Warhammer February Newsletter Thread

[eldaec]

Grab Bag highlights.

Grab Bag #11

Q: How many people can be in a city assault instance at a time?

A: We don't know. Ask me again when beta starts...... Many people have been mentioning the number 36. That is our current best GUESS as to the number of people on one side in a Scenario. But while all Scenarios are instances, instances are not always Scenarios. Does that make sense?

City siege instances will not be limited to thirty six people. Also, there will be different types of instances involved with a single city siege, so I couldn't give you a single answer even if I wanted to do so. Small-scale combat is exciting, but we are shooting for a bigger feel with an encounter as epic as the destruction of national capital.



Q: Will people in the same zone all see the message "Sanya was killed by Steve"?

A: I asked Designer Steve. For right now, the answer is “Yes, but only within the PvP areas.”


Q: Any news on whether or not us Australians will be able to play at launch? And what about New Zealand?

A: I am told that we can now say openly that Australia and New Zealand will both be part of our worldwide launch.... 


Q: I've heard it said that there will be no “healer-only” classes in WAR. I am used to games where there are healers, and there are hybrid healers. Unfortunately, many groups tend to bark at hybrid healers, and say that if you can heal, then that's all you should do for the group.

How are you planning on preventing that, and making it so that a group would want, say a Zealot or War Priest, for something other than a healbot?

A: .....

STEVE: It boils down to fulfillment of critical roles. Our healers are capable of being a 100% effective healer. They are also capable of fighting, but no healer is ever going to be as good at fighting as a true fighter class.

The reason they will want our healers is because they can fulfill their healing role AND contribute in other ways as well. Besides that, there will be no single-issue healers...all of our healers can fight as well as heal. There will be no preferred healer that is ALL heal, and better at it than the others.

SANYA: Er... no, I think you just directly contradicted the point I made. Players may want to BE the guy that can heal and contribute in other ways, yes, but the groups that those players join do not want their healers fighting. Ever.

JOSH: Being a "pure" healer will be an inefficient play-style based on how our careers are designed. The Warrior Priest, for example, builds Righteous Fury by dealing melee damage. That Fury pool gates some of his support abilities and augments others. If the WP hangs back and just tries to use his baseline, non-fury abilities to act as a pure healer, he will suck like a diesel-fueled vacuum cleaner.

It will be impossible to "focus" on healing rather than damage, so players won't be able to ignore combat healers in favor of "pure" healers because pure healers won't exist.

STEVE: Right. The point I was making is that there is no class that is more effective "just" healing.

For instance, WPs also [at this time] have an aura-based buff system that buffs friendlies IF they are within range of him. This means that he is better off being in the front line where the fighting friendlies can both fight and be in range of his buffs. If he held back and just healed from range, he would not be doing as much good as getting in the thick of it.

SANYA: *squints distrustfully*

STEVE AND JOSH: Have you tried it yet, or are you just assuming?

.......

Which is nice, but I'm telling you now - no way in hell I'm playing a warrior priest. Or a dark-elf-rior-priest (see below). Healers on the front line with the riff raff - how very uncivilised.


In other news, it turns out Zealots are Chaos Rune Priests.

The Zealot deals in symbols. He channels the power of his master through fetishes and totems, and can place the symbols of Chaos on friend and foe alike. Those glyphs placed on Chaos's loyal followers are called Marks, and can grant entirely new abilities. Those placed on the Zealot's enemy are called Harbingers, and cause lasting affliction. The Harbingers are well named however, for their full potential is not immediately realized. Using powerful ritual magic, a Zealot can rob the subject of his Harbinger of life and spirit, draining it away to empower the Marks he has placed upon his allies with extraordinary abilities.

So, my guesses for the elf caster careers....

Dark elf-rior priest   :  healer/melee
Dark elf-gineer        : short range aoe dps caster
High elf-haman       :  healer/ranged dps
High elf herder       :  ranged dps/pets

You see what I did there?

Links for those that want to see the extraneous data...

http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/newsletterCentral/archives/Feb2007.html
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/community/grabBag/grabBag_feb2007.php
http://www.warhammeronline.com/english/gameInfo/armiesofWAR/CareersDesignCommentary6.php

[tazelbain]

And the Goblin shaman won't have much Waagh sitting back and just healing.  It seems to fit. I like the Smite Cleric play style so this all sounds good.  I still disagree that pure support can't be made to work, but hey.

[Nebu]

I forsee organized guilds coming from DAoC and perhaps even WoW and making life miserable for the uninitiated. 

[Venkman]

Who offer PL services to level characters in 24 hours?

/runs

Seriously, I agree. The unitiated are going to get steamrolled early on, in beta. This'll either drive people to coordinate, which'll most likely mean VoIP and insularity by that nature alone, or piss people off so much WAR's chances at a million subs dimishes even before launch.

[Nebu]

I hope that it causes new folks to run in packs.  It would make the game a lot more interesting.  If Mythic has learned anything it's that players haven't been properly rewarded for larger scale coordination and true realm vs. realm combat.  If War degenerates to skirmishes much the same way that DAoC has, then I don't see this game being nearly as successful as it's capable of being.

[Morfiend]

I forsee organized guilds coming from DAoC and perhaps even WoW and making life miserable for the uninitiated. 

Your powers of foresight stagger the mind.

[Nebu]

Your powers of foresight stagger the mind.

I can finally rest at ease knowing that you approve.

[tazelbain]

Who offer PL services to level characters in 24 hours?

/runs

Seriously, I agree. The unitiated are going to get steamrolled early on, in beta. This'll either drive people to coordinate, which'll most likely mean VoIP and insularity by that nature alone, or piss people off so much WAR's chances at a million subs dimishes even before launch.

I think its going to be the opposite.  People are going to re-roll when they hit R4 to avoid the organized groups.

But really it is lossless PvP that people can walk out of the PvP areas at will, its not going to that harsh. Probably a level of harshness between a WoW PvE and WoW PvP.  Rallos Zek it is not.

But doing everything to make sure causal PvPers have chance to play and win is something I wholehearted agree with since that's exactly what I am.  Mythic is throwing a lot money away if they don't address this issue.  But given many of the other design decisions, I think they know this.

[angry.bob]

This goes back to some of the thing I stated in the Things WAR must do thread.

1)The game must have native voice - for people in your group at the very least. Period, there is no way it can avoid it and be even a half ass player conflict game.

2) Minimize or completely negate the ability for guild groups, premades, gank squads, whatever to dominate PUGS. People aren't going to adapt, improvise, and grow to compete on the same level as people who've done PvP/RvR together for the last 6 years. They're going to go do something fun. Namely everything that not the game they put out.

These two things are mandatory and are more important game features than having more races than Orcs and Dwarves at release. If either of these is not implemented, the game will have a decent release and then die off to subsistence numbers.

[eldaec]

And the Goblin shaman won't have much Waagh sitting back and just healing.  It seems to fit. I like the Smite Cleric play style so this all sounds good.  I still disagree that pure support can't be made to work, but hey.

By my definition of pure support, you at least have the dwarf rune priest and chaos rune priest, who appear to be relatively pure buff/debuff/heal characters - they sound a lot like the way CoH defenders play.

A short term buff or debuff is as much of a support play as a heal in my book.

It looks like each side will have effectively a Paladin, a Smite Cleric, and what looks like a CoH style defender.

Smite Cleric and Paladin have always been popular archetypes, and CoH defenders are the best support model I've ever played, so the general shape of things looks ok.

If Mythic has learned anything it's that players haven't been properly rewarded for larger scale coordination and true realm vs. realm combat.  If War degenerates to skirmishes much the same way that DAoC has, then I don't see this game being nearly as successful as it's capable of being.

For me, the big disappointment in WAR design so far has been that RvR systems seem to be leaning toward forcing small group vs small group confrontation. I don't see any way to stop pre-mades dominating in that structure.

It looks like even the city siege is instance-raid based.

The single best thing for casual players in DAoC RvR were the wild and ragged open pvp sieges. Uneven sides, and large sides were a big part of what made it feel natural, open, and what gave noobs a opportunity to win some of the time (the other thing that helped was having 3 realms ofc, but that's another thread).

Everything described *so far* points to top end guilds simply locking PUGs and new players out.

I don't have an issue with some use of instanced scenarios (not least to act as a sink that removes gank groups from open RvR), but to make instanced scenarios the core of 'real' RvR seems to turn the game into Guild Wars with fixed sides. In Daoc even a noob will get dragged into a relic defence or relic raid. Fixed numbers on each side of an instance will lead to gank guilds demanding pre-made access to dominate the top end of the game.

I have said all this before though.

[AlteredOne]

I'm a long-term DAOC player, currently re-upped until Warhammer comes out.  A few thoughts for you...

• Agreed, voice chat needs to be tightly integrated into the game.  It's the single biggest annoying barrier between casuals and hardcores for RvR in DAOC.  Personally I'd prefer to somehow ban voice chat, because I find it nothing but an annoying necessity -- groups won't take you without it.  So if it must exist, build it in.
• Go back to root causes, and analyze why pre-made groups have such overwhelming superiority in DAOC.  I'd say there are 2 key factors... 
   1. The DAOC realm ability tree is too deep, encouraging players to catass their way to Rank 13 or whatever, spending years to do so.  An arbitrary cap such as rank 5 would have encouraged less catassing, more skill.  You want to reward achievement, but not create player-gods who utterly destroy those who cannot devote months of /played time.
    2.  Eliminate all easy-mode features such as the DAOC "/assist" macro, which take the brainpower out of group coordination.  And use collison detection to force players to spread out.  It's annoying as hell to see a pile of 6 tanks all merged into a single blob, chain /assisting each other, destroying other players in 0.0002 seconds.  If you're on the receiving end, it tends to induce cancellation.
• And as others have said here, create a system of RvR objectives diverse enough to force players to spread out.  I don't even mind the instanced RvR idea, but there need to be a wide variety of such instances and objectives.  With enough variety, you will find that the uber guilds cannot be everywhere at once.  They will tend to congregate wherever the fattest loot/biggest prestige is to be earned.  Fine, give them their playgrounds, and make sure there are plenty of other sandboxes for the rest of us.   It's fine if those sandboxes are slightly less rewarding than the ones favored by the uber groups, so long as there is FUN to be had, and the ubers are not allowed to gain massive, overwhelming superiority.
• One more thought about the uber guilds...  What I loved about early DAOC RvR was the feeling of teamwork.  The uber guilds would stop their 8v8 and be a big part of a relic raid, for example.  In Warhammer, do *everything possible* to encourage that goal of making the entire "realm" feel united in an objective, with the hardcore players doing certain specialized roles, and the casuals doing other important roles.  Everybody needs to feel important, that's the root of fun in an online world.  Spread the glory!

[eldaec]

 1. The DAOC realm ability tree is too deep, encouraging players to catass their way to Rank 13 or whatever, spending years to do so.  An arbitrary cap such as rank 5 would have encouraged less catassing, more skill.  You want to reward achievement, but not create player-gods who utterly destroy those who cannot devote months of /played time.
  2.  Eliminate all easy-mode features such as the DAOC "/assist" macro, which take the brainpower out of group coordination.  And use collison detection to force players to spread out.  It's annoying as hell to see a pile of 6 tanks all merged into a single blob, chain /assisting each other, destroying other players in 0.0002 seconds.  If you're on the receiving end, it tends to induce cancellation

Couple of things.

First off, realm abilities are a red herring. Gank groups dominated before they were even patched in. Lets be clear, you can't have an interesting and deep dikumud where the most organised squad don't win the vast majority of the time. The only way to prevent organised squad dominance is either through random group formation or by designing the game principally for very large scale battles (in the order of 50 v 50 large). Both of these introduce other problems.

Second thing, collision detection as implemented in WAR doesn't stop stacking. Only enemy collisions are turned on, ally collisions are not detected. If Ally coillision is on then you are trapped into obvious greifing problems.

[slog]

Second thing, collision detection as implemented in WAR doesn't stop stacking. Only enemy collisions are turned on, ally collisions are not detected. If Ally coillision is on then you are trapped into obvious greifing problems.

I'm not doubting this is true, but can you provide your source for this?

[tazelbain]

Thanks for the headsup on the IP. I identify WH40k by the miniatures, but had to figure there was more to it (particularly since WAR is based on the RP). This is why I think WH will do better though. It's got strong enough lore to make an RPG and a strong enough following from 40k to make for a ready audience, and a lot of cash from EA. These were some of WoW's main advantages. What they don't have is Blizzard's rockstar status, and I personally don't feel the omgDAoCisawesome crowd is anywhere near the size of the b.net one. But Mythic is at least competent and creative in many areas, and with the proper support can do good stuff. And so far it seems EA is giving proper support (money, resources, handsoff the design).

So WAR>AoC chances all day long. WAR vs WoW is going to make 2007 a fun year.

WAR vrs. WoW? Thats like me (WAR) walking up to Chuck Lidell (WOW) and spitting in his face.

So to continue the discussion of WoW vs. WAR in the AoC thread, but in a better place...

It's not any game can defeat any game.  And even if anyone game could manage to put a serious dent in WoW, Blizzard would still be rolling in moneyhats.  The question is more like can WAR tap into the same vein that caused WoW balloon to proportions that until then were considered unreasonable?

We tend to talk about day 90 issues like VOIP and hyper-competitive guilds, but I feel WoW's much vaulted "polish" is more about day 0 and day 1 issues.  Does everyone would be interested in the game know about the game? Can they they get it working on their machine without any hassles? Can they grok the game enough to find something fun to do?  Does it generate enough excitement that they tell their friends?  This is the snowball rolling down hill WAR needs to make to follow WoW.

[eldaec]

Second thing, collision detection as implemented in WAR doesn't stop stacking. Only enemy collisions are turned on, ally collisions are not detected. If Ally coillision is on then you are trapped into obvious greifing problems.

I'm not doubting this is true, but can you provide your source for this?

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=228636#228636

There is enemy collision currently. Friendly collision doesn't serve nearly as many purposes and also poses significant risk of abuse in some cases.

[Merusk]

So.. anyone following this game closely? I'm looking for you to point me to any hints ANYWHERE about how the game will actually, y'know, play.   

It sounds interesting, it looks kind of nifty, but then I remember DAoC and say, "Fuck it."   I really just couldn't get into that game at all, and I was much more jazzed about it.

[garthilk]

I follow the game pretty closely. I played it at Gencon and did a small writeup about it located here. Okay I follow the game pretty religiously, but still manage to not let my hopes get up.

[SDShannonS]

Oh, PLEASE Garthilk!  Your hopes are so up, you'd think they were on Viagra!  Admit it.   

Regarding the above comments about voice chat, I was happy to read today Mark's post from back in January about his reversal on the issue.  He has always been a long-standing opponent of integrated voice chat so I'm curious to hear more from him in the future about what led him to his change of heart.

My personal thoughts on the subject are that it will bring more good than harm.  There are certainly some issues that will have to be dealt with, CS cost of addressing abusive behavior in voice chat seems high on the list, but overall I think it will be a great tool to add a level of fun to the game.  Those of you who have RvR'd with a group all using voice chat can attest to the fun it adds by adding to that sense of coordination, like you're part of a team all working together.  Interfacing through text just slows down that process and detracts from the fun part.  Typing isn't fun - fighting is fun.  I can easily talk and fight simultaneously but I can't type and fight without taking my attention away from the fun of fighting.

I hope to see this becoming more and more an integrated function in MMO's across a variety of platforms and genres.  It would be even better for a modern or sci-fi game where you don't have the concern of wrapping your mind around the fact that the elven maiden has an obviously male voice.  Though that really never became a problem for anyone that I ever met in DDO, and it's common there to group with men who are playing female avatars.


Shannon

[Hoax]

Someone please tell me what you people are imagining when you clammour about native voice chat in a MMO.  With some actual details not just [fairytale]"you know there would be voice chat, and suddenly scrub PUG's would not get smashT by org. groups"[/fairytale]

-Thx.

[Calantus]

Easier integration of PUGs into a group. It's really annoying to ask people if they have vent and then get them to download it, and then half the time they can't get it to work anyway. In PVP we insisted, but in instance groups we just said "fuck it" and just had the 2-3 of us in vent making and dealing with the PUGs not knowing wtf to do because it was all explained in vent.

Also, does anyone know just exactly what they mean by:

Q: Any news on whether or not us Australians will be able to play at launch? And what about New Zealand?

A: I am told that we can now say openly that Australia and New Zealand will both be part of our worldwide launch....

Does that mean an Oceanic server located in the region or just that we'll see boxes on the shelf or the "Oceanic preferred" that Blizz did? If it means a server actually here I'll buy 6-12 months of subscription nomatter what. Hell I'd play Vanguard if it had an actual Oceanic server.

[Hoax]

You guys need to listen to Eldaec more, he's the only person in this thread talking any kind of sense.

My points on native chat are threefold:

1.  Most of us hate listening to these people in text form, you want me to be forced into a voice group with randoms because I joined a pvp zone for some casual ownage?  How the hell are you going to protect people from the fucking anonymous asshattery the internet is known and loved for?  Fuck how many people will voice-grief others.  Rendering this amazing piece of balance-tech even more worthless then it ever was in your theorycrafting.

The easiest solution would be some sort of ranking system where only people with good rank can actually broadcast voice, but then its just the 12yr-olds who farm rank talking and you still hate it.

Or how about we add not only native voice but also some kind voice-chat karma system to police the people who are sexual harassing other gamers or spewing racial slurs (you know they will be come the fuck on).  People tell me my posts are too pie in the sky, give me a fucking break.

Best case scenario the game has voice chat built in, you can create channels and other people can join them.  But it never assigns you to one automatically.  So now you join a battle, you have to spam asking for the name/pw of the voice chat channel.  Might it help sometimes?  Sure.  It might even strengthen community and lead to the formation of some kind of middle-class of pvp'ers between the hardcore and the scrubs.  But really if you want to pretend this is going to even any playing fields...

Its not.

2.  Read Eldaec's posts, he says:

First off, realm abilities are a red herring. Gank groups dominated before they were even patched in. Lets be clear, you can't have an interesting and deep dikumud where the most organised squad don't win the vast majority of the time. The only way to prevent organised squad dominance is either through random group formation or by designing the game principally for very large scale battles (in the order of 50 v 50 large). Both of these introduce other problems.

I say, QFFT.

3.  Seriously, stop talking about PUG's standing on even footing versus Org. groups.  It will never happen, the same way you and your work buddies from the neighborhood rec center are never going to beat a WNBA team in basketball...

Either we've got unrestricted world pvp where gank groups become way less effective because they can be zerged, ambushed, pulled to guards, avoided or ganked themselves when caught on their own.  Not that they wont still kill joe blow bluebie 20 times to one but at least he knows he will get those occasional tastes of sweet revenge.  In WoW the only way the top 5v5 arena teams lose to a bunch of scrubs is if they get a dc, and I've seen way too many ss's and posts about 4v5 wins to even count on that.  They will dominate structured "sport"-pvp, because they play the game of pvp in a more serious fashion and typically are just better players (chicken meet egg).


In before someone calls me a griefer...   

*added, this info on the CD front, taken from MMORPG

There is Collision Detection in the game. The Collision Detection does not impact line of sight though. So even though you will bump into players, characters can not block attacks against people standing behind the front line.

 

[Calantus]

I wasn't talking about pure PUGs though, someone else will have to champion that idea because I don't believe PUGs can ever compete unless they outnumber. I was talking about it being helpful to the semi-organised groups (generally an organised group with a couple stragglers for numbers) that can compete with a little luck or a heaping of skill against full organised groups if they can get everyone on voip.

[SDShannonS]

Hi Hoax,

I don't think anyone's saying that voice chat is the holy grail of gaming and that it will turn the lowly noob into someone on par with the leet killah.  At least, that's not what I'm saying.   

As I see it, below are some of the ways that voice chat could enhance the game:

• Reduce barrier of entry by replacing command-line interface (/say "Hello") with a more intuitive combination of verbal and graphical UI
• Enhance fun of combat by allowing customers to concentrate on playing instead of typing
• Enhance community cohesion and reduce griefing by removing a layer of anonymity (not saying it will cure asshatism, but may help to reduce it)
• Reduce the disparity between the haves and have-nots by empowering all groups with the ability to communicate in real-time, not just those with dedicated Vent servers up 24/7

Those are the ones that spring to mind off the top of my head.  You're welcome to disagree with any or all of them, but I think each has merit and taken together as a whole they are a strong argument for integrating voice chat functionality into the game.


Shannon

[Trouble]

On the topic of voice chat, I love voice chat. With guildies. In a guild with tight standards as to who can join. But every time I join up on say a random Counter-Strike server there's always some random 12 year old who loves to talk. Most of the time I can delude myself into thinking that people under 16 don't play games, but that illusion is shattered with PuG voice chat. I would prefer to keep that illusion.

[garthilk]

Voice chat while it's certainly technically possible still has the same hurdles as it always did. The second you add it as a feature, it becomes required and anyone not using it, is suddenly disadvantaged. You don't want to build that kind of divide into your product. Not to mention of course the other issues brought up previously, like moderation, etc.

[slog]

Second thing, collision detection as implemented in WAR doesn't stop stacking. Only enemy collisions are turned on, ally collisions are not detected. If Ally coillision is on then you are trapped into obvious greifing problems.

I'm not doubting this is true, but can you provide your source for this?

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=228636#228636

There is enemy collision currently. Friendly collision doesn't serve nearly as many purposes and also poses significant risk of abuse in some cases.

Well that sucks.  As we used to say in Shadowbane...

STACK!

[Signe]

I don't want to hear the horrible, squeaky voices of the boys I pick up.

[eldaec]

STACK!

However, if because of enemy collision detection, the melee stack can only reach the enemy main tank, then I don't care.

And so long as they don't wuss out on aoe and make it only affect a maximum of 3 players or whatever then stacking isn't really a concern anyhow.

[slog]

I take it you didn't play SB.  Having one tactic that works better than all others makes for boring combat.

Unless they figure out some brilliant new code, Having an AOE affect more than say 10 people will probably make the server cry. 

[ajax34i]

You know what sucks about voice-chat?  Capture and editing, for one, and multi-channels, for two.

The text interface lets the player capture text, scroll back, see the guy's name, report him, and it's easy to screen-shot and POST the convo on a variety of boards.  To try to do the same with voice-chat, they would have to integrate a pretty good sound editing program with the game, one that would allow rewinding, that would keep tags of who speaks along with the sound, and cut/paste/etc.  Plus, posting the mp3 stream on any web or forum site should be as easy as cutting and pasting text, which it isn't.

Multi-channels, nobody in my group can tell when I've sent a private whisper to someone else, and/or what other channels I'm in.  With voice chat, either my microphone would mute itself as I switch it from the group to the private person, or like with vent/TS, I'd physically have to leave the channel and go join some private convo channel, to talk privately.

A sound stream is a lot more difficult to manipulate and replicate than text.

[eldaec]

I take it you didn't play SB.  Having one tactic that works better than all others makes for boring combat.

Unless they figure out some brilliant new code, Having an AOE affect more than say 10 people will probably make the server cry. 

I played daoc.

One of many games where aoe effects ruled out stacking and the server didn't cry.

Also, as I said, stacking will likely leave everyone blocked by the enemy main tank because of enemy collision.

[slog]

stacking will likely leave everyone blocked by the enemy main tank because of enemy collision.

I don't understand what you are saying here.   

[angry.bob]

1.  Most of us hate listening to these people in text form, you want me to be forced into a voice group with randoms because I joined a pvp zone for some casual ownage?  How the hell are you going to protect people from the fucking anonymous asshattery the internet is known and loved for?  Fuck how many people will voice-grief others.  Rendering this amazing piece of balance-tech even more worthless then it ever was in your theorycrafting....

Erm, mute them? Really, Half Life has pretty much dealt with voice support and random assholes from the interweb randomly joining your gaming experience. They don't need to reinvent the wheel. Just emmulate Half Life - which is a perfect example of why having native voice support is neccessary even though it's not going to make everyone l33t. Usually someone just saying "They're coming from the left" is enough to stop an asspounding.

[AcidCat]

Voice chat while it's certainly technically possible still has the same hurdles as it always did. The second you add it as a feature, it becomes required and anyone not using it, is suddenly disadvantaged. You don't want to build that kind of divide into your product. Not to mention of course the other issues brought up previously, like moderation, etc.

Agreed. I personally don't like voicechat at all. I like a nice "comfortable distance" between me and other players, and text provides that. Listening to people speak is just plain annoying. Why do I want to listen to a bunch of random people talking when I play a game? 90% of people I've heard on voice either sound like they just hit puberty or are just annoying twits in general. Fuck that, I'd like to keep my interaction with other players in a little corner of the screen where I can read or ignore them at my leisure.

[angry.bob]

3.  Seriously, stop talking about PUG's standing on even footing versus Org. groups.  It will never happen, the same way you and your work buddies from the neighborhood rec center are never going to beat a WNBA team in basketball...

Either we've got unrestricted world pvp where gank groups become way less effective because they can be zerged, ambushed, pulled to guards, avoided or ganked themselves when caught on their own.  Not that they wont still kill joe blow bluebie 20 times to one but at least he knows he will get those occasional tastes of sweet revenge.  In WoW the only way the top 5v5 arena teams lose to a bunch of scrubs is if they get a dc, and I've seen way too many ss's and posts about 4v5 wins to even count on that.  They will dominate structured "sport"-pvp, because they play the game of pvp in a more serious fashion and typically are just better players (chicken meet egg).

And how long do you think you and your buddies from work would pay $15 a month to be cherry picked as opponents by an NBA team everytime you go to the gym, and the only interaction you have with them is they stick their ass in your face at the end of the game and then run off to see if another office team has shown up to play?

Unrestricted world PvP is a dead concept. The very, very best thing you can hope for with it is a niche game as successful as EVE. The arena system in WoW is fine, as it's really a small subset of a subset within the main game - though they really need to set up a 1v1 ladder. For world PvP in WAR, they're going to need to find a way of minimizing gank groups ability to affect pugs, newbies, the undergeared, and people who otherwise "suck". If they have to go so far as to instance every area that's PvP and split them into "Enter as a group" and "Enter as solo or pair" and keep them separate, then that's what they're going to have to do. Their choices are mitigating against gank squads or having a much, much, much smaller playerbase than they could have otherwise.