The folks at Age of Conan have provided us with this new developer journal on the guild cities system.

After battling your way off the beach, you’ve carved your own place in the world of Hyboria with grit, determination, and steel. Now you’re part of a hardy band of warriors and the time has come to claim your own chunk of the Hyborian Dream. After all, what is a guild without land and a mighty fortress standing atop it, telling all who come near of the power and glory they possess?

A guild city is a major commitment, requiring a massive investment of blood and treasure to create and maintain. With a great price comes a great reward, however, as the benefits for owning one extend beyond lording over your greatness to one and all. In addition to power and prestige, there are concrete benefits to land ownership in Age of Conan.

Read more here.

VERY cool.Though I am not too excited about forcing players to be in guilds to craft or get the building benefits.

"Forcing?" Says who? People will either want the bonuses, and thus join a guild, or they won't, and then they won't. It's that simple. City building, like guild participation, seems completely voluntary and optional.

Personally, I'm going to actively campaign for a guild, the purpose of which is to make an enclave, but that's just me. With luck, I can find 24 like-minded people out of the 100,000 or so out there ready to play the game...

The Free City of Lochlainn is setting up guilds / Cities on both US and EU servers. If someone is looking for a place to call home that will allow for a loose association then give us a look. It is good that they are now sharing information about the city developement stage. Who wouldnt like to bonuses associated with guilds tied to the city?

http://forum.xential.net/index.php

That's what make a great guild been ever greater !

Sounds exciting... Can't wait

sounds a lot like the AO city system, which is great. The requirement to have 24+ ppl is really nice since AO has people who own multiple cities to farm the aliens there for good money, only a requirement for AO is "hopeless" since u can just make 23 toons on free accounts

Originally posted by thedrakon

That's what make a great guild been ever greater !

That makes zero sense. Care to explain it?

So from my understanding basically most guild will try to own two guild keep.  One is the player city which everyone will be able to make, and chances are it wont be brought down since only ncp mob attacks it.  The second is the battle keep which can be attack by player at certain allowed time frame.  Also only a certain number of seige keep are allowed so if you came late you're force to attack and burn one to the ground before you're able to use the area and build one of your own.  That's what I had gather from all the reading, does that seems right?  Sounds like fun !

Yeah Savilz your basically right.  The concepts are actually alot of fun and I am also looking forward to this game.  My brother in law is in the beta and he is a big Eve fanatic (I hate eve) and he seems to like this game alot.  I have already pre-ordered it and am looking forward to jumping in on may 17th.  I just hope that my system doesnt have any problems running the game, and im hoping the gameplay is alot of fun. Even if the game is horrible there is like 10 or so MMO's comming out later this year

You better hate EvE for its combat!!! And nothing else!

in this game, guilds can truely prove they are better than other guilds by simply... crushing the other guild's city. is there any better way? i think not.

dling early access AoC. WoooT

Honestly I really hope they put in a member number restriction, other wise it will really turn into old school shadow bane.  Without member restriction often time a third of the population will be in one guild because of the massive resource that guild can provide and the lvling help.  But then it will make it so only they rule - without a power struggle a form of control there is really no fun competition.  Downloading the game now :P i'll be ready by the 17th -- sooo close!

ya good point about the guild limitation. same thing in wow, only the top members gets to raid and the bottom are left to rot or waiting hopelessly for a replacement =S.

Cool thing i read about AoC, u can recruit other players who are not in the guild as a mercenary sort of thing, and get gold for their work in return.

So they talk about the different areas a little, saying what race would feel more at home where but I'm wondering exactly where you can place these cities and keeps. Is there going to be some areas that you could have a huge mountain serving as one side of your city or a huge drop off on the other side that no one would be able to climb an army up? An area like in the movie 300 that a few can hold off 100's due to terrain?

You know what they say about real estate...location, location, location.

I doubt you are able to just build a city anywhere you like, would mean they got to write alot more codes for the different area then they have time to.  With limitation on where you can build would also mean they wouldbe able to streghten the server that area is on for a large scale war fare.  Well that's said for battle keep, but for the normal pve town city I dont see a reason why we can't get a nice spot like that just for kick :P  I read at one point that when you erect a pve city that another ncp city will raise in a distance not too far and constancely attack you at a giving time frame.  Is that still happening?

Great with some  precise information about city building. Good thing that you can have a city without engaging in siege-pvp unless you want to. The player cities will probably be very important for how the game is received, even if it will take a while until you can build them.

Congratulations on those that are already playing today.