Warhammer Online's City Sieging Not As Hard As Expected?

[modeps]

Eurogamer is reporting (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=249670) that last night, Destruction was able to successfully lay waste to the capital city of Altdorf on the Karak Eight Peaks server.

The entire process, beginning with the capture of the contested zones, began in the early evening and was over by the small hours of the morning. This despite the fact that Mythic boss Mark Jacobs told Eurogamer in a recent interview that completing a city siege in one night would be impossible:

"We've laid everything out in a manner that your side has to accomplish a lot, so it's going to take time. We've seen the other games out there where people can do things late at night while nobody else is on, but it doesn't work that way in WAR. It's impossible," he said.

"It should be weeks unless we really messed up."

Plenty of members of the WAR community are already crying foul and claiming that Mythic "messed up". There are reports - mostly from the Order side, naturally - that Destruction exploited a bug in the game's most recent patch update.

Did Mythic 'really mess up'?

[court12b]

so what's the net effect of seiging? denied access to trainers or the auction house?

[Nodus]

Eurogamer jumped the gun alittle bit.

As far as i know, they did not defeat the king encounter and take him back to their city. They simply initiated the first phase, which is the city assault. Its a several phase system.


Its true that they did do it fairly quickly, but its also known that they used an exploit to take over the nearby fortresses a bit faster (bypassed front doors) so yea, thats a bit of a factor.

Theres hardly any T4 players on order, the game is not even a half month old yet, theres always some players to steamroll content in every game in attempts to be first.

[Nodus]

Your denied access to your own city, while they burn/pillage buildings and things in it, claiming loot and eventually they will take your king back to their city to throw fruit at him and torment him in a cage in town square.

They also get the chance for phat loot.

The losers get kicked out of their city and all that entails (no AH, merchants, etc) They also have their city ranked dropped back to one.

[modeps]

Your denied access to your own city, while they burn/pillage buildings and things in it, claiming loot and eventually they will take your king back to their city to throw fruit at him and torment him in a cage in town square.

They also get the chance for phat loot.

The losers get kicked out of their city and all that entails (no AH, merchants, etc) They also have their city ranked dropped back to one.

Is all of that temporary, or do they have to 'save the king' ?

[Swat]

It just happened that in that server some destro player nerded their way to tier 4 faster than the opposition, and managed to conquer tier 4 because there was no one opposing them. It's pretty normal, and it's a completely non-issue as soon as more people get up there. Even because there are clear signals for when the fortresses are under attack or are about to be, meaning that, as soon as people are stably in tier 4, there will always be defenders, and anyone that ever played warhammer online knows very well how hard it is to take a defended keep.

Saw this on Massively, and I agree. Even taking the smaller objectives and keeps can take a decent amount of time once the competition starts pouring in (and is even more fun than Scenarios - more pride attached). Who woulda thunk that once you super-accelerate to 40 in a couple of weeks there might not be ample competition? :)

If there is an exploit or issues related to the NPC's health and stuff, etc, I'm sure it will be patched as well. I don't think Mythic realized these exploiters would, well, exploit their way to end-game so fast.

I read somewhere that these insta-40s were using the killing spree bonus xp, in combination of the EXP buff book (from the CE) as well as AoE grinding to hit cap fast, but that was hotfixed out.

[Swat]

Your denied access to your own city, while they burn/pillage buildings and things in it, claiming loot and eventually they will take your king back to their city to throw fruit at him and torment him in a cage in town square.

They also get the chance for phat loot.

The losers get kicked out of their city and all that entails (no AH, merchants, etc) They also have their city ranked dropped back to one.

They are kicked from the city but there is a "Refuge" camp outside with full vendors and all the goodies, so you will still be functional. Well, aside from the pride thing. So I've heard.

[MasterEvilAce]

I don't think they messed up. I think that honestly you CANNOT *EVER* know what to expect from your player base. It's impossible. People find loopholes, glitches, and optimized plans to get things done.

Less than 24 hours is too quick, really, but they didn't expect that, so that's fine.

"We've seen the other games out there where people can do things late at night while nobody else is on, but it doesn't work that way in WAR. It's impossible".. funny. On my server keeps change hands exactly how they describe... "while nobody else is on". Order owns everything during light, and destruction takes over everything by dark. Kinda funny how the clockwork is.

[AspectVoid]

From what I've read, there are two things that allowed this. First, there were a couple of bugs where the Destruction players were able to use the back doors to enter a couple of keeps, where only Order players should be able to use them. The second is that no Order players really bothered to defend any of the Tier 4 scenarios. In taking the last couple of keeps before reaching Aldorf, there were only 6 to 10 Order players defending them, thus making it fairly easy for Destruction to just roll over them. Likewise, once they reached Aldorf, there were extremely low numbers of Order players defending the city.

[Kweli]

Apparently you cant even assist in the defense unless your level 32... which also reduces the amount of possible defenders

[Swat]

I wish I could actually verify some of this stuff hands on, but until we can experience it first hand we don't know how the end game stuff will play out. I do have my hopes, but also some skepticism (as is natural).

But, if the fun level is anywhere near the level I have from defending low level areas and keeps, and there is a sense of progression, it could be tremendous fun. Seeing as the end game RvR was touted from the beginning, you'd think it would receive the most TLC from Mythic.

[lockwoodx]

The only point at wich mythic screwed up was when players used the killing spree bug to exploit to 40 in a matter of days and mythic's solution was to entirely remove killing spree and not punish the exploiters.

This is why you're seeing city sieges so soon and to the rest of the players who never exploited they don't have the number of 40s to properly defend.

[Cyndair]

I dunno, this seems like an extreme case to me and it isn't like they aren't going to analyze and fix the problem. Mythic has done well by me so far so this isn't a game breaker.

[AlwaysOn222]

On my server, Karak Azgal we have the opposite problem with Order coming up close on our city (I am destruction) and I think it mostly depends on how well organized the different guilds/sides is on each server. A good communication with players will do a great deal no matter what you do in WAR since there is to many "noobs" still running around there.

[Wyrm]

I've been playing for a couple of nights, and I've greatly enjoyed the instanced PvP. There are lots of idiots on both sides, but this is to be expected. I'm playing a Marauder, and when I get good heals to back me up, I frequently end up in the top three at the end of the match in both kills and damage. When the other players on my team are morons, I'm only good for picking off a stray mage or healer here and there.

I like the team based thing, but this is one of those MMOs, more than any other so far that I've seen, that is entirely built around grouping. At least in the PvP, in order to succeed, you need strategy, a good mix of classes, and people who can execute. So far, it seems like most people don't have a grasp on the fact that one capture point is worth more than the other two, and when I go for it at the start, I'm all by myself, waiting for the idiots who stood at the first capture point because they didn't know better.

[Furious Wang]

And so begins the inevitable Dev vs Player MMORPG deathmatch. Expect massive nerfs, dramatic overhauls, and a ton of qq.

[Kweli]

And so begins the inevitable Dev vs Player MMORPG deathmatch. Expect massive nerfs, dramatic overhauls, and a ton of qq.

Easy there fella... they used an exploit..
So maybe expect exploit fixes?

Its not a nerf when they fix something that wasnt their original intent, especially when theres quotes from the designers

[Micasa]

I wonder if they banned anyone for using the exploit. I mean there's no question about it being an exploit at all, so players obviously knew what they were doing...

[Rifter]

Destro got I guess 300 people up at 7am (EST) today, and rolled through to Altdorf, in under 6 hours. (This morning, they said 4 hours, later they said 6 hours). They could not beat the king, and the city was left at level 4. I guess the refugee camp was kind of a pain in the butt. I also heard that a lot of the save the city type scenerios were not allowing order in, so destro was running all over us.

Ultimately, they couldn't take it all the way, since you need to be lvl 40 + lvl 46+ renown gear, and then, you need a full warband with that level of equipment, or better.

The item tables, we are being told, sucked too.

There SEEMS to be a bug where destro is locking down territories a LOT faster than order is, which is really odd.