Oh my mistake.  The only way to attract 15 year olds to your game is to have  a troll swinging corpses.  I stand corrected.  Also that fact that the game's total population won't consist of '15-18 year olds' doesn't make a difference.  There is no way to make certain classes more popular, I mean we have 10 years of evidence to the contrary, but once a troll swings a corpse, every single person playing that game is going to want to play that class/race.   It's amazing WoW is still in business, all you have to do is make a class with a troll swinging a corpse, and all the World of Warcraft players will leave to play your game.

Thanks, I feel enlightned.

Also, if you're going to be a game developer, you should probably get some clue about your target demographics.  http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_demographics.html

Originally posted by minutemaid

And yeah, Pheace, i've blocked you by the way. Your posts have been appearing as  single yellow bars  ;)

*haha* let's see if he keeps ignoring reality when the game releases ^^

This is the best move Mythic could have made to ensure integrity @ least at the population level.  Whine and bitch all you want , it's the only way to create a fair playing field to start.

These guys @ Mythic know what they are doing, and they understand that gross imbalances in population would doom the game from the start. 

Personally, I don't think the imbalances are going to be weighted too heavily in favor of one or another after 90-120 days in, however, it's a good way to get everything started..

I'm not sure about the rest of you guys, but when I went to DAoC I saw the population bonuses for the realms and based my character creation on those numbers.  Faster XP, cheaper hookpoint costs, yes please.  Everyone likes leveling up faster, because they are the underdog.  It's the same reason I usually try to pick so called "Underpowered" classes, and try to become a pvp beast. =)

Everyone likes free xp, I'm sure those bonuses will help keep the populations in check.

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PS. You know what would make the RvR really awesome!?!?  Warhammer has  a fever and the only cure is more Flare.  This crowd control while not as awesome as Mind Control, would make WAR a pvp powerhouse.  Also I just wanted to note that more stealth would be nice as well, because stealth is pvp amirite.

Originally posted by joswij

I'm not sure about the rest of you guys, but when I went to DAoC I saw the population bonuses for the realms and based my character creation on those numbers.  Faster XP, cheaper hookpoint costs, yes please.  Everyone likes leveling up faster, because they are the underdog.  It's the same reason I usually try to pick so called "Underpowered" classes, and try to become a pvp beast. =)

Everyone likes free xp, I'm sure those bonuses will help keep the populations in check.

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PS. You know what would make the RvR really awesome!?!?  Warhammer has  a fever and the only cure is more Flare.  This crowd control while not as awesome as Mind Control, would make WAR a pvp powerhouse.  Also I just wanted to note that more stealth would be nice as well, because stealth is pvp amirite.

Hate stealth.. It makes bad people think they are 'good'

On the one hand I really do understand, it's so crucial to Warhammer's survival that they keep the population as balanced as humanly possible.

On the other hand I'll be damned if I come from work to play Warhammer during peak hours, only to d/c during a siege (where I usually end up d/cing) only to find out I can't log back on because the server population is "too full."

That happened a lot during Open beta, and even free character server copies (which they aren't offering) won't stop me from cancelling if that happened more than twice to me.

Also the people who think they are getting over with the "exp bonus" aren't because low population servers mean longer queue times, and players get the most exp/rewards through PvR/RvR.

I'm not saying they shouldn't put soft caps on the game, because one sided PvP like WoW has will kill the game so fast, they will have to travel back in time just to bury it.  I'm just saying that Preview Weekend nonsense isn't gonna fly with a paying customer.

 Edit: I play a healer too if that matters

This should really have been introduced and tested (as much as possible) during Beta Testing - because population balancing is not easy.
I think it is needed - but it really should have been tested.  Population balancing can have lots of repercussions throughout an entire game.

For those who think it is not needed or that "underdog bonuses" will maintain balance or have the "I pay to play so I should be able to do whateverthehellIlike!!!!11!1111!!11!" philosophy then I suggest you look at other RvR games such as WWII Online or Pirates of the Burning Sea to see what happens in such cases.

For RvR games to work you need an enemy.  Very few people will continue to pay a sub for a game where they are just 'fodder' for other players all the time.

Originally posted by grimfall

Oh my mistake.  The only way to attract 15 year olds to your game is to have  a troll swinging corpses.  I stand corrected.  Also that fact that the game's total population won't consist of '15-18 year olds' doesn't make a difference.  There is no way to make certain classes more popular, I mean we have 10 years of evidence to the contrary, but once a troll swings a corpse, every single person playing that game is going to want to play that class/race.   It's amazing WoW is still in business, all you have to do is make a class with a troll swinging a corpse, and all the World of Warcraft players will leave to play your game.

Thanks, I feel enlightned.

Also, if you're going to be a game developer, you should probably get some clue about your target demographics.  http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_demographics.html

You obviously don't get what I was saying.. or understand the reason for my exageration.

Demo graphics have nothign to do with it. Even if the 20% of the users are teenagers and more than 50% of them want to chose "horde/distruction" cause its "COOL" they will tilt the average

And for WARHAMMER fans.. this is a GREAT IDEA!.

Think about what the MMO is based on.

The table top WAR game uses a point system so both sides have a FAIR Even opposition.

Great that the MMO has to be pop balanced.. in a way its like .. each army having 1200 points :)

it was one of the things I admired right away how thoughtful they looked at all possible ends where players in other MMOs usually have no fun, or wait or must seek the fun and minimize these. It was one of the big lessons of WOW to cut down the "way to the fun" time as much as possible, and apparently WAR will prefect this further. No one wants to ride over a world for hours seeking quests and things to do, or wait for others for hours to traverse to them to finally begin the fun. Good thinking, but one might ponder why no one else ever came to this simple ideas.

Okay, I have now watched the video and had a bit of a think about it and, sadly, this is flawed IMHO.

Population Cap doesn't address balance, it addresses server population and load.

Let's say you place a 1000 player limit to both Order and Destruction on a server?
Well that simply says that your maximum server population is 2000 people.  It does not mean that 2000 people will play on that server however, or that the population will be balanced.  In fact, it is quite possible that there may only be 1000 people on the server (due to the population cap) with all 1000 players on the same side!

The only way to make sure people do go to the under-populated sides on servers is to limit the number of servers so that players are 'forced' to play under-popped sides if they want to play at all.

The whole issue is the behavior of MMO players.  In general, people like to win. 
"...a game that's focused so heavily on the competitive side of things..." - Josh Drescher
Some people like to play the "underdog" too (I am one of them FWIW) - but not forever.  Everyone's tolerance for being on the "losing side" has a limit.
 

So, as we have seen with other Multi-Server PvP and RvR games, after a little while certain servers will become known as the "Chaos Server", the "High Elf" server or the "Dwarf" server as examples.
That is to say, these are the servers where this race or team dominates.
"...there is always going to be somebody that's dis-proportionately popular..." - Josh Drescher
This has a snowball effect, players join those servers to be part of the "winning team" and players from the other teams on those servers leave because they "can never win".  This leads to still more imbalance.

What happens is you end up with a bunch of unbalanced servers where players of the same migrate.

And that is where this post by Roin comes in:

Originally posted by Roin
...

What other choice is there?  From the video where he talked about it.   You either A) Sat in Queue till it let you in.  Which to my understanding the amount of time you wait gets bigger.  In relation to the weaker side. B) Play and/or roll a character on the weaker side.  or C) Play and/or Roll a character on another server.

... I do mind however the idea that I might have to sit in a queue for god knows how long to play the character I decided to work on.  On the server I decided to play on.  On the side I or my guild decided to work on.

So my side gets popular after 4 months after launch.  I've been working on my character the whole time.  Been there since the start.  I get home little late one day.   I go to play my character.   Can't because my side recently got popular.  The best solution you can give me is to sit in queue for 10? 15? 20? 30+ minutes?  Or reroll to other side and start anew?  ...

The obvious answer is provided by Alioth:

Originally posted by Alioth
...

"10? 15? 20? 30+ minutes?". There is absolutely no way that they would allow this to happen. Realistically, the queue time will be around one to five minutes, although I doubt you'll see many instances where you'll have to wait five minutes to get into the game. Queues have been done many times in MMOs. If Mythic plans on keeping people subscribed to their game (which they obviously do), they will find a way to limit queue times to a minimum.

But hang on, this is a case of "having your cake and eating it too"

If you are going to have a population cap that gets overridden after 5 minutes then you don't have a population cap?

The XP bonuses also don't address the issue, because population imbalance matters to PvP / RvR players - but XP is more a PvE issue.
Yeah, it allows you to level up faster for RvR and PvP... but the RvR and PvP players aren't going to be joining a server where they have no chance of winning the RvR anyway... not if given the choice.

Also, depending on how this is done, it could actually do more harm than good.
After all, what is XP?  Experience points.  It is a measure of experience.
But by boosting XP you are actually robbing players of experience.

Will these players get extra loot and items as they take this accelerated path?
If not, you are simply setting them up for failure.  They will "max out" without having completed all the quests and tasks that would have given them the required skills, equipment and understanding to survive at the higher levels.
Who would you rather have on your side;
6 players all kitted out in the best gear and weapons earned through 3 months of hard leveling? (and with the money reserves to buy more and different gear if they need it?)
or
12 players in basic gear with poor weapons and only a month of total game experience?  (And without the money to buy better gear)

Now this might all sound quite negative, in a way I suppose it is.
I commend Mythic for trying to find a solution, to what is a very difficult problem.
It's particularly difficult when you are dealing with paying customers who feel they have a right to use a product in the way they choose.

My criticism would be that MMORPG Designers developing RvR games need to find a workable solution to this problem before developing RvR games further.   ATM they seem to be hoping "...that everything else will work out on its own..." - Josh Drescher

Do I have a solution myself?
Not really (Which is why I don't want this to come across as a Mythic flame post - it's not).

All solutions to this are problematic.  My suggestions would be
1/ Don't allow players to choose sides - assign them.
      But this is unlikely to be acceptable in a Pay to Play game.  I have seen it used in a Free to play game - but even there exploits avoided this.

2/ Global dynamic Buffs and Nerfs.
  That is, as the imbalance increases the under-popped side gets buffs and the over-popped side gets nerfs.  This happens dynamically during play.  The problem how ever would be that at the extremes players from the underpopulated side could become nearly invincible while the players from the over-popped side would be as weak as kittens... I can see the Forums now... "My level 200 Uber Warrior just got one-shotted by a level 5 Pixie!"

3/ Boosting numbers with NPCs.
  Probably the best solution.  The big issue of course is that AI is still really not up to scratch and I can see the real players being rapidly singled out and targeted?

So, there you are, my 2 cents.  I will wait and watch with interest.
In many ways I hope I am wrong, because if the PvP and RvR fail in this game it could well make other Developers shy away from the whole idea for years to come?
 

This is the same thing that they did with DAoC.

Originally posted by zonzai

This is the same thing that they did with DAoC.

Okay, I never played DAoC...

How did it work there?

Originally posted by Godliest

Could see that screwing up quite a lot of people. Considering that the most have on beforehand picked what they want to be (Destruction/Order and probably Career too) and then they pick the server their friends play on, only to see that they can't play as - for instance - Destruction because there are too few on Order.

Duh , the cap is not the amount of character you can create on the server but the amount of character you can handle at the same time on one server .

Take WoW , you can still create a toon on the highes populated server but on peak you will most likely wait in Q to get in .

So lets say X WAR server have cap of 3k order and 3k destruction and theres 2k order on and 3k dest on .  You will be able to logue in order without queue but you will have to wait if you are destruction .

Originally posted by fingis

 

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Originally posted by minutemaid
The only people complaining about the pace are WoW players who are used to using 3-4 skills in total and so have need for such a fast pace.

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I call fraud. In WAR you spam your damage or your heal, over and over. WAR has the same combat and features as EQ1 a ten year old game, there's no fear, no stealth, no distract, no mind control and so on. WAR has a very simplistic combat system.

How so? Like the devs used to say it's gonna be easy to learn but difficult to master...it's quite simple just play the game as it was intented to be played which is Team based and you'll also need skills to fight and not spam CC spells.

Oh btw,GCD in WAR is 1.4 sec and WoW is 1.5 sec. 

A bump for this one because I never got an answer?

DAoC players - was the RvR game balanced there?  Since it seems Mythic is using the same approach here.

(Please read previous posts for background)

Just seems like spin on a server cap

Originally posted by Gyrus

A bump for this one because I never got an answer?

DAoC players - was the RvR game balanced there?  Since it seems Mythic is using the same approach here.

(Please read previous posts for background)

I haven't played DAOC for some time, but it seems to me that the server imbalances led to lower populations, which consequently led to more imbalances. The solution they came up with was server clustering where in RvR, you were not necessarily fighting anyone from your server, but rather players from within your cluster of three servers.
 

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Originally posted by LordDraekon

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Originally posted by Noggin

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Originally posted by LordDraekon

I think it would help a great deal if they manage to replace the missing careers soon. Frankly, from what little I've experienced, I can see a lot of Empire players getting fed up with the first RvR zone due to the lack of a native Tanking class and rolling Destruction instead. If it ever got to the point where the High Elves actually invade the Dark Elf zones, the same problem will manifest there. Face it, nobody plays a game to lose all the time. Some of us were joking that Sigmar hates us during the Preview weekend.

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I can agree with this to a certain extent, but realistically from my experience at Tier 2 people are moving between the pairings quite a lot.
 
From level 1-12 takes what? 6 hours if you know the quests, something like that. (that includes getting at least RR8-10 in that time).

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Yes, but most people won't know the quests and players who want to play Dwarfs or High Elves are going to want to experience everything in their own areas before they move on. The first Empire RvR zone was painful and I watched throughout the day on Sunday as fewer and fewer Order players showed up in that area. By the end of the day, Destruction held everything uncontested and a few diehard Order players and groups prowled around the edges on the outside chance that they could pick off stragglers.
 
On the flip side, the Dark Elves, who don't have a Tank class either, joined with Chaos early, which made things worse for the struggling Empire players. The High Elf RvR objectives went virtually uncontested.
People are people and, as I said, no one plays a game to lose all the time.

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This didn't happen on either server I played on. (Mad Dog Pass or Barrack Var). There were some population balance issues at time but the races were more or less completely mixed up in T1 by day 2.

Originally posted by Gyrus

A bump for this one because I never got an answer?

DAoC players - was the RvR game balanced there?  Since it seems Mythic is using the same approach here.

(Please read previous posts for background)

The RvR was balanced as far as numbers go (there was three factions not two).

Had got irritating a bit to be fighting Albion as Mid and see a Hybernian RvR group roll into the castle you had just been fighting the other faction for hours over.

Class Balance in DAoC was a a different story (Vampirs come to mind) as you could get a certain group of classes together and own pretty much any group of other classes (took seasoned players though).

I don't know, I think this quest hing is bologne and is not really needed in fact hell throughout beta even at the preview Destruction only had like a 400-600 man lead on each server (not that dramatic being that everyone won't be doing RvR).