Age of Conan - Hyborian strongholds

You sieged my battlekeep! How guilds in Age of Conan will compete for buffs and glory

A perk of joining a guild in Age of Conan is that each guild has the opportunity to build its own city. Constructing certain buildings will award each member of the guild certain benefits, such as unlocking new recipes and advanced trainers. Upgrading your city through its three tiers of development will reward you with the greatest prize of all: bragging rights.

Guilds with a Tier 3 city will be able to claim a battlekeep, an “outpost” for the city that provides player-versus-player (PvP) bonuses to the entire guild. Each server will have a maximum of nine keeps, so expect a land rush to grab them up at launch. Once a keep is claimed, its guild must select a day and time during which it will defend the keep on a weekly basis from attacking guilds. (Challengers must also own Tier 3 cities.) Up to 48 players on each side will compete to defend or take the keep. The only certainty is that it will be nearly destroyed during the timed PvP battle.

With enough resources, attackers will be able to build siege weapons such as catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae for devastating attacks against a keep’s stone walls. Players with access to heavy mounts like rhinos and mammoths can use them to ram the keep’s front gates. The defending guild's job is to resist the attacks, and, given that it already owns the keep, it will have the edge in combat. Siege winners are determined on a point system, and it’s possible for a guild to have successfully defended a keep that’s been reduced to a smoldering heap of stone and gravel. The resource costs for keep-owners will be very small, says Funcom, so a guild should be able to rebuild its fortress long before the next attack is scheduled.

While putting the smackdown on another guild is a just reward in itself, we’re betting that the buffs and bonuses gained from owning a battlekeep will make them one of the most sought-after prizes in all of Hyboria.