Today I was remembering an MMO I played a long time ago: WWII Online: Battleground Europe. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s a World War II MMORPG with a persistent map, and when I played it used to have around 1,000 players online.
Setting aside the differences (it was a single map with roughly 400 towns, and it was WWII-themed), I think you can still see some clear similarities with RoR: active fronts, attrition, constant pushes, and that “campaign” feeling.
What was really interesting in WWII Online is that it had a system of “lives” per town (which, in RoR terms, could be similar to a pool per RvR map). Every time players respawned, it consumed lives from that pool. Eventually, a town could be overwhelmed because the defenders had burned through their available lives… or the other way around: the attackers ran out of reserves and the assault fizzled out.
On top of that, squads (the equivalent of guilds) could organize operations to bring reinforcements (extra lives) to the front, towns would regenerate lives over time, and “high command” could even move brigades with extra reserves to reinforce key points.
It was a great system because it gave you a real sense of winning or losing: you could literally see your side’s respawns decreasing (without knowing how many the enemy had left).
I’ve been thinking about it, and I believe a similar system could be added to Return of Reckoning to make RvR more interesting: more campaign structure, more meaningful decisions, and more ways for guilds to contribute to the war effort.
Proposal: A Lives Pool per RvR Map
How would it work?
- Starting pool: Each newly opened map starts with a pool of 500 lives per realm.
Each time a player respawns, it consumes 1 life from that pool. - Maximum pool: The pool caps at 1,000 lives per realm, refilling over time (and through map actions).
- If your realm has no lives left on that map, you can’t respawn there.
Alternative (less harsh) options if that feels too punishing:- Increase the release timer to 30–60s;
- Or disable the warcamp healer for removing the injury debuff;
- In any case, you could respawn in another map and travel back (flight/movement). This represents your realm running out of manpower in that area and having to draw forces from other fronts (which also drains those maps indirectly).
Pool Regeneration
- Base regeneration: Every 15 minutes the map is open, add 100 lives to the pool for both realms.
- Each guild that uses .guildinvolve adds a bonus to regeneration.
- If the keep is claimed, the owning guild can buy upgrades that increase pool regeneration (for example, 3 tiers).
- If a Battle Objective (BO) is captured and held for a short interval (e.g. 5 minutes) without being recaptured, grant extra lives to the pool.
- Each supply delivered: +1 life to the pool.
- The average AAO during the interval modifies regeneration by the same percentage (natural assistance to the outnumbered side).
- Each keep level adds extra lives to periodic regeneration (for example, +10 lives per level).
- Each successful Public Quest (PQ) completed in the active zone adds lives to the RvR pool based on difficulty (a ch12 easy PQ isn’t the same as a hard ch22 PQ).
What do we get out of this?
First and most importantly: it gives real meaning to the RvR campaign.
- Bring back “Order pride” and “Destro pride”: a faction identity and a real “why we fight”.
- Avoid zones staying open for 12 hours in an endless, pointless warcamp-to-warcamp loop.
When one (or both) sides start running low on lives, meaningful decisions appear:- Fall back to the keep and prepare a siege,
- Play more defensively to avoid wasting lives,
- Rotate to other zones with a healthier pool,
- Or hold the map at all costs, sacrificing lives from other fronts.
- Encourage WB leaders to play smarter instead of just following the blob: if BOs and supplies feed the pool, splitting and controlling objectives becomes a strategic priority.
- Help distribute population across multiple maps and BOs (less “everyone in the same funnel” gameplay).
- Make deaths matter: it’s not just about your killboard—your respawn drains your realm’s shared resource.
- Increase teamwork value: if you get a rez, your realm doesn’t spend that life. Rezzing allies (even outside your warband) becomes a strategic contribution, increasing the importance of healers even further.
Q: Won’t this make people “unable to play” if their realm runs out of pool?
A: The goal isn’t to lock anyone out, but to redirect pressure and give meaning to attrition. If it’s too harsh, instead of blocking respawns you could apply penalties: slower respawn, or disabled Warcamp healer, etc.
Q: Doesn’t this favor snowballing (the winning side winning harder)?
A: It can if it’s not balanced properly. That’s why AAO should be a key factor: when a realm is outnumbered, its regeneration can increase a lot (or its cost can decrease) to create real counterplay. Also, tying refill to objectives (BOs/supplies) rewards playing the map, not just farming.
Q: Won’t players just turtle ultra-defensively to avoid “wasting lives”?
A: It may happen sometimes, but that also creates gameplay: if you defend well, you hold; if you just hide, you lose BOs and map control. The point is that objectives become the natural way to regain momentum.
Q: What if a warband ignores the map and just farms warcamp?
A: The system indirectly punishes that: without objectives, you refill less, and attrition catches up. Holding the front requires territorial control, not just kills.
Q: Are the numbers (500/1000 and 100 per 15 min) final?
A: No—those are illustrative. The important part is the framework: pool + attrition + regeneration via time and objectives. Fine-tuning would come through testing.
Q: What does this add that reward tweaks or BO changes don’t?
A: It adds a campaign state: respawns stop being “just time” and become a resource. That creates decisions, narrative (“we’re running this front dry”), and a more natural map rhythm.
But Kpihuss… are you drunk when you write these posts?
No, I’m not.
