When the fortresses were removed in WAR's 1.3.2 patch, the intention was to get campaigns moving again. It was successful but perhaps too successful. On some servers, city sieges are occurring too frequently, resulting in some players being locked out of their city. Mythic is aware of the problem and has outlined some of the planned fixes.
If a city siege advances to the second stage, it will lose ranking. A loss of rank means things like the Guild Hall and palace are no longer accessible. So the losing side is put at a further disadvantage. Another problem is that when the city is under siege, the rest of the game is pretty much put on hold.
Andy, from Mythic, posted some fixes for these issues:
- Guild Hall access and functionality will no longer be tied to City rank. All privileges granted by the Guild Halls will be available in a 1-Star City.
- Cities will now start to recover rank more quickly. We have drastically sped up the effort required to rank your City back up.
- Access to the Citadel and the Imperial Palace will no longer be tied to City Rank. You will now have permanent access to the quests and vendors that lie within.
- We are retiring the two Scenarios formerly available when a City is under siege: The Undercroft and the Altdorf War Quarters. Ok, this is nothing new since 1.3.2, but this paves the way for...
- During Stage 2 of the City siege there will now be two scenarios permanently available for those of you who do not wish to participate in the City siege experience, depending on which City is being seiged: If Altdorf is under attack, then Reikland Factory is enabled. If The Inevitable City has fallen to the armies of Order, The Twisting Tower will be active.
- These two scenarios will not contribute to the Victory Points of the City siege in any way however they will offer a 10% bonus to Renown and Experience gained.
- Anyone from Tier 2, 3 or 4 may queue for these scenarios. For this Scenario only, everyone is Bolstered to 40 for some face smashing good times.
- You may only queue for these Scenarios from outside of the City instance.
Another issue with the city siege is the length. It is clear players do not like spending hours fighting in the city. As a result, the duration will be shorter.
- We will be halving the duration of the City siege experience.
- Stage 1 will now last only 1 hour.
- Stage 2 will now last only 3 hours.
These changes do not address the core problem which is that population imbalances lead to too many sieges by one side. In a way, the shorter duration does help. By spending less time under siege they will have to spend more time fighting out in the lakes.
Andy did respond to my above point:
As you've alluded too, Cities were not meant to be sieged as frequently as they are right now. We know this, and it's apparent that many players know this. Internally, we're making the needed steps to address this and will keep the community informed every step of the way, as we have been doing.
And now the big question, when will we see these changes? Andy mentioned that there will be another PTS Event next week. That makes me think, if all goes well, these changes will be in late next week or the week after.
