Well, while we all probably loved the familiar feeling of turning into a rampaging furry behemoth or getting attacked by angry villagers after getting our daily blood tithe, I think everybody here should agree...the game would be preeeetty lame if Vampyrism/Lycanthropy was something that was poorly balanced. Everybody would get it and we'd...well we'd have Twilight Online. That's something I really hope to avoid, because the next step would be Zeni removing all [censored] items for werewolves, adding sparkle animations to vampires...it's a long, dirty road.

There's a few solutions I can think of...but each one has it's drawbacks.

For example, they could make them both very rare to find and obtain. Some rare instanced event that leaves you barely alive but infected, and only happens to a very small amount of players. However, eventually no matter how small it is the number would grow and grow, so they'd need to put artificial limits on how long people had it, maybe via a scripted Fighter's guild encounter after a month of something that cures you. Or whatever. This is the lamest and worst option so...yeah. I mean it's viable, but not only does it deprive gameplay from potentially thousands of maybe millions of players, but it's all on the backs of RNG and not a shred of skill. Making it a hard quest isn't even a good solution; everybody and their mother can complete a quest given enough practice.

The other option, and the more reasonable one (but still meh) seems to be replacing racials. We know that we start off with our selected race and it has its own passives and actives for us to take advantage of, but IF AND ONLY IF the werewolf/vampire racials were balanced to be just as beneficial as race racials, then it would possibly be fair and exist as an option to everybody who saw their advantages as superior to their current ones. This seems bad just on the "fun" side. Getting Lycan/Vamp is supposed to feel like something particularly epic just happened, but making it simply another race would feel like sort of a slap in the face to people who expected this awesome powerful monstrous set of abilities. Also getting the diseases doesn't really change your race, so its not exactly lore friendly.

And finally, the seemingly best option, but also the most game breaking if done wrong. I can see this going three ways; Zeni can give Werewolves/Vampires a decent set of somewhat powerful abilities as an additive to their regular form, but also give them omni-present disadvantages as well that balance their form, i.e. give them weaknesses that, if players are aware of, can use to kill them much more easily. The other way is by making them...lame. Making them weak, just another skill tree to use and disadvantages to boot with no epic feeling, or heck making the disadvantages waaaaay too severe. The last problem, quite simply, is making them OP.

Now, let me reference this next discussion by paraphrasing what Konkle said in his recent Shoddycast appearance; even if vampires or werewolves are underpowered, it won't be bad because players can just shift into a style that kills them better and the game will balance itself out.

...NO.

Wrong. Please, Zeni, I beg of you, do not jump on that train that so many have fallen from. That logic is inherently flawed for several reasons. I'll try to lay it out as simply as I can; let's say you have, as suggested in the conversation, a Vampire form which ends up being a little "OP" against people not built to combat the undead. But there *is* a way to combat them, right? The Fighters guild, of course!

But here's where the problem occurs. Your assumption is that once a FotM appears, a counter will become more prevalent. This is true. For *end-game* players, for savvy players who are up to date on strategy and more than willing to change their game play style. And even this is only true...sometimes. Look at FotM's in other MMO's. If indeed a vampire was OP, well chances are a lot of people wouldn't use this OP build. Even when a class in WoW is obscenely over powered in WoW (DK's), it will only gain several percentage points of the population. A very small minority of the game are ever involved in these meta game battle politics. The majority of people will still play with their own builds, and some may even prefer to make slight changes rather than completely shift themselves to counter. You see this, again, in WoW; when an arena composition is obviously overpowered, people do not get up and hop classes, even if they have those classes ready. People simply like to stick to one play style once they have it figured out.

So what does this mean? Well imagine this; the weakness to Vampires build is effective against undead...but what if it's weak to most other builds, most other builds here being the majority of the game? That person would be giving up viability against those simply to be able to hunt a niche build that greatly overpowers everything else. People don't do that. They just don't, it's not effective. People would in fact likely prefer to simply join the Vampire build instead, likely have an equal chance with current vampires, and a great advantage against all other players.

And thus, even with a rock paper scissor system, it ends up going like this:

Rock is op. Rocks kills all scissors. But there's only 10 rocks, and 10 million scissors. You can go paper and kill rock easily but die every time to scissor, or go rock, kill all scissors, and tie against rock.

Well...that's my beef. I really hope Zeni puts in more effort balancing these two than Konkle implied. This can potentially be epic content for the game that makes everything feel extremely dynamic and diverse, but it can just as easily turn the game into a Twilight fairy tale if not done properly.

Just something to think about.