WAR Population Balance turns to Queues

In the information being released from the Baltimore Games Day event there was mention of population balance being important to Mythic, so much so that they would be implementing incentives and disincentives for playing on over or underpopulated realms.  Personally, I’m all for most types of population balance but I did momentarily think that I may be facing a FFXI type system here where playing with my friends might be a pita.  Thankfully those concerns were laid to rest when James clarified how WAR will be managing population balance:

“So there’s already a lot of speculation and misunderstanding floating around about what was said at yesterday’s Q/A at Baltimore Gamesday.

Here are the facts so everyone knows where we’re coming from:

– We are not capping the amount of accounts/characters that can be created on a server. We want friends to play with each other, it’s important, we know that

– Most every game has a server cap, those who played World of Warcraft in the earlier years probably remember waiting in queues for a spot on the server. The only difference is that ours is based on realm to help maintain balance when we have a very high population on a server.

– This number is yet to be determined, I see 3000 being tossed around a lot, please realize that it just an example and by no means should be taken as “the law”

– The blanket caveat of “It’s Beta” applies. If we try something out, find out it doesn’t work in practice, most likely we won’t keep it. It’s important to us though that we provide the best experience for everyone.

With that said about providing the best experience having servers capped at max with queues definitely doesn’t accomplish that. We hope that if queuing becomes a necessity that it doesn’t continue for extended periods of time. You guys getting in and playing the game is definitely important.

This isn’t the end all be all of realm balance guys, just one part of the process of ensuring a dynamic and entertaining environment for all players.”

Queues.  Not a bad idea, especially when placed on a per-realm basis instead of server-wide.  I was actually expecting this as the minimalist approach and had envisioned in my mind a much more aggressive plan of boosting the side that is underpopulated.  Perhaps there will be such a system as James eludes to when he says that this is “just one part of the process”.  Funny enough, some people are already saying that the idea of queues, in light of the recent poll results, are enough to make them consider playing Order – Hah!  It’s working already.

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  • @Ruursquig: Agreed. Realm-based queues are only part of the solution. If you give people the option to transfer Destruction characters off of a Destruction-heavy server, then players who don’t care what server they play on will move to a less Destruction-heavy server to avoid queuing and things are better for everyone.

    In particular, it’s very likely that the head-start server will be more Destruction-heavy and that server which open later will be less Destruction-heavy. Therefore, allowing those head-start players who don’t care what server they’re on, the option to transfer to non-head-start servers later on seems like a really good idea.

  • I don’t think it would be too hard for them to ask this when you log into the game for the first time:

    “What realm would you like to join: Order or Destruction?”

    You click one or the other and then some backend system sorts a list of servers by #1 – your ping and #2 the side you chose being underpopulated.

    It won’t force you to pick one or the other (so you can still join friends) but it will give you a good idea of the best option for you.

  • I hate to say it, I know it could seem a cheap critique of WAR because it’s so central to their entire license, but I think the entire concept of basing PvP in an MMORPG around factions is fatally flawed.

    Faction-based queues don’t seem like much of a solution, if players feel they’re forced to roll on the faction that wasn’t their first choice just so they don’t have to wait to play… that’s going to make casual players bitter and isn’t a good idea any way I see it.

    There’s going to be a population imbalance no matter what you do so long as the premise is this side versus that, unless you made them so evenly-balanced they’d be virtually the same (esthetically as well as abilities).

    I hope they come up with something better than this. Even if it’s not my sort of game, I’d like to see it do well and kick ass on the PvP front.

  • How well do realm bonuses work to balance in DAoC? Are their servers balanced now or do some factions get a perma buff?

  • The first couple months are going to be hectic at Mythic. They are going to watch the numbers for balance, class balance, subscription increases or decreases, what patches need to go out now, and several other charts and pie graphs. I don’t think they will give any bonuses to realms for over a year but the server realm cap is a great way to cut a high Destruction or Order realm from running away with the game. I think it is great temp fix until data is fully analyzed.

  • There really were no big incentives in DAOC or methods of population control that I felt worked. Things like the /level command were there but did little to nothing, imo.

  • It’s not a bad idea, but I worry that without incentives to join and imbalanced round it will all be for naught.

    I’ll reserve real judgment until I see it in action.

    A friend of mine in the beta told me tonight that Chaos outnumbered Order 4 to 1 or somewhere thereabouts. Whether he was exaggerating or not I don’t know.

    But I doubt it.

    Oh! And Keen, I’ve moved. Created my own theme and blog using WordPress from scratch today. It’s a little bare bones at the moment, but not bad for a day’s work.

    http://ramblings.rebelutionstudios.com

    Cheers!

  • /level did work in DAoC, but only when entire guilds used it. For example, when Merlin/Midgard was in the slumps, we had an entire guild /level and within three months they had pushed Merlin/Midgard back on top. Midgard had Darkness Falls (the RvR dungeon), most of the Relics, etc. I doubt that the guild would have moved if /level 20 was not available at the time.

    However, it does nothing to STOP the winning side from getting more players, which was the problem in DAoC. A bunch of guilds lose Relics on a server, get fed up, and start from level 1 on another server, but instead of going to the losing side, they go to the side that is dominating. People might know this phenomenon as “jumping on the bandwagon”.

    Caps and queues solve bandwagoning IMHO 🙂

  • I’m kind of late to the discussion, but regarding this…

    “However, it does nothing to STOP the winning side from getting more players, which was the problem in DAoC. A bunch of guilds lose Relics on a server, get fed up, and start from level 1 on another server, but instead of going to the losing side, they go to the side that is dominating. People might know this phenomenon as “jumping on the bandwagon”.
    Caps and queues solve bandwagoning IMHO”

    I also agree.
    BUT… the problem is that if “bandwagon” is removed at the outlet for “…bunch of guilds lose Relics on a server, get fed up…”, then “cancel subscription” might be the option taken, what with PvP realm frustration and human nature being what they can be.