Alot of heated debate has been going on since more siege details for age of conan have been revealed. It looks like the starting size for warring guilds will be 48 vs 48. While this number is not set in stone, it has been met with great skepticism from AOC fans.
Myself, Im not really sure its that big of a deal, as long as the fun factor remains. If you figure 8-9 keeps, thats about 900 people involved in keep warfare per week, which is a pretty descent number. Also, this is only a starting number, as game stability improves im sure that number will grow.
Im far more concerned with how this numer will affect resource, maintenance and siege weapon crafting. If a hardcore pvp guild wants to min max and only have 50 to 60 guild members. Is that size adequate enough to maintain a battlekeep?
My second concern would be who gets to select the players eligible to defend or attack, after the pvp points for a guild have been tallied. Will it be the players who contributed the most? Or will the guild leader have total control over the selection process.
Another concern I have is whether people are able to enter the siege after its started, especially if someone goes afk or loses connection. Depending on the timeframe of the attack window(i've heard anywhere from 1 to 2 hours) with only 48 people per side, I would imagine there would be some turnover. Sometimes things come up?
What I would like to see, if this siege system is going to be limited in this way, is some type of queue for entering and leaving the battle. For example my guild consists of 70 players, 60 show up for the seige. The top 48 are selected and begin the battle. The remaining 12 would be in a re-inforcement type queue based on their pvp contributions. After a guild mate dies 5 or 10 times for example they would go to the back of the queue line and the next available guild mate would enter the battle. This would continue rotating giving everyone a chance to experience the battle who wanted to.
Granted that type of solution could be problematic for large sized guilds, but a guild of around 100 active players would probrably fare well in that system. It would also add importance to not dyeing, and since the re-inforcement members of the guild would prolly be less seasoned it would add a nice flavor of realism to the battle.
For me, right now I dont know enough about some of the other mechanics in the game to know if these siege numbers are good or bad.
But hopefully funcom will enhance and improve on this foundation as the game matures.
