Massively^™

From Tier 2 onwards, players of Warhammer Online have the option of mustering an army to go forth into the RvR lakes and capture keeps. There are numerous benefits to capturing a keep -- renown bonuses and set-piece loot await a victorious party, as well as a chance to claim the keep in their guild's name, and push the zone control meter forward for their realm. Of course, if the opposing realm has some backbone about them, a quick capture can turn into an all-out war, with siege weapons and countless casualties. One can only hope! Join us as we take an in-depth look at all of this, in our gallery guide to capturing and defending keeps.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

It was only the other day when we reported that the first Warhammer Online city siege endgame had begun. Initial reports indicated that a relatively small group of players, in average gear, managed to capture Altdorf on the EU server Karak Eight Peaks, partially due to bugs in the game. However, rumors of the death of Emperor Karl Franz have been exaggerated. More details have come to light since then; Electronic Arts contacted MMO blogger Tobold, and set the record straight.

As it turns out, Destruction didn't fully capture Altdorf. Rather, they put it in a contested state, and the would-be conquerors on the Destruction side were ousted by Order before they could complete enough public quests to reach the final battle against Emperor Karl Franz.

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	Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out our Warhammer guides: Massively's Character Creation Guide and our WoW Player's Guide to Warhammer. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

The construction of guild cities has been one of Age of Conan's main features since release. One such city on the Fury PvP server is Goonrushalem, home to the Thulsa Goons guild. Nestled in the foothills of Stygia's Purple Lotus Swamp, the city of Goonrushalem was once one of the largest player-built cities on the server. Originally intended to be built up into a functional battlekeep for siege warfare, other guilds have since taken the lead and beaten Thulsa Goons to that goal.

Join me as I take a visual tour of the great Goon complex, and discuss the uses of the various buildings it contains.

The first patch for Age of Conan under the new scheduling has hit the live servers. Along with a healthy portion of quest and NPC bug fixes, the second half of the discussed Necromancer changes have made it in, granting them more splash damage for a couple of their pets, some feat related changes, and the ironing out of a few bugs relating to their spells.

Massive PvP also received some updates. Players attacking battlekeeps will now respawn at the front gate of the city, a bug that disabled siege weapons has been corrected, and most notably, a lot of dodgy keep walls that could be walked through have been fixed. This patch does not introduce the major PvP overhaul that everyone has been waiting for unfortunately, and under the new schedule, we'll need to wait another week for the next opportunity. Check out the forums to get a full list of this patch's updates.

Age of Conan players have started getting to the stage where they can partake in the game's much-hyped "Massive PvP" -- the first battlekeeps are up, and you can be sure that people are all too keen to go and knock them down. However, it seems that the first wave of these epic battles have not gone so smoothly, and not just for any guilds left with a pile of smoking rubble.

Funcom has posted on the official forums (with the actual message being penned by Gaute Godager) in the hopes of reassuring the community that the problems that have been experienced with these battles are being looked at. The main issues are identified as those of client performance, and those of content and collision. Client performance is apparently the biggest problem being reported, and even before people started to get into massive PvP, some fixes to do with this have been worked on behind the scenes.

Today's the last day in our ongoing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning coverage and we've saved one of the best conversations about the game for last. RvR Lead Designer Brian Wheeler and Producer Jeff Skalski sat down with us on Friday to go through Keep capturing and siege gameplay. It's one of the most compelling parts of Realm vs. Realm combat from Dark Age of Camelot buffed, shined, and retooled for the Warhammer crowd

Read on below the cut for details on this expansive system. We'll discuss what exactly the point of Keep gameplay is, why it wasn't initially included in the game's design, and how all of this combat is merely the precursor to the ultimate act of sacking a Capital City. Call out the guards, and read on.

There's a two-pronged assault of Age of Conan raid content information at Ten Ton Hammer -- a 20 minute raid presentation video, and an interview with raid boss scripter Eirik Munthe. Both the presentation and the interview occurred at the AoC launch event in Oslo last week, and both were rich with information. It looks like the endgame content has some incremental innovations just like the lower-level stuff; that should make the hardcore crowd happy.

In the presentation, bits and pieces of one of AoC's level 80, 24-person raids were shown to an audience with live commentary by Game Director Gaute Godager. Multiple bosses were shown, such as a poison-leaking monstrosity and two demons -- one ice, one fire -- who gain power when standing near one another. Godager explained the philosophy behind raiding and epic gear, and using collision detection in battle strategies. He revealed that raid groups will be able to call it a night halfway through a raid and finish any time they want (so long as it's before the raid expiration date -- one week after its start date). There was also a brief series of clips of a massive PvP siege.

In the interview with Eirik Munthe we learned that Funcom put together strike teams consisting of designers, scripters, and writers. Each strike team focused its attentions completely on a 20-level span; for example, Munthe's team worked on content for player levels 60 - 80. Munthe described the challenges he faced when scripting encounters with some of AoC's unique features such as collision detection and CoE (cone of effect) healing in mind.

Another exciting aspect of Funcom's upcoming Age of Conan is the Guild City System. This is mostly unique to other MMOs, in that you build the guild city not as a hall, but as an actual city with multiple buildings within. Each building serves its own purpose for offense and defense against other guilds and attacking forces, and is upgradeable to different tiers, much like an RTS.

In a recent article at MMORPG.com, they run down the details of each of these guild city buildings, and their biggest advantages. Also in this article are some details on guild leadership itself. In order to create a guild city, your player will need to be a guild leader, level 40 or higher, and have a guild membership of at least 24 players. You will then have the choice of 3 environmental locations currently for your guild city. Let the land-grab begin!

The 28th issue of the Warhammer Online newsletter rolled into mailboxes this week. Blood, fire, and Chaos energy rippling from the seams, this latest warmachine bears a king's ransom in information for Warhammer-in-waiting fans. We've already noted the podcast all about the epic amount of voice acting coming to the game, but there was so much more! Personally, the highlight of the letter is a full rundown on the keeps and sieges system. Even though the addition of Keeps to the game came during the Beta process, their integration seems seamless. Siege weaponry especially sounds entertaining, with the opportunity to boil some stunties in their own boots particularly delicious for this Greenskins fan.

Other high points include:

• A full explanation of the Realm vs. Realm renown system. Renown will be your currency for buying abilities and pieces of awesome from your faction, and it's definitely something you're going to be dealing with.
• The second episode of Scenarios 101 covers Talabec Dam and Stone Troll Crossing.
• An overview of the Saphery zone. Gotta love Those Wacky Elves(tm).
• Player quotes from Beta.
• A Beta giveaway in the Warhammer comic book.
• Career masteries for the Bright Wizard and Zealot.
• Profiles of the leaders of the Order faction.

And, as always, Paul Barnett's excellent video podcasts round out the entire information dump. You can sign up on the official Warhammer site to get these newsletters in your inbox; who wouldn't want a warmachine of news delivered via email?

Christmas has come early for those of us looking forward to EA Mythic's Warhammer Online. While the last few newsletters have just squeaked out in the final days of the month, December's newsletter has been timed to the much-anticipated reopening of the WAR Beta test. Highlights this month include:

• A lengthy discussion of the new Keeps and Sieges gameplay. We've previously discussed this content thanks to the Beta updates, but full and gritty details of this RvR component are unveiled by Paul Barnett and Josh Drescher ... in hilarious fashion.
• The 21st grab bag, covering abilities, speccing out your character, and the differences between different avatars of the same class.
• A welcome back letter for the Beta troops! Even funnier than the Siege video, and chock full of new additions to the game. With The Hickman! If you watch one thing from the newsletter, this is the one to grab.
• The announcement of the Disciples of Khaine, the deadly healers (yes, you read that right) of the Dark Elf race. For all the details, make sure to check out Paul's hyperbole-filled video presentation.
• More on the Sorceress and Sorcerer - another Dark Elf class. These folks were announced in the November newsletter, and get even more detailed here in this December entry.
• Lairs! This fascinating new gameplay element is (I think) a brand-new announcement in this newletter. They sound like hidden areas, special dungeons that take a little bit of work to find. The WAR devs have obviously taken a liking to the Explorers amongst us. Can't wait to find my first one.
• A zone overview of Ellyrion, the breeding ground for magnificent elven stallions.
• A developer diary about the outlook on the WAR newbie experience, and a Beta journal covering just a bit of a young dwarf's life.
• And (of course) another batch of Paul's video diaries.

There's a ton more content exclusive to the Newsletter, so if it's not already in your inbox you have a task today. Go sign up. Right now! Then go back to laughing at Paul and Jeff, and their hilarious squig-related humor.

Of particular interest was Stone's discussion about Funcom's choice to de-emphasize the role of healing classes in the traditional sense, moving away from the chain-healing prevalent in games like World of Warcraft. Their plan to achieve this involves proliferating cheap, readily-available healing potions, and giving the game's hybrid healing classes more heal over time abilities instead of spam heals. They also go into depth about the guilds, large-scale PvP, the siege system, and more. If you're anticipating AoC as much as we are, it's probably worth throwing on the iPod.