City siege improvements featured in WAR 1.3.1 patch
by Brooke Pilley 
Aug 9th 2009 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Fantasy, Game mechanics, Patches, Warhammer Online, News items
It's no secret that Warhammer Online's tier four endgame and city siege specifically are a bit lackluster. Mythic has admitted this by ranking it third place in their list of five key goals for the game's improvement. Well, just over a month after announcing endgame improvement as one of their top priorities, the studio is testing out new city siege mechanics and they sound quite interesting.One of the biggest issues players currently have with city siege is that it features way too much PvE and not enough PvP (or in WAR's case, RvR). Patch 1.3.1 is introducing several improvements in this area. Sieged cities now have three states: Contested, captured, and rebuilding. Attackers and defenders will be present and battling it out in each state and the contested state public quests will benefit from a new design. Warlord encounters are now instanced and balanced for 24 players, allowing multiple groups to participate. Finally, there will be a number of siege UI improvements allowing you to keep better track of your realm's progress.
Nearly every area of the game is being touched in some way by the 1.31 patch. Take a look at the comprehensive patch notes on the Warhammer Herald to observe their true breadth and feel free to give them a try on the public test server.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Pedro said on 11:00AM 8-09-2009
This patch coupled with the changes made to AoE and CC in 1.3.0b are finally making the game closer to what it should be. They've addressed the biggest issues of the community in this patch and the previous and in a positive manner! There's a better mood right now among the (remaining) players.
This patch also introduced changes to the Keeps layout (2 ramps to Lord Room which prevents the defense of the keep on the ramp with ranged zerging).
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my2cents said on 11:10AM 8-09-2009
I'm excited to see what effect these changes have. For whatever reason, the Tier 4 RvR has gotten really, really active again on my server, which is great news. It's fun to log on in the morning and see Order pushing ever closer to our beloved Inevitable City and then come home from work in the evening to find that we've flipped it all around and 5+ full warbands of Destruction are now storming one Order's Forts.
The problem is (at least on Destro side) is the everyone intentionally stops short of attacking the City because they don't feel it's fun enough or worth the time investment. The lag certainly doesn't help either, but in all fairness it's no different than the lag WoW's been struggling with in Wintergrasp since its inception. Hopefully this patch will help make city sieges for fun and worthwhile. Even with that, the game is still flawed. But while I know there are some very vocal commentors who will disagree with me, I personally think things have been improving quite a bit lately and I'm excited to see where the game is headed (hopefully not in the toilet.) If the game still keeps losing subs then I suppose there's always Aoin, though past experience tells me that a year from now Aion will in all likeliness be getting ragged on quite a bit too (but here's to hoping for the best for both games)
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mysecretid said on 2:27PM 8-09-2009
It'll be interesting to see if WAR can turn things around in time, if only because it does have a different "flavor" to the game than most of the fantasy MMORPGs out there, and having options is always good.
And I've gotta say, if Age of Conan has shown me anything lately, it's that if the company stops with the BS hype and just shows everyone that they're genuinely working on hot-button issues, it seems to make a difference.
I'm seeing a noticeably increase in players on my AoC server (Set) compared to a few months back. Some are returnees, and some are "free trial tourists", but it's more than that. The word seems to be getting about that AoC is actually improving, over time, and I'm seeing tourist players sign up to be regulars.
It would be nice to see WAR get to a similar place -- I wonder if they can improve it quickly enough? A bunch of new MMORPGs are coming, and a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic might even take a noticeable piece of WoW's pie.
Sooner would be better for WAR, I imagine ...
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Holgar said on 3:23PM 8-09-2009
I for one want this too with Mark Jacobs gone I now throw my whole support behind the entire Dev team if they start listening to player concerns.
RvR the imbalence and out right LACK of compitent design were largely why I quit the game this spring after giving it a go.
Cicadymn said on 3:26PM 8-09-2009
If I hadn't heard such bad reviews about RvE through the roof in Land of the Dead I think I might have reupped. I've it it a couple more patches, but every time they fix something like that it brings me one step closer to reupping for at least a month.
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CSKit said on 4:24PM 8-09-2009
I read the article and the patch notes but couldn't find a 1.3.1 launch date. Does anyone know when it goes live?
I am currently taking a break from WAR as it got stale, that and I got into Champions beta. Does anyone know if the Volkmar server has improved at all?
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Mark Taylor said on 12:06PM 8-10-2009
War is over its finished.
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newskooltrooper said on 7:18AM 8-10-2009
I'm not sure about Volkmar, but Badlands has been great following the recent server merges. Volkmar was a destination server just like Badlands, so I'm sure it's a lot better.
Badlands was crazy last night. Zone locks all over the place.
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chriskovo said on 11:32AM 8-11-2009
Anyone else notice that the date at the top says 2008? LOL its a patch from the past and when will they be implementing this, this patch might make me hang on to the game for a bit more. Well until aion comes out that is :P
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