207a. 71) Will there be any instances, like in sieges or can a third or fourth party come and conquer while others are fighting ? 71) Sieges won't be instanced (everyone can come). But we plan to make territory battles. It will prearranged battles on a fixed territory, where every side should make a list of participants and only those player, who are listed will be able to battle there -rest players will be booted from that territory and won't be able to join battle, until it ends. Doesn't this seem unfair to third parties who are peaceful, or who want to exploit the weakened armies; it takes away from the excitement of stopping an army marching towards you such in Wurm. I might be biased here, but if you elaborate on your plans more I might be able to understand a little better? The siege system might implement more of what I dream of, but only time will tell.
207a) Point is, that you will have both options to fight large scale battles:
1) Siege - classic siege actions, where everyone can come, where marching armies can be ambushed, where random looters will scavenge, where is no limitations or ways to count attackers/defenders so you can brag about that on boards and so on.
2) Battle - instanced large scale "deathmatch". Amount of participants is known, no way to outnumber 1:10 (we will implement some kind of limitation or handicap for outnumbering of opponent), no rats, thrid parties and surprizes. It's kinda like challenging match, rather then normal siege, but with some tweaks closer to MMORPG reality.