As the title states, I believe the world PvP in Warhammer Online will be a lop-sided affair.  As we've heard from some beta information (which, granted, could be hearsay), Order is a fair amount more popular than Destruction.  Now, while the developers have already expressed that they plan to control an imbalances to the MAXIMUM number of players per side, they haven't done enough to account for servers that are not at full capacity.

I'm not talking about the scenarios here, because I don't know enough about them other than they are instanced PvP zones that seem to be similar to the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft (only in the fact that they are instanced and PvP.  I don't know the details of course.)  But the world PvP for the cities and control points is where I theorize there will be issues. 

From all available information, the classes seem to be balanced in their strengths.  HOWEVER, I still see two primary problems that are likely to crop up.  First, with range-capable classes having the abilty to freeze and slow the 2 "tank" classes, I believe it will greatly decrease the value of melee PvP, depending on the range at which these spells/abilities can be used. 

I recall many instances in DAoC where the melee classes became nearly useless (except stealthers who went undetected), as the classes with range capabilities participated in a long-distance standoff battle.  So unless you were a ranged class, you were all but useless unless you caught someone by surprise.  I see the same thing coming in WAR if they power of the ranged classes goes unchecked.

The second issue I see is simply with the higher populations of one faction over another (which I believe will be Order).  As there are only 2 sides to the battles, there are no other factions that can be thrown into the mix to keep things balanced.  It's like making a 2-legged table...  With order populations being higher, the Destruction players are likely to suffer consistant defeat (unless the server population caps and a queue is instituted). 

You can't assume the servers will maintain maximum population, and players don't like to lose over and over.  So Destruction players who get continuously defeated are likely to defect to the Order side so they can experience victory.  Granted, not all are concerned mostly with being the winner, but MANY are.  Even if they cap the Order players to say 500 maximum, if there are only 250 people who want to play Destruction, the cap won't mean much of anything.

DAoC maintains a "rather" balanced RvR system with 3 factions, but with only 2 in WAR it won't function in the same manner.  If one realm is in control in DAoC, they have 2 different enemies working to defeat them.  This can usually make up for any population balance.  But even in DAoC, many servers see one realm rendered nearly useless because they consistantly lose and players leave for more productive realms.  So, why would the 2-legged system in WAR be any better?

Sure, there are some who just enjoy rushing into the front lines and attacking, despite being "rolled" by the competition (as there are no penalties for death).  But I don't think a majority of players would enjoy that kind of unbalanced system, and most are likely to hang it up if their win-to-loss ratio becomes say 75% or more in the negative.  Now, I know those of you in the beta can't say too many details at this point without breaking the NDA, but I'm interested to hear any thoughts you all might have on my theory.

Wait until the NDA is lifted before you start worrying about things like this mate.

All shall be revealed next week!

Originally posted by Yella

Wait until the NDA is lifted before you start worrying about things like this mate.

All shall be revealed next week!

No it won't, there hasn't been enough testing to confirm or disprove anything about realm balance at top level and the balancing measures aren't even in game yet.

While I share some of the worries of the OP they are just worries for now and they won't be proven or disproven till well after the game is released since the OB won't be a test of this either since it will only go to level 20.

Unfortunately based on the subject I can really only safely make a single statement, though I would love to discuss this issue in particular as it is also very important to me. Perhaps in a week or two. I do want to say I liked your post and that you worded it in a way that showed concern without being accusatory/flamey and left the subject open for discussion. I think I've been jaded by a lot of 'it wont work period, this is the way it is and everyone else is wrong' type posts.

So my statement is...

Where the heck did you hear that order was more popular than destruction? lol

 

The polls lie if Order will be the more populated side. I suppose you have the WoW mentality where "little kids want to play the good guys" except the "good guys" slaughter and burn entire villages if they think there's a heretic. And the "good guys" are pissed off, drunken short angry men, not like WoW's dwarves. High Elves...well...got shiny magic and lions...meh, they're the weak link in the chain.

However your concerns are shared by many people, including Mythic. True, a 3-realm system is optimal for balance. With WAR it'd be a little hard to do lore-wise though, unless you have some suggestions of how it could work. Whereas in DAoC all the races of a realm shared the same continent, in WAR each race is distinct and set apart, joined together under an alliance but not necessarily sharing the same land all the time.

Right now we have two options with this, either A) Trust Mythic has thought about this thourougly and has some ideas that will hopefully work, or B) Wait until the game is out for a while and see how it's going overall. Mythic needs a short-term solution for the people who play at launch, but more importantly is a long-term solution for those who come in later.

Originally posted by brihtwulf

As the title states, I believe the world PvP in Warhammer Online will be a lop-sided affair.  As we've heard from some beta information (which, granted, could be hearsay), Order is a fair amount more popular than Destruction.  Now, while the developers have already expressed that they plan to control an imbalances to the MAXIMUM number of players per side, they haven't done enough to account for servers that are not at full capacity.

I'm not talking about the scenarios here, because I don't know enough about them other than they are instanced PvP zones that seem to be similar to the battlegrounds of World of Warcraft (only in the fact that they are instanced and PvP.  I don't know the details of course.)  But the world PvP for the cities and control points is where I theorize there will be issues. 

From all available information, the classes seem to be balanced in their strengths.  HOWEVER, I still see two primary problems that are likely to crop up.  First, with range-capable classes having the abilty to freeze and slow the 2 "tank" classes, I believe it will greatly decrease the value of melee PvP, depending on the range at which these spells/abilities can be used. 

I recall many instances in DAoC where the melee classes became nearly useless (except stealthers who went undetected), as the classes with range capabilities participated in a long-distance standoff battle.  So unless you were a ranged class, you were all but useless unless you caught someone by surprise.  I see the same thing coming in WAR if they power of the ranged classes goes unchecked.

The second issue I see is simply with the higher populations of one faction over another (which I believe will be Order).  As there are only 2 sides to the battles, there are no other factions that can be thrown into the mix to keep things balanced.  It's like making a 2-legged table...  With order populations being higher, the Destruction players are likely to suffer consistant defeat (unless the server population caps and a queue is instituted). 

You can't assume the servers will maintain maximum population, and players don't like to lose over and over.  So Destruction players who get continuously defeated are likely to defect to the Order side so they can experience victory.  Granted, not all are concerned mostly with being the winner, but MANY are.  Even if they cap the Order players to say 500 maximum, if there are only 250 people who want to play Destruction, the cap won't mean much of anything.

DAoC maintains a "rather" balanced RvR system with 3 factions, but with only 2 in WAR it won't function in the same manner.  If one realm is in control in DAoC, they have 2 different enemies working to defeat them.  This can usually make up for any population balance.  But even in DAoC, many servers see one realm rendered nearly useless because they consistantly lose and players leave for more productive realms.  So, why would the 2-legged system in WAR be any better?

Sure, there are some who just enjoy rushing into the front lines and attacking, despite being "rolled" by the competition (as there are no penalties for death).  But I don't think a majority of players would enjoy that kind of unbalanced system, and most are likely to hang it up if their win-to-loss ratio becomes say 75% or more in the negative.  Now, I know those of you in the beta can't say too many details at this point without breaking the NDA, but I'm interested to hear any thoughts you all might have on my theory.

Without having played the game itself, posts like this really have no point... Its just another "opinion"... ppl, stop forming opinions without even playing the damn game.  Play it, than go balls deep with what you think.

They've already mentioned how they plan to counter imbalances in populations... Read ppl read

I don't buy the "lore" part at all. if anything it makes way more sense for there to be three or more factions than it does these two.

Im not going to read this. Too much negative things people want to say about the game. In the end, mythic knows what they're doing, and WILL make a great game, if you cant trust in them, to make a good game, then dont bother buying it.

At the risk of breaking the NDA in a very minor way, your source of information was proven incorrect in the second sentence of your post.

Originally posted by Ascension08

  except the "good guys" slaughter and burn entire villages if they think there's a heretic. And the "good guys" are pissed off, drunken short angry men, 

Actually you just described the  Warhammer  athoritative base...if you're not down with that don't play Empire.

There's a video on the WAR site that briefly addresses this.  In the Baltimore Q&A, I think it's in part three, someone asks this question.  While the devs tap dance around it b/c they don't want to reveal specifics, one thing they do say is that if one side gets pounded over and over and over on a server, they will institute "help."  Though they did not specify what they meant by "help", they did seem very confident about their answer.

Originally posted by todeswulf

Originally posted by Ascension08

  except the "good guys" slaughter and burn entire villages if they think there's a heretic. And the "good guys" are pissed off, drunken short angry men, 

 

Actually you just described the  Warhammer  athoritative base...if you're not down with that don't play Empire.

On the contrary, I love it . No one is good or evil, they're all shades of gray.

Yeah, lets play Theorycraft. That gets us everywhere. Seriously, you are entirely underinformed or misinformed, one of the two. Wait until the game comes out or the NDA drops.

Did you play DAoC? The game that popularized non instanced PvP combat? On every server there were different realms that did better than the other. There wasnt just 1 best realm. On Nimue where I played, we had the least players in Midgard also dominated in the RvR area.

BTW I'm an Elder in the Closed Beta.

     I think it's a good thing if there is a little imbalance, and with the way they are doing realm caps rather than standard server caps as well as incentives to play on servers in realms undermanned; I think at most we can expect little imbalances which will shift back and forth over time. If you look at the games which have had the most similiar setups (daoc, wow, etc...) the games have always balanced themselves to an extent. There will never be a truly even matchup over the course of a day on multiple servers but as long as there are measures in place to keep the sides competitive the game will remain fun. Trying to say anything else at this point is a bit chicken little.

*Watch that NDA people, we are*

Thank you

Right now the people in closed beta are the hardcore gamer who will play Order because they think they're gonna be more mature or w/e than the Destruction. However come when the games released the casuals will play and they'll just pick w/e they'll like the look of and the game will become much better balanced.

Go read the Gamespy Beta Journal about the heavily undermanned Order team that holds a keep from the Chaos dudes.  Absoultely can't wait for this game!

BTW, every single bit of info I have seen says Chaos is the overpopulated one.

So, OP, you essentially believe that Mythic have learned nothing at all from DAoC in terms of ranged/melee balance?

The 2 sides vs 3 sides thing goes around and around ... having played both DAoC and Planetside (both 3 way fights) I've seen it work and I've seen it turn into a merry-go-round of everyone capturing mostly empty bases until one side stops to defend and then one of the three gets completely stomped because they got caught in the middle (Basically A attacks B who is attacking C who is attacking A ... suddenly A stops to defend against C who gets crushed between A (now defending) and B (still attacking).)

So ... meh ... relax and wait until a month or so after release to start worrying about it.

Euhm have you even played the game ?

And if my knowkledge servs me right, i recollect that destruction has more people in the beta.

But anyway, even if the side were uneven mythic has already figured out what to do to make sure both sides have a good chance of winning or invading the capital cities.

that was the first thing i read in the OP lines, didn't bother to read the rest. Heard all of the complaints before already, either wait and talk to people when release has been done else go play something else.

Hmmm?  It's not the number of players per side you need to be worried about but the type of player.  Hardcore pvp players seem to gravitate toward the more badass looking races.