X-Realming is Good for the game.

[Shadowgurke]

Crossrealming is AWFUL for the game, and that's our position on it. The negative effects of lack of realm association/pride and being able to change faction to the stronger one (both of which are forcing us to use a lacklustre RvR design that we don't want to) far outweigh any benefit gained by a small minority of players chasing AAO.

That is partially because the RvR system that is currently in place is awful for any unorganized zerg when the enemies have higher numbers. You make people logg, so to speak. Treat the issue, not the symptoms

[Genisaurus]

It's a pity that implementing a third faction would require a complete re-haul of the game maps, and a tremendous amount of balancing. I doubt its something we have the capability to do. Skaven, VCs, Ogres could have made an interesting third faction.

It doesn't have to. If you wanted to shortcut the whole process, you could borrow a bit of End Times lore and rearrange the races like so:

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

That would still take a ton of re-working, balancing, and re-writing. But it also cuts out the work of having to design the art assets for 1-3 new races, equipment for 4-12 new classes, and new maps with all their new quests and mobs.

[Taller]

I loved DaoC and as much as I wished that approach would be a option we probably have to agree its out...

Personally I do tend to stick to the faction I choose for "religious" reasons... ^^ not smart I know but frankly I don`t care...
Still, I would not want to limit players from other factions, rather give them a reason to support theirs... or try another approach one:


I am almost sure this has been dicussed already but could someone explain why there is a Bonus for the outnumbered faction instead of a penalty to the dominateing one?

I know they have drastically different psychological effects but aside from that?
The game is free to play by now so how about give it a try to change the bonus to a penatly for pop imbalance?
If you can win but only make e.g. 10% of the XP & RR every kill was worth with balanced population...?

This seems to me to be basically the same thing as politicians preferring tax reductions over direct governmental expenses... mathematically the latter is more efficient but the first one is usually done because it generates votes...

[Gobtar]

Wasn't Games Workshop who decided this game should have 2 factions?

Honestly wouldnt be surprised if it was EA, i can see them saying "3 factions would require too much time...do 2"

[Qwack]

I was looking for the one point that would blow your argument to bits, and I'm not surprised to see that it wasn't mentioned.

- Warhammer Online had many servers.
- Return of Reckoning only has one.

What happens in a multi-server configuration? People seek the strong servers to play their favourite characters.

What happens in a single server configuration? There's only one place to play, so this strategy doesn't pay off.

Crossrealming is AWFUL for the game, and that's our position on it. The negative effects of lack of realm association/pride and being able to change faction to the stronger one (both of which are forcing us to use a lacklustre RvR design that we don't want to) far outweigh any benefit gained by a small minority of players chasing AAO.

If you want to know the real flaw in this game? It's a two-realm game. Three-realm games are self-balancing because the weaker realms ally. Two-realm games are inherently unstable.

The outcome to leaving the game as a "two-sided realm locked environment" will ultimately be population collapse. One side will daily dominate to the point of the opposing side not even bothering to log on anymore. Yes the game design of only two factions is the real culprit, but that can't be reasonably fixed. While elements of X-realming may be aweful and that is a reasonable position, reverting the game back to the dismal days of early Warhammer realm restrictions is absolutely fatal.

What other solution is there to avoid realm dominance and opposing realm collapse? Sign-up rewards (it was tried and failed)? Blocking a realm from more sign-ups (this was a complete disaster because it prohibited friends from recruiting friends to play with them)? I don't know what the solution is because so many things were tried by Mythic to overcome its design flaw. At least X-realming, for all its faults, allowed realm to realm competition.

[Gobtar]

It's a pity that implementing a third faction would require a complete re-haul of the game maps, and a tremendous amount of balancing. I doubt its something we have the capability to do. Skaven, VCs, Ogres could have made an interesting third faction.

It doesn't have to. If you wanted to shortcut the whole process, you could borrow a bit of End Times lore and rearrange the races like so:

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

That would still take a ton of re-working, balancing, and re-writing. But it also cuts out the work of having to design the art assets for 1-3 new races, equipment for 4-12 new classes, and new maps with all their new quests and mobs.

If you are going to be putting in all that work, in rebalancing and rewriting, I think it would be cool add a completely new faction rather than break apart the internal balance we already have. I honestly enjoy the rivalary of the DE vs HE, and would prefer to distance this game from the grim reminder of the endtimes.

The other option in similar vein to what you suggest is Destruction : Dark Elves, OnG, Skaven, and Chaos: Khorne, Tzeench, Nurgle. You can use alot of overlapping art assets, add some daemons options which only will get Alternate weapons, their armour is more sigils and magical reinforcements.

[Jaycub]

Crossrealming is AWFUL for the game, and that's our position on it. The negative effects of lack of realm association/pride and being able to change faction to the stronger one (both of which are forcing us to use a lacklustre RvR design that we don't want to) far outweigh any benefit gained by a small minority of players chasing AAO.

If you want to know the real flaw in this game? It's a two-realm game. Three-realm games are self-balancing because the weaker realms ally. Two-realm games are inherently unstable.

Don't most people change faction to the losing side to reap AAO? Or am I living in a different world. Also if I recall on live some shady alliances would even let their city get pushed to farm their defense since that was easier then pushing all the way back to attack the other city.

Also all these threads before t4 where cross realming actually matters since there is a campaign (t1-3 is literally pointless) is getting my hopes up for some serious murder mayhem on the forums when city pushes are at stake.

[mindmelt]

You lose the keepdef because people log off, not because they join the other team.

Please show me the evidence, i'd like to see the number of people logging off and not switching realms, let me see your source please so I can put my mind at ease

Oh right, conjecture, again.

The difference between what I say and what you say is simple, the forums full of threads about anit-x-realming, there are probably 2 threads that support x-realming, facts.

[TenTonHammer]

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

or if you really want a challange

Orcs v Chaos v Dark Elf v Order


4 faction game


make footpatrols dreams come true; make racial wbs great again

[bwdaWAR]

I would appreciate people finally making a distinction between two things: playing characters in both factions...

When Warhammer first released there was no X-realming. Most servers got lopsided activity wise and had 1 realm dominate to the point of completely collapsing the opposing realm with no hope of recovery. Then it devolved into Door Hammer with no opposition and no SC pops. No amount of encouraging or begging players to sign up for the collapsed side worked. When new players signed up, they were hopelessly behind in gear, levels and numbers. Merging servers of collapsed populations masked the problem temporarily, but inevitably one side would push out the other in an incremental spiral down in activity. The disease was being forced to play one side only and watch your server die to it.
...
If X-realming is totally halted, RoR will become like War and be reduced to BoreHammer with an ever decreasing population. This is not conjecture, its proven fact across over 60 servers that collapsed on WarHammer.

...and the ability to instantly switch between factions, for weaker or stronger...

X-realming allows players variety in the game. It allows players who care about competition to jump on the weaker side and uphold it. Yes there are weanies in this game that only want to zerg and are affraid of competition and will always jump to the side that has more players, but there are many players who intentionally look for AAO and want a good fight. Those of us that want to help keep the activity balanced by jumping to the lower populated side for an evening should be allowed to continue maintaining a healthy, competitive environment.

The first one is indeed good for RoR. Even necessary on some level since there is only one server, so it's impossible to play Order on one server and Destruction on another (which can lead to long-term balance problems anyways, as pointed out by the OP).
And, well... any suggestions that one should stick to a single realm are, frankly, nonsensical in this PvP game - people don't complain when you play both sides in a classic match-based multiplayer shooter game. It leads to a better understanding of game mechanics, general player behavior (which can be observed/learned through guides anyways), and perhaps most importantly, less of a realm bias - including the regular accusations of the server favoring the other side than what one plays, particularly the class responsible for the latest PvP death as that class is one's ally just as often as your enemy.
Besides, classes on both Order and Destruction have their appeal. Why should anyone have to choose only one set of them?

The second one on the other hand isn't good at all. While it is true that people tend to exaggerate the amount of crossrealming as many people just leave (alleged crossrealmers are a way too convenient scapegoat, a behavior people are sadly prone to), and it's true there are people who tend to switch to the weaker side, I'm still convinced there are lots of players switch to the stronger side and only few of those who do the opposite. The reasons for that is what people usually cite, that whenever something goes bad, not only does the side in trouble lose a lot of players in a very short time, the other side also gains a lot of players - at a higher rate than before the point of obvious failure. Those symptoms we all have experienced are highly suspicious, even if only the server staff can know how much crossrealming actually happens.
That the ability to switch sides if things go bad is there at all encourages people to not bother with doing their best, or even a mediocre performance of their skill level. After all, if they screw up and their side loses, they can always just switch to the other side and benefit from the trouble they caused, at the expense of their former teammates. That is quite different from the option always available - just stopping RvR/SC activities for a while - as that option doesn't reward them for poor play (perhaps even intentional, there is a high potential for exploiting this), switching does.

The difference between the two is a lockout somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours for switching realms. Anything longer is excessive and pointless as the goal is not to punish people for playing characters on both sides, but to prevent them from switching sides and earning the benefits of a bad situation they were part of. With people logging on and off all the time, an hour or two later that situation will likely have changed. Once such a lockout can be safely implemented, that is.