Sorta miss having 3 Realms

I’m starting to miss having three realms participating in the realm war.  In Dark Age of Camelot there was Albion, Hibernia, and Midgard and all three were constantly in a war together trying to take keeps and territory and what not.  The pressure was always on to keep one realm from becoming too dominant and the risk of two realms teaming up together was always in the back of our minds.  There are a lot of benefits to having three realms (on paper at least) like realms teaming up to overcome population imbalances, keeping people on their toes at all times, and more depth to the game overall.   I especially liked how groups would have to adjust their strategies and setups even more when facing off against different groups.

Often times having three realms didn’t play out quite as nicely as it looked on paper.  When people stopped caring about relics and focused solely on gaining realm points (known as Renown now in WAR) the whole system was a moot point.  There are several reasons why WAR could have been designed to have only two realms such as a streamlined system for knowing your enemy, less balancing issues, and a quicker development cycle.

Will this hurt WAR in the long run?  No, it’s not going to hurt the game any but it would be like having a single scoop of ice cream on your cone instead of two… or in this case two instead of three.  The additional realm would just make it better.  The scope of the game would have changed completely and instead of 2 races per regional tier it would have been three.  Instead of the keep layout now there would have been more keeps to go after with more diversity.  That would have made for some serious RvR goodness as realms have to strategise about which keeps to take and when.

Oh well, it’s all coulda-shoulda-woulda and there’s really no reason to reflect on what could have been.  The game is still going to be great.  But while we’re reflecting… imagine how cool the original Warhammer mmorpg would have been with every faction battling eachother!

  • Given the IP and the POTENTIAL to have more than two realms in WAR. I think this was a very disciplined decision on Mythics part, and I think you nailed the principal reasons why…

    Remember those old strategy games that took hours to setup, but when you actually got to play it out – it just wasn’t quite as fun as you thought/hoped it would be?

    So while there is less variance in your enemy, there is more depth to the tug-of-war struggle – with less things that can go wrong and push the player base away. Also, it makes it easier for the first time MMO WOW player to feel immediately comfortable in the new environs.

    You know – 3’s a crowd!!

  • How big has happy fun guys now? Maybe you should roll order to help with the potential realm imbalance that seems inevitable. Plus it’s fun being the underdog, and it will me and my four friends a guild to join.We’d rather be destruction, but instant scenario queues and the potential the destruction will not have good competition prevent us from doing so. 🙁

  • HFG is pretty big now. We’re still set on Destruction though because it’s just more fun for us. 😉

    I still feel very strongly that the two realms will be nearly identical in population and even if they’re not I truly doubt the imbalance will be enough to alter the course of the WAR.

  • I tend to eat my ice cream in bowls…because often the quantity of it I am apt to eat won’t balance well on a cone at all. <_<

  • so just cant wait for this game i bought a new alienware just for this game ^_^ can not friggin wait an atm no game holds me in play for more than 30 mins the thought of the nonstop whoppin of order is lockd in my brain an the preview weekend has left me wanting somuch more cant wait till open beta starts so we can all play together again lookin forward to the battles

  • Couldnt agree with you more about DAOC and the triangle of fun. From what I understand you will only be able to make toons on one side, so hopefully that will aleviate and cross realming crap which really hurt daoc.

    It used to be funny though. My buddy and I would kill folks exping in the frontiers and poc, and would get nasty tells later about lot sof thing I shouldnt type here hehe

    Ahh good times. War shall be fun

  • The only real issue I had with the 3 realms was, that when Alb was Fighting Mid (mostly) the Hibs would snipe from the side or ruin the fight completely. At least in 1 vs 1 or RVR its just your back you have to watch out for 🙂

  • I keep hoping Mythic will shock us all and make Skaven the third side, drastically altering the game with an expansion =) … but deep down I know that won’t happen..

    I think Mythic made it two sides rather then three because the design they were going for (a struggle where you take over each zone, working towards the final where you can then sack the city) would just be too complex and messy with three sides, and makes way more sense with just two..

    Personally, I would have loved if it there was 6 sides, everyone except your race is against you! More enemies, harsher world, pure awesome!

  • I never remember there being a strong 3rd realm in DAOC. No one really played Midgard in any numbers except at the very beginning, when they were considered overpowered. The last few years though, at best they would have 2-3 8 man groups roaming the frontiers.

    But it would be nice to have the choice of a 3rd realm. Even if not strong presence, it did add flavor to the game. Black and white gets old.

  • When I first hear about WAR, I actually thought that every race would be its own faction fighting against the others. Just goes to show you how little I know about the game and Warhammer as a whole at the time 😀 Now THAT would be all out war!

    Three sides would definitely be fun though, I think. I never played DAoC, so I’m of the “on paper” mindset, but on paper, it sounds like a good time.

  • I agree there is potential for three realms, possable addition for sure. From beinga table top gamer for over 15 years I feel these armies would be the most viable for a third realm.

    Oger Kingdoms hate everyone, Dogs of War armies which could act like mercs for either side, Lizzardmen are solitary basically work towards self preservation,

    The one I see as more probable would be a mix of Tomb Kings(Just want to raise the great wizzard Negash)Vampire Counts (Just want to Kill everything)

    The great thing about all this is that the warhammer enviornment is so rich the potential is endless for how they might go about a third realm,

    Future addition for
    Destruction – Skaven, Deamons, Minitours, Beast of Chaos….
    Order – Wood Elves, Treemen, Brettonians, Regiments of renown.

    Ok I will sum up…

  • re: coppertopper

    Depended on server.. on Bors Midzerg (TM) wooped Albs into submission and real war was always between Hibs and Mids. With Hibs having better small grps and Mids having better overall realm organization and the zerg.

    I think 3 sides would have helped with pop imbalance A LOT, in DAOC it was pretty common for 2 realms to gang up on the third when they had all relics or close.

    It would have been pretty easy to setup 3 way war in WAR. Chaos + Skaven or Chaos Dwarfs vs Dark Elves + Greenskins (being controlled by DE) vs Empire + High Elves + Dwarfs

    Order would be Warrior Priest, Bright Wizard, Ironbreaker, Rune priest, White Lion, Shadow Warrior for example

    Zone design would become much more difficult unfortunately. Overall map would ahve to be designed as a graph with each vertex being a zone that you need to control. Some would have 3 connection (allowing all to fight) some 2

  • dont worry, they can always add the 2 undead armies as the 3rd faction, or some facsimile thereof.

  • I definitely thing WAR could have benefited from having three realms, but the problems that have been brought up in the OP and comments pretty much sum up why it couldn’t be done well.

    Adding a third realm in an expansion would probably be suicide because that “tacked on” realm would never gain enough of a population foothold to make it viable. I doubt many people would give up the characters they spent over a year on to roll a new realm.

  • It seems like the 3rd realm is just a bandaid approach to dealing with symptom of faction imbalance rather than addressing the underlying problem.

  • Only when you look at it like that Centuri. It increases how dynamic the gameplay can be as a whole when you have to adjust your strategies and setup for two different realms. It keeps you on your toes a lot more. The faction imbalance is just an ‘on paper’ beneficial side effect.

  • Dark age of camelot RvR was sorta fun; i’m surprised no one else really tried the whole three realm thing rather than just two factions