'Conquest Mode' In Guild Wars Expansion

Rich Powers writes "Gamespy interviews NCSoft's Jeff Strain about the new meta game players can expect when Guild Wars: Factions arrives in Q2 2006. Like other MMORPGs (notably World of Warcraft), the new expansion will allow players to fight over territories and even conquer them. But now they can form alliances with other guilds and, as Strain indicates, even take over the world. The article also mentions the advent of a FPS-like player-vs-player mode where opposing teams attack the enemy's supply lines. Hopefully the trend of player-driven content will continue across the genre."

Comments

From TFA:

[Kazzahdrane]

By participating in "alliance missions" and "faction battles," players can take control of cities and towns and actually move the two nations' control zones.

The last time I played it, WoW had nothing like this (and AFAIK still doesn't). This is more akin to the factions in DAoC, from what I understand. It certainly sounds interesting, and I really wish I'd picked up Guild Wars last year instead of WoW - this one looks like it's heading in a direction I'm much more into.

Re:From TFA:

[CashCarSTAR]

You don't have to have the original GW in order to play Factions. Factions is a stand-alone game on its own, and includes the original 6 classes as well. (Not all of the skills, but enough of them to make them playable, as well as the new Factions skills for them, 25 a piece).

I actually was kinda blah on the expansion, I really expected a quick knock-off like most expansions are. But from all the information, as well as seeing some of the new skills, ArenaNet really have their act together and Guild Wars probably will be around for quite a while. Factions probably will be more popular than the orignal.

Taking over the world

[FirienFirien]

Oh, please don't let one group take over the entire world. In many games where players rule areas, you get one major group who holds the [holdings], and either you're in that bloated group or you're unable to take them on. The fun is in the battles for takeover, and having a power group with a large income essentially overbalances the battle so that competitors have to resort to odd timings and sneak attacks rather than the fun of pitched battles. In Lineage 1, the servers became stagnant when a large alliance of Korean players controlled the land and transferred the holdings between two pawn factions so that all battles were at stupid o'clock for the european and american players.

Even in games where the landholdings are small, alliances form and the bloated conglomerate reigns. Granted, the alliances get to have their fun in the initial battles, but for anyone who comes later the odds are often overwhelmingly against them, with the alliances shifting their resistance force without much problem to where needed to hold that land.

There needs to be some kind of balance - the more holdings you own the worse the corruption (as in the Civilisation series), so that after a number of holdings it becomes inefficient to attack a new area unless an old one is relinquished. That way the large groups will move to more prosperous areas (leaving a low value area behind), requiring momentum in play to maintain value. The low value area, presumably taken by a smaller group, will become more prosperous over time again (less corruption for a smaller group); while as usual this idea is probably exploitable in various ways, at least it gives the game more action, less stagnation, and will draw a heck of a lot more holding power. Games are a lot more interesting if there's a pressure to stay on the form you had.

One drawback here is that smaller players - a handful of hours per week rather than massive chunks of time spent in game - will become a target when any land held is more prosperous, and it'd be tiresome to be attacked over and over just as land becomes useful - but at least it's a start, and should keep the game interesting for a lot longer.

Disclaimer: I am not a GW player, and don't know the game mechanics. And kinda got carried away a little with the idea. But I've seen enough stagnant powermongers to put me off for a bit, so something more dynamic and interesting like this would be novel enough to give a fair bit more pull.