Return of Reckoning

Greetings,

I'm PainDeViande, newly joined player from a few weeks back. You might have seen me in game as any of the "-deviande" character ("Painedeviande", "Tankdeviande", etc...). I used to play OG Warhammer with Gaiscioch more than 10 years ago and something sparked my interest recently when I saw some video game art design that looked like a Shadow Warrior (which was the main class I used to run back then). Fast forward a couple of Google search and here I am!

I'm opening a topic to discuss something I've noticed as a general trend toward Tier 1 Open RvR. At first, I thought it was just luck of the draw (or rather, misfortune of the draw) and that it would fluctuate naturally as sides saw the lack of fun of sitting still for extended periods of time but now I realize it's definitely not an isolated incident. I'm talking about Faction Ratio and, more specifically, the constant AAO on Destruction side.

Regardless of when I choose to log into the game, I've noticed that Tier 1 is exclusively Order favored when it comes to Faction ratio. I think this morning (very early; around 5-6 AM EST) was the first time I had ever seen Destruction hit over 50% T1 Faction ratio. Barring 2-3 times, every single one of my experience as a Destruction player in ORvR was under AAO and a crushing number disadvantage over Order. To me, when this occurs, both sides are on the short end of the stick. Destruction can't fight Order unless they roam inbetween BOs to claim lone kills and Order just flag humps until the zone is locked or until a small group of Destruction players sneak an invade on one of the weaker BOs, at which point they simply zerg the area and claim the 3-4 influence gained from chain killing the same 3-4 players, and we rinse and repeat. I just don't see how that's any fun for any sides. When I originally joined, I wanted to level solely from PvP because that's a thing I did for a few of my characters back in Vanilla Warhammer. But then I got online and we sat on Nordland IX as a massive force until we hit 100%, holding a single BO for probably 20-30 minutes as Destruction couldn't retake it from our 65-70%-ish number advantage. Then we went on to take Elves and Dwarves by simply running as a Warband and a half at any Destruction player trying to cap one of our 4 BOs. Our numbers were so unfair that I even expected players to swap realm sides to balance the armies and get some awesome fights in instead of this monotonous AFKing on BOs. I ended up swapping but my girlfriend wanted to try the game so we did mostly PvE stuff instead of hitting that sweet, sweet ORvR.

I thought the whole point of this game was to PvP. To me, it's so much more rewarding to fight, get benefits (renown, infl, exp, items), form parties and warbands, lead people to victory or defeat, make friends and form guilds, etc., than it is to flag hump and passively get influence rewards, then remake a new alt character to repeat the same process. It's crazy to me that people make fresh characters just to join on the whole having a significant mass advantage. I can understand the sense of fun in playing with friends from the same faction but I can't think of a reason for Order to have an almost constant stream of players in comparison to Destruction unless it's players rerolling Order characters repeatedly or Destruction players getting discouraged of getting zerg'ed 24/7.

Is this just an unlucky trend that I happened to be caught in or has this been like this for a while? Why do you guys think Destruction is always outnumbered drastically in Tier 1? Is there a weekly/monthly PvP night for Tier 1 where numbers are fair on both ends? Let me know!

Cheers,
PainDeViande

You could see it this way...

You have high aao bonus and earn significantly more renown/xp than order in a zone, as long as you make kills. Don't fight to hold BO, you don't have to win zone. The difficult task is to get a group together to roam between flags.
When I make a new char, I only play when order is zerging.
I don't know your rank and items but often people don't use talismans, what makes them very weak. As the outnumbered side you can pick your fights and run away, when order reinforcement are on the way.

The overall trend you are noticing with Order being the stronger realm was the exact opposite some time ago and will change on a more or less regular basis. It does not have to be necessarily the same in other tiers, too.
I assume when summer break is coming the younger players will be online more often and we have more Destruction around...

You can e.g. also give SCs a shot, whilst in T1 there are more pops than in mid-tier (T4 gets better when you're there).

Playing with AAO is not for everyone, but if you don't like it it limits your options. Your choice.

I suggest you wait a few days I anticipate a brief flood of Destro with the SH becoming fotm tomorrow.

Order does tend to dominate t1 but destro has their times too. On the bright side levelling out of t1 can be quick if you join a small group and aao hunt.