(heh, okay, I was beaten to the punch here in a much more involved way!)

Unless of course there is something fairly simple like points 'weighting' play to offset the population difference...

1/2 population means points are doubled or some such (likely more involved) thing.

Do you have a link to the 'Skaven in the first expansion' info?

Aside from Skaven, I like the undead as well. This a little tricky as well though since in order to be a PC an undead character would have be a bit more that the mindless dead, but also not so powerful as to completely overbalance things. As Necromancer's are the heart and soul of their armies this is a tricky thing. There are  other undead that might work however:

Tank: Tough one here. I don't really remember offhand if mummies or wights are considered 'leader' characters in an undead army. If so, I suppose either might be used as a tanker type.  

DPS: Vampire lord comes to mind with preternatural speed and other vampire goodness.

Nuker: Possibly a Lich. Undead are a bit short on the ranged side I think aside from casters, so something that really concentrates primarily on death spells and the like seems like it would fill this role.

Support/Heal: THis seems like it would be the necromancer class primarily, with the ability to raise dead, 'repair' damaged units and buff/debuff with necromatic magic.

BIggest problem we run into is with our 'normal' batman-type heroes. None of the existing powers really make sense. You can sort of get away with using temp powers as 'gadget' movement... but it be helpful to have some other variations like:

Swinging. I know, I know....

Personal vehicle like motorcycle or jetbike or something ...seems just a variation on superspeed or flight. Would have to do a lot of animation work for powers though unless you jsut pulled a WoW and had it vanish during combat.  

 After getting Assassin's Creed and playing that a bit, the way the main char moves through the world is normal but amazing. Sort of using free running really. Combination of climbing, moderate leaping and the like.  

Skaven should be in the game. Unfortunately I can't think of what the racial pairing for the Skaven would be so not sure how that would work.

As for classes?

Tank: Stormvermin come to mind, though a packmaster controlling one or more rat orgres would stand out as more Skaven in feel I think and would make for an impressive tank! (And be a bit different than the other races)

DPS: Well, since these seem to be all hth based I'd have to say assassin. Seems pretty obvious here. Various poisons, misdirects and such.

Nuker: Grey seer, again pretty obvious.

Healer: Plague Censer bearer with various types of gaseaus toxins, buffs, debuffs, heals, etc...maybe give them Jezielle and poison wind globes for ranged (yeah, sort of mixing troop types here as individually censer bearer, globadiers and jezielles are a little too specialized/limited otherwise). Maybe just call this class the Warp Engineer and allow for all sort of warp-enhanced goodness.  

Very valid points!

I agree Caellach, thus the thought about exploration, delivery and possibly kill quests using the existing game event trackers. Mostly, the point was to give an option to RP more than a way to get items. Sure an auction is easier but it's still an auction so you may not be able to get what you want for x price. Giving a player a quest would enable you to set a price and have someone do the work for you. Not a huge advantage, but something. This way also you could do something like faction quests but for your guild. RP-wise collecting 50 cloth or whatever for the guild storage vault might have more meaning than collecting the same for an NPC faction. Sure, as a guildmaster or officer I can jsut give you the quest and give you a reward 'in character, this system would just be a way to ensure everything stays fair.

I've been thinking about his for awhile and have wondered, with the possible exception of Saga of Ryzom, why MMOs have not introduced any means for players to create quests for other players. This seems like a wonderful way to encourage player interaction and roleplay and I believe it could be done with a fairly simple system based of existing COD mailboxes.

First, the player in question decides they want to offer a mission/quest to someone. These quests would likely have to be of the collection variety (at least to start). The player opens up a quest interface and sets the conditions of the quest, such as 'collect 50 iron bars and return them me' using drop-down menus or something similar. Then the player sets the reward be it in gold, items they own or both and sets a quest duration time. These items are placed in teh quest as if it were a mailbox and cannot be removed for the quest duration. At that point the player activates his quest which triggers a special 'quest marker' above his head.

At this point anyone seeing the quest player can go talk to them. If the quest player is AFK then there would be some minimal quest dialogue....anything from a minimal description based on the parameters of the quest or a longer description if the quest player decided to use that option. Alternately, the quest player could respond to the quest seeker directly, activating the quest once both were satisfied with whatever arrangements.

Once the questing player aquires the sought items, they could mail or physically return them back to the quest player which would trigger the reward for the successful quester (via mail or pop-up dialogue).

This seems pretty straightforward, a minor variation on exiting mailbox functionality. Anyone see any major problems with it? I can see some things that might be worked on a bit, like:

1) Collection Quests Get Old
Perhaps be incorporating some part of the game database into the quest engine (nothing really different than the auction, exploration and current quest systems already do), quests could be expanded to include delivery, exploration, trade, kills... any number of game states or events.

2) What about quest spamming?
To limit this the special quest marker would be colored, liek an encounter, to give you an indication of the relative worth so you could filter by site. Additionally, using somethign similar to auction/vendor minimum pricing a minimum 'worth' for the quest could be set fairly.

3) What about XP?
I think this is not something you could give out with player quest. Way too easy to exploit. You would get XP as you would normally for going about the quest, but not a chunk of XP for the quest itself. Using the relative worth idea in 2 it might be possible, though I would think this would be a lot more difficult of a system to create due to the factors involved. Open for suggestions though!

What do you think?

My wife and I play this together which is a lot of fun. The scaling definitely seems to add a measure of challenge that might not be there in the single player. I didn't play the beta much, but what i did play was noticeably more difficult (and thus more fun) in a group than solo.

As I recally, this was exactly how Diablo 2 scaled too....no surprise there.

I have no idea what that guy (mrots) is talking about. I completely applaud designers that make games backwards compatible enough that we can all play them without having to upgrade our systems constantly. I remember when half-life originally came out we were playing the game with software acceleration and having a blast! Sure it looked a lot better with a graphics card, but 1) it wasn't a necessity and 2) it didn't make the game any less 'fun' in the least. This big confusion seems to lie when people confuse nice graphics with a good game. I can think of a LOT of really gorgeous games that are just –terrible-…I’d much rather it be the other way around. However, there really is no excuse for poor graphics anymore, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. If you’ve seen the movies from Burning Seas, the game looks gorgeous (yes, yes especially the water). The advantage would be in not having to run them at full-blown max just to play at all.

Thanks for thinking about the little guys FLS!