Game of Thrones MMORPG Previews

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Written by BuckGB on March 10th, 2012

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The playable area will span from the Wall in the north to the south beyond King's Landing, and at launch will feature three major factions. You'll get the Lannisters, the Baratheons and the Starks, and all are trying to install a Hand at King's Landing. You won't actually join directly with a faction, though. Instead, you'll join a lesser house in Westeros your guild that can align with one of the three great houses. Using this system, it'll be possible to swap the allegiance of your guild between factions. So if the Lannisters are closer to installing a Hand, you can defect. Other guilds can even offer bribes to entice others to switch sides.

If your faction happens to win control of the high-ranking Hand position at King's Landing, the entire faction gets bonuses for a limited time. The road to installing someone in this position is, naturally, a long one. Martin's fiction is full of violence and backstabbing, after all, which is why the game is being built as primarily a PvP game.

Though your initial starting position will be protected from invaders, it won't be long until you're out in the open in Westeros and vulnerable to attacks from players aligned with other factions. Player versus environment content will be included, so you don't necessarily need to join with a guild or participate in PvP combat to level, but there won't be any dungeons or raids. All the high level gameplay sounds like it'll be PvP-focused.

Bandits roaming the lands will be allied with whatever faction owns those lands. If players are in lands controlled by their own faction, there won't be any PvP unless you enforce it it. However, if you move into a hostile faction's land, you will be open for PvP.

Territory control will be achieved through a siege system. There will be eight castles, 16 forts, and many keeps in the game. To own an area, players must conquer, control, and keep the castle within. But before even getting the chance to take the castle, the attackers must first conquer the land's keeps and then the forts, finally working toward the castle. Castle sieges will be 50v50, fort sieges will be 30v30, and keep sieges will be 20v20. Different castles and lands will have different resources, spurring trading within the game.

Although there won't be any crafting in game, the resources will be important for fortifying and strengthening holdings as well as aiding sieges. Crafting could be possible in the future; while the focus on the game at launch is a good PvP experience, where the game goes afterward will be dependent on the feedback of the players (and the development of technology). As time passes, features that are genuinely wanted by the players will be explored. Rob emphasized that the devs are "starting with the core components that we think are going to make it fun. But the great thing is we are getting to market so early that we can listen to what people want. Instead of spending three to five years making this amazing thing that we think is right, let's spend a good amount of time making the first version with the core things you would expect. Then if there are very specific features that everybody has to have, then we'll do it. You have to listen to your users or they will leave."

Guilds will play a major role in the game and players will create their guilds as minor noble houses. They can affiliate their house with one of the main households in the lore. However, what makes this guild system unique is that in game at a certain point player guilds can switch factions and work for another power in the world (just like the houses do when the war is on). This all ties into a political system in the game. Sadly, we didn't hear much about the political system just yet, but the team is very excited about implementing the deadly politics of Martin's world into the game.

The game borrows heavily from the HBO series. The look and style of the weapons and armor are all straight out of the show. The team is lucky to be working with the design team from HBO, which can really help flesh out the game world. There are wolves, bears and forest beasts in the land where players will have to fight and these creatures will have to be killed. This open world format allows for some amazing PVP scenarios.

The game's PvP is still in early days yet, but factions are at a war and you are in the story. The fighting goes on but you can switch factions with your guild. This gives players some serious story impact in the world. The games design also takes balance into account. This is critical to their combat. Devs take this seriously and want the game to be balanced without having players being forced to hit the item mall or anything remotely like pay to win.

If you want to take your guild and change sides you'll be able to - that's part of the game. BigPoint says that it's planning some sort of slight punishment for this, possibly by putting the choice on a cooldown, though it's not planning on making it too severe. They figure the community's response to those who switch sides too often will be enough of a punishment, and they're just leaving it to them.

That's not to say there won't be combat at all. On the contrary - Game of Thrones' battles will be a major part of the experience, with a majority of the game's focus being placed on player-versus-player battles. This will be available in both the open world (which we're being told is massive), focused around taking over forts and castles, and in ranked 5 on 5 fights.

And these battles won't be spent clicking on attacks and waiting for cooldowns. It's an action-based system, with players choosing to attack high, medium, or low as their opponent blocks. We weren't completely sold on this from what we saw during the show, as it looked a little clunky, but the developers assured us that we were seeing a fairly early implementation of the battles, and that the final version will be much more fluid.

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