So I have to say the new city siege REALLY lives up to the hype so far. I have NEVER had such an exciting time running around killing people as I have during this recent PTS event. There’s some PvE elements still hanging around, but they actually add to the fight and bring a bit of epic to the table as well. It’s much more escort oriented than previously as you’re usually running alongside an objective WITH A GIANT FINGER OF GOD BEACON pointing out it’s location to your enemies (and vice versa of course).

It seemed like the first stage was pretty heavily skewed to the defenders. This is the stage where as an invader you rush into the city and start taking BO’s. Once you clear out a BO, a sapper (keg carriers ala Keg End live event), comes out with a powder keg to blow it all to smithereens. As a defender you have to haul ass down to the other end of Altdorf, use the Flags, and kill off these sappers while dealing with the destros who are going to be protecting them. The sappers themselves don’t do anything but run from you like little scaredy bitches and don’t even have the luxury of CC immunites, so you can pretty much stun-lock them if you’re coordinated enough.

Alas, the little guys are tough bastards, and have what seems to be Hero hitpoints. Mix in the swarming Destros and they manage to squeak by. Instance 36 lost the first stage hands-down. I mean, we techincally won it, which is all that counts for baggage, since we managed to keep them out of the Altdorf palace at the end of it all, but we still lost every single BO (which is why we took so damn long and held up the QA session).

In the second stage, both teams are reset back to their spawn area, and each recieve two big badass Heroes to run around and one-shot the mobs defending the BO’s. If you already own a BO, they stop and check the place out for a minute before moving onto the next one. Again somewhat similar to the sappers, these Heroes have no time to deal with normal players. They only stop to pimp slap the BO guards outta their way, or to drop their gloves and go to town on each other whilst we all squabble like children at their feet. Heroes can be healed by the players as well, so it’s something for the healers to do while avoiding the insane amounts of havoc being caused by the rest of us. Altdorf leaves very little room for manuevering which is actually fairly hilarious when physics kick in and you can’t move past that asshole right next to you.

Don’t worry, you were that asshole as well.

Right, so the second stage ends when your Hero reaches one side or the other. So not only do you have to make sure one of your Heroes gets over there, but you have to kill the other TWO enemy Heroes before they get to the other side. This shouldn’t be too hard considering each pair WILL UNDOUBTEDLY run across each others path. This is so much fun, it’s even better than getting really drunk and feeling up your sister! I swear! Order ended up getting back all but ONE of the BO’s in the seconds stage, and got our big badass Bright Wizard across the finish line to boot!

The BO’s are used in the final stage to pass around buffs. I don’t have any idea what these buffs were since this is the most AWESOME part of the entire city siege anyway. You get called back to your spawn one last time and the head honcho himself shows up to give 4 of you lucky pimps some male/female enhancement like you’ve never seen before in WAR. Based on your wards (the better the more likely), you turn into a 16 foot tall monstrosity doing 25% more damage and with 8x more health (or something like that). Then you get into this weird pimp strut as you march straight up to their boss Tchar’Zanek and get ready for the smackdown to end all smackdowns. When the Kings collide all hell breaks loose as each warband just rolls into each other with 8 pillars of beef slapping against each other. For about 10 minutes it’s absolute MADNESS and I couldn’t have enjoyed it more.

Trust me people. Have faith. The fine Mythic employees running the show KNOW what EPIC tastes like. They’re about to rub your goddamn faces in it.

Also, afterwards there was this little Q&A session. I managed to snag a recording of the whole thing. It’s here. Also, when I say James Nichols in there, I REALLY mean James Casey since yanno, he’s a Dev and stuff. =/

Oh, and a taste of the loot that was dropping. Nothing to wet your pants over, but it’s nice to know it’s out there.