Monday, June 16, 2008

WAR: Incentives for choosing a side

In a RvR game, the population of each side can have a dramatic effect on the battle. This is one of the most common concerns for players. Recently, Mythic has addressed one part of this problem by putting limits on the amount of players for each realm that can be playing at the same time. This will work great to ensure one side is not overwhelmed by the sheer amount of players online.

Another piece of the puzzle is to make sure all sides have enough characters created. Even with the limits described above, it will do no good if the limit is 3000 and there are only 2000 Dwarf accounts. Best case for the Dwarfs would be 3000 vs 2000, and that would not work out too well for them.

As Mythic has stated, they have done this before with Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC). In DAoC, they used an incentive system to help persuade players to create characters of a certain realm. Let's take a look at what kind they offer:

  • Bonuses applied to both PvE and RvR
  • % Bonus to each PvE and PvP kill (% based on disparity)
  • % Bonus to Realm (Renown?) points (% based on disparity)
  • Cost reduction for hook points (housing feature?)
  • Free levels (affected by time)
Now some of these features are obviously DAoC only, but it can give a good idea of what we can look forward to in WAR. Quicker leveling and cheaper stuff seem to be the best way to generalize possible incentives.

What kind of incentives would get you to switch sides?

More Information:

DAoC Population Bonuses

3 comments:

I did like the free levels in DAoC but, I think WAR will be more than a year before they get the stats they need to do anything about balance. After they do get the information they need I hope it is a hit bonus with free 1 level keep upgrades. If that doesn't work use the free level bonus but not both.

You are likely right, free levels may never be necessary. I think they may have been a sign of low populations in general and trying to get new folks high enough to compete.

I don't know if it's possible to incentive to change sides(and yeah... weighing into this way late)

After all if we're locked to one side per server, you cant change unless you delete everyone surely.

As far as I recall though, we'll get bonuses to damage and xp and such.

Doesn't matter if you're 100 vs 500 if the 100 guys are buffed to the high heavens

Post a Comment