http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/09/09/ask-us-anything-variety-pack-7

You beat me to it.

There are definitely a lot of strategic options available, some of which they mention (such as an Alliance retreating from a keep when under siege by the other two so they can return when the enemies are weakened, or sending out small skirmish forces to recapture resources) but I'm wondering how well coordination is going to work.

My experience has taught me that players are rarely willing to listen to other players and without leadership there is no strategy. The only way around this is to have a guild structure (thankfully I do.) But random groups of players who are not in a guild tend to fight....well...randomly.

Nordjitsu; I hate to say it but one need not look further than Guild Wars 2 to know what alliance wars can look like, can I say zerg-fest? It was so awful...

Anyway, we didn't learn much from this AuA, mostly just re-wording what they've already said.

I'm going to send in my own questions, but, before I do I may as well ask 'em here.

> Are there any bear traps/other traps that could be used in PvP?

> Will we see very dark nights in Tamriel? Judging from the screenshots, night-time is still very 'luminous' and kind of bright, will we see anything like http://i.imgur.com/ElmaxBW.jpg?1?

> Can we choose to play without too many people, perhaps using the megaserver technology/questionnaire? (I'm still disappointed about not being able to solo dungeons, but...).

> How long does it take to kill an enemy player in PvP? Can we 'one-shot' them and take them down very quickly, as if they were a bandit in Skyrim for example?

^{A sneaky (stealthier) can kill a siege weapon operator and then set the siege weapon on fire destroying it very fast. Awsome !}

^{There will be many quests from the towns and border keeps that will send you into enemy territory where you will come across enemy players exploring or doing other things. Like this too!}

They already said killing enemy players will give the best rewards along with healing, and taking an enemy keep gives the least rewards. This should help a little with zerging. I would imagine they will also do what DAOC did where the rewards for killing enemy players was divided up amonst the group that did the damage. This really promoted groups roaming around because this system made it so people in the zerg got very little rewards. Solo ambushers, and groups were making a lot more points on the battle field.

Now if you look at GW2 it is the opposite for both. All you do is tag an enemy and every who hit him gets full credit (very bad) as well as flipping keeps and objectives for the best rewards.

Also the Cyrodiil map is set up much different and massive. You will still see zergs at the keep seiges but you will also see a lot of roaming groups and avoiding a zerg should be easy like it was in DAOC

Think concerning PvP its mainly up to the players how big the groups will be... and it will depend on how large Cyrodiil will be... will there be areas far off where small groups or soloists can have their fights like it was possible in DAoC?

Agree on the PvE aspect... would love to be able to solo in dungeons (RvR dungeons like Darkness Falls?)... what I greatly dislike is being forced to a set group size to go into a dungeon.

I really hope, that PvP fights wont be too fast... of course, one-shoting an enemy player can be fun, but on the other hand it will be very frustrating after a short time, for both sides! I really hope for long-lasting, tactical fights... then it really means something if you were able to beat your opponent... and even loosing will be more enjoyable this way as opposed to eating a 10k damage crit and dying.

Shadowscales actually started as part of the Morag Tong (as with pretty much everything the DB does), funnily enough, good to know we'll be meeting some. I hope we can murder them, traitors that they are.

There are quite a few things they are doing to prevent "zerg fests" I think.

One of these is that killing players and maintaining keeps is actually more rewarding than taking them. This disincentives "keep flipping" ala GW2. In that game, a large group would just roam from keep to keep taking them and abandoning them as they went. In ESO, that won't be nearly as profitable as taking a keep and then defending it to get the bonuses, the points, and the chance to crown an Emperor.

Another is the RTS elements, like resources and reinforcement lines. Just head on attacking keeps isn't the best way to take them. You're better off cutting off their wood, stone, and food first.

Lastly, its a persistent war. Keeps don't reset at the end of a campaign. You have an incentive to hold on to them because its a permanent, rather than transitory, achievement. And I would imagine that holding a keep gives you a lot of advantages (like being able to snipe from on top of walls, pour down burning oil, use NPC guards, ect.)

In GW2 most of the time you couldn't hit anyone from the top of a keep.

EDIT:

Also just the fact that the combat itself is more strategic and resource based.

So, we had confirmation on what we had pretty much figured the guild store was going to be: you have to be a member of that guild to be able to buy and sell from it. I'll admit it, I'm a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I (and the guildies who want to start a merchant guild) can work around it and probably make it work for us, but its an unnecessary mechanic, as far as I'm concerned. There are going to be a few unhappy people with this news, and I'm not sure I can blame them too much. They could have accomplished the same thing by allowing guild stores to have variable permission settings for who can buy and sell, and what is allowed to be bought and sold by non-guild members.

So true. It's sad that I'm so jaded when developers talk about these elaborate PVP "schemes" ... but I think we really know how it's going to play out.

The thing is if you plan it properly you have small forces already in the field that can capture and hold the small resources and even have a stealthy small force that can move around and help each small force as it comes under fire. This was the way it was done in DAoC, and I know I always go back to talking about that game when we talk AvA strategies in ESO but it is relevant to the topic because the war in Cyrodiil will be much the same in terms of strategy.

This is why the raid leader needs to be good at what he or she does and everyone in the raid, main army, small forces, stealth group, and what ever else you can come up with, listens to the raid leader and follows orders. Over time the best raid leaders will be known in your instance of Cyrodiil and when they put out the call for a raid you will really want to go because you will be about 95% sure the raid will be successful.

I want to join a highly organized PvP guild with strategies for troop deployment, guidelines for squad creation and other cool chain of command things like that.

Scenario: 100 members of the Ebonheart Pact are attacking a keep controlled by the Aldmeri Dominion. I would like a plan laid out specifying how many ranged, how many melee, how many spellcasters, how many healers etc . . . And then for war machines it would be helpful to assign 2 guards or something to each to try and repel the stealth attackers. I hope zerg tactics are kept to a minimum, in fact they should be discouraged like say if the defenders all leave their keep and start charging in a group on the open field then ranged weapons/spells should inflict twice as much damage on the charging fools.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Shadowscales this says otherwise. where does it read that they started out as morag tong? i'm interested.

Not mutch news to go whit in that post. Lets hope next will bring some.