http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/12/20/creating-eso-cyrodiils-keeps was just released a few minutes ago talking about the Cyrodiil keeps.

Good read! I miss the keep lord though

"from whether or not we’d have character collision (we currently do not)..."

Urgh. They did have to go and use that word...

*in before crapstorm*

Thanks for the link.

Should be a lot of fun trying to sneak in a keep as an assassin to create havoc.

With the class, AvA and keep systems as described, I can't think of a way that would even be possible.

I wonder if we'll see groups of people roaming around during off-peak hours doing nothing but destroying walls.

I've read it on some site but they have already said you will be able to climb the walls and such.

It won't stop people from trying.

With the megaserver and everyone in the pacific sort of stuck with NA as the default server, off-peak hours are going to be a bit weird.

But... even so, if they have the ability to destroy walls unchallenged, that might as well go the next step and just take the keeps

Ahh, my apologies then. That would be nice to have implemented.

I've heard rumors that wall climbing was something that they could possible implement when the Thieves Guild comes out, but it's just rumors this isn't fact. It would be neat to have climbing abilities to just add some more dynamics to fighting for a keep.

Right...even after a gate or wall(s) are knocked down...

Climbing keep walls would be really nice, so that only the inner keep remains a true safe place (as close as they stick to DAOC, I'm almost sure it will be in at some point in the future)

And yes, bit sad that there won't be keep lords... it would add another (last) stage when attacking a keep... killing the lord while defending against remaining or arriving defenders would be nicer (I guess)

Mmm, but as was said, they'd need to fight the NPC guards and then repair the walls. I'm very confident there will be people who'll just spread random destruction for teh lulz.

There will be NPCs guarding a keep though. Maybe they could even make one of them the 'lord'. The point is that it's a bad idea to make capturing the keep conditional on defeating said NPC, because that makes attackers ignore the defenders. Far better to just use the Control Point system.

In order for climbing to work it would have to be carefully balanced. Guards would have to be strong enough to defeat players who attempted it solo. Interrupting a climb would have to be as easy as hitting the person with a single light attack.

Otherwise it would undermine the whole siege system.

I had the same thought.

That actually makes it sound like they're open to it later. Which honestly, if they can do it without turning it into a lag-fest, I'd be happy with.

Ya in GW2 if defenders came behind you when you were sieging, the strategy was to run away from them and quickly kill the keep lord so you could capture the keep and lock them out.

But that's also a problem with insta-repair walls, which ESO doesn't have.

Absolutely. Totally okay with them revisiting the engine in 4-5 years.

Nice to see them varying the look and designs of some keeps too, so they all won't look the same, also, I noticed them mentioned various dungeons we saw in Oblivion will be in ESO, this is also good .

I can see many pvp groups standing in the sidelines when for example the EP and DC are fighting it out, the keep is partially destroyed once that battle is over, then the AD storms in and takes it from under their nose.

All in all, can't wait for this now, excitement level has increased!

It was an interesting read, certainly. Admittedly I was a little disappointed with the line 'We looked at medieval keeps for inspiration' (or words to that effect), since I worry leaning to heavily on the Medieval world for fantasy makes it pretty...generic...and Cyrodiil at this time should really be a forested swampland (but that's another debate). I'd just hope they're looking equally to the Pocket Guide to the Empire, or to Morrowind for architectural inspiration.

They did also mention they went back to Oblivions Cyrodiil and looked at that architecture.

Yeah...but Bethesda decided before Oblivion that, in spite of the enormous success of Morrowind, which featured a unique and alien landscape, they'd better generic-up Cyrodiil to fit a stereotypical fantasy archetype, even though the lore stated it was a dense jungle with great cultural differences between the Nibenay Valley and Colovia. Granted,the change is backed up by interesting lore, but this game takes place an an era where Cyrodiil should look completely different.