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Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: Population Imbalance Issues
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com Warhammer online Correspondent Asaf Younsian writes this quick opinion piece throwing in his two cents about the population imbalances in Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.
After a smooth launch and a lot of buzz, we're starting to see dents in Mythic Entertainment’s Warhammer Online world.
As it's not my intent to go on and list them, I wanted to narrow it down on one specific problem that might cause a series of problems that might very well drop the entire game a notch – Population imbalance between the different factions.
First, let's take a look at what this imbalance means and how it affects the world:
Most (if not all) servers seem to have a population of around 60% Destruction oriented characters and only 40% Order. While those numbers may change slightly, the majority remains on the destruction side.
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Read more here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
Eh im so tired of hearing about this stuff with all the stuff finally they're doing to help try balance things out and make the RvR lakes more popular. My only real gripe about this editorial is the remark about scenarios. They may help scenario grinders get to T4 faster, may help them learn how to play their characters for Scenarios but it won't help them with the main part of T4. If players aren't familiar with how to take over keeps, defend them, and handle large scale battles as a team they're effectively worthless. Scenarios do not prepare you for RvR large scale battles its really in most cases (pugs atleast) just a way for people to level themselves and still act like jerks in the process.
Whats worse is the lame boo hoo missing tank argument. Do we really need another gripe about that when they announced they're coming into the game soon? We all know the gripes would be 10 time louder if they were in the game and they sucked ultimate balls.
Really, stop whining.
"balance" comes with abilities, not only with numbers.
And in that regard, Order is overpowered.
I dont know how anyone can call dwarves unassuming and that their armor sucks they look cooler than the humans and cooler than the greenskins in some respects. Not to mention when you hit T3 and you see an IB or a Engineer coming at you You know to run like hell before they use their over powered knock backs & group magnet pulls.
For being a "warhammer correspondant" he doesn't even know the name of the Empire, calling it Order...
Funny, though, all this alarmism on having altdorf sacked every morning. Where? When? he writes like it happened multiple times already on all servers. Too bad it couldn't be more far from truth. It's quite evident it'll be a quite rare occurrence, despite any kind of population imbalance.
Finally, and this sounds the death knell for this article, his descriptions of the races are completely screwed, and make me wonder if he's actually playing the game or just reading some forums and aggregating some naysaying.
And dont forget in Tr3 even tr 2 if you see an iron breaker you know to groan in pain because of their dang knock downs AND knock backs I have a levle 22 chosen I love this walking tin can!! but man I HATE going against an iron breaker!!! Only two classes i can honeslty say I fear....Iron breakers and the ooo so annoying bright wizard (which i play as well and love that fireball tossing loon!!)
The balance issue i think will fix it self a sepcialy when they put out the other tank for Order.
I normally attempt to stay away from critizing articles, especially ones written by members of our community - but damn. Was this at least edited? Abriael makes some great points...
Population imbalance is an issue, but IT'S NOT the major one.
The major issue is SERVERS POPULATION.
Mythic launch the game with WAY too many servers. This cause the population to spread all over the place. Now a few months later you have queued servers and ghost town servers.
That's is what drove me away from the game. Coming from WOW i don't want to have to wait to play (queues). When i play i want to be able to do content (PQ, Scenerio) but the problem is there, in most non queues servers there is NO ONE to play PQ, scenario queues are Looooooooooooooooong.
Mythic should have lauch the game with very little servers, 10-12 maybe and as they fill, slowly open more.
Now it's sitll time to correct the situation, but it involve the major headache of servers merge. Merge the low pop servers togethers.
@Aguitha: they already have free server transfers coming.
I have zero problems as far as a long wait on the Destruction side for scenarios. Longest I've ever waited might be 5 minutes. I like the fact that you can be questing and still waiting, still have a minute or so to get someplace safe, then enter the scenario. As far as imbalance goes, I get my head handed to me as often as we rout the other side.
I"m gonna post this simply because I cannot believe no one else pointed it out....
The writer says that Order suffers from an imbalance in healing classes.
I'm gonna repeat that because it bears repeating.
The writer says that Order suffers from an imbalance in healing classes.
As a dedicated and smart Destruction player, I've gotta call this one out. Are you serious?! FFS man... try killing a runepriest. Try killing an Iron-breaker with a runepriest healing him. It's simply not gonna happen. The runepriest has insta-cast heals, absorbs, etc. They're easily the best healer in the game as a result. I'm not knocking Destruction healers, but the runepriest is seriously badass.
No godless person can comprehend those minute distinctions
in doctrine that provide true believers excuse for mayhem.
-Glen Cook
The citys have never been captured to this day. Never. Please to learn the system.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
The article really lost me when it was suggested that more people play Destruction because WoW had more people play Alliance. Is there any evidence to support this other than this being the author's experience?
1. Not all Warhammer players are coming from WoW.
2. Evidence supports that younger players tend to play human type of characters because they aren't quite to the point of playing something that resembles an animal or a monster. Since Warhammer has human style races on both side, I expect this demographic will be spread more evenly. This is speculation only at this point.
3. What about the Warhammer fans who have a predisposition for a side based on how they have played in the Warhammer universe in the past? This wouldn't have any influence would it?
Good journalism would state a perception of an imbalance. Nonetheless, could this perception be isolated to the 1-2 servers the author plays on. Could it be due to the time of day at which he played? Surely this could also be a factor.
I have at times felt some imbalance, numbers wise, in Open RvR but I can't say it is a constant. It just happens to be who is online and what they are motivated to do at that moment. I am just reluctant to throw this label on the game as a whole when it could just be an issue that impacts only part of the total server set.
The point about Order RvR is, at least on my server (also a lot more destro) is actually quite the opposite.
Order is holding nearly always all of T2 & T3, while destro mostly hold T1 and T4 being constantly contested. As for nightly raids: Actually it is the destros who start attacking every day at 4am. (I was staying awake late chatting with a few Guild members, when our keep was besieged).
Is there a way we can vote for a "no confidence" on a correspondent?
your arguement is so persuasive, so filled with knowledge and insight. You back up your argument very articulately, with suggestions of improvements and raising examples to glorify your position....oh wait, you didn't
Interesting read is my comment on the article. On the PQs though is my friend on the bad side said had as much trouble with trying to play PQs as I did playing the proper side of the battle (lots of sarcasm about sides as I do like being good).
There are issues but at the moment the only one I ever think about is the fact I have my computer gamma up just so I don't give myself a headache in the dark places which makes certain other areas blinding then. I would have been happier hearing something about that than what I read in this article as it offered me nothing to think about where the game is heading.
Most servers appear to be equal as far as balance.
I have very few gripes with the game that revolve more around the grou ui and a few bugs. I simply report those and wait for them to be corrected.
I fought in a siege on Mandred's Hold the other day and we fought them at the door then out to the hills on several occassions. On Brettonia, the numbers are about as even as you can get, I'll be looking forward to getting more players transfer here in december.
Hmmm also should have stated open RVR server or the standard PvE with RvR zones.
Play on Praag youll see many High lvl Order and see that there healers arnt as weak as you think.
and I guess you havent faced enough Pocket Healed Iron breakers.
Hard core on either side will be on the RVR and there poulations seem fine ATM.
Man, I wish I had time to write for MMORPG.com. Unlike this guy I actually understand RvR games and their sociology. This guy knows nothing about Warhammer Online, he's clearly an ex-wow player and someone who's assuming that this game is just WoW2... which it most certainly is not.
The imbalance issue has to do with (in my opinion) how players identify with the classes offered. For example, most people who play destruction will tell you that they see less zealots and shaman on the battlefield than they do their counterparts, the archmage and the runepriest. Many people i've talked to think of the zealot's hunched posture and weak looking demeanor as something hard to imagine looking at for 40 levels, whereas it's counterpart, the runepriest looks healthy and strong.
In the case of the shaman, for the first few levels they look naked and meak... and although there's certainly more shaman than zealots, I've heard several people say they feel weak as a shaman in rvr, not so much in spells, but also in the look and feel. You equip a belt and it's a thin rope, you equip a chest piece and you're chest is still bare... it's hard to feel like your character is progressing. The counterpart for the shaman, the archmage, feels lean and noble.
To me, the shaman is a funny class that is to be respected and feared, and the zealot is a cruicial class on the battlefield. The problem seems to be that everyone is obsessed with being the biggest badass they can be, and zealots (and in some people's opinion, the shaman) just don't "feel badass".
Also, this guy writing this article is talking about the "dark elf counterpart" of the knight of the blazing sun? No such thing. The Knight of the Blazing sun is the counterpart for the Chosen, and the Blackguard is the counterpart for the Ironbreaker. What this means is that destruction will be getting their knockback/grudge-like mechanic tank and order will be getting their dps/aura tank.
As a player in tier4 I can difinitely say that what is needing immediate fixing is the queueing, the team building and a FEW minor tweaks to certain class abilities.
For example, it makes no sense that Mourkain Temple, Tor Anroc, and Serpent's pass are the most common scenarios when most players on both sides press "join all". At first I thought it had to do with the opposite side only queueing for that one, but I've since learned that this is not the case. We should be seeing much more of the other scenarios and we're not.
There's also an issue with team building. When I enter a scenario and there's only witch elves and marauders with the occasional disciple of khaine thrown in... and we're up against 4 ironbreakers, 4 bright wizards, and a plethra of healers from all pairings. A simple fix for this would be class limits in scenarios, though how this would impact wait times for some classes and pre-grouped people could be very damaging, so this is something that they've probably already given some major thought to.
Anyways, bottom line, WAR is in great shape and is only getting better. This guy's article was ill-informed and really only serves to damage the already skewed views about this game. I implore MMORPG.com to avoid publishing articles like this, as it is bad for their repuation, wether it was an opinion-based piece or not.
WAAAGH,
MAUL0r
I think alot of the population decline and or imbalance is because people are placed into these scenarios that give basically free goodies. My day in WAR is mostly spent sitting at a random war camp waiting for a scenario que. It's getting to the point of boredom in some cases. Mythic needs to solve this problem head on. They need to provide a reason for Open RVR. Create a large based dungeon similar to Darkness Falls and use it in the same manner. It's what kept people wanting to do keep sieges. All these scenarios due is force people into instancing. I'm not going to say it truly forces you, but what reason is there to claiming a t2 keep? Besides some random loot bags, decent xp and trivial bonuses, what else is there? Darkness Falls, a huge dungeon with alot of reasons to keep it is what made me love RvRing in DaoC. But besides city sieging in t4, keep taking is really lackluster pre-t4. Give people a good reason to take these keeps. Make a huge DF dungeon with control advantages for claiming a certain amount of keeps. Do something besides increasing the bonuses. It's not the bonuses people want, it's the feeling we got from DF is what we really want.
It's either that are atleast replace these scenarios with keep scenarios so people learn how to take keeps. And not just random mini-game fun. I hated BG's in WOW because of this, and now WAR is doing it. And to me the only reason they did it is to take people away from WOW bg's. But why would people want to come to WAR to play another WOWish BG? Make this a Warhammer game without the WOWish neccesites. I re-subed to WAR and love it. But it really is becoming boring. The level grind after 20 and these dam scenarios must be getting to me so I will end it here. But seriously Mark, quit giving bonuses and fix the dam problem. Remeber ToA, enough said.
As a dedicated and smart Destruction player
this part made realize this post was bogus.
When I said i had "time", i meant virtual time, i got no RL "time" for you.
I was just talking to someone about this on vent yesterday! You're right on the money. Though I think it doesn't NEED to be a dungeon or even a physical location. Just make more quests available if you are in control of an area, and make the PQs harder if you're not. Then make the PQ keep sieges worth influence like the pve ones. These bonuses and penalties could also change depending on wether the zone was your's to begin with... like some of the higher level zones.
a dungeon like DF would be cool too, but we've seen it before.
I have played a several servers to get a feel how the populaiton affects the game.
Starting at Skull Throne it is essentially collector's edition server. People got in early head start and having rolling since. Good times until official launch. Log in cue were horrible. Then the server was cloned to Throne of Doom.
I went there because of my peak playing times were eastern time and evening meant i couldn't get in for 30-60min. Unacceptable. Unfortunately the major guilds stayed and the cloned server was an alt server/ and very quiet. Scenarios after T2 would not pop at all.
My guild moved to Ironfist which seemed good, T4 scenarios are popping with greater frequency.
A made a character on one of the imbalanced servers. Order. It seems less organized obviously and scenario win /loss ratio is poor namely because there are few healers. So we shall see how things pan out.
Interesting though all servers at this point have Rank 5 cities. I do not know of a city capture yet. I'd figure by now Skull Throne would have one,
Would a larger server be able to work? Mythic seems to think not. I am concerned though that 5k pop might not be enough.
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They're already working on making open rvr more desirable. Some they already did, some will come soon.
Moreover people that think that scenarios are always better than open RvR simply didn't play all the way yet. At level 40 scenarios contribute very little to carachter growth (an average of 400 rp in a won scenario).
The OP vastly overstates the population problem, and fails to give Mythic credit for the actions they are taking to correct the problem.
I play destruction and I never wait more than 10-15 minutes to get into a scenario, and in the evenings it is more like 2-3 minutes. I do agree that RvR at least in the first two tiers is pretty barren, but they are taking steps to fix this as well.
Besides while destruction may have more players, order seems to have better players.