MMORPG: Perfect World City Battle System

CASTLE SIEGE: A NEED MORE THAN A WANT

We've seen the siege feature over and over again in various games. Siege popularity came to an all-time high when War of Emperium was introduced in Ragnarok. Suddenly it changed from being a want to a need. Because Ragnarok siege gave gamers a totally new experience in online warfare, gamers now expect this feature in any of the online games that they play. Who can blame them? After all, competition is one of the most compelling reasons to keep on playing MMORPGs.

Enter the multi-awarded MMORPG, Perfect World. This game takes the competitive aspect of gaming to the next level by introducing a complex and very enjoyable City Battle system. Unlike other games when you have just several castles to choose from, in PW, you there are 44 cities or states available for conquest! Yup, you heard me right... 44 states PER server.

STATE OWNERSHIP BENEFITS


If a guild is strong enough to own a city, they will be rewarded with fame and fortune. The guild name will be written on the state map, and they will regularly get taxes from any transaction done by non-guild members in their city. Guild members will also get 1 hour of double experience every week for every state that they own. I'm not yet 100% sure on this one but from what I heard a guild can own up to three states. The benefits are not insanely great, but they are just right. It shows that the developers really made an effort to ensure game balance.

DECLARING WAR

Every week, a guild can declare war on only one state. If a guild already owns a state, they can only declare war on an adjacent state (based on the map). To declare war, the guild leader must go to the war NPC and pay a fee of 500,000. If multiple guilds want to attack a certain state, they will undergo bidding system to determine who will be the one to invade for that week. After the bidding ends, there will be an announcement on the server that will say which guild will attack which state and their corresponding schedules. War only happens during the weekend, and the system will generate the schedule at anytime during Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

THE BATTLEFIELD

Yes, I know what you're thinking. The map really looks like DOTA. Three lanes and guard towers per lane! Anyway, guilds will start at their respective home base, which is located at the far ends of the map. Each base is protected by a fortress wall with three gates. In each gate, there are 2 guard towers for added security. The central building is also defended by 4 guard towers. The three roads leading out of each base can also have towers built at the middle (now that totally reminds me od DOTA). Now the question is... how does a guild win? Pretty simple. In order to win, a conquering guild must destroy the central building of their opponent. The host guild, in turn, must defend it for the time period (2-3 hours) or destroy the central building of their attacker.

There are two ways to damage the guard towers and the central building: player and catapult. The best way to go about it is of course to use the catapult. It is really hard to do this though as you will have to escort the catapult from your base all the way up to your opponent's base. You'll need to go through the guard towers and opposing enemy troops just to get the weapon in place.

In the event that a character dies, he can teleport to any of the guard towers or transfer columns situated in various areas in the map. These columns act as waypoints (WoW speak) or agitating points (RO speak). They can also be destroyed by other players or by catapult.

If there is one word to describe the City Battle system, that word is EPIC. Perfect World promises to be one of the biggest games in 2007, especially since most of the new games, except for Lineage II, will have minimal PVP content. This is something that Pinoy gamers crave for and Perfect World will definitely give them that at the highest level possible.

Despite the seemingly pvp-centric nature of the game, Perfect World also boasts of intricate community features. The most noticeable one is the Mount System. Two players can actually ride one mount, which is really cute and compelling for anime-fans and gamer couples. I also heard that if you're a werebeast, you can transform to a wolf/bear and your lady love can actually ride you.

That's it for now. I'll try to get more material on PW and other games coming out this 2007. Cheers! Many thanks to O'neil Buena, PW Brand Manager and Andro Baluyut, LU Game Operations Head for giving me materials to work on for this post.