World first complete city capture in WAR

By Oli Welsh Published 7 April, 2009

Euro Destruction faction downs the King.

Massively reports that, over six months after the release of Warhammer Online, the first complete and legitimate sacking of a realm's capital city has taken place.

The Destruction faction on the European server, Karak Eight Peaks, successfully breached the Order capital of Altdorf on Sunday afternoon and progressed through all phases of city capture to the final encounter with Emperor Karl Franz.

After "many hours of wiping", according to a victorious forum post, the Third Realm guild alliance managed to defeat the King. He was caged for everyone in the Destruction faction to throw rotten foods at.

This is a world first for a complete city capture in Warhammer Online, without taking advantage of any bugs or exploits. The first, partially successful siege took place just weeks into the game's life, but was reportedly made possible by an exploit.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (21) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • DoctorZoidberg #1 3 years ago

    erm... good for them.

  • JahB #2 3 years ago

    slow news day?

  • iokthemonkey #3 3 years ago

    Yeah, that'll learn 'em to mess with the forces of Chaos!

    "Woe betide those fools who stands in our way! We will defeat you and... throw tomatoes at you... SO MOTE IT BE!"

  • actionfitz #4 3 years ago

    hehe. that was my old server before I stopped playing.

  • DFawkes #5 3 years ago

    Awesome. I've seen the first bits go back and forth, but to finally push all the way to victory is great. I'm really looking forward to eventuaolly being able to do this myself :)

    I'd hardly call it a slow news day when one of WARs big selling points of huge city sieges finally happens, it is a big event.

  • Slabbathepave #6 3 years ago

    If i could only play this sucker. I still hate anyone else that can too.
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/09 @ 11:31

  • Dizzy #7 3 years ago

    Gz to all involved!

  • rowsdower #8 3 years ago

    That server is stacked about 5:1 Destro though and they do daily raids on Altdorf. There was hardly any resistance from Order so they essentially just walked in.

  • LazyDan #9 3 years ago

    Explain to us non WAR players... What does this mean? An enemy faction now completely runs anothers' city? How long does that last? What does it affect?

    In my WoW-head, this is like Stormwind being completely taken over by the Horde to the point where it becomes their town for a time or until captured back. Am I close?

  • anomagnus #10 3 years ago

    @actionfitz

    mine to

  • sneetch #11 3 years ago

    Booo! Down with Destro! They obviously cheated somehow. :p

    @LazyDan
    Explain to us non WAR players... What does this mean? An enemy faction now completely runs anothers' city? How long does that last? What does it affect?

    In my WoW-head, this is like Stormwind being completely taken over by the Horde to the point where it becomes their town for a time or until captured back. Am I close?

    Your side loses access for about a day and when you regain control it's been looted, pillaged and burned. From [link url=http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/Ne wsArticle.war?id=457
    ]http://he rald.warhammeronline.com/warher...[/link]

    So the enemy has captured the city. They’ve taken on Karl Franz and possibly won and lost to the big guy a few times. Then what happens? Well, the capture and sacking of the enemy’s city is like the Super Bowl of Warhammer Online. It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work and determination for the players. Whoever manages to capture the city theoretically “wins the Championship” and after the 20-24 hour period is up the hold on the city is relinquished and the defending players are allowed back in. The cycle begins anew.

    However with Warhammer Online’s Living Cities, they’ll likely notice a few things are missing. When the enemy takes your city, it knocks down the rating of the metropolis. So if you and your guild had access to Sigmar’s Hammer before in Altdorf, when you are allowed back in the city and the Destruction host as moved on, you might find it in disrepair and unable to be accessed until the city has again achieved sufficient rank.

    Such is the penalty for losing the capitol to the enemy. Things need to be rebuilt, the defenses re-bolstered. Also bear in mind that taking a Higher Ranked Capital nets better rewards for you and your realm-mates. By letting the enemy build up their defenses, it may be harder to take them down, but when you do… the spoils will be that much more enticing.

    But what are you waiting for? Why are you just standing around looking at your once majestic city now in the middle of repairs? Why aren’t you amassing your own army to take the battle to the enemy’s capitol? Hop to it, soldier! The WAR’s not over!

  • PrinzPils #12 3 years ago

    Further details can be found under: [link url=http://www.ihavenolife.or g
    ]http://www.ihavenolife.or g
    [/link]

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #13 3 years ago

    The '5:1' bit needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as on Azgal you could say it favours Order in the same way, however it's all dependent on whos actally online and what time of day it is, whos to say the K8P city capture wasn't at the early hours in the morning?

    This is the whole misconseption about WAR, for a game that requires players being online to actally defend, without actally seeing the hard numbers, one night could favour Order, the next could favour Destro, if the servers were truly '5:1', GOA wouldn't have allowed a erver transfer to that server from that side - have to give them props on that they've been vey carful about the numbers even tho it's taken them a while to actally pull their finger out and do proper server shuffles.

  • Balboa #14 3 years ago

    @Kremlik Yeah. When Destruction actually pull their finger out, they own T1-3 on Azgal. There was a 3-warband strong outfit creaming us just the other day. I expect the tide to turn in T4 quite shortly.

  • Dark_Stranger #15 3 years ago

    what?

  • riz23 #16 3 years ago

    I would say that the recent server migration stopped any massive imbalance such as 5:1. That would be one of the main reasons for doing it. Stop whining you prissy Order loser. ;-)

  • Spekingur #17 3 years ago

    There need to be somekind of 'wish you where there' items... or even 'I captured Karl Franz and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" items.

  • Xensor #18 3 years ago

    @Coin-Op

    How succinctly eloquent and thought-provoking a comment. Please allow me to respond in kind:

    Fuck off to your brown shooters you clueless cretin.

    :p

  • tenebrae #19 3 years ago

    What makes this really funny is that K8P is one of the very few servers, EU or US, where Destro is clearly dominant. On the rest Order is running the show, oft-times with Inevitable City raids twice a day. It has been so since 1.2 patch which brought some mechanic changes (hello, soft cap to resists) as well as class changes - and in certain respects the problem was compounded by things that were NOT changed (hi there LOS exploits and stacking GTAoE). Certain Order classes, most prominently Bright Wizards and Warrior Priests, benefited immensely, to the point of allowing Order to dominate an even-numbered fight. This is most evident during keep and fortress sieges where BWs can melt the approaching tanks before they have hardly touched the door, much less laid down a battering ram. Fortunately next patch lays a heavy hammer on the most OP mechanics, but damage has been already done I fear, my entire guild alliance's online numbers are nothing to be proud of.
    Edited by 1 at 07/04/09 @ 19:44

  • jetsetdemo #20 3 years ago

    I Hvae been on K8P since Nov08 playing order, the transfers activly stoped me reaching lvl40 as t4 turned in to a nightmere just as i ranked high enough to play rvr there. i abandoned my WH at R34 and now have several alt's that i play in t3. This server was a good place to play before the transfers. I dont want to quit to another server as this is my bloody server and i dont see why i should have to start all over again due to some hand of Mythic server transfer crap!

  • sneetch #21 3 years ago

    @riz23
    I would say that the recent server migration stopped any massive imbalance such as 5:1. That would be one of the main reasons for doing it. Stop whining you prissy Order loser. ;-)

    I thought they were in the process of shutting the server down. Good idea for cowardly Destro to wait until the vast majority of the noble, brave and attractive Order players have been transferred before sneaking (in a cowardly fashion) into Altdorf while ol' Karl Franz slept to Emperor-nap him.

    That's what happened. You know it's what happened because I'm about to say FACT at the end. FACT! ;)

    (Actually, I believe they're transferring to Eight Peaks and not from it and although the server migration won't necessarily fix the imbalances, I find it hard to believe it's anything like 5:1, sounds made-up).