The Light Side: Population Balance
October 10, 2008 – 9:47 pm
By: Geoff
Before I begin this week’s post I feel like I should explain my tardiness. I know I promised a new “Light Side” article once a week, presumably on Mondays. Well as it turns out, that’s a bit harder than I expected it to be. Sometimes there just isn’t an issue to discuss or there isn’t really anything that comes to mind that affects explicitly the Order side of things. So, from here on out, the Light Side will remain a weekly article but it will just appear at whatever day I can find to write about something. I hope that works for you cause it’s the best I can give at the moment. Anyway! Onward to the issue at hand: population balance.
Population balance may not seem like a big issue, after all, in other popular MMOs, like World of Warcraft, the balance of a server barely seems to make a difference (trust me I was on a hugely imbalanced server). However, in Warhammer, each zone has a world pvp section that gives specific advantages to whichever side is winning thus making any population imbalances much more serious than in WoW where there is hardly any world PvP.
Now, I don’t know about you, everybody has different experiences and everybody plays at different times, but personally, I have no idea what it’s like to be in a zone that has the perks for winning in the world PvP. Every single day that I log on, Destruction has the entire territory dominated. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even bother checking the status of the zone anymore simply because I already know what’s happening; Destruction controls all points, and even if Order did mount an offense against one of them and secured it a “recapture” Destruction team twice there size is probably already on the way to re-secure it.
Likewise, simply PvPing outside a scenario has become tedious. Why bother even attempting to PvP when the likely outcome is that there are going to be twice as many of them as there are of you. It makes no sense, and, as such, I have begun to notice a sharp decline in the amount of world PvP that is actually going on.
I know this is an important issue, especially for Warhammer Online. Mythic built this game from the ground up with PvP in mind and now that it’s actually here it looks like many of the PvP options they made available to the players is going by the wayside. As such, Mythic needs to figure out why players are more apt to choosing Destruction and figure out what it can do to bring Order to the same level, otherwise, all the world pvp objectives they spent so much time promoting and implementing might as well have been for nought.
EDITOR’S NOTE: At the time of posting this, Mythic has just announced a 50% XP bonus in RvR lakes.
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Post tags: opinions, RvR, Warhammer Online
34 Responses to “The Light Side: Population Balance”
I keep hearing this whining from Order, but I keep seeing Order win majority of Scenario’s and owning more keeps on my server, Badlands.
So I think this is more whining than fact, or else I’m just on the two servers that are anomalies (I have Order on Averheim).
But from my perspective, Order is controlling the game right now and far more powerful.
By ScytheNoire on Oct 10, 2008
I think the people who make order characters are aware that they will be the underdog; I have had a lot of success my order character, both because I get into scenarios much faster than my destruction characters, and also because I feel I win a good number of them, depending on the time of day.
I haven’t gotten into Keep sieges much, I have only helped defend them twice, but I think the Order side seems to have a more mature playerbase, and are usually more organized and work better together.
I have started to enjoy playing my Order more not because we win all the time, but because when we come out from behind or are fighting against difficult odds its all that much sweeter when we prevail!
By Timm on Oct 10, 2008
How does +50% xp in open world RvR help the population issue? It encourages more people into open world RvR from both sides, and I guess there are fewer Destruction left who are not in it, but… Turning 3-on-2 to 7-on-5 is an improvement, but you still need to get the kills to get the bonus xp. The side getting farmed is not happy and can leave.
Imbalance does not make me happy on either side, because the losing team can walk off the field. Great, I am the champion, crushing these almost unaided NPCs. Oh noes, we are getting crushed, I guess I will just play scenarios where the odds are more even.
By Zubon on Oct 10, 2008
If that were the case ScytheNoire then why is it that the 7 servers that are getting the Population Bonus ALL on ORDER side…? I came from Wolfenburg and currently play on Erire Downs both servers order is badly out numbered and they aren’t even getting the exp bonus. So I can only imagine how much worst it is on other servers.
By grimrot on Oct 10, 2008
I would prefer to be on the outnumbered side of things, even if it means a reduction in your rewards over time. I just don’t feel as much of a rush when you trample a group half your size. Still, I really wanted to roll destruction, so here I am.
On the flip side though… It goes along nicely with the storyline doesn’t it? Destruction starts out by pounding order, we’ll just have to see how things turn out.
By Knash on Oct 10, 2008
Ok, I don’t get it. We both play on the same server on the same realm. Every time I log in Order is in control of everything. Destruction will go out and take it back, then the cycle repeats. There are a couple of Order guilds that pretty much run the show.
From everything I see, our server is Order heavy. RP servers tend to favor the side of good. You see it as Destruction heavy. I wonder what we’re seeing differently?
By Skwigspit on Oct 11, 2008
I started on destruction, but eventually switched to order just because scenarios pop so fast. Dwarf engineer also happens to be one of the coolest classes I’ve ever played in an MMO. A lot of the order classes are a bit on the bland side, however.
By Yeebo on Oct 11, 2008
They need to put in the cut classes and make them cool to help balance a bit. Beyond that, they will need to start buffing the underpopulated toons. What other measures, if any, did they take in DAOC?
By SleepySam on Oct 11, 2008
I believe the 1-week +20% exp/renown for underpopulated servers was targeted at population balance.
The +50% exp for open RVR seems more targeted towards encouraging more people to wander into the lakes.
By Meep on Oct 11, 2008
You can’t argue with the pop issues. All you have to do is look at the server select screen. Pheonix Throne isn’t near as bad as a lot of the others, but you will still see Order: Med, Destruction: High.Some (the ones with the bonus) were Order:Low, Dest:High. I like being the underdog, but that would just be too much.
By Tumorseal on Oct 11, 2008
My server Praag, seems to be somewhat like you describe, but it doesn’t sound as bad. I have tried to take an Order keep with a bunch of people and failed if they actually have people guarding it. Scenarios seem to be 50/50, even though a lot of destruction players I have talked to say they lose 80% of them. I just think they lose a couple win one, lose one, win a couple, and they think they are losing 80%. My server seems pretty even, although when I log on in the morning Destruction does seem to own 2/3rds of the Open RvR.
By MrTorture on Oct 11, 2008
On Wolfenburg i play destruction(Squig herder FTW) and the population seems pretty balanced to me. Then again i am in tier 2 still so i could be wrong since most people have moved to tier 3. Overall i can see how Destruction gets more favor since people think “Bad guys lets play them!”
By Velzak on Oct 11, 2008
The problem I’ve noticed seems to be with Order is that on my server at least, most of our side has already taken a losing mentality. It’s nearly impossible to get even a full warband together to attack a keep, and when you do, the class imbalance is so bad that it ends of failing most of the time, so people just loose all motivation to go attack a keep.
By Medrin on Oct 11, 2008
I tend to see population not really effect Phoenix Throne. The server seems to have a relative 1:1.2 ratio destruction over order. In fact in recent days I’ve seen order really step up the Keep takes and defence. Generally once we do take a keep a recapture team does try to come in and take it, we usually wipe them if we are defending. I think it varies really, one day destro owns almost all, then the order do, it’s very fluid.
As Mark jacobs said in a VN post there is no server that has more than a 1:2 ratio of destro vs order.
The main problem i see is destro seems to do open field RVR alot more, order tend to not as much, unsure what is the cause.
By Alchemda on Oct 11, 2008
Wolfenburg is far from balanced… Just look at the server population during peak hours before you sit in your destruction queue to log into the server.
By grimrot on Oct 11, 2008
I havent had a queue for the server for about a week now. I say that within a month that at least some servers will become more balanced.
By velzak on Oct 11, 2008
Well, at least order can rvr when they.
Overpopulation least to limited resources…resources being enemies
The reason why half the realm is already on their way when a skirmish sign show up is because we are desperate for some world rvr
By farao51 on Oct 11, 2008
Eh, it does kinda suck that order has so much less. On my server (bretonnia) world pvp is pretty hard to find because destruction almost ALWAYS has every point. I forgot to mention that i play destruction. i wanted to play order but my RL friends wanted destruction. =/
By ardo123 on Oct 11, 2008
Hochland (ORVR) also suffers from a high Destruction population. Time between T3 scenarios can be a pain (even with the new 18+ allowed). I sure hope they put a bonus on Order for our server. Its almost sad that in War, Destruction is the new “Alliance”.
By Felyza on Oct 12, 2008
I dont want to comment to much as i never see any of this! im also on badlands and the other night it took us around 4 hours to finaly take a keep being held by order
it was mad fun but man i would go to say that order chars are 2x as powerful in a group. so 1 6 man team of order could easily take on 1 6 man team of destruction. but now this is another blog for u in the future. but here on the badlands the top guilds are order and we run around with our heads cut off all the time while they swoop in and farm us 
that is very intresting though to think of each server being completly dif? someone should write a blog about that as well or just research the war realm site when its working
[a/z] box
By XBloodBlade on Oct 12, 2008
I am on Bretonnia, I see something very similar on our server.
It is almost guaranteed that keeps and battlefield objectives are destruction.
Destro is chomping at the bit to get any piece of Order flesh in open RvR lakes. Keeps are taken back swiftly. Order and smart guilds are able to take them long enough for us to ocassionally get some reknown gear and training.
We do very well in scenarios though. At least the ones that have a full crew. In tier 3 scenarios, I had 3 of 6 of them end because of population imbalance within 2 minutes.
By realhawker on Oct 13, 2008
I´ve noticed that order side isn´t too imbalanced ratio; but its leveling a little bit slower.
When i was T- 1 all RvR was destro, when most people hit T- 2 it goes to order; and so happened in T2 and T3
I hoppe we get more balanced al 40s; if not the myth politics of bonuses will be a great bost.
By Jambalicha on Oct 13, 2008
Do you think that Destro controls the open world BO and Keeps because they are more determined and organized or just that they are all bored sitting in longer queues than their Order counterparts?
I know on all my Destruction characters I would queue up from a warcamp and then go out looking for trouble in the RvR lakes. I imagine that many other players are doing the same.
By Centuri on Oct 13, 2008
Centuri,
I think its a bit of both…
Order is used to heavily doing scenarios, it was more of a fair fight. Even if population balances out, this is a good place to be.
There is almost no wait in Order queues too.
By realhawker on Oct 13, 2008
There’s a WoW analog to this, which is that in Outlands, the world RvR was pretty much 100% of the time in Alliance hands, as they outnumbered Horde on most servers. Halaa was probably the biggest annoyance, because you could never access the goods. If you ever did get together a group to go take an area (which was unheard-of other than Halaa), it would be recaptured within the hour. I think Alli would see “something was happening” and come from far and wide to see it, it was so rare.
When they added in the PvP dailies, you then started seeing it happen more and more, but they still pretty much reverted to Alli. It did encourage more action, however you also saw an odd thing - when they incented the capture of something, there was no reason to defend it. In fact, ppl would avoid defending it, because if it was captured by the other side, then you could in turn cap it and finish your daily. Not sure how to set up that correctly to get ppl to do what you want, but more action didn’t necessarily mean more PvP.
By Mike on Oct 13, 2008
I realize the announcement : “The experience earned for killing an enemy player in an RvR lake will be increased by +50%.” was intended to bring more people to the RVR Lakes, but it will really just give the overpopulated side even “more” numbers, it does not help the underdog at all. It does bring more people to the lakes, just not more of the ‘right’ people.
Mark had a post that they can’t make the game all things to all people, it really is impossible.
They’ve implemented xp and renown bonuses to realms that were under populated - good, but when every server has Order listed as below or even with Destro, something else is amiss.
Many bloggers, forum goers, soothsayers, etc… have commented that they need to bring a class to the Order side that has that gritty, dirty, powerful, dark feel to it. If there was something equivalent to a Maruader or Chosen on the Order side, I’m guessing more people would be willing to roll it. I play Order side, and it’s too ‘clean’ for WAR.
By Seri on Oct 13, 2008
Come to Skull Throne, Order atack the Maw every night after securing Prag and chaos wastes in seconds.
By lapetra on Oct 14, 2008
The problem with population imbalance in a 2-sided PvP game is it can and will cascade pretty damn quick. People have gone down the list of reasons people might pick Destruction over Order, but they’ve left out the most important one.
Order is outnumbered on most servers. There are less Order.
That does influence players just as much as classes and races do. And in a PvP game, people want to WIN. And if they see one side as being hopeless, chances are they’re not gonna roll that side.
So they roll the overpopulated side and tip the scales further. And each person that comes after them that does this adds to the effect…
By Neri on Oct 14, 2008
There seem to be a number of reasons for population imbalances;
1)
Order are the same races as every other game and it starts to get old, wheras the Destruction side has the human/elf races with a twist. People who play MMO’s choosing Destruction get the familiar races but a different angle so its comfortable but new.
2)
Tanks - anyone wanting to play a tank wants a big hulk of meat with spikes and large weapons. Order just lack this, a dwarf thats as wide as it is tall, and a effeminate elf in a dress. Warrior types therefore roll BO and CHosen
3)
Mounts - roll Destruction, have 5 alts and 5 different mounts, Order have hte Horse or Gyrocopter… why they did not think to spread the 6 types of mounts so it was 3 per faction I have no idea.
4)
Hype - and assumptions. people always roll the @good guys’ yet as WoW has proven on every new PvP server Horde out number Alliance. People going to WaR see the imbalance, think that the better players went to Horde and want to get in on the percived mirror in WaR.
There are lots of other reasons, but I think those are the main ones - hell even I wanted to go Destrution and everyday I log onto my Order toons and see the sea of red I think that mayne someday soon I will join them.
By Bia on Oct 14, 2008
Odd that everyone is dancing around the main reason for population imbalance. Gross class imbalance.
For example. I play an ironbreaker and I have fought in quite a few scenarios. Chaos healers are far tougher than ours. DoK can out damage Witchhunters and Shadow Warriors and heal better than Runepriests or Archmages.
I have beaten many DoK to within an inch of their lives (this takes MUCH longer than one woudl imagine against a cloth wearing class) and without fair at 15% or so they stop attacking to get some SP back and insta-heal themselves for 40% health and are back in it.
Engineer and Ironbreaker are the only tow order classes that I know are worth a damn. Witchunter and shadow warriors are a joke. They are not even true dual wielders.
I fear what we have here is a case of the devs saying “Ooooh I love DoK or Ohhh Squig Hearder is neat” and their bias is blinding them to the numbers.
XP bonuses will never work. Class balance MIGHT work.
By Blarg on Oct 14, 2008
This is really a concerning issue. Assuming the pie chart is correct, Order on all servers somewhere between “somewhat outnumbered” and “completely screwed”. This means WAR is going to shift towards small-scale PvP (Scenarios), which isn’t exactly what war was made for or balanced for.
I think Mythic could save this, but it has to be done before the free month expires.
By FenixStryk on Oct 15, 2008
Well XP bonuses are all said and good…until people hit 40 then it doesn’t matter and the imbalance is just going to be even more staggering. right now out tier 4 is semi balanced but the one time we made it to their fort i think every destro on the server came to defend. whereas when they made it to our fort we barely had a warband there to defend (lucky us they for some reason didn’t push on into it).
The bonuses will needd to eventually be dmg/rp/hp bonuses to balance it IMO.
By Kevin on Oct 16, 2008
It’s so pathetic, but after playing a dozen t1 scenerios on an alt earlier to day and not having SINGLE freaking one without at least one naked high elf female(One had FOUR) I have the answers.
Hot chicks.
Or hot clothes for the already hot chicks.
So sad, but so true.
By Mitsubachi on Oct 16, 2008
Played destruction to level 24 and Order to level 13 atm after switching sides.
All I do as Order is play PvP battlefields - the queue is considered long if its more than 3 minutes. As destruction the queue was around an hour or more.
Naturally Order win most of the battles because we have had 10 times the experience but I expect it will be evened out in world PvP because of sheer numbers.
If you are unhappy as Destruction then just reroll - worked wonders for us.
By Krym on Oct 20, 2008