Overview
A commonly occurring question for Ashes of Creation is: What is a Node War and how is it different from a Node Siege?
The simple answer to this is that a Node War is designed to disrupt a Node’s operation by put the citizens of the opposing Node in a hostile state towards each other. A Node Siege is designed to destroy the Node completely and remove it from the map.
After hearing this a lot of people ask what is the point of a Node War? That is an excellent question and one we are going to address now.
Purpose
There are a lot of different reasons why one Node’s leadership may declare war on another Node putting both those groups of citizens into a hostile state.
The first, is that it puts all those citizens into a hostile state which allows them to fight without the Corruption mechanic being a factor. This might be due to long time rivalries, it may be due to a stolen caravan shipment, it may be due to these two Nodes being border towns and residing in different Castle Regions, it may be a prelude to a Node Siege in an attempt weaken the Node. The other option is that it could simply be for the chaos it will cause. Given this is the result of a player’s actions, one can never know all the rationales behind the decision for the declaration of war.
Disruption not Destruction
A long while back there was a rumor circulating at the end of Node vs Node wars the losing Node would be destroyed. Steven has dismissed this as incorrect. The only mechanic for destroying a Node is through the Node Siege Mechanic.
Node Wars are a way to influence the effectiveness of other Nodes by destroying key NPCs and buildings. Destroying key buildings will also be the victory condition for Node Wars. The victory condition will vary war to war depending on the participants, Node Type, level, history, etc.
For example, the victory condition in a Node War vs an Economic Node might be to destroy their market, while in a Node War vs a Node with an established Scholar’s Academy there may be something to steal out of that building.
Guild Civil War
We also know that Citizenship is the highest relationship in the Hierarchy, so if members of your Guild happen to live in both Nodes A and B, and the Mayor of Node A declares a war on Node B, then the members of the guild are legal combatants with each other. What ramifications this has in regards to grouping, raiding, running dungeons, etc, is not yet known.