Introduction to RvR (from : http://www.war-rvr.net )

I decided to write this article because I hear a lot of people asking questions about what "RvR" means. My introduction to the RvR scene was with Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC), Mythic's previous and very successful game. Given my extensive experience and knowledge of DAOC, I hope that I can share my enthusiasm with you and shed some light on what RvR is all about. While I have no doubt Warhammer will be a very different game from DAOC, I believe many of the succesful elements from DAOC will be implemented in Warhammer in one form or another, simply because they are a lot of fun.

First of all, RvR means "Realm vs Realm". Basically it's PvP, but on a larger scale and with wider goals than single player vs single player encounters (or small group vs small group). A RvR based game is designed to encourage players to get involved into massive PvP campaigns that lead to epic battles between different groups of players, and the ultimate goal is to make your entire realm stronger by succeeding at these campaigns.

It wasn't uncommon to see epic battles of 100+ vs 100+ players. The servers are actually able to handle the load associated with these big battles, so server crashes few and far between. The guild system also allows the formation of great communities. With its alliance system, different guilds (from the same realm of course) can ally together and gain access to an alliance chat channel. Every guild in the alliance has the power to determine which rank of members can view and/or talk in it. This allows fast communication and fast reaction to any situation in the frontier. It also allows the entire realm to band together while guilds still remain unique and independant entities. It's impossible for everybody to get along perfectly of course, but a realm that manages to deal with its differences is usually a realm that will be very succesful in its campaign. Community communication and cooperation is the key.

Without a doubt, what fires up RvR conflicts in DAOC is the relic and keep capture system. In the frontier, keep doors and walls are destroyable. Siege weapons are particularly efficient to achieve it. There are a number of reasons to encourage players to band together and capture enemy keeps and towers.

Some realm benefits that result from taking enemy keeps:

Possibility to open the relic keep gates, which can lead to the access of the relic keep and give a chance to steal a relic. By succesfully stealing a relic, every player in the succesful realm gains more power (spell or melee dmg, depending of the relic taken) and this lasts until they lose the relic (another realm has to come and steal it).

Access to the dungeon Darkness Falls. Only one realm can enter this dungeon at any time, and it is based on the realm who owns the most keeps in the frontier. It is always a lot of fun to open access to the dungeon and send a "cleaning crew" to wipe the players from the realm who previously had access to it.Owning one of the coastal enemy keep gives your realm the possibility to teleport to it, making travel to their frontier much faster then it normally would.

The more keeps a realm owns, the more bonuses and perks its members gets, like more coins drop from mobs and guards, more exp gained from kills, more realm points gained, etc.

So we can see, even if there isn't a relic raid planned, taking enemy keeps always has perks associated to it, thus ensuring fierce battles pretty much all day long.

Personal benefits from participating to RVR:

A player gains realm points (RPs) when he kills an enemy player, and when he participates in a successful keep take. Gaining realm points allows a player to gain realm levels and ranks. The more levels/ranks a player gains, the more points he has available to spend to train special skills and abilities. Many of these abilities are very powerful and very sought after. They are the end game abilities.

A player also gains bounty points when he kills an enemy player. These bounty points can be used to pay the house rent (if the player owns a house) or buy siege engines at a keep or tower.

A player who is a member of a guild also makes his guild earn guild bounty points when he kills another player. The guild bounty points can be used by the guild to claim and upgrade keeps/towers.An upgraded keep or tower has more HPs, is physically bigger, can hold more hookpoints for siege weaponry, and have higher level guards protecting it.

All the players, classes, guilds and alliance realm points are compiled on a web site for everybody to view. This allows some healthy competition between players and different groups and is one of my favorite features.

This system gives a lot of incentives and motivation to a wide variety of players to go out and PvP. Some players prefer to go out and solo. This is viable to stealth classes mostly, but some other players managed to be succesful at it despite not playing a stealth class. Other players prefer to run around as a full group (a full group in DAOC is 8 players), trying to kill anything they can run across and stirring trouble by attacking towers and weakened keeps. These "8 man crews" are usually feared because they are usually very well balanced and coordinated teams. And of course there is the zerg. Zergs are great for low realm rank and less experienced players, as their numbers are making up for their weaknesses and lack of experience. A zerg with a lot of high realm rank players in it is something to be scared of! A zerg left alone unchallenged can cause some massive destruction to a frontier so counter zergs are almost always formed and big battles always follow.

Despite DAOC's heavy RvR content, there is also a strong PvE component, but nothing grindy like we have seen in other PvE games (I am deliberately ignoring the TOA expansion though). Every realm has a set of PvE zones and dungeons where players can level up and receive loot. Enemy realms cannot reach these areas, so there is no ganking in the PvE zones. Some end game gear is quested, while some other is acquired from boss mobs. Every drop in the game is tradeable, so if a player doesn't want to bother with dungeon runs (or if that player is unlucky and never wins the items he's after), he can try and buy the drop he wants from other players. This allows for a healthy economy. In DAOC, the stats a player can earn from his equipment are capped, based on his level. For this reason, crafters like armorsmiths, weaponsmiths, tailors and spellcrafters are very sought after because players need to get a couple crafted pieces to round up their stats and complete their set.

I am hoping WAR will be as diverse as DAOC, and will allow different type of players to enjoy the game (PVPers, crafters, PVEers, etc). I also hope the campaign system will be as exciting and challenging. I would love the PvP ranking system to be as solid and allow for healthy competition between individuals, guilds and realms. I hope the rewards gained through the PvP ranking system will be meaningful and plentiful. I am also hoping players in WAR will be able to build strong communities and work together towards the same goal: smash their enemies to pieces! WAAAGH!