29 replies to this topic

[fathamburger]

The first thing that struck me about the naming of the two "sides" is that Asheroth sounds like a ripoff of Azeroth which is well known as the world of Warcraft. It may seem minor but as people usually focus on stupid minor things , this may undermine Crusade in looking like a WoW knockoff.

My other concern is a potential repeat of the Horde/Alliance population imbalance thing. You clearly have one side that is pretty and stereotypically fantasy good and another side that obviously dark and ugly. It's been well proven that people typically go for the pretty/good races. I don't want to see a disaparity between content on various races/sides etiher.

In WoW, Chris Metzen delibrately grayed the two sides to give you more incentive to play what was traditionally the "bad" guys and to me made the Horde seem a lot more interested. However this was not carried over visually i.e. the orcs while the lore portrayed them as noble and trying to go back to their roots, this wasn't depicted in the art. The horde were still hunched over, perhaps to bring their imposing size down to fit within architecture, or that it was done because of their slave history. Thus if you weren't steeped well in Warcraft lore or did not pay attention to the quests, given a bare gamewise comparison the Alliance were a lot more polished and appealing than Horde in their design

If you're going to have sides, you need to give equal incentive to play both without relying on the "omgz goth vampz!" angle. They can be darker and more mysterious without emphasising the ugly part. We know from WoW that very simple and stupid things such as wives/gfs not wanting to play an ugly race helped skew things over to Alliance in the beginning which had to be addressed with an expansion.

[Syndic]

Well speaking from a non-WoW perspective, evil has always had a smaller crowd. Not really sure since "Evil will always win, becuase good is dumb" - Spaceballs
Yes I've noticed Horde is a little lower in population, although I've always pictured them as evil, I didn't go into research on the game and didn't even know they tried to goodify (geez full of new words today) the horde. I chose them becuase they were evil.

EQ2 had Qeynos and Freeport, good and evil. Yet in a game where the only difference between good and evil was your starting city it still lacked an evil presence to equal that of good.

I've not actually seen QOL state the sides and good and evil, they most likely did I just skimmed over it. I've seen them state Order and Chaos, to me that is a totally different concept. Take Star Wars for example, Order in it's case is the Empire, strict military structure, Law and Justice (maybe tainted by corruption but isn't that everywhere). The Rebels were Chaos, raiding, looting and undermining the structures of the Empire.
I guess that was one of the things I loved most about the game Tie Fighter they really made the Empire look like the good guys and the Rebels were exactly that.

Good and Evil are just points of view. Admittedly todays society generally, and I certainly mean generally, has roughly the same point of view on what is good and evil. That also comes down to good story telling also.

I guess it is very hard to do, but the perfect ideal thing would be to come into the game without any preconceived notions as to which side is good and evil and let the player decide.

[fathamburger]

yes I can tell they are aiming for that ideal, but they still describe the talrok (kujix) as evil. You basically cant get away from Western society's ingrained notions of good and evil unless you make a conscious concerted effort to try

So.. a population imbalance isn't an issue? I can tell you don't pvp

The graying was necessary since most people by nature and also game mechanics (evil is nearly always completely gimped and halfassed in any game) will choose good. That's where the money and dev attention usually goes

[Syndic]

yes I can tell they are aiming for that ideal, but they still describe the talrok (kujix) as evil. You basically cant get away from Western society's ingrained notions of good and evil unless you make a conscious concerted effort to try

So.. a population imbalance isn't an issue? I can tell you don't pvp

The graying was necessary since most people by nature and also game mechanics (evil is nearly always completely gimped and halfassed in any game) will choose good. That's where the money and dev attention usually goes

Your right I don't PvP, there is a reason for it which is not on this subject so I'll leave it at that.
I can understand from a PvP point of view having each side equal in population is important, although without putting some code in to choose which side a player is on like in Unreal Tournament and such, you will never have equal sides.
As you have pointed out it is hard to get away from Western Society's view that something must be good or bad.
Also as you have said giving people a taste of both sides could be good option. I would suggest now though to put a pause on advertising the sides as light and dark, good and evil. Maybe just go for the old 2 ruling nations fighting to conquer the other.

One story I will relate though is when my friends and I started EQ2. We all agreed to go Freeport (evil) before release. So we all created our characters and played happily for a couple of weeks. When I hadn't seen my friends log on in a few days I rang them to see what was up. Little did I know they started again in Qeynos this time. One of them found Freeport depressing to be in.
To give you a visual, Qeynos was bright, clean, colourful and orderly. Freeport was trash-ridden, dark, rustic, crumbling and drab. Now I guess that was the way SoE thought things should look when you are evil, all I can say is "WHY?"

OK go for darker tones if you want to give that feeling to people, but why the untidy and horrid living conditions? They had a Tyrannical (sp?) leader who cared for no-one, and that's maybe thier story.

I just hope the Kujix can have a high standing that people will want to play. Yes I agree with the "evil" portion of the game not getting as much attention as the "good" side, after all the devs put the money where the most are going to see it.

Dark != Bad.

As mentioned above don't make it too gloomy either, it really does depress people playing, leave that for the swamps.

[fathamburger]

You don't want completely absolute equal sides, but roughly equal proportions. Cutting off the ability to create on any side is bad, but you want to give people incentive to experience both sides equally. I am against running multiple chars (one on each side) mainly because of trust issues, but for the sake of population balance I'd allow it. Population balance isn't so important if pvp will be restricted to constrained areas such as instances, and is based on fair play. I'm talking more like world pvp. If for example, horde population is low enoguh that fielding more than 20-40 people for pvp and raids is a problem while alliance can regularly field 4+ raid grps, then you have the issue of quest npcs and towns perma camped and relying on guard spawns more than players to fight. There are morale issues too, when the initial thrill of pvp wears off and people just stop showing up to defend. Towns get overrun, newbies don't have quest npcs and merchants etc. I know this all sounds like great arguments against having world pvp, but I believe pvp just for the sake of having it in it's own pocket universe that doesn't affect the world is pointless. Might as well boot up UT2K4.

I agree, clear cut good and evil is bad, more like diff sides like how rise of nations or starcraft does it. Pick the side that suits your style

Freeport? hah I liked the older more neutral Freeport, but I guess Lucan eventually overran it huh not enough people camping him for Soulfire it seems. Gloomy atmosphere, dark == bad, those are all things that are going to have to be done differently. Dark has to be different, and things like slums and barren atmosphere all contribute to a less attractive side to play. You could be dark and have all kinds of magical research and chaos run amok, same as good has it's nice looking towns and stereotypical hero types etc.

[Retina]

Two sides is very common in these games. Also remember that Warcraft is simply a ripoff of Warhammer. Again, two sides: forces of order and forces of destruction. Both can be viewed as evil by the other, but neither is explicitly evil. Frankly, evil is simply a point of view.

Take the Shadows and Vorlons from Babylon 5. Again, it's order vs. disorder. You can easily argue that both sides are evil or both are good, depending on your point of view. I always felt both were a bit evil since they both were trying to control everyone, the Vorlons being the worst.

Two sides is fine. As long as you design it in as RvR instead of simple PvP. Simple PvP has been done to death and is boring. RvR matters. RvR has lasting effects for the winners side (well, temporary but last a long time). PvP is just a kill fest that has no effect on the world at large and that makes it pointless.

[Zheng]

I have found that the kind of people that play the "evil" side, myself included, enjoy for the most part being in the minority. That only goes so far as I've been in PvP with a 20 on 100 ratio and we do pretty well and because of being outnumbered almost all the time we become better at PvP than they do, but five to one odds get old. I am looking forward to being Kujix and seeing what the play will be like.

[Psiborg]

I think that the two sides of Crusade will have a strong good and evil bent. The descriptions of the organizations mention that the Asheroth champion,

[Syndic]

[quote=Psiborg]but I personally believe the imbalance had more to do with he Horde

[S0ulb0und]

i'de like to start off with this note..

evil has nothing to do with torn-up dark ugly surroundings it's just a point of view as a couple people have said. i see people who chose "evil" merely like to more dark shadowy appeal and the "dark magics". they enjoy the fact of death or maybe they embrace the fact that good is also a point of view that games make some characters seem heroic and others nasty and gross but good is all how you look at it. for example lets say theres a kujix tribe somewhere (think in real world terms this isnt in the game) and a baby is born into the kujix tribe. a king from the asheroth side says to his finest hero that the kujix must be vanquished because they are killing our people. the hero burns one of the kujix houses but the hero has no idea the baby was in the house he just burned down. some would say he is evil some would say he did what he was told. merely a point of view. either way the baby's life has ended. if we get mixed up in the good and evil aspect in the game we lose sight of the real matters. in the case of the story the baby was killed, but o the parents left it there. in the fact of choosing sides we think oh its depressing.. well maybe yes they could make it less depressing but it is more than looking depressing it is about what each person wh plays the game is looking for. some liiike the "darker side of life" while some go for the "goody-goody be the hero" look into what the bonuses of that side are and then choose don't look at what you like about the way the character and his surroundings look...

it was just a short story that popped into my head a friend from school did a report on "good vs. evil" and its was a scenario something like that.

[Zheng]

I'm sorry for bringing up older posts, but I reread them sometimes and new things come to mind. On the subject of the two opposing sides in WoW and good and evil, I've have to bring in the fact that the Horde is not evil. They're just fighting for survival. The Orcs' planet was destroyed if I remember correctly, so they had to find a new place to live and that means uprooting another society to make room (humans, etc). That sort of change will breed great conflict as it has in real life with refugees in Europe including many thousands of Jews escaping Germany and eventually Europe in the 1930's and 40's.

If you played the Horde, you saw that almost all of the quests were actually filled with honor and good intentions. I felt much more of a connection with good feelings when I played Horde than Alliance. The Night Elves were just selfish in their quest to reclaim their immortality, which they lost because of a lust for power in the first place.

So, as it was mentioned earlier, evil is a point of view like many labels we use in life.

Also... points to Syndic for using a Spaceballs quote... Good is, indeed, dumb.

[dog]

Yeah I don't think the Horde are necessarily 'evil'. Anyway I have played both Horde and Alliance and while the Alliance might have a bigger player-base, this does vary from server to server. For example the server I was on had a 3 to 1 Horde to Alliance ratio. And I have found that while the Alliance may have more players the Horde has more skilled players. (like me)

[Jergis]

*Poof*

-Thread resurrection at its best!

I like being bad.

You think you're better because you have more friends?

I'll kill them first, then we can really have some fun.

Besides, i enjoy a challenge.

Jergis

[Soarael]

You can's discriminate against the darkness just because other people do. Death, shadows, the color black are not bad things just because people think they are. Don't label them as evil, label them as enemies.

[melanieshaman]

Most people go to the pretty races/good side?? For me personally (to use your example) In WoW.. I played Horde nearly exclusively for 4 years... 80 Tauren warrior, 72 Tauren Shaman, 73 Belf Rogue (ok ya they ARE pretty).... Tauren was and is my favorite race in that game, with Draenei (the good guys 'ugly' race) a close second. I went straight for destruction in WAR as well.... I like evil, ugly, underdogs... more fun.


oh ya one more thing.. it's not that they are "bad" maybe just misunderstood

[Zianix]

Most people go to the pretty races/good side?? For me personally (to use your example) In WoW.. I played Horde nearly exclusively for 4 years... 80 Tauren warrior, 72 Tauren Shaman, 73 Belf Rogue (ok ya they ARE pretty).... Tauren was and is my favorite race in that game, with Draenei (the good guys 'ugly' race) a close second. I went straight for destruction in WAR as well.... I like evil, ugly, underdogs... more fun.


oh ya one more thing.. it's not that they are "bad" maybe just misunderstood

Yeah this was written in 2006. But actually in WoW, on all server i've been on. Horde is the most populated.

[Bluejinn]

On the server i was on in WoW the alliance out numbered the Horde by ALOT. It was HARD when i was in outland trying to get the stones (it has been so long i forgot what they were called) to buy the pvp items on the area in the middle of the bridges (mind went blank again lol). I don't really care what side i play. I play both sides at the same time.

[Vaterwolf]

[quote name='melanieshaman' date='Apr 19 2009, 01:47 AM' post='10026']
Most people go to the pretty races/good side?? For me personally (to use your example) In WoW.. I played Horde nearly exclusively for 4 years... 80 Tauren warrior, 72 Tauren Shaman, 73 Belf Rogue (ok ya they ARE pretty).... Tauren was and is my favorite race in that game, with Draenei (the good guys 'ugly' race) a close second. I went straight for destruction in WAR as well.... I like evil, ugly, underdogs... more fun.


Most of the games I have played, a good majority seem to gravitate to the "evil" or dark factions. I think they think it's cooler or something. That isnt of course to say there arent always a few servers where the "good" side would be dominate, but the most of them would be the"dark side".
I hate to keep using it as a template but DAoC was a good template in the fact that neither of the three factions were the "evil" ones. Each faction held itself as the righteous side. No evil or good was ever really implied into any of the three factions.
But hey, even if we do get a "evil" side. I would play on whatever side had the better looking environment and or toons

[melanieshaman]

Most of the games I have played, a good majority seem to gravitate to the "evil" or dark factions. I think they think it's cooler or something. That isnt of course to say there arent always a few servers where the "good" side would be dominate, but the most of them would be the"dark side".
I hate to keep using it as a template but DAoC was a good template in the fact that neither of the three factions were the "evil" ones. Each faction held itself as the righteous side. No evil or good was ever really implied into any of the three factions.
But hey, even if we do get a "evil" side. I would play on whatever side had the better looking environment and or toons

this is true as well..when WAR first came out it seemed that Destro was high pop and order was med at best... hopefully there will be enough interest in both sides to keep it balance...especially when pvp is put in the game.

[Velkyn]

Doesn't matter what side I play... the other side is always evil