LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

Mythic Entertainment has mentioned the upcoming Keep Upgrade System several times over the past month or so and even released a complete guide to the system available in the Warhammer Online Herald. Everything looks fantastic and I’m really anxious and excited to see this put into the game. But this article isn’t to rave about how awesome it looks and what it can do for open rvr, this article will explain why none of it matters. From one perspective, anyway.

I’m sure just about anyone that’s reading this has done atleast some open rvr Keep sieges at this point, whether it be Tier 2 or Tier 4. Ever noticed how difficult it is to take a Keep when it’s being defended? For example, on March 29th, 2009, I was playing my Orc Choppa on Skull Throne (US). I ran across 2 large warbands while scouting some battlefield objectives in Greenskin versus Dwarf Tier 2. One warband was completely full, so there’s 24 players. The other warband had 22/24 players, this totals out to 46 players. The warbands were on their way to the Keep in Barak Var, which was currently Order controlled. We reached the Keep and immediately began our siege. The problem was, there was around 15 or so visible Order players defending this Keep. These 15 or so order players were able to fend off the 46 destruction attackers, with style and ease. So half an hour later what did we do? We moved on to a Keep that no one was defending. Why? Because we wanted those epic phat loots that you can’t get from killing players, well, not efficiently anyway.

This is a problem I’ve had with WAR’s Keep system since launch. I even asked about it during our interview with Josh Drescher (See Stonetroll Certified #14), and while I agree that defenders should be at an advantage, some much needed changes will have to be put in place in the future to keep attackers attacking instead of bailing out to take a Keep that is undefended. Just a few defenders is all you need to hold a Keep. Even if a couple warbands are attacking. What happened to the element of surprise? Shouldn’t that give you some advantage as an attacker? It seems the only time the element of surprise is an advantage is when you surprise attack an undefended Keep. Man, we really surprised those NPC’s didn’t we?

The warband I described above was one of the few warbands I have participated in that proceeded to attack the Keep while it was being so heavily defended, even though we only stayed 20 to 30 minutes. Normally, the groups I find will leave as soon as they see more than 3 or 4 Order characters playing defense. There’s just no reward in it. Yes, I know, you get renown points and experience. But even those have deminishing returns. It feels like you are penalized for fighting other players while rewarded for killing NPC’s.

I would hate to be one of the developers behind the scenes trying to balance this one because Mythic has a very difficult task set for themselves. How do you compel players to fight hour long battles just to take a Keep, or not? The immediate reward for taking a Keep is loot. Why spend hours attempting to siege a defended Keep when you can go to an undefended location and cap it in just a few short minutes? In a perfect WAR world, in my mind anyway, battles would be fought around the clock. You would siege a Keep for the sake of killing your enemy and controlling the zone rather than getting the “phat loot”. But loot is one of the greatest and most powerful incentives when motivating players to do something. Currently, it’s just easier to find an undefended Keep, although if the reward was better I would attack a defended Keep all day long, even if I knew we couldn’t take it.

With the game’s current system, I can see the new system becoming more viable after the game has been out longer. Especially in Tier 4 when players have all of their gear and such and are actually battling for zone control rather than loot. That being said, Mythic’s ace in the hole will be the new rvr resource, Ordinance, that can be traded in for assault upgrades, and the Divine Favor Altar that requires the skulls of fallen enemies to operate (See Keep Upgrade Guide). I’m really hoping that Ordinance and the Divine Favor Altar will be enough to compel players to participate in these “losing” battles at moderately defended Keeps. Or, maybe just the fun of playing with our new toys will be incentive enough.

So, while I still feel that the Keep Upgrade System is one of the most important additions to WAR since launch, simply because it will bring a sense of ownership to Keeps, what good is all this defense if no one is gonna attack you anyway? Will Ordinance and the Divine Favor Altar be enough? We’ll find out soon, the upgrade system is set to be implemented in 1.2.1!

What’s your thoughts? Have you ever left a Keep behind that was defended just so you could attack one that wasn’t? Will Ordinance and the Divine Favor Altar spark epic battles across the WAR servers? Leave us your thoughts in the comments thread below and we’ll see you out on the battlefield!