WAR : Faction imbalance...

[Macaubre]

Hey hey! in WoW, the biggest problem with PVE servers (and to some extent PVP servers) is the obvious faction imbalances (more Alliance then Horde).

In a game that is heavy on RvsR, how the imbalance pan out? People wanting to be good guys won't play Greenskins, making the Dwarves at a unfair advantage of numbers...

Did the developers covered those issues before?

[Zeli]

They have stated that it is something they are aware of, and because of DAOC, have experience with. They have not said anything specific about how they are addressing it, but I found this quote from Morg'th over at the Only-WAR website:

Now to ease your concerns, we talked with Sanya about the population issue, and she had stated that (I'm paraphrasing, so don't get all uppity if it doesn't sound right), what alot of MMO developers do is see the population pre-release and overcompensate for release and during the first few months, and then they have to spend the life of the product trying to put it back to normal. Mythic is not new at this. They know what to do. This is why we encourage people to roll what they want instead of rolling "the underdog because it's cool".

Since it's so early in beta, we kinda just have to trust that they know what they're doing and time will tell.

They are having "Dogs of War" in the game. I am not sure of specifics but I believe that NPC fighters spawn, in certain types of battles, to assist if one side is severely undermanned.

I am also nervous about this. I was concerned when I learned that it's a 2 sided war with 6 armies. In a 2 sided war, if one side is dominant, it's glaringly obvious. Coming from DAoC, I still think 3 sides is the perfect RvR set-up. Even if one side is overly populated, we had many instances where the other two sides would form a truce to defeat the common enemy. With 2 sides, the community is not able to make that compensation for population and it's all up to the devs.

But it's not DAoC. And I am trying to keep an open mind that maybe Mythic has new ideas and new solutions and everything will be peachy.

[Winin]

I'm glad they are going to address it. I hope they do something clever. 3 sides would have been better, but that doesn't alleviate population imbalance in any given battlefield.

[Zeli]

Sanya was asked about this on the Warhammer Vault interview that went out today:

Warhammer Vault: Have you discussed anything about population balance and how to handle it? If so, are you allowed to reveal any information on how the system will work?


Sanya: This is HUGELY important to us, obviously. We have mechanisms in place for city retaking (NPCs, defending players grow gradually more powerful over time, etc). Other things are under discussion, but like everything else, play testing will almost certainly modify our plans. The plans we have now probably won’t last until the point where the NDA is lifted and I can talk freely, and that means my answer isn’t worth putting permanently on the internet.

It's vague but it's being worked on!