Sod fortresses

There’s been a lot of talk about changes to fortress battles in Warhammer Online. And let’s face it, what the game really needs at the moment is for someone to successfully attack Altdorf or the Inevitable City and to get as near to the King battle as possible. Why? Because that’s the given endgame of WAR, and the players want to know progress is being made. Now, I’ve only made it to a couple of fortress battles, myself, and despite what some people think about the changes, I think they’ll work out for the best in enabling players to progress towards the City fights we all want to see.

However, let’s not forget that if the three racial cities were in, we wouldn’t need fortresses at all. These problems have stemmed from the cities being reduced to one per faction, and having to come up with some reason to attack in the Elf/D. Elf or Dwarf/Greenskin pairing at all. So one fix is to get rid of fortresses and give us the cities – not a quick fix, by any means.

I’m not that enamoured with how the fortresses have worked out, I have to say. I find it fiddly and confusing for the the majority of players who’ve encountered nothing of such a fiddly nature until they hit Tier 4. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – players need to spend the entire game learning how to make the final attacks, and the game needs to train them towards this.

I think it’s becoming given knowledge also that Battlefield Objectives are a little.. underwhelming, that they’re simply capture the flag type objectives that are passed between Order and Destruction often, for the realm points, sometimes at the risk of an all out oRvR battle. It was touched on in the last Chaos Cast, and I agree.

As I was listening to No Prisoners, No Mercy it struck me that I disagreed with Julie and Fran over the fortresses. I don’t think the level 40s should be elsewhere, I think they should be attacking fortresses and cities. But they’re not wrong, those under 40 also need some solid objectives. And at the same time, I found myself wondering why there’s nothing like a fortress battle elsewhere in the game to practise on. Maybe the battlefield objectives in Tier 4 need to be meatier, or throughout the game, in fact. That way the 33-39s could be out on the battlefield objectives, helping in the big fight when they’re locked out from the fortress.

And from there, I started dreaming of attacking a village, something I’ve read in quite a few Warhammer novels. Without the epic scale of Praag, or the quick focus of a keep fight – why are there no villages we can take over. Surely these would be more interesting battlefield objectives? A little pillaging goes a long way in times of war! It’s certainly not an easy fix for Mythic, but I think it’d add a new dimension to the oRvR with more varied fights, and a reason to stay in the village to take over the blacksmith for an armour buff, etc etc.

As you can see, it’s not a very well-formed idea. But I like it. Who knew I was a pillager at heart?!