Remember that sleepy dwarf back in part 1? Apparently, he's a constant dozer.

And that dream is to love WAR again!

So what's my plan of attack? Is a picture worth a thousand words?



Syp and I decided to roll alts and play them once a week together. I will still be playing my Squig Herder on Ostermark most of the week (at a 3:1 ratio), but my hope is that this little side project will provide a welcome distraction for the uber-grind that is T3 right now and the underpoweredness of my main.

I had more fun in last night's 45-minute play session on a rank 1-3 Ironbreaker than I've had in weeks as my Squig Herder. Could it possibly be because the IB+RP combo is the most overpowered in the game, especially in T1? Yeah... that's part of it (we pretty much dominated and led our team to victory in our only run of Nordenwatch last night... spamming our rank 1 and 2 abilities because we forgot to train our rank 3s) but it's also the feeling that I don't have to keep up with anyone and we can just chatter randomly over Skype while bouncing around from quest to scenario.

So far, so good!

*Disclaimer: I may or may not also acting as an undercover Greenskin agent to learn all about the various strengths and weaknesses of the sad, alcoholic stunty army!

An extremely keen reader of our site just informed me that Warhammer Alliance is running a new career poll and that he has set up a spreadsheet to track and analyze all the results. Great job, Napox!

The most interesting thing of all is that the population seems to be balancing out with 53% choosing Destruction and 47% choosing Order careers. My analysis of the previous poll showed that you can't make blanket statements about how things will play out at release based on these types of polls, however, we can compare this poll to the previous one.

Here's a link to  Napox's older spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p2RqwCxSG1nvY1eLRbKlDcg. A quick numbers comparison shows that there are quite a few more people who want to play Order today than there were only a couple months ago! The previous poll had Destruction at 59% and Order at 41%. That's a drop of 6% in Destruction population, which is really a 12 point spread difference!

Napox went so far as to make us some amazing charts, which I've been given permission to share with you here. So far, there have been over 3700 respondents to the poll. Update: One day and 300 respondents later, the results are still 53/47!



This is a detailed breakdown of all careers across the board. As we can clearly see, the Shaman is the most popular and the high elf White Lion is the least popular. Surprisingly, the dwarfs are doing quite well for themselves! Maybe that's because an IB + RP is the nastiest combo in the game? Also of note, the Magus and White Lion aren't very popular, which could be a result of a lack of marketing until only recently. The other classes we knew almost nothing about were cut from the game a couple months back.



Here we can see that Destruction only has a 6% lead! For each % Destruction loses, Order gains 2 towards a balance. This is a much different  picture than we saw in June...



Here's a realm breakdown. Greenskins and Chaos are still in the lead, but not by much. This isn't surprising since these two realms are the poster boys of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning marketing and are arguably the most popular in the tabletop game as well.



This table breaks everything down for you, nice and easy. If you're like me who hasn't taken a Calculus class in almost a decade, here's a quick definition of Standard Deviation:

Formulated by Galton in the late 1860s,^[1] the standard deviation remains the most common measure of statistical dispersion, measuring how widely spread the values in a data set are. If many data points are close to the mean, then the standard deviation is small; if many data points are far from the mean, then the standard deviation is large. If all data values are equal, then the standard deviation is zero. A useful property of standard deviation is that, unlike variance, it is expressed in the same units as the data. ~WIKIPEDIA

Destruction may have the three most popular careers, but it also has two of the three least popular careers.



Here's a breakdown of each career archetype. I'd say this is pretty balanced with what you'd find in most MMORPGs. I would also wager that the Support archetype is so large because it is made up of six careers, which is two more than MDPS and Tanks. The same goes for Ranged DPS. I believe Melee DPS and Tanks are suffering a little bit because there were four of these career-types cut from release a short time ago.



Everything seems pretty normal here. The Black Orc slice is larger than the Swordmaster slice because even though these careers share the same mechanic, Greenskins are more popular than High Elves. Greenskins also only have three careers to choose from, while High Elves have four. Chosen and Ironbreakers are almost dead even.



The spread is a bit larger here because we have so many careers to choose from. Again, while the Shaman and Archmage share the same mechanic, there is a big difference due to realm popularity and career options. The Warrior-Priest and Disciple of Khaine are relatively close and the Runepriest and Zealot are almost dead even. Interesting to note is that the damage-focused support careers are more popular than the straight up healers. Looks like Mythic had a good idea when they decided to present us with these options!



As opposed to the tanks, where we have four options and the spread is fairly even, Melee DPS is a different story. The Marauder is immensely more popular than the Witch Elf on the Destruction side. This could be because WEs are female-only and the majority of WAR players will undoubtedly be male IRL. It could also be because the Marauders are more straight-up Melee DPS with several mutations that increase their versatility, while the WE is a more rogue-like class. Marauders are unquestionably more durable.

The Witch Hunter is quite a bit more popular than the White Lion on the Order side as well, which is interesting because it has the same mechanic as the Witch Elf. I believe the White Lion suffers from being a pet class, being a High Elf (four careers to choose from), and being marketed to fans so late in the PR game. On the other hand, the Witch Hunter is a very recognizable career for anyone even remotely interested in WAR (he even has his own Comic book). It also has some nice ranged abilities and was long considered "overpowered" in beta. Only having Altdorf and the Inevitable City in the game at release may also have something to do with it's popularity, as it belongs to the realm of Empire.



Again, there is a fairly large spread amongst ranged DPS careers because there are six to choose from as opposed to four. The three pet classes are the least popular of the bunch, which isn't overly surprising. The Bright Wizard and Sorceress glass cannons (huge firepower, little defense) are up there but I'm a little shocked that Bright Wizards aren't more popular in this poll because I see so many of them in beta. The Shadow Warrior is a hybrid ranged/melee DPS so I would guess it is very popular due to its versatility. Oh, and the Legolas factor (nyuk nyuk). Surprisingly, Order trumps Destruction in RDPS popularity by a score of 53% to 46% (we seem to have lost a percent to rounding).

Conclusions

This may only show us where Warhammer Alliance forum members are falling in the grand scheme of things, but I will go out on a limb and say that I believe Order is gaining in popularity and will continue to do so until the game finally launches. I doubt we'll ever see perfect balance on any WAR server at release, but I think this bodes much better than the previous results.

Many people believe, myself included, that the majority of more casual gamers favour the "good guys" in MMORPGs. The rising popularity of Order, as illustrated by this poll, may prove this to be the case because WAR's audience has been shifting from the hardcore audience to the mainstream audience lately. Everyone in the preview weekend would be considered a fan of WAR since they preordered a copy of the game, however, I would argue that they are generally less hardcore than the people who have been following this game for the past few years.

Once the NDA was lifted, a massive influx of new people or people who were only casually following WAR's progress started to take notice. Hell, my blog traffic has tripled since last week! With the NDA up and 50,000 participants in the preview weekend, I believe people are now basing their career choices on more facts than fiction. When the NDA was still in place, people were basing their choices on the ideas of each career, based on whatever little information Mythic released.

We still can't be exactly sure how things will work out at release, but this poll definitely lifts my spirits. I truly hope for balanced servers or an Order bias because I am set on rolling a greenskin and I DO NOT want to be in the overpopulated realm. My fingers are crossed.

Thanks again to Napox! He rox! ;)

Update: My new, tweaked version is up at Warhammer Alliance. Check it out to see where I deviated from this original post! :) Thanks Garthilk!


In case you haven't heard, Warhammer Alliance is running a massive class poll on their forums! Make sure you cast your vote and if you aren't already a member of WHA, this is the perfect time to sign up! Your votes will help create more accurate results and allow me to play TheoryHammer(tm) with fits of glee!

This is why I got into Warhammer Online blogging folks! Analysis. Comparison. Theorizing. Having fun!

Let's get on with it then!

Results Summary

• Destruction outnumbers Order 3:2


• Greenskins outnumber Dwarfs 3:2


• Chaos outnumbers Empire 3:2


• D-Elfs outnumber H-Elfs 3:2


• D-Elf vs. H-Elf is the closest pairing


• Greenskin is the most popular realm


• Dwarf is the least popular realm


• Shaman is the most popular class


• Hammerer is the least popular class


• Shamans outnumber Runepriests 2:1


• Chosen outnumber KotBS' 2:1


• Magus' outnumber Bright Wizards 2:1


• Disciples of Khaine outnumber Archmages 2:1


• White Lions outnumber Witch Elfs 2:1


• Click here to be taken the Google Spreadsheet!

Results in Detail

I think it's fair to say we can perform somewhat accurate poll analysis of Destruction vs. Order population balance because there have been over 3000 votes cast. Your typical WAR server at launch will likely support 3000-5000 players, so we can simply pretend the current poll-takers are indicative of what you might find on an average server.

Things that hinder this analysis are that votes have been cast as a result of the class information, which has been made available through the media. Most people are voting based on what they've read, not what they've played/tested. Also, details are less robust on some classes versus others right now. E.g., Much is know about the Shaman, yet very little is known about the Knight of the Burning Sun. This means results are likely skewed in favour of what we know... not the unknowns.



However, I still believe there is much to be taken away from these initial results (taken June 06, 2008 @ 12:00 EST). They no doubt confirm what many of us have feared, which is that Destruction will outnumber Order, causing population imbalance and less fun for the less-populated side. EA Mythic have stated they will offer incentives to weaker realms and may even put population caps in place, however, based on these raw results, we can make several statements.

Destruction is more popular than Order

Destruction currently outnumbers Order by a 3:2 margin because each racial pairing is roughly 3:2 in favour of Greenskins, Chaos, and Dark Elves. The Dark Elf / High Elf pairing is slightly closer with 57% in favour of Khaine's minions vs. 43% choosing the "nobler" path.

Why is this?

EA Mythic is marketing their game in favour of Destruction

I've never heard Paul Barnett speak so passionately as when he's describing the different classes of Warhammer Online, and he goes most bonkers for Destruction classes (Greenskins especially). It's just a fact. He favours destruction and he's the most popular public face for the game. The second most popular WAR dev is Josh Drescher... and he's crazy about Dark Elves. This is all fine and good, but I'd suggest they start speaking just as passionately about Order classes or give the unseen Order-lovin' WAR devs face time too. Right now, it's just unbalanced.

They're also marketing their game as RvR and most recently, "hardcore." A game like this is naturally going to appeal more to the people who traditionally play "evil" races in other MMORPGs. In World of Warcraft, it's no mystery that Horde players fancied PvP more than Alliance. In Dark Age of Camelot, Albion may have been the more popular realm across most servers, but Midgard was the most devout to RvR, which is saying something considering how ugly the realm was to play in (longtime Skald here). They seem to have realized this, which is why I believe Order is marketed as more of a grey area between good and evil. Doing more of this would help - but too much has other pitfalls! Chiefly, "what's the difference?"

Destruction classes are just cooler!

There are exceptions of course - Witch Hunters, White Lions, and Engineers - however, Order classes are more skewed towards tradition while Destruction classes are more unique takes on tradition.

The Warrior-Priest reminds me of a Paladin. An Ironbreaker reminds me of Gimli. A Bright Wizard... one-dimensional Fire Wizard. Shadow Warrior? Legolas. All classes in WAR have interesting mechanics, but Order, at its core, just seems a bit like more of the same.

Destruction on the other hand has the Disciple of Khaine - a dual-wielding melee healer! Blackguard... well we don't know too much about him but he just looks so badass with that massive halberd! You know he's gonna use it... and it's gonna hurt! The Magus is a chaos-magic mama (wonder if they can be female) with a living disc they float around on - and apparently it will have pet summons now too! All the greenskin classes... GW created the mold for these fungus-flingin' freaks of nature! A pet class that can be eaten by his squig to rock'em sock'em? We've never seen that before (correct me if I'm wrong)! The Sorceress is somewhat traditional but the fact that she can channel so much chaos magic that her head might explode? That's original too!

If you don't believe me, just compare each archetype in the racial pairs. Destruction wins 9 times out of 12 - and the Zealot/Warrior-Priest pairing is in a dead heat.

If this isn't fixed, the game will suffer!

The question on many people's mind is whether or not EA Mythic wants balance in each pairing or balance OvD overall. My guess is that they want to balance the game overall, but they can't sacrifice pairing balance to do so.

Sure, it won't matter at the endgame when Greenskins, Chaos, and Dark Elfs are joining forces to fight against Dwarfs, Empire, and High Elfs, unless the 3:2 overall balance isn't dealt with, but you'd imagine that as a we wittle Squiglet Herder your primary targets will be Dwarfs. The game leading up to the endgame (T1-T3) will suffer from imbalance unless they ensure that the races are mixed together right at the beginning.

This is getting long, so stay tuned for Part 2!

Now that your eyes are bleeding, I'll release you to check out all the other interesting WAR sites. But beware... I'll be back once the poll numbers hit 4000-5000 with further analysis and expansion on some of the themes I touched upon today!

Thanks for reading and make sure to comment with your thoughts! What insights do you gain from these numbers?

I asked you guys to supply me with interview questions to be put forward to EA Mythic regarding the Greenskin vs. Dwarf beta phase of Warhammer Online and you didn't disappoint! Twenty-six questions were asked in total, of which, I narrowed down to eight. The questions were submitted through WarhammerHerald.com's feedback form and I hope we hear back soon!

I notified the winner of "best question" by email over the weekend but haven't heard any response yet. I'll give it a few more days and then choose another.

Here are the questions in no particular order:

1. In what way do the Warhammer Greenskins and Dwarfs deviate from the standard fantasy stereotype? Are the Orcs strong, dumb, and brutal? Are the Dwarfs stubborn and drunk with Welsh accents?


2. As a Greenskin or Dwarf, what will make me want to hate the other side? What kind of narratives are you implementing to ensure an epic battle between these two foes?


3. We know Greenskins aren’t much for traditional architecture, so what steps are you taking to ensure their capital city is as interesting (both aesthetically and content-wise) as other capital cities in the game?


4. We’ve heard rumours that there is a chance that certain exciting features may not make it into the game, such as Dwarfs growing beards, Greenskins growing larger, and the famous Orcapult. How are these progressing, and if they don’t make it into launch, are they still planned post-release?


5. Can you explain a little bit about the various mounts available to the Greenkin and Dwarf races? We heard wolves, boars, and… steam carts?


6. How advantageous will it be in RvR to play the more diminutive races such as the Dwarf and Goblin? Can they take advantage of terrain and line of site more effectively than their larger counterparts?


7. Can you leak any information about any Dwarf and Greenskin action we’ll see in the new cinematic trailer?


8. Even though certain races are paired up in conflict, is it assumed for balance purposes that they will be assisted by their allies at higher ranks? How does that play against the Greenskins’ general willingness to fight anything with a pulse, including others of the greenish persuasion?