The map is also intelligently laid out, with each alliance’s primary territory tucked into its respective corner of a triangular map and the crown jewel of the Imperial City (surrounded by six keeps) in the center. Cyrodiil makes use of Transitus Stones that allow you to fast travel to keeps in your alliance’s control, as long as the keep isn’t under attack or the link between keeps isn’t broken by captured territory.
Another aspect of Cyrodiil that stood out was the varied geography. There are often many ways to approach an objective or enemy force and the layout of the map allows you to intelligently use the terrain to your advantage. During my experience, I witnessed or took part in all sorts of smart flanking and ambush opportunities and I greatly appreciated the attention to detail in this regard.
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One of the most impactful ways ESO sets itself apart from other RPGs that offer large scale warfare is in the decisiveness of the battles. Mindless zerging simply isn’t as effective. I have not-so-fond memories of times I could log off during a keep siege in Warhammer Online and return three hours later only to find the same siege still in progress. Guild Wars 2 has similar issues due to the implementation of the downed state, which is fine for PvE and perhaps sPvP, but offers way too many opportunities for players to get back into the battle in WvW.
Just like the two aforementioned games, ‘zerging’ is alive and well in ESO, but it’s much more controlled due to the way Zenimax handles death and spawning in Cyrodiil. For one, resurrecting other players requires a filled Soul Gem and you have to actually walk up to them and initiate the rez. Depending on where your ally died, this can put you out of position and at risk of getting yourself killed, and if not, it at least costs you a consumable resource. This means that players actually die throughout a siege and allows for the tempo of a siege to swing dramatically if you’re just throwing bodies at a fight vs. a formidable enemy.
It’s true that you can place Forward Camps in the world that allow you to spawn back in closer to an objective (think Sunderers in PlanetSide 2), but these have a limited number of spawns, and like Sunderers, cannot be placed too close to one another.
I actually had an opportunity to witness this exact sort of tempo swing play out in one of my very first keep defenses in Cyrodiil. My alliance, the Ebonheart Pact, was dominating our particular campaign, and so the Aldmeri Dominion and Daggerfall Covenant essentially teamed up to siege one of our keeps. Things were looking pretty grim for most of it, but we were doing our best to hold them off for as long as possible. I slowly began to notice that the attacking force was losing steam as the fight went on because they were simply throwing themselves at our defenses, dying, and not getting back to the fight in time to replenish their forces before we could thin the herd further. With each failed attempt, their attack weakened.
The manner in which the siege ultimately ended really served to highlight the controls against zerging that Zenimax has put in place. As an archer, I was firing arrows down on the attacking force from the battlements while darting in and out of the keep to keep an eye on the inner gate that was slowly, but surely, breaking down under the assault of the enemy ram. That gate did eventually give way, but by the time it did, there were only a couple of enemy troops left to push the final assault on the keep interior and those few poor souls were taken out by a vat of oil and a hail of flaming arrows from myself and a couple of other archers.
Without the ability to mass resurrect players, it takes more than raw numbers to crack a solid defense. I’m not saying that zerging isn’t possible. I certainly saw it work many times over the course of the weekend, but the systems in place make it a less reliable strategy than you might expect coming from other games.
What if you don’t want to roll with a blob of players? Heck, what if you want to play a lone wolf? I wanted to answer these questions for myself over the weekend. After rolling with said blob for a few sessions, I decided to just run around Cyrodiil and see what sort of action I could find in small groups or even solo. Surprisingly, I would frequently run into smaller groups of players that were heading for manageable side objectives, such as outposts, lumber mills, mines and the like. I would often just run up and merge with the group and see where they were headed.
I actually found a great deal of success in joining with these smaller roaming groups to weaken keeps by capturing their mines and other resources while the larger forces were engaged in a keep siege. Oftentimes, we were met by similarly sized enemy groups and I had the opportunity to enjoy these smaller skirmishes around side objectives.
