Below you will find a brief explanation of the territory control system currently in place:

Only guilds with a keep in the zone may gain ownership of that zone.
Guilds can only control one zone at a time for now. Each zone will have two or more keeps in it's area. House owners can vote for what guild they want controlling the zone that their House is located in. All players can vote for what guild they want controlling any zone, this is done via Voting Officers. Voting Officers can usually be found close to libraries.
Votes are counted once every week (early Sunday morning).
A player has one vote per account, but can acquire an additional vote by owning a house. House votes are worth twice as much as a player vote. Player votes count as: 1 and House votes count as: 2. This means that one account can have a total of 3 votes. Voting on one of your characters will set the same vote to the rest of your characters. They will however all only count as one.

In the event of a vote tie between the current owner guild and a new guild, the current owner guild will win. If no guild owned the territory previously, no owner will be set. In the event of a vote tie where the current owner is not in the split first position, the territory will become owned by no one.

Once a guild controls a zone, that zone will default to dictatorship rule. Meaning that voting the owning guild off the throne is impossible. A guild can choose whether their zone shall be a dictatorship or a democracy. Via the keep options UI. Gaining ownership of a dictatorship zone requires a Guild War win vs the owning guild, a keep in the zone in question and that your guild does not already own another zone. Winning a Guild War vs the dictatorship owner can be done either via making them surrender to you, or by destroying their keep.

Losing your territory can be done via votes if democracy is enabled, via the above war loss example or by having your keep destroyed. By pressing Use('R') on the flag structure that marks the territory center you will be able to see who owns the territory in question. You can also use: /territory – This shows who currently owns the zone as well as what zone you are in.

Owning a zone will grant your guild one extra Guild War Challenge that can not be declined.