I do not think it falls short. There are essentially two or three differences between Bandama and Elvandar:luminier wrote:The Asralites and Sathonites could assault Elvandar and make their way to the Queen and kidnap her or just imprison her. Does that mean they should have control over the city? It is realistic definitely but it is not how the game is supposed to work.
1. Elvandar has guards. Unlike Bandama, we can assume it has the capacity to defend itself. Elvandar has most likely thousands of guards, while the enemy forces are much less. Even if we assume Sathos have let's say 20-50 undead marching along 4 high-level death-priests, it is somewhat unrealistic that they would break through (I'd argue that Satho priests are meant to be rare though). Now all of these hundreds of guards are not modelled in-game, just like every citizen is not. There are just four guards, and *that* is a realism-problem, because technically you will break through when you killed those four.
2. Power. The game is often unbalanced in terms of how strong the good and evil side is. The main factor is how many characters log on for each side, and I think the course of the game should never be based on what happens on such things, but rather excellence in RP (if we now speak of something as major as something that should overthrow the Queen). Secondly, much of that power is based on the size of each character which varies greatly with interest in powergaming and time each player has put into the game. This is also not a good criteria to drive the plot, again, it must be done on RP reasons, with a major effort from mainly the evil side. It would sort of be a shame if such main events that happen in the game are based on the fact that someone skilled up his character more than every other's, because I believe that would be a truly low mark in terms of roleplaying. In that case, we would have a powergame-driven game, and not a roleplaying-driven game.
That said, I think power-mechanics can definitely play a role. If you have for example two sides that are nearly quite equal in power, a conflict is going on and you need a final verdict and decide to "roll the dice" to see who comes out as a winner - I think it could definitely fall back on letting this rule the final decision.
3. From a game-perspective, it makes sense with some safe areas, not to mention newbies. I think in some way that people need a "base" of sorts, even evils need Asador intact. The question is sort of how the future would look if e.g. Elvandar or Asador city is razed. I personally think it is alright and I believe roleplaying is very possible, but it does sort of make a big change to the game.
That said, I *personally* would not object if the wizards decided that Elvandar has been attacked so much that it should fall. It would be highly entertaining for everyone involved, especially the goodie side. Even deciding that the Queen is now dead or kidnapped. What a milestone! I am all *for* such interventions, just like I would be *for* such an intervention in Bandama. The problem is to know exactly in which cases wizards would commit to those things, and in which cases they would not, but for me personally that would not matter.