I think the low tier RvR is nobody's land today; I only found some battles in New Emskrank in Tier 1... I don't think the Order has any problems with the healers - there isn't much healer, but there isn't much Destruction healer too, so it isn't problem. It's worse that in a scenario there isn't an automatic warband, so many times I simply can't see who needs healing because my groupmates were spreading across the map... (no, I'm not in a guild, I'm running pug matches) The PQs are deserted too, so I'm gathering influence in the first grinding stage almost every times...
The OP raises some good points. Hopefully the class/faction imbalances can be corrected.
I see a lot of speculation about mostly children play Order, or only experienced players play Destruction, bla bla bla. Lot of assumptions based on what? From the posts I've read it looks like their assumptions are heavily weighted toward what faction they play.
I am playing Empire right now. Destro on the forums say it's Or'ders fault for losing because they don't use strategy and tactics. Well it's easy to use strategy and tactics if you have the numbers and/or classes to support it. Otherwise there tends to be chaos which is what we seem to have at the moment. Empire very much needs a tank.
This game needs pvp to be successful for the game to be successful. In spite of the baseless assumptions about Order players made by the other faction, there is hopefully someone within Mythic crunching the numbers to see that things are indeed imbalanced in favor of Destruction. Otherwise you would not see Mythic adding classes, adding bonuses to improve factional balances, etc.
Infact, the OP's observations are legitimized by Mythics recent actions and announcements to correct the problems which the OP details. So how people can then come here and dispute which even Mythic admits is puzzling.
But some people like to argue for the sake of argument I guess.
Class balance restored – It's a long shot, but the Knight of the Blazing Sun is something the Empire needs badly. I believe it will have a bigger effect on drawing people to Order then it's Dark-elven counterpart.
Believe all you like. I for one will be hanging up an IB and rolling it's destruction counterpart.
And in regards to the above poster who mentioned the Knight was treated as the 'mirror' I read it as tank released at the same time.
As for pop imbalance there's one on my server. Destruction outnumber Order in open field and yes it'll need to be fixed. Or you'll see Order farming renown dings in scenarios only with the odd zzerg or late night/morning keep takes.
Yeah, have to agree with a few other people who have responded. Order has weaker healers eh? Bogus. Archmages and Rune Priests rock, if people know how to play them. On Red Eye Mountain I can honestly say scenarios go 50/50, I never know who is going to win any given one. Also on keep sieges, order can really put up a good fight if they are defending, and if they are attacking they seem to make quick work of a destro keep. Yes I play destruction.
The most important class in WAR are the healers. The side with the most healers often wins most battles...as long as they don't have TOO many healers.
High Elves are damn ugly. There's no way I am going to roll a fruity looking elf that is also damn ugly. That leaves Order with the Rune Priest who has his own visual shortcomings. Order needs a human pure-healer (not WP) and a human tank (KotBS).
I had talked with some of the members of Mythic at Gencon when Warhammer was still going into open beta and they had said they expected Destruction to outnumber Order about 60% to 40% and they were ok with that. In a game like WAR the "bad" guys were expected to outnumber "good" because of the nature of the game.
Yeah there is no problems with the game at all, everything is OK. Like the SC I was just in where Des had 4 tanks, 5 DPS, Order we had 3 DPS, and rest where healers, and NO tanks, but everything is fine.
Also I have played a Zealot and RP both to level 15, the zealot is a lot easier and better to play then the RP. I am playing to RP cause I have friends that want to stay on the order side, if not for them I would be on the Des side in no time.
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.
Well, another person that claims that it's Mythic's fault for the choice of server that they made. Been playing since head start and most likely very lucky in that the population balance, on badlands, is pretty darn good. The community isn't so hot, but hey, if I want to queue for serpent's passage im in in a matter of minutes, usually not long enough to turn in the kill players and scenario participation quests.
You seem to forget that orcs and dark elves are also missing their classes, choppa and blackguard to be specific. Explain to me how its such a bad thing for order to be missing their two classes while it's ok for destruction to be missing theirs? Tell me, is it just convenience that you stress how hard it is on order to be missing a melee dps and a tank while failing to mention that the exact same disparity lies with destruction as well, or are you just incapable of rational thought?
Rune priests and Archmages underpowered? Have you played one? Did you ever think that the ones you have played with just suck? Not enough tanks? Role one! Instead of whining and crying and putting the blame on everyone else man up, take some responsibility and be proactive.
MMORPG.com, I think your selection of a "correspondant" is SERIOUSLY lacking in both reasoning ability, and in onjectivity.
The class composition imbalance is correcting itself atm simply because the player population is not stupid and can see what works and what dont work. I gave up on my SW in T4 and rerolled a WP instead so I had to go up through the tiers a second time and I can see some great differences from the first days of the game.
Order has far more tanks and healers and less dps (practically no SWs anymore), and dest side field far more ranged dps and fewer tanks, all in all you see similar group composition on both sides now as the 2nd generation of chars are lvling up. So that is being fixed as we speak.
The overall population imbalane OTOH is a more severe problem. On my homeserver of Karak Orrud we are always outnumbered 1 to 1.5 towards 1 to 2 any time we venture out into open RvR no matter what tier we move into. The only time we take keeps is a nighttime and then we get a lot of experience in keep defenses (but game give no rewards for defending keeps, only taking them).
So far the only thing that have prevented dest from taking Altdorf is the severe server lag when more than 150 people fight in a zone. So the fortress lords kills entire raids in between the lag spikes.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
Very good read, I think you covered the game pretty honestly. I am sure things will change though they always do, MMO's seem to change monthly these days.
This is shocking...ly bad. If anything, it's the exact opposite on the server I'm on, scenarios pop every 2 seconds because its all people freaking play, you would never know what the population balance was considering nobody is ever NOT in a scenario, and Order usually steamrolls Destruction, not the other way around as he claims, because Destruction can't our shit together half the time. Population troubles being the biggest issue in WAR? Don't make me freaking laugh. How about a combat system thats practically exacly the same as WoW, watered down RvR that doesn't even meet DAoC standards let alone feel like the game was designed around it, and NOBODY playing in freaking ORvR because people are too busy grinding out scenarios either because they want EZ experience or because they're from WoW and "Hey! these are like BGS 8D YAY familiarity!" How about we concern ourselves with WAR actually having an idenity of its own and fixing its RvR before we complain that the other side has two tanks and we only have one QQ.
I, for one, feel like he is incorrect in saying that the Destruction classes completely overpower the Order classes. A warriorpriest is every bit as good as a disciple of khain they are just direct opposites in respect to buffs (one buffs one debuffs but they both fight melee and heal the same)
----------------------------- Real as Reality Television!!!
Well all you people can try to defend WAR all you like here, but the fact of the matter is, this game is 110% dependent on Population Balance. If there is an imbalance, the game is screwed...there's no "uhm and aah" about this, this is reality.
We can go on about why there's population imbalance , whether it's the fact that Order is simply visually unappealing or whether the late upsurge of Horde players in WoW resulted in a more "comfortable" feeling with playing Destruction is also irrelevant.
I am playing Order, and if there's a 40+ sized Destruction warband in any given area and only 20 Order, you can smoke any kind of crap you like, Destruction WILL NOT GET A FIGHT. Order WILL resort to "guerilla" or "avoid the zerg" tactics and simply well, avoid the fight.
The part that the Author did not touch on , which is surprising to me is another Population Imbalance which Mythic imposed on the game. That is of course TIER based populations.
Has no one ever thought what T1 is gonna look like in 3 months time? Heck what about T2/3 ? How will any new player or "alt-aholic" play WAR in 3 months? If you leveled too fast you probably hit T4 with nothing to do, if you leve too slow you will sit in T1 with nothing but quests to do....
on my server it's 50/50 order takes keeps during peak hours we take keeps prime time. yea i dont agree with order has weaker healers there pretty even minus dok and wp the wp is a stronger healer. and iron breakers hahaah dude there mean as hell and have some of the sickest buffs 400 will power buff put that on a healer with 600-700 will and watch what happens lol. i cant speak for other servers but on mine order has alot of healers and destro is starting to get more t4 and it's not like when game first launched and empire is fighting chaos in sc's it's everyone fighting everyone at first i could see ppl getting pissed about empire not having a tank. cause it was annoying in khaines when de fougth he who had sw and de had doks lol. but (on my server) there is a good mix minus all the evil BW i hate you all but you make the game fun for me on my mar. they have already said that they are adding inf for orvr for gear thats comming 1.1 i think that will fix alot of the issues with it yea i do agree with poster who said what about t1-t3 they need to fix this or new ppl who just start war will get frustrated and quit. but im sure that they are aware of the issue and are working to fix it. they do want there game to do well and remember ppl game only been out for lill over a month. best launch imo even compared to WoW that so many of you love. i have faith in mythic dont get me wrong there is stuff they need to fix but comes with time if your one the the ppl who cant wait then play somthing else till this game has been out for a while and has year or so of tweaks.
The thing I don't understand about the complaint with server imbalances is that it is allegedly a double edged sword, meaning that both sides lose out on something. Wait a minute! That's almost the very definition of balance! If people are Destruction and are tired of long waits, they could just roll order. And if order has this force of need pushed on them, I think you'll get a stronger more focused community because of it. It may be more hope than actual logic, but I think everything will turn out all right.
It is class/sides inbalance in WAR sadly , it is because "mirrior" classes on both sides are not really equal , compare WE kiss system with WH bullets system for example , MR as mdps class and its "mirrior' WL with buggy in 2 seconds dying pet / skills ect.
There is ofcourse one class on Order site which appeling a lot of destruction players ...BW... but this leads to even more imbalance as 50% Order population are BWs wihile other 40% is other dps and 10% tanks /healers , in T4 its great disadventage for Order in SC and in orvr i can't ofcourse talk about all servers but on mine in sc we are getting constantly steamrolled by destruction tanks with loads on WE/MR at their backs.
I'm almosy toally agree with article. Except healers - order have really great healers.
And it seems all those naysayers here operate only "omg! l2p noob!" and picking to words. They know author right and they have no arguments against it so the resort to trolling.
There are disbalance issues in favor of destruction - this is a statistical fact. Go argue with that little trolls.
I mean that was a "game-breaking issue of the day" a few weeks ago...
Another "game-breaking issue" that made the game beyond redemption and any hope of saving was the lack of regional channels...
Please get a bit more up to date. Today's "game-breaking issue" is low overall population on servers.
Meh...
Funny how most of those "game-breaking issues" tend to disappear in a week or two after being detected. Really funny. I suppose in a few months we'll see "game-breaking issues" like "vendor red sometimes comes off pinkish" and "PQs don't drop purplaz for everybody all the time".
FYI My server (Karak Norn, EU) was severely imbalanced for a few weeks after release. Us order guys couldn't even ENTER the RvR zones because there were always 10+ destros swarming right at the entrance to our warcamp screaming bloody murder. While I was doing T2 we actually begged the destros on the server forum to leave us one keep so we can maybe have some fun - if you take all our keeps none of us won't get any RvR because it would be pointless.
And now, after an immensely long time (one month FYI) our server is imbalanced again... With Order completely pwning face. I can't recall a scenario in the past 3 days that we lost. I really feel sorry for the destro guys - maybe we should let them have one or two just to boost their morale a bit, no fun fighting against opponents who are resigned to loosing. In T3 destros are lucky if they have one keep. T4 is still a bit slow because it seems we are a bit slow-leveling server overall but imo destros are going to have their hands full when T4 starts filling up.
In short, the server balanced itself. I have a few guys in my guild who played destro then decided to go order because of all the problems destros had for being overpopulated. Now I'd say we are 50-50 balanced pretty closely and it will stay this way... if the destros manage to pull themselves up. In fact I fear we might end up being an order overpopulated server because destros are really loosing badly atm.
I'm not going to repeat a lot of the good comments many have made, aside to say that, yep, I agree - THE issue is server pops. Most of the open beta players seemed to dive on the servers they were on previously and once headstart was over we had 500+ waiting lists for a time. Then GOA tried to fix it by cloning loads of characters to other servers to encourage movement and then tried adding a 20% boost to Order (mainly) renown and XP on low pop servers. The result is that we've now got a far wider and thinner spread of all players.
Sure, there are some servers bucking the trend, but there are too many English servers with low to med pops in the evenings. Frankly, there just seems to be way too many servers. The free transfers should help, and I know I'll be consolidating many of my alts onto busier servers, but I just wish they'd get on with it. I've always felt uneasy about the way game itself splits pops across many armies, zones and tiers, and low pop servers really isn't helping to maintain the kind of game experience Mythos clearly had in mind.
On a positive note, I had my first big RvR bash on Sunday night and although 100+ players slugging it out looked like a slideshow at times on my PC, it was a pretty amazing experience.
Population imbalance is an issue, but IT'S NOT the major one. The major issue is SERVERS POPULATION. ----snip----
I am going to quote a post from the first page here because Aguitha obviously has nailed down the actual problem.
A population spread of 40/60 on a 6000 pop server is not going to impact the gameplay on the same grade as a 40/60 population spread on a 2000 pop server. Sometimes I have the feeling that people are actually trying to imply that Mythic is ever going to achieve a 50/50 server population spread. A think that, in my opinion, they will never be able to achieve this, and I do think that Mythic is fully aware of that. All they can do is to give incentives to players to choose the underpopulated side, but this is never going to give us 50/50 servers.
And to Mr Asaf Younsian I would like to say the following:
Please, next time you write something about population imbalance issues in a game, whether it is WAR or another one, please first sit down and look out for the real issue at hand. Then think about the best way to solve it and then try to write about this. Also, please do not try to be the alarmist/populist type, we already have way enough of those freaks on the MMORPG forums here. If you would like to be a "game journalist" then please take a step back and write your articles in a neutral and moderated way. It is my believe that articles written by a staff member of a site, even on MMORPG, should be a bit of a higher level than your average daily forum post.
Your article also has some false informations and inconsistencies in it (the part of Order having the weaker healers was one of the more funny ones, closely followed by that Altdorf comment).
Regards
An MMORPG reader and WAR (Order) player
*************************** Remember, remember the 5th of November ***************************
I'm almosy toally agree with article. Except healers - order have really great healers.
And it seems all those naysayers here operate only "omg! l2p noob!" and picking to words. They know author right and they have no arguments against it so the resort to trolling.
There are disbalance issues in favor of destruction - this is a statistical fact. Go argue with that little trolls.
Not to mention that it clearly starts to show that most things are bugged for Order.
They now have basically locked down VP in Tier4, because Order wasn't able to lock Tier4 down, while Destruction could do it within couple hours!
How do you mean it's mostly the Destruction side of things that have clearly been tested in Beta!
But still I don't fully agree with the article. As the main problem is the server population, not realm population!
Here in Europe we have over 27 low pop servers atm that need to be dealt with ASAP! And I frankly doubt that opening up server transfers is going to help. It will only make things worse and they will end up losing more subscriptions in the end, then if they do forced server mergers!
And I frankly doubt that opening up server transfers is going to help. It will only make things worse and they will end up losing more subscriptions in the end, then if they do forced server mergers!
[/quote]
You missed the fine print where they basically said "free server transfers" will pretty much restricted to transfering to and from specific servers with specific populations. Basically it would be server mergers, just sugar coated a bit. i.e. i'm pretty sure they will do what Blizzard did with their server migrations in the line which will read like :
"Free transfers from Server X are open, you can transfer to Servers A,B or C, transfers will be open between date 1 and date 2 but can be closed at any time if the population cap are reached" .
Well all you people can try to defend WAR all you like here, but the fact of the matter is, this game is 110% dependent on Population Balance. If there is an imbalance, the game is screwed...there's no "uhm and aah" about this, this is reality. We can go on about why there's population imbalance , whether it's the fact that Order is simply visually unappealing or whether the late upsurge of Horde players in WoW resulted in a more "comfortable" feeling with playing Destruction is also irrelevant.
I am playing Order, and if there's a 40+ sized Destruction warband in any given area and only 20 Order, you can smoke any kind of crap you like, Destruction WILL NOT GET A FIGHT. Order WILL resort to "guerilla" or "avoid the zerg" tactics and simply well, avoid the fight. The part that the Author did not touch on , which is surprising to me is another Population Imbalance which Mythic imposed on the game. That is of course TIER based populations. Has no one ever thought what T1 is gonna look like in 3 months time? Heck what about T2/3 ? How will any new player or "alt-aholic" play WAR in 3 months? If you leveled too fast you probably hit T4 with nothing to do, if you leve too slow you will sit in T1 with nothing but quests to do....
This is exactly the kind of whining that I hate. The game is not solely dependant on a perfectly matched population. They could be perfectly matched and if destruction has a well-organized alliance of 10 large guilds, while order has a loose alliance of 10 large guilds, one will certainly win... the organized one. I will acknowledge the population differences, you can't deny that... but seriously? Stop saying that it's the one thing that will make or break this game... that's retarded.
as for the t1-3 argument, all I can say is PFFFFT the one thing that's missing from this game is /xpoff so you can keep alts at lower tiers. That's the ONLY thing they need to do. If you think mythic is responsible for making sure there's tons of random low level players... you're mistaken. MAKE A FRIEND OR 2. You can level your tier1-2-3 with them... this could even be a guild event. Be creative! Mythic's job is not to babysit you and make sure your individual needs are met... sometimes you actually need to work at it.
Comments
I think the low tier RvR is nobody's land today; I only found some battles in New Emskrank in Tier 1... I don't think the Order has any problems with the healers - there isn't much healer, but there isn't much Destruction healer too, so it isn't problem. It's worse that in a scenario there isn't an automatic warband, so many times I simply can't see who needs healing because my groupmates were spreading across the map... (no, I'm not in a guild, I'm running pug matches) The PQs are deserted too, so I'm gathering influence in the first grinding stage almost every times...
Signatures are boring things.
The OP raises some good points. Hopefully the class/faction imbalances can be corrected.
I see a lot of speculation about mostly children play Order, or only experienced players play Destruction, bla bla bla. Lot of assumptions based on what? From the posts I've read it looks like their assumptions are heavily weighted toward what faction they play.
I am playing Empire right now. Destro on the forums say it's Or'ders fault for losing because they don't use strategy and tactics. Well it's easy to use strategy and tactics if you have the numbers and/or classes to support it. Otherwise there tends to be chaos which is what we seem to have at the moment. Empire very much needs a tank.
This game needs pvp to be successful for the game to be successful. In spite of the baseless assumptions about Order players made by the other faction, there is hopefully someone within Mythic crunching the numbers to see that things are indeed imbalanced in favor of Destruction. Otherwise you would not see Mythic adding classes, adding bonuses to improve factional balances, etc.
Infact, the OP's observations are legitimized by Mythics recent actions and announcements to correct the problems which the OP details. So how people can then come here and dispute which even Mythic admits is puzzling.
But some people like to argue for the sake of argument I guess.
Class balance restored – It's a long shot, but the Knight of the Blazing Sun is something the Empire needs badly. I believe it will have a bigger effect on drawing people to Order then it's Dark-elven counterpart.
Believe all you like. I for one will be hanging up an IB and rolling it's destruction counterpart.
And in regards to the above poster who mentioned the Knight was treated as the 'mirror' I read it as tank released at the same time.
As for pop imbalance there's one on my server. Destruction outnumber Order in open field and yes it'll need to be fixed. Or you'll see Order farming renown dings in scenarios only with the odd zzerg or late night/morning keep takes.
Yeah, have to agree with a few other people who have responded. Order has weaker healers eh? Bogus. Archmages and Rune Priests rock, if people know how to play them. On Red Eye Mountain I can honestly say scenarios go 50/50, I never know who is going to win any given one. Also on keep sieges, order can really put up a good fight if they are defending, and if they are attacking they seem to make quick work of a destro keep. Yes I play destruction.
The most important class in WAR are the healers. The side with the most healers often wins most battles...as long as they don't have TOO many healers.
High Elves are damn ugly. There's no way I am going to roll a fruity looking elf that is also damn ugly. That leaves Order with the Rune Priest who has his own visual shortcomings. Order needs a human pure-healer (not WP) and a human tank (KotBS).
Anyone who thinks Order is OP is clueless.
I had talked with some of the members of Mythic at Gencon when Warhammer was still going into open beta and they had said they expected Destruction to outnumber Order about 60% to 40% and they were ok with that. In a game like WAR the "bad" guys were expected to outnumber "good" because of the nature of the game.
Yeah there is no problems with the game at all, everything is OK. Like the SC I was just in where Des had 4 tanks, 5 DPS, Order we had 3 DPS, and rest where healers, and NO tanks, but everything is fine.
Also I have played a Zealot and RP both to level 15, the zealot is a lot easier and better to play then the RP. I am playing to RP cause I have friends that want to stay on the order side, if not for them I would be on the Des side in no time.
Read more here.
Well, another person that claims that it's Mythic's fault for the choice of server that they made. Been playing since head start and most likely very lucky in that the population balance, on badlands, is pretty darn good. The community isn't so hot, but hey, if I want to queue for serpent's passage im in in a matter of minutes, usually not long enough to turn in the kill players and scenario participation quests.
You seem to forget that orcs and dark elves are also missing their classes, choppa and blackguard to be specific. Explain to me how its such a bad thing for order to be missing their two classes while it's ok for destruction to be missing theirs? Tell me, is it just convenience that you stress how hard it is on order to be missing a melee dps and a tank while failing to mention that the exact same disparity lies with destruction as well, or are you just incapable of rational thought?
Rune priests and Archmages underpowered? Have you played one? Did you ever think that the ones you have played with just suck? Not enough tanks? Role one! Instead of whining and crying and putting the blame on everyone else man up, take some responsibility and be proactive.
MMORPG.com, I think your selection of a "correspondant" is SERIOUSLY lacking in both reasoning ability, and in onjectivity.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
The OP is both right and wrong.
The class composition imbalance is correcting itself atm simply because the player population is not stupid and can see what works and what dont work. I gave up on my SW in T4 and rerolled a WP instead so I had to go up through the tiers a second time and I can see some great differences from the first days of the game.
Order has far more tanks and healers and less dps (practically no SWs anymore), and dest side field far more ranged dps and fewer tanks, all in all you see similar group composition on both sides now as the 2nd generation of chars are lvling up. So that is being fixed as we speak.
The overall population imbalane OTOH is a more severe problem. On my homeserver of Karak Orrud we are always outnumbered 1 to 1.5 towards 1 to 2 any time we venture out into open RvR no matter what tier we move into. The only time we take keeps is a nighttime and then we get a lot of experience in keep defenses (but game give no rewards for defending keeps, only taking them).
So far the only thing that have prevented dest from taking Altdorf is the severe server lag when more than 150 people fight in a zone. So the fortress lords kills entire raids in between the lag spikes.
"You are the hero our legends have foretold will save our tribe, therefore please go kill 10 pigs."
Very good read, I think you covered the game pretty honestly. I am sure things will change though they always do, MMO's seem to change monthly these days.
This is shocking...ly bad. If anything, it's the exact opposite on the server I'm on, scenarios pop every 2 seconds because its all people freaking play, you would never know what the population balance was considering nobody is ever NOT in a scenario, and Order usually steamrolls Destruction, not the other way around as he claims, because Destruction can't our shit together half the time. Population troubles being the biggest issue in WAR? Don't make me freaking laugh. How about a combat system thats practically exacly the same as WoW, watered down RvR that doesn't even meet DAoC standards let alone feel like the game was designed around it, and NOBODY playing in freaking ORvR because people are too busy grinding out scenarios either because they want EZ experience or because they're from WoW and "Hey! these are like BGS 8D YAY familiarity!" How about we concern ourselves with WAR actually having an idenity of its own and fixing its RvR before we complain that the other side has two tanks and we only have one QQ.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
I, for one, feel like he is incorrect in saying that the Destruction classes completely overpower the Order classes. A warriorpriest is every bit as good as a disciple of khain they are just direct opposites in respect to buffs (one buffs one debuffs but they both fight melee and heal the same)
-----------------------------
Real as Reality Television!!!
If population imbalance is not enough , topped by generally just better more efficient classes on Destro side,
but to make things even worse:
Destruction side are just better players
-
Face it. Powerplayers , pwners , organized PVP guilds - they are playing Destruction.
Order is populated by casual players , girls and carebears and roleplayers.
I was in many RVR battles , and was simply impressed how organized Destro was.
Well all you people can try to defend WAR all you like here, but the fact of the matter is, this game is 110% dependent on Population Balance. If there is an imbalance, the game is screwed...there's no "uhm and aah" about this, this is reality.
We can go on about why there's population imbalance , whether it's the fact that Order is simply visually unappealing or whether the late upsurge of Horde players in WoW resulted in a more "comfortable" feeling with playing Destruction is also irrelevant.
I am playing Order, and if there's a 40+ sized Destruction warband in any given area and only 20 Order, you can smoke any kind of crap you like, Destruction WILL NOT GET A FIGHT. Order WILL resort to "guerilla" or "avoid the zerg" tactics and simply well, avoid the fight.
The part that the Author did not touch on , which is surprising to me is another Population Imbalance which Mythic imposed on the game. That is of course TIER based populations.
Has no one ever thought what T1 is gonna look like in 3 months time? Heck what about T2/3 ? How will any new player or "alt-aholic" play WAR in 3 months? If you leveled too fast you probably hit T4 with nothing to do, if you leve too slow you will sit in T1 with nothing but quests to do....
on my server it's 50/50 order takes keeps during peak hours we take keeps prime time. yea i dont agree with order has weaker healers there pretty even minus dok and wp the wp is a stronger healer. and iron breakers hahaah dude there mean as hell and have some of the sickest buffs 400 will power buff put that on a healer with 600-700 will and watch what happens lol. i cant speak for other servers but on mine order has alot of healers and destro is starting to get more t4 and it's not like when game first launched and empire is fighting chaos in sc's it's everyone fighting everyone at first i could see ppl getting pissed about empire not having a tank. cause it was annoying in khaines when de fougth he who had sw and de had doks lol. but (on my server) there is a good mix minus all the evil BW i hate you all but you make the game fun for me on my mar. they have already said that they are adding inf for orvr for gear thats comming 1.1 i think that will fix alot of the issues with it yea i do agree with poster who said what about t1-t3 they need to fix this or new ppl who just start war will get frustrated and quit. but im sure that they are aware of the issue and are working to fix it. they do want there game to do well and remember ppl game only been out for lill over a month. best launch imo even compared to WoW that so many of you love. i have faith in mythic dont get me wrong there is stuff they need to fix but comes with time if your one the the ppl who cant wait then play somthing else till this game has been out for a while and has year or so of tweaks.
The thing I don't understand about the complaint with server imbalances is that it is allegedly a double edged sword, meaning that both sides lose out on something. Wait a minute! That's almost the very definition of balance! If people are Destruction and are tired of long waits, they could just roll order. And if order has this force of need pushed on them, I think you'll get a stronger more focused community because of it. It may be more hope than actual logic, but I think everything will turn out all right.
It is class/sides inbalance in WAR sadly , it is because "mirrior" classes on both sides are not really equal , compare WE kiss system with WH bullets system for example , MR as mdps class and its "mirrior' WL with buggy in 2 seconds dying pet / skills ect.
There is ofcourse one class on Order site which appeling a lot of destruction players ...BW... but this leads to even more imbalance as 50% Order population are BWs wihile other 40% is other dps and 10% tanks /healers , in T4 its great disadventage for Order in SC and in orvr i can't ofcourse talk about all servers but on mine in sc we are getting constantly steamrolled by destruction tanks with loads on WE/MR at their backs.
I'm almosy toally agree with article. Except healers - order have really great healers.
And it seems all those naysayers here operate only "omg! l2p noob!" and picking to words. They know author right and they have no arguments against it so the resort to trolling.
There are disbalance issues in favor of destruction - this is a statistical fact. Go argue with that little trolls.
The OP is soo... last tuesday.
I mean that was a "game-breaking issue of the day" a few weeks ago...
Another "game-breaking issue" that made the game beyond redemption and any hope of saving was the lack of regional channels...
Please get a bit more up to date. Today's "game-breaking issue" is low overall population on servers.
Meh...
Funny how most of those "game-breaking issues" tend to disappear in a week or two after being detected. Really funny. I suppose in a few months we'll see "game-breaking issues" like "vendor red sometimes comes off pinkish" and "PQs don't drop purplaz for everybody all the time".
FYI My server (Karak Norn, EU) was severely imbalanced for a few weeks after release. Us order guys couldn't even ENTER the RvR zones because there were always 10+ destros swarming right at the entrance to our warcamp screaming bloody murder. While I was doing T2 we actually begged the destros on the server forum to leave us one keep so we can maybe have some fun - if you take all our keeps none of us won't get any RvR because it would be pointless.
And now, after an immensely long time (one month FYI) our server is imbalanced again... With Order completely pwning face. I can't recall a scenario in the past 3 days that we lost. I really feel sorry for the destro guys - maybe we should let them have one or two just to boost their morale a bit, no fun fighting against opponents who are resigned to loosing. In T3 destros are lucky if they have one keep. T4 is still a bit slow because it seems we are a bit slow-leveling server overall but imo destros are going to have their hands full when T4 starts filling up.
In short, the server balanced itself. I have a few guys in my guild who played destro then decided to go order because of all the problems destros had for being overpopulated. Now I'd say we are 50-50 balanced pretty closely and it will stay this way... if the destros manage to pull themselves up. In fact I fear we might end up being an order overpopulated server because destros are really loosing badly atm.
I'm not going to repeat a lot of the good comments many have made, aside to say that, yep, I agree - THE issue is server pops. Most of the open beta players seemed to dive on the servers they were on previously and once headstart was over we had 500+ waiting lists for a time. Then GOA tried to fix it by cloning loads of characters to other servers to encourage movement and then tried adding a 20% boost to Order (mainly) renown and XP on low pop servers. The result is that we've now got a far wider and thinner spread of all players.
Sure, there are some servers bucking the trend, but there are too many English servers with low to med pops in the evenings. Frankly, there just seems to be way too many servers. The free transfers should help, and I know I'll be consolidating many of my alts onto busier servers, but I just wish they'd get on with it. I've always felt uneasy about the way game itself splits pops across many armies, zones and tiers, and low pop servers really isn't helping to maintain the kind of game experience Mythos clearly had in mind.
On a positive note, I had my first big RvR bash on Sunday night and although 100+ players slugging it out looked like a slideshow at times on my PC, it was a pretty amazing experience.
I am going to quote a post from the first page here because Aguitha obviously has nailed down the actual problem.
A population spread of 40/60 on a 6000 pop server is not going to impact the gameplay on the same grade as a 40/60 population spread on a 2000 pop server. Sometimes I have the feeling that people are actually trying to imply that Mythic is ever going to achieve a 50/50 server population spread. A think that, in my opinion, they will never be able to achieve this, and I do think that Mythic is fully aware of that. All they can do is to give incentives to players to choose the underpopulated side, but this is never going to give us 50/50 servers.
And to Mr Asaf Younsian I would like to say the following:
Please, next time you write something about population imbalance issues in a game, whether it is WAR or another one, please first sit down and look out for the real issue at hand. Then think about the best way to solve it and then try to write about this. Also, please do not try to be the alarmist/populist type, we already have way enough of those freaks on the MMORPG forums here. If you would like to be a "game journalist" then please take a step back and write your articles in a neutral and moderated way. It is my believe that articles written by a staff member of a site, even on MMORPG, should be a bit of a higher level than your average daily forum post.
Your article also has some false informations and inconsistencies in it (the part of Order having the weaker healers was one of the more funny ones, closely followed by that Altdorf comment).
Regards
An MMORPG reader and WAR (Order) player
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Remember, remember the 5th of November
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I would say that the person writting this should head back to WoW, with the frequent referance to the game it looks like they miss it.
Oh when you get back to WoW plz be sure to drop a ton of Chuck Norris referances and Grind that Honor from months on end to get your Arena gear.
Not to mention that it clearly starts to show that most things are bugged for Order.
They now have basically locked down VP in Tier4, because Order wasn't able to lock Tier4 down, while Destruction could do it within couple hours!
How do you mean it's mostly the Destruction side of things that have clearly been tested in Beta!
But still I don't fully agree with the article. As the main problem is the server population, not realm population!
Here in Europe we have over 27 low pop servers atm that need to be dealt with ASAP! And I frankly doubt that opening up server transfers is going to help. It will only make things worse and they will end up losing more subscriptions in the end, then if they do forced server mergers!
Cheers
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And I frankly doubt that opening up server transfers is going to help. It will only make things worse and they will end up losing more subscriptions in the end, then if they do forced server mergers!
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You missed the fine print where they basically said "free server transfers" will pretty much restricted to transfering to and from specific servers with specific populations. Basically it would be server mergers, just sugar coated a bit. i.e. i'm pretty sure they will do what Blizzard did with their server migrations in the line which will read like :
"Free transfers from Server X are open, you can transfer to Servers A,B or C, transfers will be open between date 1 and date 2 but can be closed at any time if the population cap are reached" .
This is exactly the kind of whining that I hate. The game is not solely dependant on a perfectly matched population. They could be perfectly matched and if destruction has a well-organized alliance of 10 large guilds, while order has a loose alliance of 10 large guilds, one will certainly win... the organized one. I will acknowledge the population differences, you can't deny that... but seriously? Stop saying that it's the one thing that will make or break this game... that's retarded.
as for the t1-3 argument, all I can say is PFFFFT the one thing that's missing from this game is /xpoff so you can keep alts at lower tiers. That's the ONLY thing they need to do. If you think mythic is responsible for making sure there's tons of random low level players... you're mistaken. MAKE A FRIEND OR 2. You can level your tier1-2-3 with them... this could even be a guild event. Be creative! Mythic's job is not to babysit you and make sure your individual needs are met... sometimes you actually need to work at it.