f13.net

One post with one word is all you need in this thread.


Who is going to have the highest population by Christmas? Order or Destruction? If you are foolish enough to believe the two will be indistinguishable, you can say that.

Order. Bitches.

I'll say Destruction. But I might be counting out the influence of the masses too easily.

I haven't seen many screenshots. Does one side have hot chicks and the other side not? If so, side with hot chicks wins.

I'm gonna say Order will have the highest population, but Destruction will be better at PvP. Basically like WoW.

Destruction.

Goody two-shoes will stick with WoW.  The majority of those coming to this game looking for PVP will prefer the "badass" / evil image.  And the bikini-armor chicks.

Order.


-edit-

There will be one "official" hardcore PvP server, and that server will have a massive Destruction population. Otherwise Order over all.

Order by a 2-1 or 3-1 ratio on regular servers, 3-2 on the open servers.

Order.  I used to be sure destruction was the answer, but I'm beginning to run into the BG2 evil alignment problem- feeling guilty about doing bad things.  All the slop and mayhem and stupidity of greenskin culture was fun, but I'm starting to get the itch to surround myself with scary Teutonic goodness. 

On the face of it, Destruction. Hot half-naked bad girl elves will help pull a crowd. Chaos attracts more people than order.

However, if Order has an early lead, that could continue and grow as people like to be on the 'winning' side.

But I'll go with Destruction.

Because of the Scenarios, sheer numbers don't automatically determine which side will "win" most of the time. In earlier betas (haven't played recently) the side that's significantly outnumbered can still keep a zone from flipping sides even if all the objectives are held by the opposition by consistently winning the scenario(s) for that zone.

Destruction.

WOW is alliance-heavy because of PVE. On PVP servers the population difference is much lower, and in many cases, horde actually outnumber alliance. WAR is a PVP game primarily, so yeah.


-- Z.

Order.

Destruction has sex-specific classes, a race with no women at all, a race with skanky women that are not actually hot (neither side's elves are good looking, imo, they're creepy and alien (which I actually like)), and the freaky looking humans. Generally speaking, that is not appealing to a majority of people, although the dark elves will probably grab a big, big slice of the mangina pie. Order has a class that every paladin secretly wishes their paladin was like (seriously, now that I've actually played the warrior priest, I know for sure that every I MUST BE A PALADIN knob is going to hop on that), witch hunters, "good" elves and normal looking humans. I don't think it will be as hugely lopsided as I initially feared, but I'm starting to suspect there are going to be like four orcs total since there's only one orc class now.

Dark elves are Destro. This kind of recruitment scheme cannot be overcome.

IBT Drizztwannabes?

I'm unsure and won't comment on this. Destro gets more votes through various sites from people not in beta. Destro is the defacto larger force during closed beta. But before preview weekend started rumors were spreading that higher skilled players were reconsidering on joining Order and reading reports on this weekend leaves me with the impression Order has been kicking more ass than destro especially in scenarios.

It's been implied once that Destro still has the greater numbers and as a result they balance out in RvR but get steamrolled in the BGs. But that was one person so hardly enough to get a good feel of the populations.

Open beta will give a more of a definitive picture.

Destro had larger numbers on the server we played on in RvR, but Order continually won - at least the areas I was in. Either the players on Destro weren't skilled or simply less skilled than Order side, or there were more on our side and I just couldn't tell since I was looking at THE ENEMY. During BG, I lost more than I won, and I was pretty decent at it.

It's still incredibly hard to pick. At this point, I may even start 2 toons on headstart, get them both to tier 2, and pick from there. I REALLY don't want to split the f13 force in half though. So I think we're gonna have to come to a conclusion on which side.

I'm thinking Destro will have the population advantage.  I've thought that for a long time and still feel that way.  PVPers always seem to want that "Badass" feeling, and yes while the WH lore says both sides are scum, the lore (lol lore) isn't well-known enough to get that message across.  Order is "Good" and Destro is "Evil" and that's how decisions will be made.

Destruction by a 1.5-1 or 2-1 margin.

Destruction.  Just like beta already is and how people who have been in the beta for years have said.

For a game built on RvR, not having ANY sort of population control is suicide.

Something half assed will be introduced within the first 4 months, and because it wasn't part of the original design it will suck and take another 6 months to get working.

Some servers will have an initial Order over population, some will have Destruction. The positive reinforcements of winning over and over again will cause landslides in the numbers.

It will be *the* biggest complaint.

You can't handle that any more poorly than Blizzard did.

Instanced PvP anyone?

O - and instanced PvE.

Wait a second...........................

So basically everyone in the entire game is standing beside an NPC waiting to queue or standing beside an instance waiting to raid.... /quit.

No need to stand beside the NPC to PvP in war.. there isn't an NPC, its a button on your map.   :grin:

Destruction with a 3:2 ratio on their 'normal' servers, and 2:1 on the 'PvP' servers.

And they will start bitching about BG, er 'scenario' queues approx. two days after the game goes live but never consider rerolling.
There will also be at least one massive imbalance in the non-mirrored classes, and at least one lesser (but still noticable) imbalance in the "Mirrored-but-not-really" classes.
Oh, and all the instances will be biased to one side or the other and people will only want to play the maps where its biased in their favour.

Does it really say that both sides are scum?  I mean, reading the tome stuff I certainly am seeing that the empire isn't all happiness and roses, certainly (witch hunters and stuff), but it seems more like just a grim, somewhat less-than-wonderful kingdom, whereas most of destruction really does seem actively evil.  Order still seems like the "good guys" to me, from the in-game stuff.

But yeah, I'm unfamiliar with the lore outside of the game, so I dunno.  But just from the in-game stuff, it seems like a reasonably noble dwarf/elf/empire character is someone that might exist, whereas in the case of chaos/greenskins/dark elves they're all just completely bent on murder and death.

The Empire are the bad guys, and Chaos are the really bad guys.  :grin:
It's shades of grey, with the best of the bunch being a pretty dingy grey. Slight tangent: In the 40K universe (which the Warhammer world may or may not be a part of), there's an ongoing complaint about a newish race/army (the Tau) not fitting into the lore because it's "too cheerful/hopeful/bright". They are, essentially, the Stalin-era Soviet Union in power armour with a side order of eugenics. The kicker? They probably are the 'nicest' group in the lore.

One could argue that the orks are actually the closest to innocent, of course, as they don't act with any real malice - they just really like fighting.  :why_so_serious:

WHFB is a little less dark than WH40k. I'd say the High Elves and Dwarves are pretty close to being good. They're not Tolkien elves who are pure and noble etc etc but they're nice enough if territorial and bit warlike. The empire are like dark ages europe though, not very nice at all.

To use D&D alignment terms the Dark Elves are definitely Evil (and in fact are the most Evil of all the WH armies), ranging the full spectrum on the ethical axis from Chaotic to Lawful.

The Greenskins are Chaotic Neutral. As Simond said their sole reason for existence is to fight things, including each other if they can't find somebody else to fight but they aren't malevolent and sadistic like the Dark Elves are.

Chaos is obviously Chaotic but they range from Evil to Neutralish depending on which of the Chaos gods a follower happens to worship. E.g. Tzeentch is, among other things, the Chaos god of Hope, which is hardly an evilish thing. On the Evil to Neutral scale Nurgle and Khorne are closer to the Evil end of the Scale while Slaanesh and Tzeentch closer to the Neutral end.

Order side the Dwarfs and the Elves are closest to "Lawful Good", though that of course didn't keep them from battling each other in the "War of the Beard" (secretly started by the Dark Elves), destroying both empires in the process.

The Empire spans the full range of alignments but would average out to somewhere around Lawful Neutral, IMO. The Empire is somewhat like the Dark Ages in Europe with the Inquistition, like Calantus said, except that everybody is suspected of harboring the taint of Chaos not just certain segments and nobody is truly innocent.

Yeah, I guess that's pretty much how I was imagining it, then.  I do really like chaos (and tzeentch in particular), and it's definitely an interesting situation since changing an empire for the better generally really DOES involve lots of war and death.

But yeah, from what I'd heard of 40k, the empire in that seemed a LOT more twisted than what I'm seeing here.  Don't they worship some immortal emperor-in-a-vat as their god or something?  I'm too lazy to look it up.

Also, to be fair to the WAR witch hunters and the empire in general, chaos agents really ARE hidden in their kingdom, presumably, right?  So I mean, at least they're not totally pulling that out of their ass.

I'm going to go with Destruction.

Its pretty much Destruction with at least 55% of the population in a 100 different polls I've seen over the last few months.  Obviously we can't discuss known pops since that is still covered by the NDA on the beta servers, but I'd take a stab and say Destruction had the majority of peeps during the preview weekend.

Destruction. Although it does have a really evil feel to it.

This..

http://www.road-to-war.com/

Will give ya a rough idea. Unfortunately, it looks like the taint of Chaos is overwhelming.

Warhammer Fantasy really is about as dark as WH40K.
 Everything is in decay. The Elves feud over the bones of their once glorious empire. The Empire is losing territory and allies to Chaos, as it consumes itself in a futile effort to remain pure. Bretonnia is a shining, glorious beacon built on the broken backs of serfs. The dwarves are dying out, helped along by their chaos-corrupted brothers. The greenskins are being driven out of their areas by the Undead. Chaos is flooding out from the former North Pole due to an error by the now nearly extinct Slaan. Even Chaos wars among itself as each of the four primary Chaos god and their followers try for dominance over the others. Beastmen abound, and Skaven pour forth under the banner of the Horned Rat.

Not really any good guys at all.

Oh, and I think it'll be about an even population split over all, but every server will end up about 60/40 imbalanced.

Destruction.

The lizard men seem to be actual good guys but they don't do shit except sit on their hands even though they have an edict handed to them by their god to eradicate evil. :oh_i_see:

Sweet, good guy lizards?  Do want.

Destruction.

Cooler tanks and healers by far. Only thing they don't do better is glass cannon ranged.

More like eradicate Chaos but they are cold-blooded so it takes them a while to get going :awesome_for_real:

(http://pandadesigns.com/f13/Kroq_Gar_on_Carnosaur.gif)

:drill:

warhammer fantasy USED to be very dark, very low-fantasy.  I don't know when the fundamental change was made, but it was sometime between the early 90's (when i stopped playing the P&P game regularly) and a few years ago, when the new P&P book came out.  Saw some strange things in there, did some looking around on the interwebs, and the entire warhammer world has been... well... 

it's still dark compared to any other mainstream fantasy world i know of, but the changes are disgusting.  Warhammer should NOT be Tolkien.  Every single change pushes the world further in a high-fantasy direction.  The new P&P book did this much less than the current tabletop game does, but things had to match the tabletop so the only places where GW really allowed an old-skool warhammer feel are in areas the tabletop doesn't cover.

now i realize there's zero chance a MMO would be released based on old-skool warhammer or anything like it...  and i also suspect that usually the sort of person who prefers high fantasy is more likely to faithfully waste thousands of $ on new mini's/rulebooks once a year.  But i really wish people still had access to the old warhammer stuff in stores...  it really was a unique and fascinating world.  Lots of games and books these days evoke H.P. Lovecraft, but very few evoke Rabelais.  I  wonder what the people who originally created warhammer think of the direction GW has chosen.  I really hope they're thinking "My pants keep falling down because they're STUFFED WITH MONEY" but i doubt it.

In the latest edition it's gotten darker again in some places E.g. the Bretonnians are now more grim instead of the "rah rah we're the Knights of the Round Table" type stuff.

that's good to hear, i haven't wanted to go near anything GW since then for fear of what abominations i might see.  Or might not.


sorry to spew nerd-rage all over yr thread, folks...   

Don't worry.  Nerd-rage is what powers the F13 "server farm".  If it weren't for you and others like you this site would be nothing but a 404 error.

Yeah we're used to nerd rage and expect it. For example, if you don't start capitalizing properly and avoiding things like "yr" you'll get some impressive nerd rage directed your way pretty soon I'd wager.

i can see spelling out "your" but i don't like capital letters except to separate sentences or to make names clear where they otherwise might not be. 

Maybe he wasn't clear.

We don't give a fuck what you "like" or "don't like." Use proper grammar and capitalization, thanks. The only time you can get away with otherwise is when the response is total mockery like 'lol k' or 'wat' or 'psycho.'

Feel free to call me a dick, but if I don't point this out, someone will unleash The Hounds.

Deja vu all over again.

schild wut r u talkin about

 :star: :star: :star:

The fine folks at F13 have helped me with my grammar and spelling. They can help you too. Mabye.

EDIT: Changed who i quoted, to make more sense.

I, for one, welcome our Grammar Nazi Overlords.

Some jokes never get old. This isn't one of them, but I refuse to stop using it.  :why_so_serious:

TTH did a video interview with Josh at GC. It covers a fair bit of material, including what they plan on doing (and not doing) to control population imbalance.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/42862

I like how at 8:30 the game crashes.

I guess the network just went down.

Their proposals for population imbalance prevention seem silly.   Levels won't matter if the population is significantly off. 

For that matter, if levels are such a big deal, why not make a game without levels?

Yeah, people need to get renown as well as levels (duh Mythic).  So they'll que for scenarios in order to fight on equal terms, and they won't venture out for RVR as much just to be steamrolled by the zerg in .00000000003 seconds.

It is a total waste of time to organize a party of 50 to try to take a keep, and be met with a 200 man zerg each time. That's what population imbalance really is, and on the DAOC servers RVR died out as a result. What happened next was the rise of the "8 man" concept which was a roaming RVR open PVP gank squad.  The second component to that was that people rolled ALT's, and parked them in the DAOC battlegrounds (basically level based persistent PVP scenarios with a keep). 

WAR is more like DAOC 2.0 than WoW.  Without some way for the lesser populated side to stand up to 3 or 4 to 1 odds then the underpopulated realm will retreat to scenarios while the over populated realm owns most of the keeps.

I'm sorry, but it wasn't population imbalance that killed RvR in DAoC.  It was a lack of incentive.  Achievers could amass rps about 20x faster by running around in small gank squads than they ever could taking relics and pounding on keep doors. 

A large percentage of MMOG gamers are achievers.  They will follow the path you set before them if they are properly rewarded for it.  If WAR wants to make the game abotu large scale keep seiges, then that had better be the most efficient way to climb the achievement ladder.

population imbalance is only a problem if, fundamentally, Zerg trumps all. If the pvp, and subsequently the Combat system is more robust, imbalances (to a point) are marginal and able to be overcome with skill.

Yeah I certainly agree that was part of it. But honestly, how many realmpoints did people earn when every time they ventured out to the frontier there were 300 people waiting for 1 guy to get outside of guard range? Your point is valid, but severe population imbalance was a big issue.

If the ratios are close, maybe.

But then you have to realize that the percentage of "skilled" players will be roughly equivalent on each side, so your argument is kinda silly, given that there will be less skilled players on your side to help fight off the overwhelming numbers on the other side.

I think that server pop imbalance was more a symptom of other problems than the root cause of problems.  You do make a good point though... I would often log off if all I did was get zerged all night long.

Here's my take on the core causes of imbalance:  

- Relic hoppers: Players that rerolled on realms will all the relics.  Real issue: relics provide the victor with too much power.

- Class imbalances: People play the realm that has the greatest current advantage.  This moved from realm to realm with (not including all of the class issues, just examples) smite clerics, then stungard & left axe, then animists being ridiculous in keep defense, theurgists, BD's, etc.  

- Play times: Some servers had large euro populations.  You could play US primetime and see one population dominate and then log on euro hours and see another.

Mirroring in WAR will help with class issues.  We'll have to see what incentives they offer in WAR and the role it plays in pop imbalance.  The biggest issue I see on the horizon with WAR is that the hardcore pvp crowd will gravitate to chaos and the inexperienced and casual players will flock to order.  It's going to make balancing sides very difficult as players will migrate based on perception rather than fact.  

I'm actually quite curious how 'gank squads' will do with the lack of speed.

I don't think it was speed that made them so tough, it was organization and the strategic use of powers like ae mez, SoS, snare nukes, melee snares, melee stuns, etc.  If everyone has the same speed, you can't catch someone once they get out of range.  Remember that ToA made speed available to the entire zerg and it didn't help them one bit.   

That I had forgotten.

Whenever we tried running around as an 8-man squad, being able to fly in, Mezz/Stun/Kill and fly out was the only reason we were successful. It was more about knowing when to turn and leave than taking out everyone in sight, like a few of the good ones could.

Having said that, we didn't do it very often either.

Chicken and egg.

The rise of gank groups/rvr guilds killed all chances of finding a competitive PUG.  Casuals and all those not in the gank guilds ended up zerging.  This killed the small/partial group game,  and lead to an arms race of who had the bigger zerg which naturally tilted towards population.

That being said... almost all servers had varying populations that led to different realms holidng rvr dominance.  The big problem was it generally took 3-6 months and a couple major buff/nerf patches by Mythic to get that to happen.

A popular, respected RvR leader usually could turn things around as well.

Nah, going to give an example. Planetside. Many MANY times, the zerg will simply loose, because of the combat system and a small handful of effective players and skill. Zerg does not trump all in PS. If you think it does, your part of the zerg.

Which why I support hard caps, sure people will piss and moan.  But in the long term everyone will be happier and accept it the same way we accept server queues today.  Incentives take way too long.  People will quit long before enough people will switch sides.

Um, Planetside capped the players in a continent so the full Zerg could never get in the battle.

If by capped you mean 150 per side (x3), sure. But what i'm talking about, and what your talking about. Are diffrent.

Alliance.

[Was going to split my answer for more snark when someone called me on it, but realized I probably won't look at this thread for several weeks.]

For those actually playing WAR: Order.