MMOs with Siege of Castles

The theme of Castle Sieges has been introduced into the MMO scene for a while now. Although it might have become pretty common, let’s remember some games with the fascinating sieging process.

Guild Wars 2

Castle Siege in Guild Wars 2 deserves an appreciation. It is pretty thrilling because of the fact that defence forces here are divided into several groups. The first protects the castle itself from the attackers. The second is trying to capture the resources which will help in the construction of defensive weapons and fortifications. The third group is defending the loot and makes sure that the enemy does not rob the transport.

Age of Conan

It's been 10 years since Age of Conan was unleashed upon the world, however, this old boy never fails to amaze when speaking of sieges. Here gamers seize not the castles but entire cities. After the city is built, there is always a risk of the attackers coming and setting up the camp, ballista, catapults and other siege weapons. Unlike the other MMOs, capturing the city is not enough for the victory in Age of Conan. Both defenders and attackers score points while fighting, so the city is fully conquered only if the attacking clan has scored more points than their enemies.

Lineage II

Lineage II is considered the benchmark for castle-siege content and even inspiration for some other online worlds. No wonder: Lineage II has the most epic sieges. Tactics and strategy here is not a joke but the means of mere survival. Having a castle gives your clan an immeasurable strategic benefit, so the leaders have to elaborate almost cinematic battle plans. Dozens of separate units are fighting under their command and each has its own combat goal. Sometimes over 300 people are cooperating in voice chats which makes you feel in the midst of a real castle siege. Almost forgot: what can be more epic than conquering the castle with a huge siege golem?

Black Desert

Sieges here is the standard way for the clans to sort their relationship out. Each region here has a castle. All castles in the game are unique: they have different appearance, design, map, weaknesses and strengths. Besides that, they are huge and look like real-life medieval buildings. Any player here can take part in the purge, though it is not the best idea if you do it without a guild, because during the siege, the territory controlled by the castle becomes a PvP free zone.

The Elder Scrolls Online.

Cyrodiil definitely pushes gamers towards group playing, so the castle-siege process here requires a great deal of effort from the players involved, and can actually be a dull experience - at least at first. Although, when you take a step back and look at it from a distance, it's can be quite fascinating to watch an ongoing siege, and see players operating a dozen different trebuchets all chucking fiery projectiles at a castle gate, while enemy players try to knock them out with siege weapons of their own from along the castle ramparts.

Which MMOs siege do you admire the most?

I actually really enjoyed the GW2 WvWvW sieges. Pretty enjoyable from both sides, the equipment you got to use was cool and successfully breaking in felt satisfying. With the announcement of the Elsweyr expansion for TES:O I might have to consider giving that a shot too.

I might be alone in singing it's praises but Aion's Abyss Fortress sieges were an incredible weekly undertaking. All fortresses sit on floating landmasses in a massive PVP area called the Abyss. Once a week several Fortresses owned by a faction becomes vulnerable to change over. In order to do so an entire server's faction plans and decides which Fortress to take over and which to protect. This usually means 400 to 600 players being divided into different roles which involve scouting, defense or offense. Offense involves finding a way through the enemy shields or finding an unprotected backdoor, breaking the crystal that controls the over shield letting everyone else through, breaking through the Deities gate and killing a massive boss that protects the Fortress all the while several hundred enemy players are trying to stop you.

This is also all happening in a game where everyone could fly and more often then not the sky will be fill with people fighting or trying figure out where to go in the chaos. Each fortress not only gives different universal buffs to players of the faction that hold the Forts they are also each a unique Dungeon Instance. Players of the faction that does not own the Fortress can still use the Dungeon Instance but they would need to race past players and hostile NPCs that own the Fort.

It gets incredibly hectic and that's not including the AI controlled faction(which I and many others suspect are just being controlled by the developers) that can also take part in Fortress Sieges, usually signaled by a giant flying war ships that unloads high level enemies or when the most prominent(and worthwhile) Fortress at the core of the Hellfire Array becomes vulnerable once a month(I think) that's when most of the players in the server take part (which usually turns the game into a slide show) and requires attackers to free fall into a massive well of fire before being greeted by most of the server's enemy population including most of the hyper serious guilds which tend to own the Core.

It might not have been the most popular MMO but it was a great time and the server I was in seemed to be populated by friendly players.

No mention of Dark Age of Camelot??

Didn't that Warhammer one have sieges of faction capitals back when it was still online? I never engaged with PvP, but I remember that being one of the selling points.

@automatik: Good article, I liked it, I been playing for 3 years on the classic server Lineage, though there is a problem in the overpayment for NA servers, but I play on Skelth. And I'm not worried about this moment

Guild Wars 2 is the only one I've ever participated in. I remember it being fun, but it was a long time ago. That's cool that TESO is getting it now, unfortunately I never could play the game for very long. I tried many times throughout the years, but every time I went back I played for a few days and forgot about it.

When I see stuff like this, it always make me realize that I've never given an MMO a fair shot. I always say I'm gonna get into one, but am bored to tears after a few hours of play. Then I see stuff like this, install a new MMO, try to get into it, and repeat the entire cycle again. Do I need to break through the monotony of the early stages to truly enjoy an MMO? How much time/investment are we talking here? Feel like I put at least 20+ hours into Elder Scrolls Online and I still haven't seen anything cool like a siege.

@big_denim: It really does vary but generally speaking there are not a lot of MMOs that are Amazing from the jump. FFXIV is something at this point that I would consider one of my favorite games of all time and even then I would caution people of how very very mundane it is for frankly too many hours.

It does honestly sound like you HAVE given them a totally fair shot though.

@efesell: How far into FFXIV would you say you got before it 'clicked' with you? Or were you into it from the beginning?