Keen’s talking about missing a third realm in WAR’s two-faction design, and I have to say, I agree with him.
This has long been my biggest dislike about the WAR design. I’d go through my blog and point to the times I mentioned it, but I’m lazy and don’t feel like making people read my old posts anway.
I think just having two realms might make a difference in server control. There were plenty of times in my DAoC experience that Hib/Perc would have been required to just turtle up against the Midgard machine if we didn’t have the Albs to keep the Mids a little honest. Same was true for the Albs at times, I think. And I know the Mids loved barging in on a Hib/Alb fight out in the frontiers.
Personally, I loved the chaos when two realms were squaring off at a keep, and the third realm decided to come blasting into the middle of the fight. Or milewalls…it was a hell of a lot of fun to have three factions, and multiple fronts to your fight.
Mythic might make up for the loss of third realm by making RvR more accessible in WAR, but I do fear what’s going to happen to a server that has a faction that’s just dominant, either through skill or through the number of people who regularly participate in RvR.
Rock-Paper-Scissors is a lot more fun than Rock-Paper, ya know? We’ll see how it goes…it’d suck to have RvR turn into a feeling of helplessness or hopelessness if your two realms are badly out of balance somehow.
/random 
I also agree. But at the same time, what would the third faction be? Isn’t Warhammer and all its lore really built around 2 sides?
In alot of ways the lore really doesn’t have sides. For example the Dwarfs have had several historical conflicts with the Elves. In the tabletop world you can make a case for battle between pretty much any race.
However the different races do tend to break down into those with noble intentions and those without. Its possible there could be a neutral faction, but that isn’t all that exciting, and it would be hard to decide who to put there.
@Pete S: Actually, Warhammer is everyone vs. everyone.
I always wanted a third faction that you could join voluntarily ala EQ to spice things up in WoW. Dwarves n trolls working together killing the rest of the dwarves and trolls. It’d be sweet.
totally
Nah, I don’t have a suggestion for a third race, and I don’t know enough about Warhammer to squawk that there *should* have been a third faction or anything…I’m just saying that I thought the three-realm mechanic worked superbly in DAoC, and it’s one of the things I always missed in WoW. I missed real PvP in WoW too 🙂
The only way I’ve experienced three competing factions is in an RTS game, Battle for Middle Earth II, but it was awesome there. I’d love to see a third alliance, but I don’t see it happening now. All the interior zones are split evenly between Order and Destruction, so there’s no room for anyone else unless they redefine some present content.
Have they said they aren’t ever going to add another faction or that they didn’t want to do it at launch? Never know, they could add it with an expansion later.
anything is possible, just ask the Harley riding Gnomes in WoW.
I’d all butbet money that we’ll see more races in expansions, there’s just too many others out there. The trickiest thing I see with adding a faction is scenario pairing.
Warhammer has he Dogs of War, the mercenaries that will work for anyone, so the groundwork is there for a faction folks could defect to. I don’t care what they add as long as it eventually includes my Skaven.
[…] Faction: How Could It Work? August 29, 2008 It seems to be a hot topic these days (see: /random, Keen, Tobold), and I’m just the sort of person who doesn’t mind hopping on a media […]
Thanks for all the Lore Education, everyone. Much appreciated.
A Mercenary faction sounds interesting. I wonder if they could go so far as to make it a faction that you switch over to (kind of like Betraying in EQ2) so you’d have this rag-tag band of mixed races fighting together.
Though I suppose that wouldn’t be practical in RvR, just due to instant recognition of which guys are the enemy.
This was a fun article to read since I played Midgard Perc from the launch of DAoC and for the first 2 years or so.
The 3 sides were indeed one of the most important factors that kept DAoC RvR awesome. Albion had by far the biggest population, and Hib/Mid often had to counter that.
Many other times, Midgard dominated in RvR largely because of 2 very, very organized alliances (Fist of the North and Bloodaxe). If HIb/Alb weren’t able to “kinda-sorta” team up Midgard would be ruined the server during those times (*evil grin*).
-Cambios
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