above the minimum to grab all the milestone-like rewards.
That's not a lot, but that's also not a little. An extra half hour per day, over and above what's necessary to grab all the normal tower rewards. It took me about 45 minutes to do blocks 61 through 66 in the skill tower (which maxed out the milestone rewards). So my estimate for my total tower grind time to get everything I want is 45 x 6 + 34 x 21 = 984 minutes, or about 16 and a half hours across three weeks.
Whether you think that's a reasonable grind time or not is a YMMV situation, but I would describe that as a moderate amount of time. How many people decide to go that far will be an interesting question for the rank rewards to figure out.
Anyway, we'll see where we are tomorrow after Day One concludes.
