A couple of days ago staff writer Carolyn Koh at MMORPG.com had the opportunity to sit down with Brian Wheeler, one of the designers of Warhammer Online.  Most of the brief interview covered points that those following the game will have already heard.  However, toward the end she mentions that she was given an inside look at how city sieges will work, and was allowed to make some general comments about that process:

I was also given an in-depth example by Mythic of how the city siege component of the game currently works. I was reminded that the game has not launched and it would be misleading to make any claims of 100% certainty at this point in time.

In this case, the Armies of Destruction are attacking the Empire capital city of Altdorf…

• When the Tier 4 zone of Reikland falls, the city of Altdorf becomes “attack eligible”
• Destruction can then enter the Outer City, which is an RvR zone, to fight against players of Order and capture control objectives.
• Players on both sides will respawn in the Outer City until the battle is won or lost.
• If Destruction wins, the Outer City closes and they advance to the Inner City to fight NPCs and other Order player that may have survived the initial battle.
• Order players still in the Inner City will not be able to respawn once killed.
• Destruction will then have several hours of uninterrupted time to loot, pillage, quest, fight the king, etc.
• After this period of time has ended, the Outer City will re-open for RvR combat and the forces of Order may attempt to retake this area
• Should Order succeed, they can then enter the Inner City to clear out the forces of Destruction (who will no longer respawn in this area once killed)
• The city will then revert to its original state of peace.

Please note that the city siege itself will be population limited (size to be determined) and could play out over several different instances.

I thought this sounded like a pretty solid way to handle the city siege, but the last statement (bold mine) was news to me.  I’m just wondering how a city siege would work with population limited instances.  In other words, could there be 5 distinct instances of Altdorf’s outer city under attack at one time?  If so, what happens if Destruction wins in three of those fights, and Order wins the other two?  Does each instance progress separately, or does the game take the whole of all instance outcomes into account and declare one winner and one loser, then opens the inner city?  What if four of those battles were decided relatively quickly, while one took two hours - I don’t think you’d want the players in the other four instances waiting around.  They’d almost have to be independent of each other.

Or, perhaps once the outer city is taken in even one of the instances, the game considers the outer city lost and moves everyone directly into the inner city instance?   That would speed things up and keep everyone “together” in a way, even if you are participating in different instances.  I’m assuming that once the city is won, all victors would then be in just one instance of the captured city and be ready to loot, burn, and capture the king.  Hrm…  Well, something to ponder and if any of you have seen any other clarifying info on this, let me know. 

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