Finally NDA gone. This post of mine got deleted and I got a warning for it, it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole GW2 vs ESO PvP debate.
What GW2 does wrong:
1) The "feeling" of WvW. Its not epic. Its laggy, its way too much particle effects, its too cartoonish for something of these proportions. The whole points of RvR is to make it feel like armies fighting eachother, evoke this feeling of epicness. GW2 just fails with the design of the zone/the spells/with everything. You just cant take it seriously.
2) Waypoints. You can tp yourself to the defense of a keep instantly. You cant tp directly to a keep under attack, but you are there within a minute regardless, with swiftness. And that works for an ENTIRE ZERG. Theres no punishment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This makes punishment for death nonexistent. This makes the reason for defending a keep, apart from the fact that its way too easy because you can get the zerg there instantly, minimal. So what if you get another waypoint, it saves you what, 1 minute of walking time? Who cares.
3) Lack of viability for small groups. Why would you ever make a small group in GW2? You can tp the zerg to defense in a minute if needed, you clear all the content way faster, you can stack more buffs, small groups can get spotted just as easily as zergs (hello giant red nametags), theres no downside to it. A small group can achieve small victories like taking over a supplycamp or some nonsense like this. A small group in ESO can make huge dent in the enemy reinforcement capabilites in ESO, more on this later.
How ESO handles these things:
1) W o w. I've never played an MMO where PvP feels this epic. The zone, the artstyle, the performance of the engine, the LIGHTING, oh my god does Cyrodiil feel amazing. My jaw literally dropped when I first saw the nightsky being lit up by dozens of trebuchets firing at a keep with the 2 moons in the sky. No overdone spelleffects, no lag, no silly comic-bloom-huffypuffy atmosphere. Epicness done right.
2) Dear god do you have to walk for a LONG TIME if you die. ~7 minutes is the shortest distance you can hope for, and thats an outpost if you have the keep right next to it. Going into enemy territory - thats 10minutes+ of walking and potentially being ambushed if you arent careful. And mounts arent a whole lot faster people, 25% increase is the fastest that was available. This makes defending a keep much more difficult as well, since you cant just tp instantly, even to the keep that makes it an at least 7 minute run, no, you have to be INSIDE of an UNCONTESTED keep to tp somewhere on the map. You are attacking a keep? You wont be in time to defend your own that is being attacked. And defending keeps is EXTREMELY important - you need a connected line of keeps to respawn or teleport to one. You take 3 keeps in enemy territory, but dont defend the little outpost that is connecting 2 of them and can be taken by a rather small group? Boom, you spawn all the way in your territory and that can be T H I R T Y minutes of running if you were at the enemies scroll!! Talk about punishment for death... Furthermore, you need all keeps in enemy territory leading up to their scroll to capture it (it gives a BIG buff for you and takes away the buff for the enemy) and all 6 keeps around cyrodiil to have an emperor (and probably some other amazing stuff that we dont know about yet) which gives amazing buffs and abilities to your forces. Furthermore, if a group of 5 people takes the Mill + Mine + Farm around a keep, you cannot spawn there. A small group can literally take these 3 objectives from a keep that is in the middle of a connected line and you are FUCKED, because you cant spawn to the keeps that you conquered and end up losing all of them, because your "zerg" couldnt get there in time. People talk about fewer objectives to capture encourage zergs - these fewer obejectives have a MUCH higher impact than in GW2 though and ALL OF THEM NEED TO DEFENDED if you want to get ANYWHERE on the map. About to take enemy scroll? Oh look at that, 3 groups of 5 people took the outpost/resourcecamps in the middle of our spawnline. We can only spawn at out basekeep now and have to walk for 30 minutes to defend our keeps. Oh look at that, all of our keeps are gone. STRATEGY and DEFENSE is required, or you spend your time WALKING to the frontlines, and being KILLED by SMALL groups hiding in stealth.
3) No huge red glowing nametags here for you to see your enemies from 100 miles away. Stealth is name of the game for small groups. You can hide from zergs, scout out zergs (which is extremely important because of point 2, if you scout well you can actually defend and adapt to what your enemy is doing and outmaneuver them!!), take essential outposts that are needed for the respawn-link in small groups and you seem to get more alliancepoints that you can spend for siege-gear, equipment, you name it. I think the points get split among all players contributing to a kill/capture, since I got huge chunks of them when i killed someone solo. Furthermore, there is a limit to how many siegeweapons you can build for attack and defense of a keep. Its a measily 20 siege units. The rest of zerg then has the choice between standing around doing nothing, since most NPCs are inside the inner walls of the keep or unreachable ON top of them, or splitting up to capture the little mills/farm/mine around the keep, or defending their siegeweapons against enemies. People operating the weapons have literally no vision behind them and are sitting ducks to any enemies approaching. That in itself makes a big zerg HIGHLY ineffecient. Add this to the necessity of groups being spreadout everywhere on the map because of the spawnmechanic in point 2), zergs become almost useless. Plus you seem to get way less alliancepoints for killing and capturing things in a huge zerg. I got huge chunks of Alliancepoints for killing players solo, while I got very little when running around in a zerg. Maybe that was just my imagination though.
They dont make the mistakes of Warhammer either, there is no immediate gear-reward whatsoever for taking a keep. You get a buff and take away said buff from the enemy, you increase your chances of advancing further, you get another spawnpoint on the map and take away one from the enemy. All of these rewards are HUGE, but only for the purpose of achieving a GOAL - taking the enemy scrolls, pushing for Cyrodiil, establishing mapcontrol, etc. Nothing for the individual that couldnt be gained by simply killing other players. The reward is extremely helpful in terms of accomplishing the goal of you alliance. The reason why warhammer turned into zerg-rotation RvR, actually avoiding enemies, was because of the fact that you would get really good LOOT for capturing a keep! Both your forces and the enemies would just run around in a circle farming this loot, avoiding enemy contact.
Having played the awesomeness that was Vanilla WoW Alterac and Southshore pvp, moving on to WAR RvR and coming back to WoW to become a Gladiator and releasing an open-PvP movie in WotLK, i've had my fair share of MMORPG PvP.
I didnt play the first beta weekend of ESO despite being invited, because I thought this game was going to be awful, simply milking the popularity of the ES franchise, just as SWTOR did. I only installed the client for the 2nd beta-event because I had a free weekend after exams and what I found was an amazing PvP experience, the likes of which I've never experienced before. I cant say that this game will be a success in terms of PvP, a lot of it depends on endgame balance. The biggest problem I see is imbalance between the factions. If one faction is dominating, it will quickly become extremely frustrating for the losing ones. You can argue that, with more keeps, it becomes extremely hard to cover all these little outposts and camps to make sure you can actually spawn at your keeps, but if a faction is losing, do they really have the manpower or organization to pull off something that tactical? It is very hard to come up with a system that doesnt punish the winning faction for winning, but doesnt make it extemely and hopelessly frustrating if you are losing.
However, the foundation for great RvR as well as small scale PvP within this RvR is there, something that is a rare sight.
After looking at the cinematic and realizing that its essentially about PvP, as well as the fact that already some abilities differentiate between player and non-player effects and knowing that the old team of DaoC is working on ESO, I am hopeful that the PvP in this game will be as good as it can be.
players move to winning side if pvp (or zerg) not equal.
seen tis GW2.
will see...
Aye, pretty much my point in my previous post.
Losing for a week or two and then being matched to more appropriate enemies is ok.
Losing for three months, and NOT being matched against more appropriate enemies so actually losing more and more, that's not fun.
And in all those multi-faction PvP games, you always have a stronger faction on the top of the food chain.
ESO will have serious faction balance problems when more players will flock to the winning side (or what will be perceived as the winning side), and the removal of racial restrictions will make this a no brainer, since people wanting to play (e.g.) a Nord will be able to do it in any faction anyway. So no racial pride, no faction pride, just join the winner and rake in the rewards.
Er you cant just switch faction whenever you feel like it. You would have to make a whole new character and lose all your skill and level progress. Not sure how everyone will jump to the winning side.
You can change campaign and guest on other campaigns but that will not give you alliance points or leaderboard points
Er you cant just switch faction whenever you feel like it. You would have to make a whole new character and lose all your skill and level progress. Not sure how everyone will jump to the winning side.
Do you really think that will stop people? After 3 months of losing, and future being more losing? Specially considering how fast the progression is in ESO? (yeah, the NDA is gone now)
I m actually agreeing with JLP on this. It won t stop anyone, and with todays type of gamer (ie, not back in the day of the take your time and enjoy it, non ADD, enjoy the ride MMO player). TESO will not be immune to this at all.
Er you cant just switch faction whenever you feel like it. You would have to make a whole new character and lose all your skill and level progress. Not sure how everyone will jump to the winning side.
Do you really think that will stop people? After 3 months of losing, and future being more losing? Specially considering how fast the progression is in ESO? (yeah, the NDA is gone now)
I m actually agreeing with JLP on this. It won t stop anyone, and with todays type of gamer (ie, not back in the day of the take your time and enjoy it, non ADD, enjoy the ride MMO player). TESO will not be immune to this at all.
This is my biggest concern with the system as well. Zenimax has to come up with some sort of Matchmaking system that pairs factions from different campaigns against eachother, like GW2 does. If you look at it, the campaign are not different from GW2s realms. You have a homeserver / homecampaign which you can switch or guest in other ones (of course in ESO, each server is split into 3 factions, though not being able to switch factions, you could look at every faction as their own realm), so it should be possible (and necessary) to do the same thing in ESO as well.
Er you cant just switch faction whenever you feel like it. You would have to make a whole new character and lose all your skill and level progress. Not sure how everyone will jump to the winning side.
Do you really think that will stop people? After 3 months of losing, and future being more losing? Specially considering how fast the progression is in ESO? (yeah, the NDA is gone now)
Indeed, I've been in those kind of mmorpgs. People will do anything to switch to the winning side, anything. That's just human nature.
From what I've seen so far, GW2's WvW and Cyrodiil seem very similar in concept, in many ways almost identical.
So as a PvP focused player who enjoyed a lot of what GW2's WvW had to offer, what is there about ESO's AvA system that would justify paying a sub for essentially the same PvP experience that I'm currently getting without a sub?
GW2 WvW is a match ...a fight between two servers for a specific limited time.The fight lasts for a week....and then it ends and you have another match with another server.It is like a basketball game.....you try to score more points (by capturing locations) than the other server..The WvW maps are much smaller than the ESO fighting area. The zerg dominates action .There is little keep defense.The fighting experience is akin to a 15 minute pvp arena match expanded to a week of 24/7 fighting. Then it ends as if it never happened....and a new match begins.
ESO is like the frontier in DAOC. but larger.The fighting on your instance/server NEVER ends.it is a true war.The fight is between 3 factions....not two servers like GW2. This makes the fighting and balance of power much more fluid and interesting. The zerg ...so far ......has not been dominant.Keeps are aggressively defended.AvA has mounts.Last I looked WvW did not. ESO's Cyrodiil has quests .Last I looked GW2 WvW does not. ESO AvA is NOT about scoring points.It is about a never ending game of conquest. ESO facilitates fighting with your guild because of the mega server technology...you are not forced to fight on a server your guild id on and endure a gimp server that may not have a player population that is not into fighting. Captured locations in ESO stay captured until recaptured by another faction---like areal war.A war that never ends.
Both servers have the standard assortment of siege weapons. ESO's director Matt Firror helped develop DAOC.Going forward you can reasonably expect continuing strong development of AvA. GW2 devs do not have his background and despite years of players begging for a WvW re-design have not taken significant steps and signaled an major overhaul of their pvp match concept the call WvW. Both games have large keeps and smaller objects near the keep which can be captured.
IMO...ESO's AvA is much better in design and execution ...if you are looking for a true war like game experience.
You can usually throw off multiple hits from siege engines on GW2 as well. Arrow carts. catapults not much risk of dying. A direct hit from siege weapons on ESO can be devastating as I found out while defending a keep. 2 hits and you can be a goner.
From what I've seen so far, GW2's WvW and Cyrodiil seem very similar in concept, in many ways almost identical.
So as a PvP focused player who enjoyed a lot of what GW2's WvW had to offer, what is there about ESO's AvA system that would justify paying a sub for essentially the same PvP experience that I'm currently getting without a sub?
GW2 WvW is a match ...a fight between two servers for a specific limited time.The fight lasts for a week....and then it ends and you have another match with another server.It is like a basketball game.....you try to score more points (by capturing locations) than the other server..The WvW maps are much smaller than the ESO fighting area. The zerg dominates action .There is little keep defense.The fighting experience is akin to a 15 minute pvp arena match expanded to a week of 24/7 fighting. Then it ends as if it never happened....and a new match begins.
ESO is like the frontier in DAOC. but larger.The fighting on your instance/server NEVER ends.it is a true war.The fight is between 3 factions....not two servers like GW2. This makes the fighting and balance of power much more fluid and interesting. The zerg ...so far ......has not been dominant.Keeps are aggressively defended.AvA has mounts.Last I looked WvW did not. ESO's Cyrodiil has quests .Last I looked GW2 WvW does not. ESO AvA is NOT about scoring points.It is about a never ending game of conquest. ESO facilitates fighting with your guild because of the mega server technology...you are not forced to fight on a server your guild id on and endure a gimp server that may not have a player population that is not into fighting. Captured locations in ESO stay captured until recaptured by another faction---like areal war.A war that never ends.
Both servers have the standard assortment of siege weapons. ESO's director Matt Firror helped develop DAOC.Going forward you can reasonably expect continuing strong development of AvA. GW2 devs do not have his background and despite years of players begging for a WvW re-design have not taken significant steps and signaled an major overhaul of their pvp match concept the call WvW. Both games have large keeps and smaller objects near the keep which can be captured.
IMO...ESO's AvA is much better in design and execution ...if you are looking for a true war like game experience.
3 months is to long, losing for three months is to much, not everyone has this kind of will to keep fighting to win in a game that he is being dominated for 1 month already.
Also is to early to compare these 2 pvp systems. Give it few months after the games release so the players can form the meta gaming and we will see whats better. My prediction is that in the end its going to be zerg wars, guilds will make their zerg, random players will join that zerg and they will stomp everyone until they meet another zerg. There have been cases in GW2 where 10 people took down 20+, there is a vid on youtube where 4 guys killed a 30 man zerg, I m curious to see if something like that can happen is ESO too.
Ask your selves what are you going to do when you see a big friendly zerg, you will not follow it so you get more rewards and the chance to get into an epic battle or you will choose to roam around and get killed by an enemy zerg or do some random duel every few minutes.
Both AvA and WvW look fun, the good thing is that there are no organised guilds atm in ESO and the battlefiend is chaotic but this will change and Organised Guilds will dominate the Battle and form the meta gaming.
ESO siege machines are build instantly - everyone can pop one doesnt req any kind of resource
GW2 siege machines need to be build up and req supply, supply is limited
ESO map isnt that big yeh looks big but if you count the travel times between points its less than a minute
There is a limit of how many siege units can be built withing the range of a keep. 20 for attack and 20 for defense. Set an attacking siege unit on fire and it slowly burns to death, but you cant use it anymore because of the fire - it still takes up one of the 20 slots for siege units though. A stealthed group can easily set all of them on fire if they are left unguarded, making it completely impossible to further attack the keep.
ESO map is enormous. The shortest travel time by foot you can hope for is between a keep and its outpost, which is roughly 7 minutes of running. However, this outpost is very easy to take, compared to a keep. Also, you need to be at a keep in the first place to teleport to another one. So, if you are attacking an enemy keep, you have tot either find a way to die somehow, or run to your next keep (shortest runningdistance between 2 keeps is roughly 10-13 minutes), then tp to the keep closest to the outpost and then run to it. By the time you are there the outpost is gone. The enemy has the same disadvantage though, so scouting out enemy movements will lead to big advantages in terms of both offense and defense.
ESO siege machines are build instantly - everyone can pop one doesnt req any kind of resource
GW2 siege machines need to be build up and req supply, supply is limited
ESO map isnt that big yeh looks big but if you count the travel times between points its less than a minute
There is a limit of how many siege units can be built withing the range of a keep. 20 for attack and 20 for defense. Set an attacking siege unit on fire and it slowly burns to death, but you cant use it anymore because of the fire - it still takes up one of the 20 slots for siege units though. A stealthed group can easily set all of them on fire if they are left unguarded, making it completely impossible to further attack the keep.
ESO map is enormous. The shortest travel time by foot you can hope for is between a keep and its outpost, which is roughly 7 minutes of running. However, this outpost is very easy to take, compared to a keep. Also, you need to be at a keep in the first place to teleport to another one. So, if you are attacking an enemy keep, you have tot either find a way to die somehow, or run to your next keep (shortest runningdistance between 2 keeps is roughly 10-13 minutes), then tp to the keep closest to the outpost and then run to it. By the time you are there the outpost is gone. The enemy has the same disadvantage though, so scouting out enemy movements will lead to big advantages in terms of both offense and defense.
can sieges be removed? GW2 had thouse trolls that build sieges to vrong places to piss ppl off.
ESO siege machines are build instantly - everyone can pop one doesnt req any kind of resource
GW2 siege machines need to be build up and req supply, supply is limited
ESO map isnt that big yeh looks big but if you count the travel times between points its less than a minute
There is a limit of how many siege units can be built withing the range of a keep. 20 for attack and 20 for defense. Set an attacking siege unit on fire and it slowly burns to death, but you cant use it anymore because of the fire - it still takes up one of the 20 slots for siege units though. A stealthed group can easily set all of them on fire if they are left unguarded, making it completely impossible to further attack the keep.
ESO map is enormous. The shortest travel time by foot you can hope for is between a keep and its outpost, which is roughly 7 minutes of running. However, this outpost is very easy to take, compared to a keep. Also, you need to be at a keep in the first place to teleport to another one. So, if you are attacking an enemy keep, you have tot either find a way to die somehow, or run to your next keep (shortest runningdistance between 2 keeps is roughly 10-13 minutes), then tp to the keep closest to the outpost and then run to it. By the time you are there the outpost is gone. The enemy has the same disadvantage though, so scouting out enemy movements will lead to big advantages in terms of both offense and defense.
can sieges be removed? GW2 had thouse trolls that build sieges to vrong places to piss ppl off.
Intact sieges can be removed by simply pressing X, I dont know if you can remove a siege another player placed though.
Finally NDA gone. This post of mine got deleted and I got a warning for it, it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole GW2 vs ESO PvP debate.
What GW2 does wrong:
1) The "feeling" of WvW. Its not epic. Its laggy, its way too much particle effects, its too cartoonish for something of these proportions. The whole points of RvR is to make it feel like armies fighting eachother, evoke this feeling of epicness. GW2 just fails with the design of the zone/the spells/with everything. You just cant take it seriously.
2) Waypoints. You can tp yourself to the defense of a keep instantly. You cant tp directly to a keep under attack, but you are there within a minute regardless, with swiftness. And that works for an ENTIRE ZERG. Theres no punishment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This makes punishment for death nonexistent. This makes the reason for defending a keep, apart from the fact that its way too easy because you can get the zerg there instantly, minimal. So what if you get another waypoint, it saves you what, 1 minute of walking time? Who cares.
3) Lack of viability for small groups. Why would you ever make a small group in GW2? You can tp the zerg to defense in a minute if needed, you clear all the content way faster, you can stack more buffs, small groups can get spotted just as easily as zergs (hello giant red nametags), theres no downside to it. A small group can achieve small victories like taking over a supplycamp or some nonsense like this. A small group in ESO can make huge dent in the enemy reinforcement capabilites in ESO, more on this later.
How ESO handles these things:
1) W o w. I've never played an MMO where PvP feels this epic. The zone, the artstyle, the performance of the engine, the LIGHTING, oh my god does Cyrodiil feel amazing. My jaw literally dropped when I first saw the nightsky being lit up by dozens of trebuchets firing at a keep with the 2 moons in the sky. No overdone spelleffects, no lag, no silly comic-bloom-huffypuffy atmosphere. Epicness done right.
2) Dear god do you have to walk for a LONG TIME if you die. ~7 minutes is the shortest distance you can hope for, and thats an outpost if you have the keep right next to it. Going into enemy territory - thats 10minutes+ of walking and potentially being ambushed if you arent careful. And mounts arent a whole lot faster people, 25% increase is the fastest that was available. This makes defending a keep much more difficult as well, since you cant just tp instantly, even to the keep that makes it an at least 7 minute run, no, you have to be INSIDE of an UNCONTESTED keep to tp somewhere on the map. You are attacking a keep? You wont be in time to defend your own that is being attacked. And defending keeps is EXTREMELY important - you need a connected line of keeps to respawn or teleport to one. You take 3 keeps in enemy territory, but dont defend the little outpost that is connecting 2 of them and can be taken by a rather small group? Boom, you spawn all the way in your territory and that can be T H I R T Y minutes of running if you were at the enemies scroll!! Talk about punishment for death... Furthermore, you need all keeps in enemy territory leading up to their scroll to capture it (it gives a BIG buff for you and takes away the buff for the enemy) and all 6 keeps around cyrodiil to have an emperor (and probably some other amazing stuff that we dont know about yet) which gives amazing buffs and abilities to your forces. Furthermore, if a group of 5 people takes the Mill + Mine + Farm around a keep, you cannot spawn there. A small group can literally take these 3 objectives from a keep that is in the middle of a connected line and you are FUCKED, because you cant spawn to the keeps that you conquered and end up losing all of them, because your "zerg" couldnt get there in time. People talk about fewer objectives to capture encourage zergs - these fewer obejectives have a MUCH higher impact than in GW2 though and ALL OF THEM NEED TO DEFENDED if you want to get ANYWHERE on the map. About to take enemy scroll? Oh look at that, 3 groups of 5 people took the outpost/resourcecamps in the middle of our spawnline. We can only spawn at out basekeep now and have to walk for 30 minutes to defend our keeps. Oh look at that, all of our keeps are gone. STRATEGY and DEFENSE is required, or you spend your time WALKING to the frontlines, and being KILLED by SMALL groups hiding in stealth.
3) No huge red glowing nametags here for you to see your enemies from 100 miles away. Stealth is name of the game for small groups. You can hide from zergs, scout out zergs (which is extremely important because of point 2, if you scout well you can actually defend and adapt to what your enemy is doing and outmaneuver them!!), take essential outposts that are needed for the respawn-link in small groups and you seem to get more alliancepoints that you can spend for siege-gear, equipment, you name it. I think the points get split among all players contributing to a kill/capture, since I got huge chunks of them when i killed someone solo. Furthermore, there is a limit to how many siegeweapons you can build for attack and defense of a keep. Its a measily 20 siege units. The rest of zerg then has the choice between standing around doing nothing, since most NPCs are inside the inner walls of the keep or unreachable ON top of them, or splitting up to capture the little mills/farm/mine around the keep, or defending their siegeweapons against enemies. People operating the weapons have literally no vision behind them and are sitting ducks to any enemies approaching. That in itself makes a big zerg HIGHLY ineffecient. Add this to the necessity of groups being spreadout everywhere on the map because of the spawnmechanic in point 2), zergs become almost useless. Plus you seem to get way less alliancepoints for killing and capturing things in a huge zerg. I got huge chunks of Alliancepoints for killing players solo, while I got very little when running around in a zerg. Maybe that was just my imagination though.
They dont make the mistakes of Warhammer either, there is no immediate gear-reward whatsoever for taking a keep. You get a buff and take away said buff from the enemy, you increase your chances of advancing further, you get another spawnpoint on the map and take away one from the enemy. All of these rewards are HUGE, but only for the purpose of achieving a GOAL - taking the enemy scrolls, pushing for Cyrodiil, establishing mapcontrol, etc. Nothing for the individual that couldnt be gained by simply killing other players. The reward is extremely helpful in terms of accomplishing the goal of you alliance. The reason why warhammer turned into zerg-rotation RvR, actually avoiding enemies, was because of the fact that you would get really good LOOT for capturing a keep! Both your forces and the enemies would just run around in a circle farming this loot, avoiding enemy contact.
Having played the awesomeness that was Vanilla WoW Alterac and Southshore pvp, moving on to WAR RvR and coming back to WoW to become a Gladiator and releasing an open-PvP movie in WotLK, i've had my fair share of MMORPG PvP.
I didnt play the first beta weekend of ESO despite being invited, because I thought this game was going to be awful, simply milking the popularity of the ES franchise, just as SWTOR did. I only installed the client for the 2nd beta-event because I had a free weekend after exams and what I found was an amazing PvP experience, the likes of which I've never experienced before. I cant say that this game will be a success in terms of PvP, a lot of it depends on endgame balance. The biggest problem I see is imbalance between the factions. If one faction is dominating, it will quickly become extremely frustrating for the losing ones. You can argue that, with more keeps, it becomes extremely hard to cover all these little outposts and camps to make sure you can actually spawn at your keeps, but if a faction is losing, do they really have the manpower or organization to pull off something that tactical? It is very hard to come up with a system that doesnt punish the winning faction for winning, but doesnt make it extemely and hopelessly frustrating if you are losing.
However, the foundation for great RvR as well as small scale PvP within this RvR is there, something that is a rare sight.
After looking at the cinematic and realizing that its essentially about PvP, as well as the fact that already some abilities differentiate between player and non-player effects and knowing that the old team of DaoC is working on ESO, I am hopeful that the PvP in this game will be as good as it can be.
Jesus everything you said makes me want to play GW2 and not run around in an emty zone all alone for 7-10 min.
Only time I had lagg in GW2 is when I played on my PC that was 5 years old. If you have a good PC doesn't even have to be any highend gaming pc you will never experience lagg in GW2.
No idea why you feel the need to convince people GW2 is so amazing. It has already been out for 2 years and I am sure everyone who was interested has tried it by now. It is pretty delusional to think WvW didn't have some critical problems.
The other stuff you point out are just general issues that exist in every mass pvp game.
Yes population imbalances will exist there are 2 ways this is addressed:
1) The overpopulated side will have a cap so if everyone wants to join the winning team most of them will have to wait in a queue, just like GW2.
2) There are multiple campaigns, or AvA instances so a player can switch to one with more even population.
Jesus everything you said makes me want to play GW2 and not run around in an emty zone all alone for 7-10 min.
Only time I had lagg in GW2 is when I played on my PC that was 5 years old. If you have a good PC doesn't even have to be any highend gaming pc you will never experience lagg in GW2.
The entire point is to punish people for playing badly and getting killed a lot, unlike in GW2 where there is virtually zero penalty for constantly making suicidal decisions. In DAOC if you ran out alone and got killed you would have to wait up to 15 minutes just to get ported into the pvp zone and then run for 10-25 minutes to get to the fight.
People who want to be solo-mode heros are not going to be successful in this type of game which is what a lot of people are looking for -- you know challenge? -- GW2 and Planetside 2 are always there for the Rambos of the internet.
Again what is your point? Yes zergs exist in mass pvp games. We have known this for over 10 years. ESO is clearly trying a lot harder than the last two games GW2 and Planetside 2 to address this. The pussies can go join the winning team and wait in queue all day if they can't handle losing.
GW2 WvW is a match ...a fight between two servers for a specific limited time.
ESO is like the frontier in DAOC. but larger.The fighting on your instance/server NEVER ends.it is a true war.The fight is between 3 factions....not two servers like GW2.
Is it just me, or did "Shadanwolf" just put his foot in his mouth?
Everyone who even just logged into WvW once in GW2 knows there are 3 factions.
While we are speaking of feet in mouths, There is only one player faction in GW2.
There are 3 factions in ESO. Those 3 factions will wage war in Cyrodiil
In GW2 that 1 faction on 3 different servers will wage war on sever maps.
Jesus everything you said makes me want to play GW2 and not run around in an emty zone all alone for 7-10 min.
Only time I had lagg in GW2 is when I played on my PC that was 5 years old. If you have a good PC doesn't even have to be any highend gaming pc you will never experience lagg in GW2.
The entire point is to punish people for playing badly and getting killed a lot, unlike in GW2 where there is virtually zero penalty for constantly making suicidal decisions. In DAOC if you ran out alone and got killed you would have to wait up to 15 minutes just to get ported into the pvp zone and then run for 10-25 minutes to get to the fight.
People who want to be solo-mode heros are not going to be successful in this type of game which is what a lot of people are looking for -- you know challenge? -- GW2 and Planetside 2 are always there for the Rambos of the internet.
No idea why you feel the need to convince people GW2 is so amazing. It has already been out for 2 years and I am sure everyone who was interested has tried it by now. It is pretty delusional to think WvW didn't have some critical problems.
Not trying to convince anyone, just giving my opinion after playing both games, and also stopping some misinformation about GW2 from being believed to be true.
The only delusional people here are those who believe large scale faction vs faction PvP in a specific area over objectives won't end into a zerg-fest. I'm absolutely not wanting ESO to fail, it's a fairly decent game despite the big difference it has with the other titles of the franchise, the mediocre animations, but some expectations here are going to be hit hard by harsh reality.
Could have fooled me. You're one of the biggest GW2 fanboys in this thread. You can try to distance yourself from the word "fanboy" all you want, but what you're essentially trying to do is convince folks to believe that the way GW2 did WvW is the best thing since sliced bread. And that's just simply not the case. As much as you try to defend the particulars of GW2, you can't escape the fact that it feels like a team sport. You have these two week rotating small server instances of 100ish people going at it. Which essentially destroys any sense of pride in ownership when it comes to owning a keep for guilds since it will just be reset again in two weeks anyway. There's no passion to defend what's yours like an owned Keep that's persisted. That's another negative for me in the way GW2 did things. Also, the lack of any real death penalty bugs the hell out of me. I know, I know I'm going to get a bunch of GW2 fanboys jumping down my throat about how that's not the case since "you need to run so far" in GW2 when you die. First of all, I'm pretty sure "far" is relative since these GW2 fanboys tend to have never played DaoC before. Second, the larger issue I'm referring to is the fact that it's too damn easy to resurrect downed players. Literally ANY player (I don't care if you're a warrior, mage, kung fu panda monk, thief) can resurrect a downed player without any restrictions. This is just a BAD IDEA since it essentially eliminates any semblance of consequences in PvP. It's like killing Jason in Friday the 13th over and over and over again. He just keeps getting up. The bastard never dies! And it makes RvR unfun since it doesn't punish stupid mistakes and bad players. They just keep popping up and piling into the fray since death is meaningless in the game. NOT my cup of tea.
What it boils down to is this:
1) If you enjoyed DaoC RvR, you will enjoy ESO RvR.
2) If you only played GW2 and have no context of playing DaoC, you will cry about it "failing" because it's not the same as the "awesome" GW2. But when you play it for a few months, you'll get it.
3) You've played both DaoC and GW2 RvR, but for some mysterious reason you think the way GW2 did it is superior. I don't know what to do for ya in this case.
Originally posted by Damedius Well in massive battles people don't disappear from your screen like they do in GW2.
They don't disappear from your screen in GW2. They have not in nearly a year now. You can keep your terrible animations to your ESO though.
By terrible animations, do you mean somebody shooting rainbow unicorns from a bow? Or a pop-gun, or maybe a sparkle princess wand? How about the new KIngdom Hearts/Sailor Moon Valentine's weapon skins? Oh, wait, that's GW2.
I love the realism that ESO offers. I'm glad a studio has finally gotten away from cute and colorful and moved to deep and meaningful.
I completely agree. GW2's PVP is like a Michael Bay movie. Full of colorful explosions and no real point to it's existence.
No idea why you feel the need to convince people GW2 is so amazing. It has already been out for 2 years and I am sure everyone who was interested has tried it by now. It is pretty delusional to think WvW didn't have some critical problems.
Not trying to convince anyone, just giving my opinion after playing both games, and also stopping some misinformation about GW2 from being believed to be true.
The only delusional people here are those who believe large scale faction vs faction PvP in a specific area over objectives won't end into a zerg-fest. I'm absolutely not wanting ESO to fail, it's a fairly decent game despite the big difference it has with the other titles of the franchise, the mediocre animations, but some expectations here are going to be hit hard by harsh reality.
It is impossible to predict how AvA will turn out in a fully populated Cyrodiil. All we can do is make speculations and compare the mechanics that are in place to prevent this from happening.
In theory, ESO has added mechanics to discourage excessive zerging that both WAR and GW2 lack. To which extent these mechanics will change the way AvA plays, remains to be seen.
However, even if all these anti-zerg-mechanics fail to prevent zerging on a larger scale, the addition of stealth to every class gives each and every player (and group of players) the opportunity NOT to zerg, if they wish to do so. The ability to chose who you fight and when makes it possible to entirely avoid enemy zergs and seek out smaller fights, even if the vast majority chooses to join the zerg. There will always be players who died running back to the action or people questing, going into dungeons, dealing with smaller objectives - it is you choice to stealth up as a group, let the zerg pass and go about your business of small-scale PvP. Zenimax's task is to make this sort of behaviour actually viable to the end goal, but even is this fails, the option to do it for FUN is always there.
In WvW, there are 3 factions warring in GW2. Blue, Red and Green.
Trying to dismiss that with some ridiculous "arguing on semantics" post doesn't make it less true and undeniable fact.
No, there is only one faction, no matter how you would like to redefine faction. That one faction is split on multiple servers. Those severs engage in battle. The severs are denoted by color.
Comments
Finally NDA gone. This post of mine got deleted and I got a warning for it, it pretty much sums up my thoughts on the whole GW2 vs ESO PvP debate.
What GW2 does wrong:
1) The "feeling" of WvW. Its not epic. Its laggy, its way too much particle effects, its too cartoonish for something of these proportions. The whole points of RvR is to make it feel like armies fighting eachother, evoke this feeling of epicness. GW2 just fails with the design of the zone/the spells/with everything. You just cant take it seriously.
2) Waypoints. You can tp yourself to the defense of a keep instantly. You cant tp directly to a keep under attack, but you are there within a minute regardless, with swiftness. And that works for an ENTIRE ZERG. Theres no punishment for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This makes punishment for death nonexistent. This makes the reason for defending a keep, apart from the fact that its way too easy because you can get the zerg there instantly, minimal. So what if you get another waypoint, it saves you what, 1 minute of walking time? Who cares.
3) Lack of viability for small groups. Why would you ever make a small group in GW2? You can tp the zerg to defense in a minute if needed, you clear all the content way faster, you can stack more buffs, small groups can get spotted just as easily as zergs (hello giant red nametags), theres no downside to it. A small group can achieve small victories like taking over a supplycamp or some nonsense like this. A small group in ESO can make huge dent in the enemy reinforcement capabilites in ESO, more on this later.
How ESO handles these things:
1) W o w. I've never played an MMO where PvP feels this epic. The zone, the artstyle, the performance of the engine, the LIGHTING, oh my god does Cyrodiil feel amazing. My jaw literally dropped when I first saw the nightsky being lit up by dozens of trebuchets firing at a keep with the 2 moons in the sky. No overdone spelleffects, no lag, no silly comic-bloom-huffypuffy atmosphere. Epicness done right.
2) Dear god do you have to walk for a LONG TIME if you die. ~7 minutes is the shortest distance you can hope for, and thats an outpost if you have the keep right next to it. Going into enemy territory - thats 10minutes+ of walking and potentially being ambushed if you arent careful. And mounts arent a whole lot faster people, 25% increase is the fastest that was available. This makes defending a keep much more difficult as well, since you cant just tp instantly, even to the keep that makes it an at least 7 minute run, no, you have to be INSIDE of an UNCONTESTED keep to tp somewhere on the map. You are attacking a keep? You wont be in time to defend your own that is being attacked. And defending keeps is EXTREMELY important - you need a connected line of keeps to respawn or teleport to one. You take 3 keeps in enemy territory, but dont defend the little outpost that is connecting 2 of them and can be taken by a rather small group? Boom, you spawn all the way in your territory and that can be T H I R T Y minutes of running if you were at the enemies scroll!! Talk about punishment for death... Furthermore, you need all keeps in enemy territory leading up to their scroll to capture it (it gives a BIG buff for you and takes away the buff for the enemy) and all 6 keeps around cyrodiil to have an emperor (and probably some other amazing stuff that we dont know about yet) which gives amazing buffs and abilities to your forces. Furthermore, if a group of 5 people takes the Mill + Mine + Farm around a keep, you cannot spawn there. A small group can literally take these 3 objectives from a keep that is in the middle of a connected line and you are FUCKED, because you cant spawn to the keeps that you conquered and end up losing all of them, because your "zerg" couldnt get there in time. People talk about fewer objectives to capture encourage zergs - these fewer obejectives have a MUCH higher impact than in GW2 though and ALL OF THEM NEED TO DEFENDED if you want to get ANYWHERE on the map. About to take enemy scroll? Oh look at that, 3 groups of 5 people took the outpost/resourcecamps in the middle of our spawnline. We can only spawn at out basekeep now and have to walk for 30 minutes to defend our keeps. Oh look at that, all of our keeps are gone. STRATEGY and DEFENSE is required, or you spend your time WALKING to the frontlines, and being KILLED by SMALL groups hiding in stealth.
3) No huge red glowing nametags here for you to see your enemies from 100 miles away. Stealth is name of the game for small groups. You can hide from zergs, scout out zergs (which is extremely important because of point 2, if you scout well you can actually defend and adapt to what your enemy is doing and outmaneuver them!!), take essential outposts that are needed for the respawn-link in small groups and you seem to get more alliancepoints that you can spend for siege-gear, equipment, you name it. I think the points get split among all players contributing to a kill/capture, since I got huge chunks of them when i killed someone solo. Furthermore, there is a limit to how many siegeweapons you can build for attack and defense of a keep. Its a measily 20 siege units. The rest of zerg then has the choice between standing around doing nothing, since most NPCs are inside the inner walls of the keep or unreachable ON top of them, or splitting up to capture the little mills/farm/mine around the keep, or defending their siegeweapons against enemies. People operating the weapons have literally no vision behind them and are sitting ducks to any enemies approaching. That in itself makes a big zerg HIGHLY ineffecient. Add this to the necessity of groups being spreadout everywhere on the map because of the spawnmechanic in point 2), zergs become almost useless. Plus you seem to get way less alliancepoints for killing and capturing things in a huge zerg. I got huge chunks of Alliancepoints for killing players solo, while I got very little when running around in a zerg. Maybe that was just my imagination though.
They dont make the mistakes of Warhammer either, there is no immediate gear-reward whatsoever for taking a keep. You get a buff and take away said buff from the enemy, you increase your chances of advancing further, you get another spawnpoint on the map and take away one from the enemy. All of these rewards are HUGE, but only for the purpose of achieving a GOAL - taking the enemy scrolls, pushing for Cyrodiil, establishing mapcontrol, etc. Nothing for the individual that couldnt be gained by simply killing other players. The reward is extremely helpful in terms of accomplishing the goal of you alliance. The reason why warhammer turned into zerg-rotation RvR, actually avoiding enemies, was because of the fact that you would get really good LOOT for capturing a keep! Both your forces and the enemies would just run around in a circle farming this loot, avoiding enemy contact.
Having played the awesomeness that was Vanilla WoW Alterac and Southshore pvp, moving on to WAR RvR and coming back to WoW to become a Gladiator and releasing an open-PvP movie in WotLK, i've had my fair share of MMORPG PvP.
I didnt play the first beta weekend of ESO despite being invited, because I thought this game was going to be awful, simply milking the popularity of the ES franchise, just as SWTOR did. I only installed the client for the 2nd beta-event because I had a free weekend after exams and what I found was an amazing PvP experience, the likes of which I've never experienced before. I cant say that this game will be a success in terms of PvP, a lot of it depends on endgame balance. The biggest problem I see is imbalance between the factions. If one faction is dominating, it will quickly become extremely frustrating for the losing ones. You can argue that, with more keeps, it becomes extremely hard to cover all these little outposts and camps to make sure you can actually spawn at your keeps, but if a faction is losing, do they really have the manpower or organization to pull off something that tactical? It is very hard to come up with a system that doesnt punish the winning faction for winning, but doesnt make it extemely and hopelessly frustrating if you are losing.
However, the foundation for great RvR as well as small scale PvP within this RvR is there, something that is a rare sight.
After looking at the cinematic and realizing that its essentially about PvP, as well as the fact that already some abilities differentiate between player and non-player effects and knowing that the old team of DaoC is working on ESO, I am hopeful that the PvP in this game will be as good as it can be.
Er you cant just switch faction whenever you feel like it. You would have to make a whole new character and lose all your skill and level progress. Not sure how everyone will jump to the winning side.
You can change campaign and guest on other campaigns but that will not give you alliance points or leaderboard points
I m actually agreeing with JLP on this. It won t stop anyone, and with todays type of gamer (ie, not back in the day of the take your time and enjoy it, non ADD, enjoy the ride MMO player). TESO will not be immune to this at all.
More power to them then if they want to restart and join a winning faction.
I'd feel like a tool if I did that.
This is my biggest concern with the system as well. Zenimax has to come up with some sort of Matchmaking system that pairs factions from different campaigns against eachother, like GW2 does. If you look at it, the campaign are not different from GW2s realms. You have a homeserver / homecampaign which you can switch or guest in other ones (of course in ESO, each server is split into 3 factions, though not being able to switch factions, you could look at every faction as their own realm), so it should be possible (and necessary) to do the same thing in ESO as well.
Indeed, I've been in those kind of mmorpgs. People will do anything to switch to the winning side, anything. That's just human nature.
GW2 WvW is a match ...a fight between two servers for a specific limited time.The fight lasts for a week....and then it ends and you have another match with another server.It is like a basketball game.....you try to score more points (by capturing locations) than the other server..The WvW maps are much smaller than the ESO fighting area. The zerg dominates action .There is little keep defense.The fighting experience is akin to a 15 minute pvp arena match expanded to a week of 24/7 fighting. Then it ends as if it never happened....and a new match begins.
ESO is like the frontier in DAOC. but larger.The fighting on your instance/server NEVER ends.it is a true war.The fight is between 3 factions....not two servers like GW2. This makes the fighting and balance of power much more fluid and interesting. The zerg ...so far ......has not been dominant.Keeps are aggressively defended.AvA has mounts.Last I looked WvW did not. ESO's Cyrodiil has quests .Last I looked GW2 WvW does not. ESO AvA is NOT about scoring points.It is about a never ending game of conquest. ESO facilitates fighting with your guild because of the mega server technology...you are not forced to fight on a server your guild id on and endure a gimp server that may not have a player population that is not into fighting. Captured locations in ESO stay captured until recaptured by another faction---like areal war.A war that never ends.
Both servers have the standard assortment of siege weapons. ESO's director Matt Firror helped develop DAOC.Going forward you can reasonably expect continuing strong development of AvA. GW2 devs do not have his background and despite years of players begging for a WvW re-design have not taken significant steps and signaled an major overhaul of their pvp match concept the call WvW. Both games have large keeps and smaller objects near the keep which can be captured.
IMO...ESO's AvA is much better in design and execution ...if you are looking for a true war like game experience.
LOL, are you play in GW2 via youtube?
in WWW always 3 servers fight.
So your opinion is meaningless.
3 months is to long, losing for three months is to much, not everyone has this kind of will to keep fighting to win in a game that he is being dominated for 1 month already.
Also is to early to compare these 2 pvp systems. Give it few months after the games release so the players can form the meta gaming and we will see whats better. My prediction is that in the end its going to be zerg wars, guilds will make their zerg, random players will join that zerg and they will stomp everyone until they meet another zerg. There have been cases in GW2 where 10 people took down 20+, there is a vid on youtube where 4 guys killed a 30 man zerg, I m curious to see if something like that can happen is ESO too.
Ask your selves what are you going to do when you see a big friendly zerg, you will not follow it so you get more rewards and the chance to get into an epic battle or you will choose to roam around and get killed by an enemy zerg or do some random duel every few minutes.
Both AvA and WvW look fun, the good thing is that there are no organised guilds atm in ESO and the battlefiend is chaotic but this will change and Organised Guilds will dominate the Battle and form the meta gaming.
ololo
ESO siege machines are build instantly - everyone can pop one doesnt req any kind of resource
GW2 siege machines need to be build up and req supply, supply is limited
ESO map isnt that big yeh looks big but if you count the travel times between points its less than a minute
There is a limit of how many siege units can be built withing the range of a keep. 20 for attack and 20 for defense. Set an attacking siege unit on fire and it slowly burns to death, but you cant use it anymore because of the fire - it still takes up one of the 20 slots for siege units though. A stealthed group can easily set all of them on fire if they are left unguarded, making it completely impossible to further attack the keep.
ESO map is enormous. The shortest travel time by foot you can hope for is between a keep and its outpost, which is roughly 7 minutes of running. However, this outpost is very easy to take, compared to a keep. Also, you need to be at a keep in the first place to teleport to another one. So, if you are attacking an enemy keep, you have tot either find a way to die somehow, or run to your next keep (shortest runningdistance between 2 keeps is roughly 10-13 minutes), then tp to the keep closest to the outpost and then run to it. By the time you are there the outpost is gone. The enemy has the same disadvantage though, so scouting out enemy movements will lead to big advantages in terms of both offense and defense.
can sieges be removed? GW2 had thouse trolls that build sieges to vrong places to piss ppl off.
Intact sieges can be removed by simply pressing X, I dont know if you can remove a siege another player placed though.
Jesus everything you said makes me want to play GW2 and not run around in an emty zone all alone for 7-10 min.
Only time I had lagg in GW2 is when I played on my PC that was 5 years old. If you have a good PC doesn't even have to be any highend gaming pc you will never experience lagg in GW2.
@jidkra
Thanks for that write up, it does a great job of explaining why ESO AvA if fixing a lot of the issues that were in GW2.
@Jean-luc
No idea why you feel the need to convince people GW2 is so amazing. It has already been out for 2 years and I am sure everyone who was interested has tried it by now. It is pretty delusional to think WvW didn't have some critical problems.
The other stuff you point out are just general issues that exist in every mass pvp game.
Yes population imbalances will exist there are 2 ways this is addressed:
1) The overpopulated side will have a cap so if everyone wants to join the winning team most of them will have to wait in a queue, just like GW2.
2) There are multiple campaigns, or AvA instances so a player can switch to one with more even population.
The entire point is to punish people for playing badly and getting killed a lot, unlike in GW2 where there is virtually zero penalty for constantly making suicidal decisions. In DAOC if you ran out alone and got killed you would have to wait up to 15 minutes just to get ported into the pvp zone and then run for 10-25 minutes to get to the fight.
People who want to be solo-mode heros are not going to be successful in this type of game which is what a lot of people are looking for -- you know challenge? -- GW2 and Planetside 2 are always there for the Rambos of the internet.
Again what is your point? Yes zergs exist in mass pvp games. We have known this for over 10 years. ESO is clearly trying a lot harder than the last two games GW2 and Planetside 2 to address this. The pussies can go join the winning team and wait in queue all day if they can't handle losing.
While we are speaking of feet in mouths, There is only one player faction in GW2.
There are 3 factions in ESO. Those 3 factions will wage war in Cyrodiil
In GW2 that 1 faction on 3 different servers will wage war on sever maps.
Sounds like a lot fun!
Could have fooled me. You're one of the biggest GW2 fanboys in this thread. You can try to distance yourself from the word "fanboy" all you want, but what you're essentially trying to do is convince folks to believe that the way GW2 did WvW is the best thing since sliced bread. And that's just simply not the case. As much as you try to defend the particulars of GW2, you can't escape the fact that it feels like a team sport. You have these two week rotating small server instances of 100ish people going at it. Which essentially destroys any sense of pride in ownership when it comes to owning a keep for guilds since it will just be reset again in two weeks anyway. There's no passion to defend what's yours like an owned Keep that's persisted. That's another negative for me in the way GW2 did things. Also, the lack of any real death penalty bugs the hell out of me. I know, I know I'm going to get a bunch of GW2 fanboys jumping down my throat about how that's not the case since "you need to run so far" in GW2 when you die. First of all, I'm pretty sure "far" is relative since these GW2 fanboys tend to have never played DaoC before. Second, the larger issue I'm referring to is the fact that it's too damn easy to resurrect downed players. Literally ANY player (I don't care if you're a warrior, mage, kung fu panda monk, thief) can resurrect a downed player without any restrictions. This is just a BAD IDEA since it essentially eliminates any semblance of consequences in PvP. It's like killing Jason in Friday the 13th over and over and over again. He just keeps getting up. The bastard never dies! And it makes RvR unfun since it doesn't punish stupid mistakes and bad players. They just keep popping up and piling into the fray since death is meaningless in the game. NOT my cup of tea.
What it boils down to is this:
1) If you enjoyed DaoC RvR, you will enjoy ESO RvR.
2) If you only played GW2 and have no context of playing DaoC, you will cry about it "failing" because it's not the same as the "awesome" GW2. But when you play it for a few months, you'll get it.
3) You've played both DaoC and GW2 RvR, but for some mysterious reason you think the way GW2 did it is superior. I don't know what to do for ya in this case.
I completely agree. GW2's PVP is like a Michael Bay movie. Full of colorful explosions and no real point to it's existence.
It is impossible to predict how AvA will turn out in a fully populated Cyrodiil. All we can do is make speculations and compare the mechanics that are in place to prevent this from happening.
In theory, ESO has added mechanics to discourage excessive zerging that both WAR and GW2 lack. To which extent these mechanics will change the way AvA plays, remains to be seen.
However, even if all these anti-zerg-mechanics fail to prevent zerging on a larger scale, the addition of stealth to every class gives each and every player (and group of players) the opportunity NOT to zerg, if they wish to do so. The ability to chose who you fight and when makes it possible to entirely avoid enemy zergs and seek out smaller fights, even if the vast majority chooses to join the zerg. There will always be players who died running back to the action or people questing, going into dungeons, dealing with smaller objectives - it is you choice to stealth up as a group, let the zerg pass and go about your business of small-scale PvP. Zenimax's task is to make this sort of behaviour actually viable to the end goal, but even is this fails, the option to do it for FUN is always there.
No, there is only one faction, no matter how you would like to redefine faction. That one faction is split on multiple servers. Those severs engage in battle. The severs are denoted by color.
WoW has 2 factions - Horde/Alliance
Swtor has 2 factions - Republic and Empire
EVE has 3 (right?) factions - forgot their names
ESO has 3 factions - Daggers/Dominion/Pact
GW2 has 1 faction. It's more than semantics.
Eve has four races.
However since it's more of a sandbox it has multiple factions, in the form of corporations(guilds), that compete with one another.