everyone want to be Elyos?

[Otium]

Originally Posted by Frein

I'm almost 100% convinced we'll see history from WoW repeat itself in Aion: Elyos (Alliance) will initially outnumber Asmodians (Horde) but Asmodians will dominate PVP whenever they don't get bulldozered by superior numbers. Eventually people on the Elyos side will grow tired of always losing, so they start rolling new Asmodian characters, which is when the populations will start to slowly balance out.

I'm not sure I'd bet a whole lot of money on this prediction, but I'd be tempted to.

Because everyone thinks like that, specially those coming from WoW, the situation in Aion will pretty much be reversed. I can almost bet it... lol

[Kyio]

The Chosen... oh how those dragons are constantly switching sides
I remember reading (and watching the trailer) when over at my friend's house about Aion for the first time. Thats what stopped us from playing WoW. It is more fun to watch Aion develop all this time then it is to play WoW

[Defiler]

lol, yes I agree Kyio...I am really looking forward to this game. And I'll take the good and the bad with that. As of now, L2, LOTRO and Hellgate: London just aren't doing it for me.

I personally like LOTRO lvling. Can grind it out or do quests. They just have no endgame stuff and no pvp. Aion will excel because of the sieges you can do every 4 hours and an open pvp area will allow max lvls to not easily get bored.

[Verth]

Aion managed to get me out of the WoW chokehold I have also got a ton of people from my server excited about Aion now so when Aion gets released, we're so there! But we're all rolling Asmo, we're all horde on WoW and we just like the darker side of things plus we get bat wings.. how much cooler can it get??

WOOT just got word it's snowing bad here so we're going home early!! :P sorry had to share that....

[Ligisttomten]

If it's anything like in WoW with Elyos being "alliance", all the more reason for me to go Asmodian. \m/

[Kaldur]

I like both races, but both have things that I like, so I don;t know which I will end up playing. Asmodians are kind of grabbing my attention.

[Mygo]

You can't compare WoW/Aion...

"Dark" side, have not the same attraction ^^

[Midgarsormr]

Originally Posted by Mygo

Never tire of that pic.

[Kattrina]

I think that assuming that the Alliance/Horde scenario will play out the exact same way is a poor assumption.

People chose Alliance more for two reasons: They're the good guys and they're waaay better looking than those butt ugly horde. (Yeah, I said horde are bad guys... you can't visit the under city and see a group of undead killing and rezzing and killing and rezzing human prisoners over and over again and not think they're just "misunderstood").

Here, Elyos being "better looking" is a matter of preference as opposed to fact. NCSoft actually made the Asmodians pretty darn cool looking. And, anyone who's into the "good guy" "bad guy" lore will realize that neither side is really bad at all. And, like Otium said, I can imagine a lot of WoW people rolling Asmodian because they assume it's going to be an alliance/horde repeat.

I certainly don't believe there's any reason to think that Elyos are going to outnumber Asmodians just because something like that happened in World of Warcraft. I think the only reason you see more Elyos on AionSource right now as opposed to Asmodians is because the quality of guilds on the Elyos side are currently quite a bit better than the quality of Asmodian guilds for the most part (I said for the most part!! Dun kill me).

I see a lot of really quality Asmodians wandering around AionSource guildless, and I've seen a good number of Asmodian converts come to the Elyos side for the guilds. I think we just have to wait it out for now.

[Fiend]

Originally Posted by Taerr

lol, i do find evil people tend to take their work more seriously XD haha, and they go to greater extents to acheive their goals, but i will be very interested to see what happens in Aion, especially the PvPvE part. If one side DOES outnumber the other, do you think the gms will make a temp alliance between Balaur and the fewer numbered side? i think that would add an interesting component to the game. The alliance would be extremely volatile ofcoarse, but it'd be interesting for a while :P

From the sound of things so far, the Balaur game mechanic will probably favor whoever is holding less land:

From Balaur - AionSource.com Wiki

Originally Posted by Wiki

The Producer of Aion, Ju-hyun Jang, said this about the Balaur:

"The [Balaur] are a server-controlled NPC faction, so players cannot choose to play them.
However, just because they are controlled by the server doesn't mean they are stupid; they can make choices, and players will never quite know what they are going to do.
For example, imagine a castle siege-style scenario, where one of the player factions, the [Asmodians], is attacking the [Elyos] faction's castle. In the middle of this siege, the [Balaur] may appear.

When they arrive, no-one will know what they are going to do. They may have previously helped the [Asmodians], but that doesn't matter; in the siege, they might betray them and help the [Elyos]. Or they might help the [Asmodians] to siege the [Elyos'] castle. Or... they might try and take the castle for themselves, fighting against both the [Elyos] and the [Asmodians].

The important thing to realize is that the [Balaur] are not typical NPCs. They are the third faction in the game, and they have free will, which makes them very unpredictable."

Somewhere I read something about them helping to balance... I'll keep digging.

[BahamutKaiser]

I think the Balaur are designed to automatically apply more resistance to the winning side, to keep an adequit challenge on either side of the field. They make it sound like the Balaur just pop in to randomly irritate either faction, but in many interviews they described how they are ment to counteract the winning side. Beyond that, if your side is winning and holds more locations, your obviously more likely to fall under attack, since your the only one there, the opposite faction may not be around to give you a challenge, but the Balaur will surely find a way to make your occupation a tough one, at least they better.

[k1klass]

Some good post's, but i got to stick with my gut instinct, and that the Elyos will out number the Asmodians becouse most peeps like to be the good guys, or shall we say the guys with the most light.

What worries me if true is the previous mention on each race having different leveling speeds? is this true as ive not picked it up anywhere, but if true i think a thast majority will play Eylos just to lvl up Quicker, i can say i will take my time as to try and not miss anything and enjoy the game, but they will be 1000's that treat it like a race and want to be the first to cap out.

[Lunais]

Whether or not the Elyos outnumber the Asmodians, I don't think that in Aion it will make such a big difference. I doubt the gap between the two would ever favour one too heavily, and I don't think people will have a reason to all favour one side (DP skills seem for the most part to be somewhat balanced) to any sort of extreme extent. Some servers may have the scales tipped in one side's favour a bit more than others, but that's what the Balaur are for.

The reason I think the Horde at first were outnumbered significantly was that that their races were not quite as developed as the Alliance's.

Undead: Okay, the Undead were good. An appealing race with an interesting backstory, they had the 'misunderstood murderers' vibe to them, although as Kattrina said some of them were slightly more extremist than others.

Orcs: Orcs also had an interesting backstory, and they'd appeal to some. But Orcs, typically a race that all look the same and are slain by the bucketful by RPG players, could look a bit bland. They may have had some interesting lore, and I quite liked them, but I don't think they stand out quite so much.

Troll: Trolls are a bit disappointing. This race, although charming in it's own way, is quite possibly the most bland in WoW. Funny accents aside, they are another race that people can plenty of and not think about it at all. The whole 'segmented tribe' thing made it difficult to feel very strongly attached to 'Trollkind'. A bit meh, I guess. Some funky hairstyles though, I'll admit. But not too much in WoW itself to make you feel very strongly about them, especially as only a small portion of them are meant to be 'with the Horde' as such.

Tauren: Tauren had an interesting angle to them, the naturalistic angle being somewhat reminiscent of the Night Elf yet maybe a little more down-to-earth about it. The problem is that playing as a big cow tends to be more of a LOLZ thing than anything. A lot of people do not want to spend years being known as a big cow.

Of course, this is all just my opinion, and you could apply some of this logic to the Alliance, but really the Horde just seemed a bit more bland.

Aion keeps things simple. Only two races, different sides. Both of which are quite human, the Asmodians looking slightly more feral or animal-like than the Elyos. Both races can look quite visually striking, and with the customisation feature being so advanced I'm sure nobody will feel like they all look the same, regardless of race chosen. People may complain that both races don't differ much, but perhaps this makes it easier for both races to be appealing to players.

[Frein]

Originally Posted by Lunais

Tauren: Tauren had an interesting angle to them, the naturalistic angle being somewhat reminiscent of the Night Elf yet maybe a little more down-to-earth about it. The problem is that playing as a big cow tends to be more of a LOLZ thing than anything. A lot of people do not want to spend years being known as a big cow.

Tauren are by far my favourite race. They're not big cows unless you pick female, the males are bulls. The attraction of course comes from the fact that they're huge brutes (even though their personalities are calm). If they existed in real life, one could just grab you and snap your spine with one hand. :P

Of course, this is all just my opinion, and you could apply some of this logic to the Alliance, but really the Horde just seemed a bit more bland.

I don't think it was blandness that kept people away from the horde but their alien features. People easily identify themselves with human or very human-like races. Socializing with aliens as opposed to other humans just doesn't appeal to many people.

To me, the alliance is really bland. You have the boring humans whose males have way too large arms and look funny. Then we have the night elves with the cute girls but also the fruitiest guys. Dwarves as a race are pretty interesting in most fantasy settings, but the graphics in WoW don't do them justice so they end up looking like short and chubby humans. The only visually interesting race are the gnomes, though they are a bit of a gimmick race based mostly on silliness.

[Dynasty]

I think Fiend has a point. The Balaur, if done right, should eliminate any imbalances in population that any server might have. Another thing that should help reduce the chances of this is probably the race specific advantages, as they may stop people being Elyos or Asmodian just for the "looks".

It's definatley something worth thinking about though.