X-Realming is Good for the game.

[Hausherr235]

High and Dark Elves vs Empire and Dwarves vs. Chaos and Greenskins

Two-faction PVP games will never work in terms of having equal numbers on both sides.

But speaking from my personal experience with other three-faction games (Rift, GW2, ESO), the two weaker factions just don't ally to fight the largest one.
Instead, the weakest faction usually gets farmed by both more populated factions, because it is the easiest way to personal rewards for the individual player.

I don't know how DAOC did it, so I would like to hear some veterans on this topic. If it actually "balanced itself", how exactly?

In my opinion, these points would be required to somewhat balance large-scale PVP:

Spoiler:

• - three (or more) factions
• - access to all races no matter the faction & access to all classes/abilities no matter the race (this would obviously kill the lore, but nobody could ever complain about "op" classes on the other faction)
• - NO xp, rr and loot rewards for killing/capturing the losing faction(s)
• - increased rewards (or even only rewards) for killing/capturing the leading faction (while still keeping an incentive to be the winning faction, I honestly don't know how to do this )
• - probably some shooter-like autobalance so it's not 300 vs 30 vs 3 (ignores guilds/parties, rewards for voluntarily switching factions etc.)
• - not being able to rotate zones and capture an empty zone while the opposite faction does the same thing somewhere else.
• - ...and stuff like that, I kind of brainstormed this, so please excuse me if some points may be stupid or had been discussed before

Since most of this is never going to happen in RoR, X-Realming is here to stay. The only thing we as players can do against the ones who love joining the winning team is get our likeminded friends, switch to the less populated side and try to give them the hardest time possible. WAAAGH!!!

[Gobtar]

@TKlees I agree with 3 factions, but I would rather them be fleshed out, and have real story driving them, than using the the End Times as a precadent. Will it require more time and effort, yes definitely. It will be worth it in the long run, especially if there are new classes to play. It will be much easier to balance 3 well balanced factions than 3 vastly outbalanced factions.

Edit: I see your edit, thanks.

[Sulorie]

The current rvr system promotes xrealming for bad reasons. Fix the rvr in a way where the drawbacks of a 2 faction system won't matter.

[Sizer]

I still have yet to see any evidence of "xrealming", ie everyone switching to the winning side after they lose. Sure, there might be an even 50v50 fight in rvr, and 10 minutes later its 90v10, but that means nothing. 40 people from the losing side might have gone to another zone or to low tiers, while 40 people from the winning side might have been afk in the wc/city, heard of a flip incoming, and went into the lakes. Thats exactly how it worked on live before you could play both sides, one faction would wipe and disappear, yet people didnt whine about xrealming, because they knew there was more than one zone in the game.

Not that the lack of "realm pride" isnt a problem, it would be great to have the server like it was during the first two years, where you actually cared if your realm flipped zones, but thats a population issue.

[Gobtar]

Lets say we live in a perfect world, where no one switches accounts to play the winning side. Players will still rage quit and leave a WB when experiencing defeat after defeat, often going to do SCs or log onto an alt or just log off. This problem can be compounded with new players joining the winning side.

We don't need X-realming in the game to have these issues. If we have 3 seperate factions that can ally depending on who is dominating we can see more of a balance that one side doesn't hold too much power. It will need some brainstorming and troubleshooting in order to this idea fleshed out, bit I think it has some merit.

[rybiz]

Can somebody actually explain me what is that big deal with x-realming? As i see it from posts on forums why people complain: Okey, im playing one side. We have big zerg and we are taking empty keeps. After few keeps some opposing players start defending them - totally awesome, keep takes will give more influence! We are happy. After few other keep takes there appear lot more palyers defending. Actually happens our zerg wipes at some points. Now lot of people switch realm (as unhappy players keep pointing out, but i dont beleave somebody would insta swap and isnt playing this side character because he enjoy lvling and playing his char) and now we get AAO and our side isnt zerging anymore. That is so unfair, because other side shoudlnt be allowed to have more players and take some keeps and i shoudlnt be unhappy. ... Well i just tried to describe how i see it from those complaints. I dont think this should be cause to ban x-realming

[Morf]

I tend to agree with Qwack and tbh i think xrealming is less of problem then ppl make it out to be, its just a convenient excuse as to why u lost.
I wouldnt be to happy if friends are playing 1 side and i cudnt join them because of a lockout.

The ppl who do switch side because they are losing are the players who dont have any sort of impact on rvr anyway unless its a huge number of players which i find unlikely, most guilds are not going to switch side just to zerg i imagine and hope they would if anything switch to the underpopulated realm.

With all that said i would like to see some sort of realm pride like i remember from my early days of playing the game but as times change i think thats all but gone and unlikely to return.

About 3 realms and splitting the current races i really don't think its doable, it would require so much work, more effort then simply separating the races and wouldn't make sense at all to how rvr and the campaign/city sieges would work, if anything adding a new race like skaven or undead would work better where they could just infiltrate the rvr zones and be the 3rd realm, like how thanquils incursion use to pop up in t4, instead of a lame dungeon it could open up skaven to be playable as a 3rd race and not used by order or destro.
Undead could be playable in lotd as a 3rd race where pq's are objectives and tovl entrance is the keep objective but again would require a ton of work.

I remember londo showing us some of his work where he could control and add abilities to monsters, i imagine this could be doable for a 3rd race but spliting up current races i don think would work.

[roadkillrobin]

I've personally have had perception that more people like playing with AAO then against it.
I could be wrong tho.
For the PuG Zerg it usually doesn't mather i can agree with that, so if it is the PuGs in general that makes Xrealming a bad thing then remove open Warbands maybe?? Make warbands a guild/alliance priviliage. That would pretty much force the pugs to run with 6mans wich they would have to ballance with tanks, healers and dps to make it work (wich imo is a good thing) While guilds and alliances have the privilage to form 24 guild man groups.
There's alot stuff that could go wrong and is bad with this. But might be a way to solve the xrealming. If it really is a problem.

[Hooley]

To support x-realming is to go against what the Mythic developers envisioned. For good reason the Mythic developers did not want players to switch realms in this game. Mythic developers wanted realm pride to drive the contest and community in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. It was only when WAR was on its downward spiral when the Mythic developers allowed players to switch realms with the intent to give players more choices about where they wanted to play and who they wanted to play with (Patch 1.3.6 if you remember). However, there was a caveat, that Jeff Hickman and Carrie Gouskos both acknowledged in the "1.3.4 Producer's Letter" revolving around this new mechanic and I quote...

Carrie Gouskos, 1.3.4 Producer's Letter (Please read below)

We’re aware of the possible downsides (such as cross-realming) and we’re aware that people have a lot of realm pride, which we believe is very important, so we’re going to be introducing a significant lockout timer to switch between realms. Warhammer has a lot to offer between Order and Destruction and we want to give you the opportunity to experience all of WAR with a single account while still maintaining ties to the community of your home server.

X-realming was not mechanic Mythic developers wanted to inject into WAR, at all. At the time of Patch 1.3.6 the player population of WAR was plummeting. In a effort to sustain the expectations of customers, Mythic developers implemented "cross-realming with a lockout timer" to increase player retention in their dying MMORPG that revolves around player population. It's an inconvenient truth we all must accept: cross-realming was NOT supposed to part of the WAR experience.

So now lets discuss the awesome community of Return of Reckoning...

1) Return of Reckoning is free-to-play.
2) Return of Reckoning is a HIGHLY populated server.
3) Return of Reckoning is not a product garnering income, so the volunteers who are rehabilitating this game don't need to meet fiscal goals for their company or a publisher.

What does this mean?

Simple. All the financial conditions that influenced and incited Mythic Entertainment to change the vision of their game are no longer relevant and don't apply to Return of Reckoning.

It means that the "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning" we are now playing is no longer a business model that needs to adapt to make consumer sales/transactions. We (the RoR community and the RoR developers) have the opportunity to play this game as it was meant to be played. There is no need to compromise or appease customers to sustain profitability.

I understand, that at this time it is vain to regulate cross-realming with a lockout timer, since new accounts can be made for free. However, I implore the volunteer developers to implement a lockout timer regardless. Implement this mechanic to support the principle of this argument and to discourage members of your community from x-realming. At least do this, until a client-side/launcher solution is found to prevent this exploit that is a blatant degradation to the gameplay of this game we cherish.

[Forbiddian]

Daily reminder !

X-realm lead to No Pride
No Pride lead to No Honor
No Honor lead to You Worth Nothing
You Worth Nothing mean Kill Yourself

If you are a real MAN, you absolutely NEVER X-REALM and NEVER PREMADE

Enough said for today. ( opening my umbrella, looks like its going to rain )