In our continuing coverage of EA Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood pens this article on the capital cities in the game.

Warhammer Online is an interesting game. Not just for what they are doing that is unique and innovative, but also for what they are doing that is a constant in MMORPGs. What do I mean? Well, while visiting the studios to get a look at the un-released game, I sat in on a presentation on cities. While virtually every MMORPG has cities, Warhammer seems to take city building to an extreme making large (very large) cities and filling them with content.

While we didn’t get to see every race’s starting city on our trip, we did get to see the two human cities, Altdorf and Inevitable City, giving us a great idea of both how similar and how different the cities can be.

Before we get into talking about the specific cities, we should probably talk a little bit about how the cities work and what is available in them:

Read the whole article here.

Real reason to level your city other then defence I like the idea

So will the cities revert to level one if the city is conquered or will they slowly degrade?  I would also like to thank Mythic for placing multiple Auctioneers throughout the each of the cities.  The ones near the transports will probably always be the most crowded but it should at least help somewhat.

Originally posted by Falcon4196

So will the cities revert to level one if the city is conquered or will they slowly degrade?  I would also like to thank Mythic for placing multiple Auctioneers throughout the each of the cities.  The ones near the transports will probably always be the most crowded but it should at least help somewhat.

I believe in one of the previous news items about capital cities, it was mentioned that the faction attacking the city would be provided with special quests that involve some kind of looting/killing/burning that once completed, would knock the cities level down. Its likely that this would have to be a faction wide undertaking however, only a few people probably couldnt do much damage. But if you got to the point when you are in the enemies city, I'm sure there will be no shortage of manppower on the attackers side.

IIIRC, cities do go down when they get taken over by the enemy.

Statues are great added feel goodies.  City of Heroes forums long ago had player request for player statues but Stateman shot that idea down.  Guess it is doable!

Has it ever been stated how long a city will remain overtaken?

It would need to be long enough so the the attackers can do some raids in the conquered city's underground content.

Once again i feel EA Mythic proves that they understand that it's really the little things that make the biggest differences.

It's no surprise the game was delayed again having to add and tune all of these little joys, but it's totally worth it. These are the things that give a game "flavor" trust me.

Like in Fable, where you could kick the chickens and it'd record the distance you kicked them. Had nothing to do with the rest of the game, but this little touch brought me soo much joy.

Absolutely agree. It s brilliant and alot of the little things make the big picture even better. I love the statue thing and being able to destroy them is purely amazing, can t wait.

What I'm still wondering is if there will be some stupid lock out time that will prevent another faction from attacking the other faction's cities and/or capitals, even during the night?  That's the one thing that really is bothering me for Age of Conan, is that there's a lockout timer that prevents putting a keep up for attack, nor seiging the keep, during the time between midnight and 6a.m.  I know a small force of 9-10 people at 1a.m can't do much of anything, but they can still TRY to take over a city or a keep or whatever.......

It sounds great, just hope it's implemented well.

Something that I read makes me quite leary of this whole city rating BS........

The article says CITY RATINGS ARE UNIVERSAL OVER ALL SERVERS...........

This means each server is NOT unique in their ability to affect the ratings of their own cites and must be at the mercy of all the actions on EVERY server in the game.  This is a very poor mechanic if that is the case.  Even WoW can break down these events and similar activities over each individual server.  Why should a company force its players to rely on what every other server has done, or in the case of some low pop servers, what they don't do. 

If this is a mistake and ratings are not universal over all servers, then I think its a great idea.  But again, to force people to work for their capital city and then find its all in vain, is in my opinion ludicrous.

Originally posted by Siphaed

What I'm still wondering is if there will be some stupid lock out time that will prevent another faction from attacking the other faction's cities and/or capitals, even during the night?  That's the one thing that really is bothering me for Age of Conan, is that there's a lockout timer that prevents putting a keep up for attack, nor seiging the keep, during the time between midnight and 6a.m.  I know a small force of 9-10 people at 1a.m can't do much of anything, but they can still TRY to take over a city or a keep or whatever.......

I personally would like to see them be attackable during the night hours, if they do manage to capture it then you can prove your worth the next day and take it back.

Originally posted by rshandlon

Something that I read makes me quite leary of this whole city rating BS........

 

The article says CITY RATINGS ARE UNIVERSAL OVER ALL SERVERS...........

 

This means each server is NOT unique in their ability to affect the ratings of their own cites and must be at the mercy of all the actions on EVERY server in the game.  This is a very poor mechanic if that is the case.  Even WoW can break down these events and similar activities over each individual server.  Why should a company force its players to rely on what every other server has done, or in the case of some low pop servers, what they don't do. 

If this is a mistake and ratings are not universal over all servers, then I think its a great idea.  But again, to force people to work for their capital city and then find its all in vain, is in my opinion ludicrous.

Sorry, you misunderstood. Theya re universal across the server, meaning that they are the same for everyone (and not some kind of instanced mumbo-jumbo). I'll take the "s" off of that word to make it a little bit more clear.

Honestly, when I wroite the article, I didn't think of the scenario you mentioned. It just woudn't make any sense at all...

Originally posted by Stradden

 

Originally posted by rshandlon

Something that I read makes me quite leary of this whole city rating BS........

 

The article says CITY RATINGS ARE UNIVERSAL OVER ALL SERVERS...........

 

This means each server is NOT unique in their ability to affect the ratings of their own cites and must be at the mercy of all the actions on EVERY server in the game.  This is a very poor mechanic if that is the case.  Even WoW can break down these events and similar activities over each individual server.  Why should a company force its players to rely on what every other server has done, or in the case of some low pop servers, what they don't do. 

If this is a mistake and ratings are not universal over all servers, then I think its a great idea.  But again, to force people to work for their capital city and then find its all in vain, is in my opinion ludicrous.

 

Sorry, you misunderstood. Theya re universal across the server, meaning that they are the same for everyone (and not some kind of instanced mumbo-jumbo). I'll take the "s" off of that word to make it a little bit more clear.

Honestly, when I wroite the article, I didn't think of the scenario you mentioned. It just woudn't make any sense at all...

Bad you and your grammatical mistakes!!1

Then my note of saying that would be great, will hold true.  I was in WOW when they did the events for opening Quiraj and the gathering items, etc was great.  Being able to watch your side increase and see that you mattered even a little bit really made it better. 

I don't think I will be playing Warhammer when it comes out, but this aspect of Cities should make it really interesting and fun for those who do play it. 

  Each day I hear more and more good stuff about WAR. They truly are polishing this game.

 Sign me up for pre-order.

Originally posted by Siphaed

What I'm still wondering is if there will be some stupid lock out time that will prevent another faction from attacking the other faction's cities and/or capitals, even during the night?  That's the one thing that really is bothering me for Age of Conan, is that there's a lockout timer that prevents putting a keep up for attack, nor seiging the keep, during the time between midnight and 6a.m.  I know a small force of 9-10 people at 1a.m can't do much of anything, but they can still TRY to take over a city or a keep or whatever.......

If there are enough people to fight at night then I see no reason why they couldn't take it at night.   Just remember though there's alot of NPC's & players you have to go through in order to own the city.   They've made sure of this so that a power guild can't just simply run in and do it on their own.  It must be a Realm Effort.

I figure by Teir 4 most players have probably adapted somewhat to realm co operation to some exent (there will always be people who do for themselves only) which will make it a major coordinated zerg fest(which is what sieging truely is!).

Originally posted by Stradden

 

Originally posted by rshandlon

Something that I read makes me quite leary of this whole city rating BS........

 

The article says CITY RATINGS ARE UNIVERSAL OVER ALL SERVERS...........

 

This means each server is NOT unique in their ability to affect the ratings of their own cites and must be at the mercy of all the actions on EVERY server in the game.  This is a very poor mechanic if that is the case.  Even WoW can break down these events and similar activities over each individual server.  Why should a company force its players to rely on what every other server has done, or in the case of some low pop servers, what they don't do. 

If this is a mistake and ratings are not universal over all servers, then I think its a great idea.  But again, to force people to work for their capital city and then find its all in vain, is in my opinion ludicrous.

 

Sorry, you misunderstood. Theya re universal across the server, meaning that they are the same for everyone (and not some kind of instanced mumbo-jumbo). I'll take the "s" off of that word to make it a little bit more clear.

Honestly, when I wroite the article, I didn't think of the scenario you mentioned. It just woudn't make any sense at all...

you missed out a "t" on the word The in the Altdorf paragraph.  Aside from that a very good article

It is nice to see the people at mythic played Shadowbane.

P.S. I mean no disrespect to anybody by the donkey I just like that stupid thing!

Originally posted by heerobya

Once again i feel EA Mythic proves that they understand that it's really the little things that make the biggest differences.

 

It's no surprise the game was delayed again having to add and tune all of these little joys, but it's totally worth it. These are the things that give a game "flavor" trust me.

Like in Fable, where you could kick the chickens and it'd record the distance you kicked them. Had nothing to do with the rest of the game, but this little touch brought me soo much joy.

 

That made me chuckle.  How many chickens did you kick?

Looks fun

shame the graphix suck

Guild Taverns = Win in this news article.

Originally posted by vickypollard

shame the graphix suck

Graphics  = how good the game is.

Originally posted by Arkane_A

Guild Taverns = Win in this news article.

The statues idea is awesome.  Even if its only for a week I want to get my toon as a statue!  Every time I find new info about this game I get more pumped about the small but good features which are going to make this game great.