I stand by my views on the subject.

Originally Posted by Krulltak
Good Gork, you people never understand.

This site has hardly ANY foreshadowing of the future WAR population. Why? Because a few thousand is not even one percent of a few million.

The same thing happened with WOW and any other game. People on the pre-release forums expected the “big bad guys” to win (most of them planning to play such characters) but come release the “seemingly good” guys flooded everything in a ridiculous manner. It happened in DAOC, it happened in WOW, in EQ, and I’m damn sure it will happen in WAR, albeit with at least a slight shift due to the awesomeness of all twenty four classes.

By Krulltak Gobslasha on Jun 6, 2008

“so we can simply pretend the current poll-takers are indicative of what you might find on an average server.”

Thats a very big assumption. Even if the poll garnered 10,000 votes, you have to realize that it only represents a small portion of the players, and that portion will be extremely skewed towards hardcore gamers and die-hard Warhammer fans.

By Tholal on Jun 6, 2008

Great analysis! Thanks for doing it so I don’t have to!

The biggest caveat here is that polls are hardly ever 100% accurate, and polls taken from a very specific demographic (namely, “MMO gamers who are dedicated to WAR so much they’ve signed up on the WHA forums”) even less so. Polls and popular opinion on WoW, prior to release, indicated that almost everyone was going to roll Horde. We see how that turned out.

As you said, the majority of WAR players won’t be there on Day One — they’ll be the group arriving post-release. Elves and humans have statistically proven incredibly popular in every MMO that offers them as a choice (it’s the most “familiar”). And we’ve yet to see a lot of info on many of these classes, past a few meager descriptions.

It’s an interesting poll, but the chips really are very much up in the air. I agree that everyone’s holding their breath to see how Mythic handles server/class balance.

By Syp on Jun 6, 2008

“Let the bodies hit the floor”

I gots plenty of grenades for all you greenskins

By Brotik on Jun 6, 2008

I played Alliance in WoW because the general consensus during beta was that Horde was going to outnumber Alliance.

I am going to stick with Chaos and let the chips fall where they may, but I think things will even out (or the numbers may completely flip) in retail.

I have not been a part of a game where tanks and support outnumber DPS, but that seems to be what we are looking at so far according to the current numbers on the poll.

Overall, I’d agree that things will be a lot different in retail, but it will be interesting to see how it actually pans out.

By Suchey on Jun 6, 2008

More for me to kill IMHO.

By heartless_ on Jun 6, 2008

As others have already said, it is far too early to tell how the population will turn out. At the very least I consider anyones interest in a career highly suspect till they actually play it. For example someone could say they love the Goblin Shaman now, but end up playing a Witch Hunter as their main.

The other issue to contend with to add more complexity in, is the folk polled are people who will be ending up on different server types (and in different server farms). This poll may overall show a Destruction bias, but those polled are split across NA/EU boundaries. In addition some may roll on RP servers, others on Core servers others still on Open-RvR servers. Wheee.

I do not envy the folks at Mythic grappling with this issue as it will likely not be till a couple months after launch before good population data can be established.

By Alluvian on Jun 6, 2008

For the sake of discussion let’s take this as if this was a scientific poll, (which as Kullrak points out again and again, it isn’t and it isn’t representative of the WAR community as a whole). A 60/40 split in realm population is not a significant imbalance issue. It is not enough to draw the conclusions which you did based upon the data.

By Kermichil on Jun 6, 2008

What interests me in all of this is that healers are doing pretty well in the polls. That’s a good sign, imo.

By Keen on Jun 6, 2008

As others have mentioned, it’s way too early to get your panties in a wad about population differences.

Personally, I was hell bent on rolling a dwarf until I saw their mounts, now I’m going with my back up plan of gobbo shaman.

By Kudzu on Jun 6, 2008

“I think it’s fair to say we can perform somewhat accurate poll analysis of Destruction vs. Order population balance because there have been over 3000 votes cast. Your typical WAR server at launch will likely support 3000-5000 players, so we can simply pretend the current poll-takers are indicative of what you might find on an average server.”

I clicked on the poll to vote in it, and it wouldn’t let me. I then figured out that I had to start an account in order to vote, which I wasn’t going to do.

You cannot make the assumption that you are describing. Only a very specific type of gamer posts of forums, and all this data shows is that that type of gamer is likely to play destruction. It indicates nothing about how the races will be populated at launch. You CANNOT assume that the opinions of 3000-5000 people on a forum are indicative of the entire audience for a game that hasn’t been released. Bad statistics.

By Dan on Jun 6, 2008

Also, I’m playing hammerer. Too bad I’m too lazy to voice my opinion

By Dan on Jun 6, 2008

Forums never respresent the attitude of the majority of its gamers. It also never will.

3000 people out of 600,000 beta applicants alone would not be enough to determine any kind of population spread.

This doesn’t confirm anything except out of the non lurkers at WAlliance who saw the poll and actually voted there will be more Destruction.

Hell if you bothered to accurately census WoW’s official forums you’d find a crap ton of Undead Rogues

By Bo on Jun 6, 2008

Weeks or months ago, Barnett said that they did have an imbalance in early beta. He said the playerbase initially favored the Destruction faction by a significant number… but then the players realized that the Order faction was also crazy, brutal, and fun, and the populations evened out. In other words, WAR fans initially favored Destruction because of their expectations going in; but after they spent a little time in the game, their perception of Order changed.

If you think about it, the same basic phenomenon probably happens with every MMO: expectations meet reality, and players choose different options than they planned to.

Mythic’s also talked about the incredible metrics system they have, providing the devs with a ridiculous amount of info for balance purposes. They’re still tweaking the game, and there’s months of beta to go. And, as you mentioned, WAR has some gameplay systems designed specifically to correct imbalances.

Don’t get me wrong. I think polls like this one are meaningful, and I’m sure the WAR team is paying close attention to it. But a 20% divide among people who haven’t played the game isn’t anything to worry about.

By Aaron on Jun 7, 2008

Good analysis.

I’m not convinced that this represents the average player, I remember during the WoW beta that the majority of people said they planned to play horde. And PvPers always prefer the more badass/evil side.

The big question I get out of this is ‘How are they going to keep the numbers balanced’ and it’s not something that Mythic have really answered yet. Even if this poll is wrong in all respects, there’s a good chance that order/chaos won’t be present in equal numbers if you leave players to their own devices. It was a huge problem in DaoC, is it going to be an issue here?

By Spinks on Jun 7, 2008

I seem to remember that Barnett was talking about the first racial pairing (Chaos and Empire?), Snafzg. It might not be as balanced with the pair they’re testing now.

In the first 6 months of Star Wars: Galaxies, good always outnumbered evil… 3:1 on some servers (including mine). I could be wrong, but I think good outnumbers evil in every MMO. Kyle at Massively says that many of those games had mostly evil populations before going live. So perhaps people interested in beta testing gravitate toward darker races and classes, for whatever reason, while paying customers gravitate to roles of good.

By Aaron on Jun 7, 2008

@Snafzg: Thanks a lot for pulling the data together into a more usable form (I may be a geek, but I think the Google Spreadsheet is fun to play around with!)

I think this poll may be an accurate reflection of the class distribution we see during the headsart (although I don’t wonder if the popularity of Goblin Shaman doesn’t have something to do with the recent Massively article that made Shaman sound really cool …) However, given the historical appeal of humans (and elves) in MMOs, I think there’s no question that a few weeks after release we’ll see more Empire than this poll indicates.

@Keen: I completely agree that this poll bodes very well for healer populations. At least the serious fans of the game are willing to believe Mythic when they say, “leveling a healer will not be the painful ordeal you’ve experienced in other games”.

By Lepinski on Jun 7, 2008

I must agree with Bo here, since the only 3000 ppl from the forums are not enough to have a clear result. If i’m not wrong, same thign was going for WoW too, at the forums horde was much more than allis, but when the game lunched its wasn’t the same.

By Greek on Jun 8, 2008

Hardcore gamers aren’t the only reason why these pre-release polls are practically useless. Another very important subset will change the balance, namely women. Women seem to hang out on these type of forums far less than men do. Once the game comes out a lot of men are able to play together with their significant other. Since Destruction has actual restrictions on gender this will surely have an effect on how many people will play Destruction or Order. When your significant other wants to play a female character, which most of them do, they will persuade their partner to play on Order instead of Destruction. And that is another very big reason why “good guys” tend to be played more. So the polls such as on WHA are really useless to determine the actual balance come release.

By dutch_gamer on Jun 8, 2008

Here’s an updated version of the spreadsheet as of 19:00 GMT on Sunday June 8. This version also includes archetype comparisons (e.g. 27.8% of respondents chose healers):

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWq_uGJR3oyxHpUpE46xmIg

By Lepinski on Jun 8, 2008

One might naively hypothesize that players in Warhammer would choose a career by independently selecting their favorite race and their favorite archtype. If this were the case, then we would expect that since 20.9% favor Greenskins and 22.2% favor Melee DPS that 4.64% of players would choose Choppas.

Now, in the case of Choppas, this hypothesis is essentially correct (at least as of Sunday afternoon). That is, the popularity of Choppas can be fully explained by the popularity of Greenskins and the (un)popularity of Melee DPS. However, this is not true for all classes. Given the relative unpopularity of High Elves (compared to Greenskins), we would not ‘expect’ the White Lion to be more popular than the Choppa, but in the poll more people chose White Lion than Choppa! Therefore, there must be something particularly attractive about White Lions that makes them more popular than would be ‘expected’ for a High Elf Melee DPS class.

The following is a list of careers ordered based on their deviation from ‘expected’ popularity. (Classes at the top of the list are more popular than ‘expected’, classes on the bottom are less popular than ‘expected’). The numbers given are the difference between actual numbers from the poll (on Sunday afternoon) and the ‘expected’ numbers based on race and archetype popularity:

White Lion: 51
Shaman: 33
Chosen: 32
Sorceress: 25
Witch Hunter: 20
Warrior Priest: 20
Blackguard: 19
Shadow Warrior: 18
Engineer: 15
Black Orc: 7
Runepriest: 6
Disciple: -2
Choppa: -4
Magus: -8
Ironbreaker: -8
Zealot: -11
Hammerer: -12
Marauder: -13
Bright Wizard: -13
Swordmaster: -23
KotBS: -27
Squig Herder: -37
Witch Elf: -42
Archmage: -46

Note: From a Public Relations point of view, I think in the coming months Mythic needs to demonstrate to the community that the classes at the bottom of the list of really cool and fun to play!

By Lepinski on Jun 8, 2008

A 3000 person poll is pretty extensive. Most presidential polls only use 1000 or less people and ‘tend’ to be close to the actual results. However, all 3000 people who participated (100%) are signed up for a specific forum. It would be like conducting a national survey and calling between 11am and 12pm. You will most likely be surveying stay at home moms/dads and college students and proceed to claim that this represents the entire country. I am quite certain the number of people who visit forums will not be an accurate representation of the actual population of WAR. This is a poll of the minority player. The data is borderline useless. One may say that it shows that more dedicated players will be on the destruction side. These players on Destruction may potentially be more skilled/committed than the Order players.

By Travis on Jun 8, 2008

I don’t think it’s a good idea to infer that the population on a forum is anything like the greater mass of future WAR players.

By Earnst Dodge on Jun 9, 2008

There’s some fantastic number-crunching going on here, and it’s really interesting to read.

Like many others, I feel that a poll on what is perhaps the most active forums might not be totally indicative, but it does highlight the classes and races that could do with a bit of a push - which I’m sure we’ll see as more info trickles through

By arbitrary on Jun 9, 2008

Most of the fan forums out there are leaning Destruction, I hardly think that 3k out of just the beta signups(730k+) is really representing anything but your sites choices.
Open beta might be a better view, but even that is people willing to put down for CE.
Once launch comes I can almost bet money that these numbers are so far off it’s funny.
Fan forums are far far away from the general MMO audience since WOW brought in such a big crowd of casual players who don’t come to forums.

By t on Jun 9, 2008

Personally I view it as a good sign that destruction is ahead in numbers, as generally the “good” side is more popular with more casual fans or new players, although it likely means very little..

If I remember in WoW, Undead was the most popular race in beta, but the “good” side ended up dominating almost every server..

WAR has a huge advantage with being able to achieve a better balance imho however, as they have humans and elves on both sides, which are often the most popular choices.

By nazgum on Jun 9, 2008

Dedicated fan wanna play Destruction. I’d imagine the people who pick the game up in the store just because it looks good will choose Order. And just to mention, the analysis of the Bright Wizard vs the Sorceress is incorrect. The two classes are parallel, both using the same “blow yourself up if you overdo it” mechanic. The only major difference is the visuals.

By RagingMarauder on Jun 9, 2008

The poll numbers do reflect the general feeling that I’ve been getting from the various boards that I read. But there are a few things to consider.

1) Most of what I have read about classes so far tends to make Destruction sound both cooler and more powerful than Order. If this is true Mythic has programmed themselves a dog game and people will flee in droves from a one sided game.

2) The people in this poll are the kind hardcode gamers and fanbois that will spend time reading these boards for a game that isn’t even out yet and does not come close to representing a real world population. A lot of you probably haven’t bathed in a month.

3) For those people saying the same kinds of polls said that Horde would outnumber Alliance in WoW, I would suggest that you keep in mind that the Undead took a major nerf to their racial abilities just before release. I’m fairly sure that if they had left in things like complete immunity to some of the best CC in the game the Undead would have indeed been massively overpopulated.

4) The one thing we can’t know at this time is what will be the overpowered class/ability at release. We all know that there will be one. Let’s face it if Mythic misplaces a decimal point and KoTBS end up with 10 times the HP of any other class in the game you’ll find that half the servers will be playing this class. Conversely, if Mythic takes in these polls and decides that they have to do something to curtail the overpopulation of Goblin Shaman’s by cutting their HP’s in half you’ll see very few Goblin Shaman’s.

All in all I think if all things remain equal between now and release Destruction will start out with a much larger population than Order, but population will balance out a little better after a few months. Assuming of course that Destruction really aren’t as much cooler and more powerful than Order than they seem to make them sound.

By Lytek on Jun 9, 2008

What’s really odd is Lepinski’s stats, if they are correct. Every class has a mirror on the other faction. Shamans, which are second on the list, are the mirrors to arch mages, and they are all the way on the bottom. Iron breakers, which are at -7 points, are the mirror to black orcs at 8. That’s only a few of them. So really it’s not the mechanic people don’t like. It’s just that some of the classes seem cooler looking. The mechanics are really very close.

By Anonymous on Jun 9, 2008

@Anonymous:

I think you’re absolutely correct. In my mind, even though this poll just represents a few thousand fans at one fan site, it still raises two big questions:

1) What’s wrong with the Squig Herder? Greenskins are the most popular race; Destruction is more popular than Order; Ranged DPS is more popular than Melee DPS overall; So why is the Squig Herder one of the two least popular destruction classes (and why is it less popular than the White Lion)?

2) What’s wrong with the Archemage? High Elves are the most popular Order race; Healers are the most popular archetype overall; Shaman (who mirror the Archmage mechanic) are the most popular class overall; So why is the Archmage one of the two least popular Order Classes (and why is it the least popular Order healer)?

P.S. Here’s an updated spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pWq_uGJR3oyyqG7yeBsVQCw

By Lepinski on Jun 10, 2008

@Snafzg:

Yeah, completely agree about the marketing of the Archmage. Given all the work that Mythic has put into each and every class they seriously need to release something before the game goes live that makes people say “Wow, Archmage is a kick-a## cool class!” … They’ve done this with other classes, but at the moment the Archmage needs some marketing love.

With regard to the Squig Herders, I’m just perplexed. Mythic has released all sorts of cool squig pictures, and the fans love the Greenskins; yet Squig Herders are left at the bottom hanging out with Witch Elves. I wouldn’t expect a pet class to be at the top of the Destruction list, but hey can’t they at least beat out Choppas? (Mythic has yet to give me any reason to believe Choppas are cool ).

By Lepinski on Jun 10, 2008

I dont agree your post regarding to desto will out number order. It is very wrong tought but i respect it. Reason i said it is wrong tought Becaouse everyone has a diffrent taste. Lots of people i know in real life gonna go for order. One of my freinds thinks dwarfs look so cool which i dont agree with. I hate dwarfs in general not only in WAR but as I said it is a matter of tase. I deffinetley go for a desto class. Those number are you gave up there came from beta tests so that does not mean anything. People are trying all races and yes desto should look more bad ass it is the evil side it has been always like that. Even in star wars movies look at the dark side…. they always have better looking costumes and light sabers. Thats the way it is my friend :d

By awaken on Jun 11, 2008

They should make those dark elves uglier if this poll proves to be accurate; then I’m sure the populations will even out. Or make the Dwarf Engineer (”Represent!”) ridiculously overpowered. Now that I think about it, I prefer the second option. =P

By Adam Tiler on Jun 11, 2008

Ok, I hear all this about how it’s skewed due to the fanboi’s being more apt to be evil. Well, let’s take a peek at what happened with World of Warcraft, shall we?

Here’s a link to a poll that was out right before WoW was released:

http://www.worldofwar.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-280043.html

QUOTE:
”
Human - 16.56%
Dwarf - 11.56%
Gnome - 6.51%
Night Elf - 23.60%
Orc - 9.60%
Tauren - 9.75%
Troll - 8.23%
Undead - 14.18%
Total Votes - 3,364 = 100%

Now I’ll use both polls to compare the Alliance and Horde in population.

Alliance - 58.23%
Horde - 41.77%
Total Votes - 3,364 = 100%”

Does this not come somewhat close to what current populations look like?

Let’s not discount the polls too much here.

One idea that I’d like to help keep each server balanced would be for you to enter in at character creation which server type you want, then which faction you wish to play. Then have the game figure out the best server to place you on for balance purposes. Many folks aren’t affiliated with large guilds and will go wherever the game funnels them. Let the game help keep the servers at least semi-balanced.

By Sadrak on Jun 11, 2008

Oh, it certainly shouldn’t force you to a server if you know which one you want to join. But it should funnel the undecided.

I think the WoW class poll had about the same numbers that this WH poll has. It really turned out pretty close to that balance upon launch. If anything, the current poll is a touch early for us to really tell what’s going to happen. My personal feeling is that it will be heavily Destruction but we’ll see. I think a poll that’s perhaps within a month of release will be a far better way to gauge what will happen.

By Sadrak on Jun 12, 2008

Other games had imbalances that favored the good guys because:

A: most times the humans were on this side, there easiest to identify with so are played heavily, here humans start on both sides.

B: one side has a monopoly on “pretty races” such as in WoW. Dark elves here have the monopoly on pretty, so that is gone too.

But now people will be coming from the most popular mmo to date, and they feel that the good guys in pvp = unskilled newbs to be rolled. So the majority of alliance leaving wow will flee to destruction to avoid noobs.

For this reason alone I will be rolling order.

By Jargo on Jun 12, 2008

Another thing to look at is server balance in WoW for PVP servers. You’ll see that the Horde has 57% of the population on those servers:

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php?serverid=-1&factionid=-1&minlevel=70&maxlevel=70&servertypeid=2

I think that’s going to be similar to how WH shakes out. The folks who love WoW and are fearful of PVP won’t even bother trying WH. The hardcore PVP WoW folks will likely steer clear of Order due to their experiences as Alliance. Plus WoW already has shown PVPers like the “evil” side.

By Sadrak on Jun 12, 2008

Keep in mind through all of this. You are the people that will also skew the final numbers on population. Throughout several pvp based games I’ve played I notice that people tend to want the underdog side to an extent. With the amount of people anticipating such a game I think it will be hard to nail down populations.

Given that a large % of players are not affiliated with large guilds, I still think there are some VERY large guilds (ours for example) that tend to bring a large chunk of people with them which can effect population on a server by server comparison.

The other part of the equation here is that if they don’t take this issue seriously to start they will have to retro-fit fixes by opening new servers and allowing transfers etc.

I know our server in wow (Alleria) was one of the first on the list, therefore was overpopulated from the start and still is today. We need to make sure they plan ahead and don’t make server names nefarious for poor performance and overpopulation.

A server suggestion system would be ideal, but I also believe that they could implement a maximum # of accounts to connect to a server. What this would do is allow people that may have open slots to still create characters on that server, but not new accounts to keep population in check.

By Drye on Jun 12, 2008

I also made a little spread sheets about warhammer alliance poll :
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p2RqwCxSG1nvY1eLRbKlDcg

I’m updating it on daily base.

By napox on Jun 15, 2008

I’m going to play the hell out of Order and Chaos both.

One suggestion for Mythic would be take a note from Blizzard’s page - let there be incentive to play the underpopulated faction.

In WoW the incentive to decrease battleground queue times sent PVPers to Horde in droves. This served to balance the disparity somewhat, but also ensured that there was incentive to play the underrepresented faction.

if 1) Players have a reason to go to the minority and/or 2) the play experience is not diminished by playing the minority then I dont see the initial draw to Destruction impacting the game negatively.

By WorldEater on Jun 17, 2008

I agree with many of the points on statistics but I also have to say.. I’ve been following this game closely for some time now and I only just this day heard about this poll. I would think there are quite a few out there like me. Who signed up for the beta, haven’t got in yet, follow the game closely,don’t sign up for every poll, and still plan on playing dwarfs. On another note if we assume hardcore gamers will play the more evil side at first.. couldn’t we also assume they will level more quickly and find them selves wanting to try the other side on some other server? Its not like every person who signs up will be on all the same server or with the same character all the time. Who knows the mechanics.. there are simply to many variables at this point: the age of the players on each side may determine what times of day people play. For instance if younger people play order they may not have careers that keep them from playing during the day but they may have to sleep earlier. That’s just one metric to consider.

By Zer0 on Jun 19, 2008

http://warstatistic.net46.net/

Here is statistics page which doesn’t show such imbalance (yet?). True there is not so many votes but it is still open so maybe until WAR launch we will see truth about imbalance.

By Nisley on Jun 22, 2008

Hmmm it is very interresting… But in general we forget alot of stuff to condsider…

I quit wow coz i got tired of the repeating playstyle… I know 100% im gonna play war.. haven’t signed up or anything or voted, the day itll come out ill probaly be working picking it up the nearest day i got time..

I did play wow soo much i managed to level 4 charss to 70 and do some end game content through some rough time… I bet we all know we wont be playing the first char we make all the time I almost never played it after went 60 then again 70…

and I know i will play order HE SW and I know I will draw at least 5 - 8 players with me… old “play” mates from wow and family brothers and sisters.. and we all played alli.. in wow and most of the younger pop on servers do play the good guys….

i just think its absolutely impossible to base on that count you did with less than 0.5% of the people who now are signed up for a beta (6-700.000) and i could imagine just the day it launches we will see plus 1.000.000 online…

By Tenzhi on Jun 22, 2008

and anyway ido hope the chaos side will be swarming i like playing the underdog as 1 mentioned…

By Tenzhi on Jun 22, 2008

WHELP, this poll and post was vindicated. These exact problems have come about in-game. Not only are the destruction classes more popular, they are often stronger than their Order mirrors. It does seem like the Dev’s put more love into the destruction side of things, even the destruction areas seem more detailed (this is very subjective).

Order does have a couple strong classes:
Ironbreaker
Bright Wizard

But the others tend to favor destruction

By James on Oct 8, 2008