By: Geoff
Recently, with the release of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, and the upcoming release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK from here on out) it seems that siege weapons have become the “next big thing” for MMOs that wish to delve deeply into PVP oriented gameplay. However, while the idea might sound new and fresh, the advent of siege weapons in MMOs dates as far back as 2001… maybe even earlier.
The first game to fully feature siege weapons as a major component of PvP-based gameplay was Dark Age of Camelot in 2001 (please let me know if you can find one before that). One of DAOC’s best features was that realms could defend, claim, and capture keeps using several different siege weapons, including catapults, ballistae, rams, and boiling oil. After the re-invention of their frontier zones with the (free) New Frontiers expansion, players could actually watch towers and keep walls crumble under the barrage of of a large-scale siege assault.
Next up was Shadowbane, a scrappy MMORPG that was released in March of 2003 and offered a large open world that included many features that we cherish today, one of which was the ability to destroy other player created cities using the likes of siege weapons. As a player in Shadowbane you can take your siege weapon to nearly any city and completely level it to the ground using siege warfare. Not a bad idea considering the idea came from almost 5 years ago.
Two months later, however, a new game would show up on the scene promising massive warfare that would eventually include the likes of siege weapons. While not technically an MMO”RPG” the game still is calssifed as such by many publications and websites. Planetside burst onto the scene in May of 2003 and, while the game didn’t officially launch with siege weapons, it wasn’t too long before an expansion pack was released that included it. However, Planetside was a different type of game than most and as such, siege weapons in Planetside were also different. First of all, your siege weapon was a moveable “do anything, anywhere” type of weapon. You could place it where you wanted and move it to where ever you wanted. From there you’d lay down your siege on a specific base and unleash your artillery onto the unsuspecting enemy population. Of course, in Planetside the siege weapon was only used to clear out enemy troops and vehicles as the base and terrain were completely non-destructible. It was a different sort of siege weapon but also a bit less “realistic” as well.
Following Planetside was a game that had siege weapons in the design scheme all along, but it just never really manifested itself into the game. Sage of Ryzom launched in 2004 to, unfortunately, little fanfair. While the game had many promising features that it actually did eventually deliver, I can’t seem to find anything about the mythical siege weapons that were promised. The dev company even went as far as to include the feature into the manual of the game. Unfortunate for the players however that it wasn’t ever acually included into the game as it probably would have complemented other features the game offered quite nicely. (Again, I searched and searched the website, wikipage and forums for any sign of this feature being implemented after the release and I couldn’t find anything. Please let me know if I have made an error.)
Finally we have the scraggly Archlord as the last major title to get siege weapons before the big three we see today. Arlord released in 2005 and featured a very ambitious PVP system that was based on a player becoming the actual “Archlord” of the server. Of course, one of the ways that players would become the archlord was by rising through the ranks of destroying other guilds using the likes of siege weapons. While the process carries on from there, the siege weapons do not. As such the siege weapon is only really used in passing, but it still provided a unique view of massive siege warfare in a game that was so heavily pvp based from the offset.
As you can see, there were many games prior to Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and WotLK that included siege weapons. I’m sure if you really dug back into the past you’d be able to find siege warfare in games prior to 2001, perhaps even in MUDs. Siege weaponry has been a part of our civilization’s history for hundreds of years, so it was destined to appear in fantasy-based MMORPGs. Ironically, while catapults, cannons, rams are some of our oldest inventions, computer technology has only recently (within the last decade or so) allowed us to bring them back to life in a new way.
