Uncle Order Needs YOU!

We all knew from the beginning that building a RvR-centric MMO was going to be a tremendous challenge for Mythic, especially as they expanded the scope from Dark Age of Camelot to the sheer size of Warhammer Online's RvR playgrounds. Yet the greatest fear, from the early days of beta to the post-launch days of now, was that this whole premise would rise or fall based on one simple factor: population balance.

Sure, Mythic could do all they could to stack the odds in their favor: instanced (and balanced) scenarios, mirroring career mechanics between the two factions, capping servers to encourage balanced populations, and trying to make the case that either faction was worth the time of the player. They knew that statistically, MMO players tend to go for the "good" faction, and therefore gave Destruction more publicity and some of the coolest-looking classes in the game (while Mythic might claim that they didn't engage in favoritism between the factions, the fact is that that is the impression they gave as Destruction -- and Greenskin in particular -- got the bigger slice of the publicity pie prior to the game launch). But they can't control human nature or strong-arm players into playing a race or career or faction that doesn't interest them.

And now, post-launch, Destruction is the majority favorite of players. I have to eat my hat for being (initially, at least) wrong in this regard: I assumed that once we got more casuals in the game than hardcores, the balance would shift to Order's favor. So far, that's not happening.

Right now it's not a massive issue, for the most part. Annoyances such as longer scenario queue times for Destruction, or larger login queues for certain servers/factions are grimaced at, then accepted. Most RvR in the first month is taking place in scenarios, not in the open world RvR or with keep/fortress/capital city sieges, where the population imbalance isn't felt as hard. But this looks to change, and fairly soon, as the T4 population grows and the lesson that size -- or perhaps quantity -- does matter. People are nervous and fearful that the end game simply won't be fun when they get there, if it's such a lopsided battle (even Destruction players are saying this), and nobody wants to see an early exodus before the kinks are worked out.

A couple dev quotes to chew on for now:

"All throughout Beta we saw a disproportionate popularity on the Destruction side. We know from previous games we've worked on, the good guys tend to be significantly more popular. Everyone wants to save the princess and have shiny armor. Even though we don't offer any princess saving in our game, we knew that the good guys were going to wind up generally more popular in the long term.

What we're seeing now is that people looked at server populations on launch day and made a choice. "Oh, I've heard bad guys are really popular, I want to be on the side that's most popular." They chose Destruction characters initially." ~ Josh Drescher

"Our first really 'major' patch isn't for a while, you'll start seeing information and updates on what that will contain as we get closer to its release. For now we intend to continue addressing what we can as we work on nailing down as many remaining problems as possible." ~ James Nichols

Josh represents the "Order will eventually attract more (casual) players than Destruction" camp, which will be proven right or wrong with time.  James informs us that any substantial patch, potentially with additional classes or solutions for the population imbalance, is a ways off.

So with this uneven mixture brewing, I want to pose the question: how can Mythic entice players over to Order, at least to the point where it's more or less evenly balanced between the two factions?  Maybe it's not even possible, but here are my answers:

1. We've said this before, but we'll say it again: Order needs the two cut classes back, stat.  They need a viable Empire tank that looks just as cool as Black Orcs/Chosen -- but in their own way -- that will attract more players to Order who are looking to tank but don't like the look or feel of Ironbreakers/Swordmasters.  And: Slayers, Slayers, Slayers.  I won't stop this chant.  It's an incredibly popular class in Warhammer, it fits the mold of dwarf melee DPS, and it would give Order players another "whoa" class to combat Destruction's myriad bad boys.


2. Make sure that Order doesn't have any gimped classes.  This is true for both sides, but every career that players perceive is less-than-useful on the Order side are more players who are looking for fun elsewhere.


3. Give players an incentive to roll the underpopulated faction on a particular server (which is probably Order).  Let's say that if a server population is about 5-10%+ unbalanced for a certain period of time, then the underpopulated side would receive a fun, usable goody (like a resurrection scroll that you could use three times in combat to rez yourself).  Never underestimate the power of freebies!


4. Promote and advertise Order just as much as Destruction.  Maybe Mythic thinks they're already doing this, but they really need to up the profile of Order, particularly as tough-as-nails "good" guys instead of the goody-two-shoes in comparison with the baby murderers of Destruction.

What say you?