Guild Wars 2

Something needs to be considered here.

Let’s just use two games where realm versus realm pvp has been used as a central part of the game. Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online.

Dark Age of Camelot did it right by having a 3 realm system, which meant that if one realm was getting overwhelmed by another one the third realm would be the factor for the experience to still be enjoyable, because even if the realms did not decide to ally, it would still be a thorn on the backside of the dominating realm and be a deciding factor for the stomped realm of having a chance to make some progress.

Warhammer Online on the other hand used a 2 faction system, Order and Chaos and that made for some horribly lopsided servers, where one of the two factions would dominate horribly and the other faction would just have no chance of an enjoyable experience. People would get tired of getting ganked and being stomped on and would move servers to one where their faction was dominating. This only made the problem worse as it created servers heavily dominated by Order and others heavily dominated by Chaos. The underdog faction would just not go into the pvp areas to avoid getting rolled by the zerg and the dominating side had no one to kill, which destroyed the playing experience for both factions…

DAOC has been very succesful and is still the realm versus realm standard, even though it’s heading for its inevitable end, but Warhammer Online fizzled before it was even succesful and the sad part is that in my opinion was a mechanically and technically superior game. The decision to only have 2 factions doomed the game.

Arena Net has wisely learned from other’s mistakes.

Having 3 factions or armies is a blessing… believe me…