E3 Killjoy 2010
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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Dear me do your research next time. As many people have said TOR has tons of gameplay footage out there, some of it coming close to a year old.
With all due respect, Shamus, all the points you covered in your article preety much reflect the thoughts a lot of people had of the games/devices mentioned. So effectively, with the possible exception of people looking forward to The Old Republic, you weren't a "killjoy" for anybody.Shamus Young said:
Anyway, I think there are two reasons why the 3DS isn't receiving more flak from the public:
1. Nintendo is not forcing 3D gaming down people's throats. With the Wii and DS, it often felt like Nintendo was trying too hard to sell their unique control schemes to people. They practically made it a requirement for game developers to implement the motion sensor/stylus touch-screen mechanic, no matter how convoluted and tacked on it may be for that specific game. A lot of people were turned-off by this as a result.
In this case, however, Nintendo implemented a slider with which you can determine the amount of 3D depth you want to have and you can even shut it off completely. As such, it remains a selling point for those that are interested, while the rest can focus on other aspects of the handheld without the 3D aspect forced on them.
2. There is enough variety between initial 3DS games. It is practically a tradition for Nintendo to release their consoles with a strong library of games. However, people always complain that they are either a) dedicated solely to the casual-gaming audience or b) are merely rehashes of Nintendo's core franchises.
This time, Nintendo preety much topped themselves. Not only do they have a staggering volume of games for their starting lineup, the variety between them is also very impressive. You have platformers, RPGs, adventure games, fighting games, sports games, puzzle games, rhythm games...Simply put, no matter who you are or what type of gamer are you, chances are that you will find at least something in the starting library that appeals to you. Not only that, most (if not all) of them come from well-established and popular franchises and Nintendo tapped into some of the franchises they had previously ignored (such as Kid Icarus and Star Fox).
Basically, what I am trying to say is that the reason people are mostly not complaining about the 3DS is beacuse there is not much to complain about. Infact, other then Miyamoto's awkward demonstration of the new Zelda game, Nintendo handled this year's E3 conference quite well and they have preety much left it as the undisputed winners.
Well the thing is that this is not a "story" as much as a competitive, faction-based MMO. As such both sides need to be presented at their best. If the game was single player, this kind of marketing would make sense since it would be get people stoked for the uphill battle. In this case however where The Sith and their allies are playable characters this is far less of a good idea.rsvp42 said:
Given the nature of the game, I think that the material so far shows a great amount of favortism towards the Sith side.
In the KoTR single player games, the main characters were left to be customized by the player, so it makes sense that they spent that much time on the apperance of the bad guys who would only be viewed one specific way. This is however no longer a single player game, both sides are being customized, and truthfully the good guys should be just as interesting as the bad guys.
People have been making cool heroes for a very long time, and truthfully when things look as one sided as they have been so far, it leads me to believe that the developers aren't making as much of an effort on the good side of the equasion.
I've mentioned this before, over a period of years actually, I even said something on the Bioware sites (though I haven't been harping on it). With the game a little over six months away I'm guessing I find it slightly disturbing that we haven't really seen much of a shift in focus away from the "Sith are cool" promotions. I haven't seen the good guys really strutting their stuff, and really I think that side of the game needs some love.
Thank GOD someone finally made the point Ive been harping on since 2008. This is two years running now, where all we have to show for our slavish devotion to TOR is some pretty cinies, and some concept art/comics.
Im as big a fan of KOTOR as anyone else. I fully intend to play this game when it comes out. But BioWare has had legions of fans begging on hands and knees for 3 freaking years now, and we dont even have a confirmed, solid release date. I mean, cmon people.
I hope TOR is all its being cracked up to be. I appreciate the sweet spice of anticipation. The carrot on a stick. The "around the corner" hype.
But 3 years is way too much spice, the horses legs are getting tired, and while this corner may have alot of pretty corner dwellers to look at, Id like to get to the main freakin street already.
Im as big a fan of KOTOR as anyone else. I fully intend to play this game when it comes out. But BioWare has had legions of fans begging on hands and knees for 3 freaking years now, and we dont even have a confirmed, solid release date. I mean, cmon people.
I hope TOR is all its being cracked up to be. I appreciate the sweet spice of anticipation. The carrot on a stick. The "around the corner" hype.
But 3 years is way too much spice, the horses legs are getting tired, and while this corner may have alot of pretty corner dwellers to look at, Id like to get to the main freakin street already.
RobfromtheGulag said:
I'm assuming you're fairly young. There were several pretty good Star Wars titles -- Lucasarts put out a few back in the 90s, and the X-Wing / TIE Fighter titles were pretty fun, also from the 90s.
Honestly I'd say there have been more good SW games than bad... but that taken per cultural weight, bad is bigger than good due in no small part to that abysmal Star Wars MMO.
That isn't anywhere even close to true.Therumancer said:
DAoC was *all about* factions, and is still the only game to actually get faction-on-faction conflict right. EQ had a (poor) attempt at factional conflict as well (good v neut v evil) -- and even though EQ's PvP servers were.. not that great.. at least they had the good sense to stick with 3 factions.
Warhammer just failed because Warhammer was an abortion unto game design. It had a lot of promise but was killed because they were too afraid to make it too like DAoC (3 factions, real PvP endgame) and to afraid to make it too *un*like WoW (liek zomg everyone lieks pveeeeee endgame).
Basically, 2 factions is cool if the factions don't fight eachother. If they do, small differences in population will make a big difference. Ya make 3 factions all fighting and it's a lot harder for 1 faction to be totally dominant -- unless one faction gets more than the population of the other two combined and that is not likely.
anyway, certainly not my killjoy. if you gathered all the reviewers on this site, gathered all the games they've panned and discluded any good reviews and were just left with the grand total of all games that anyone here said were garbage, you'd still not be able to keep up with how absolutely shitty and terrible I find most games to be.
if any of the games mentioned aren't abominations unto gaming it only could be because god himself came down and revealed his glory to mankind and bestowed some super special divinity to the game. anything shy of that will fall short.
.. except for maybe the kirby game, that sounds pretty neato keen.
But that just boils down to personal perception. I watched that cinematic and got more stoked about the Trooper and Jedi Knight classes. I mean, that one trooper was a beast, trying to take on those Sith, then the Jedi with the double saber? I found those characters to be a lot more appealing. The sith just seemed like more red-sabered bad guys, but again it's really subjective.Therumancer said:
When I was talking about storytelling, I was talking about storytelling for a cinematic. A cinematic needs to tell a compelling story, even if it means showing favoritism to one side or the other (unless the cinematic is meant to be just clips of different classes looking cool, which is a different case). I realize that the entire game should probably have a sort of narrative balance, but you can't take a particular bit of marketing and use that as a basis for criticizing faction balance in an unreleased game. Not only is it based on individual perception (like I think the cinematic showed favor to the Republic and the Jedi), but it's jumping the gun on criticizing the game. Like I suggested, you may be completely right and the Sith end up being the favorite of both players and developers, but I'm not sure we could say that with any confidence at this point.
However, looking at the site again, I can see why you'd pine for more updates from the Light Side. If they continue to use the Sith to showcase all the new content, then those of us interested in the Jedi and whatnot may be justified in wanting some more balance. But then again, just because the developers decide to use a particular faction to introduce new content, doesn't mean there's cause for worry. Hopefully coming updates will level the field a bit.Therumancer said:
I agree with it, all of it, and I fear for it too as I fear for it with every MMO I see going in production. The reason why it's happening is obvious; evil is simply so cool. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsCool] Star Wars is perhaps the worst and most obvious example in fiction. Especially for a younger, more shallow audience, aesthetics are important. And lets face it, these guys:Therumancer said:
I mean, come ooooon. Did they even try? Well ok they did with Han. But since then, everything Star Wars related is stuck with this stigma. I fear SW:TOR will suffer from it too and I doubt it'll be able to overcome it. The latest Hope trailer took a good shot at it, Republic troopers are pretty awesome.
Disclaimer: I know Ackbar is a tactical genius and I know Boba Fett isn't technically aligned with the Empire, this is just about aesthetics.
You guys do NOT need to worry about the dark side "looking too cool" and being overpopulated.
That's been the mantra of pretty much every MMO with factions that I've followed since.. good grief.
They said that with WoW -- guess what, Horde never outnumbered Alliance (contrary to what some other chap posted in this thread). Yeah, a lot of the organized guilds that rolled at release DID go Horde, an overwhelming majority of those types did in fact. Thing is, and what everyone forgot to take into account, is that those people -- and especially those people who make their choices known on internet forums -- are an EXTREME MINORITY. At one point in time, if I'm recalling things right, Blizzard only had 2 or 3 servers where Horde had a sizeable (more than a few percent) majority -- and 2 or 3 DOZEN where Alliance had a sizeable majority.
Same thing was said of Warhammer. Guess what! Never happened! At least not at release -- anything after the 2-week mark doesn't count, as most people figured out the game was bad at that point and quit playing.
I can't think of any other 2-faction MMOs that've come out recently but I'm sure whatever they are, similar things were said pre-release (omg the bad guys are sooo coooool no one's gonna play a prissy fancy fairy!) and at release all such nonsense was promptly forgotten the first time you got your face smashed in by a prissy fancy fairy brigade out zerging the soooo coooool bad guys.
that said, it's still a fact that any mmo that tries to incorporate large-scale PvP (or RvR as Mythic likes to call it, which is a better term), and uses a 2 faction model is just going to fail. You can't have prolonged conflict when it's always one guy beating on another, not and have open-world combat like DAoC had and like WoW for the longest time was constantly hinting that they were going to have (hint: it never happened and they've pretty much abandoned the idea). There's gotta be that third faction to sweep in when the others are weakened from a fight, that keeps the aggressor from over-extending, and most of all that keeps faction populations relatively sane with regards to one another. 45%/55% is a big difference, but 28%/28%/43% isn't a huge deal. The two smaller factions are vastly outnumbered against the single large faction, but together THEY are in the majority.
Then again, there really aren't any MMOs where PvP is much more than an afterthought anyway, and numbers don't really matter at all when all you're competing against are NPCs in dungeons.
That's been the mantra of pretty much every MMO with factions that I've followed since.. good grief.
They said that with WoW -- guess what, Horde never outnumbered Alliance (contrary to what some other chap posted in this thread). Yeah, a lot of the organized guilds that rolled at release DID go Horde, an overwhelming majority of those types did in fact. Thing is, and what everyone forgot to take into account, is that those people -- and especially those people who make their choices known on internet forums -- are an EXTREME MINORITY. At one point in time, if I'm recalling things right, Blizzard only had 2 or 3 servers where Horde had a sizeable (more than a few percent) majority -- and 2 or 3 DOZEN where Alliance had a sizeable majority.
Same thing was said of Warhammer. Guess what! Never happened! At least not at release -- anything after the 2-week mark doesn't count, as most people figured out the game was bad at that point and quit playing.
I can't think of any other 2-faction MMOs that've come out recently but I'm sure whatever they are, similar things were said pre-release (omg the bad guys are sooo coooool no one's gonna play a prissy fancy fairy!) and at release all such nonsense was promptly forgotten the first time you got your face smashed in by a prissy fancy fairy brigade out zerging the soooo coooool bad guys.
that said, it's still a fact that any mmo that tries to incorporate large-scale PvP (or RvR as Mythic likes to call it, which is a better term), and uses a 2 faction model is just going to fail. You can't have prolonged conflict when it's always one guy beating on another, not and have open-world combat like DAoC had and like WoW for the longest time was constantly hinting that they were going to have (hint: it never happened and they've pretty much abandoned the idea). There's gotta be that third faction to sweep in when the others are weakened from a fight, that keeps the aggressor from over-extending, and most of all that keeps faction populations relatively sane with regards to one another. 45%/55% is a big difference, but 28%/28%/43% isn't a huge deal. The two smaller factions are vastly outnumbered against the single large faction, but together THEY are in the majority.
Then again, there really aren't any MMOs where PvP is much more than an afterthought anyway, and numbers don't really matter at all when all you're competing against are NPCs in dungeons.
You know, that is so true. I don't know why gamers defend gamers they like with such an insane deal, as if they had some stakes in them other than playing it. I remember just now when Yahtzee was chewed on for his review of Monster Hunter Tri. You'd think for the way people were attacking him that they were receiving a percentile of the game's sales. If you enjoy the game personally, what else matters?
Oh, and the fact that, for better or worse, the Wii is going downhill doesn't bode well with Kinetic/Move's attempts to steal their thunder. It's one thing to buy something that's easy to play, and another thing to buy something else that's supposed to change the way something you already own and like plays, even if the problems with vertical stacking don't come into play.
..I usually agree with you about 99% of the time, Shamus. But you're wrong on the reason to be skeptical about either Natal or the Arc-thing The tech behind the Arc.. move... is solid. It's something that should have been what introduced motion gaming, and it's a much easier system to port from other kinds of peripherals because of the mapping in three dimensions (along with the twist along the z-axis). The occlusion detection as well is extremely good - if you've seen it in action, you're starting to wonder why in the world no one is actually interested more in this part of the move. Because we're really having some monstrous potential going on here.
The possible fail that can happen here, is that Sony manages to blow their first and third party support, and never get another title developed for the move-controls specifically during the life-time of the console. And that we're going to be stuck with wii remakes and hand-waving.
Basically, console devs may turn up with a one-hit wonder, but then get drowned out by devs using the same scheme and abstraction for motion gaming as is there with the wii, and that will be specifically made for 2d gestures, rather than tracking an object in 3d.
It's a bit on the same track with the Knitectt..Kint.. Natal. It won't actually work with hand-gestures, and with depth-perception we're talking about very simple motions. For example, instead of pushing gradually on a Katamari, we're talking about either off or on based on two distinct layers, or else we're talking about sensing activity with the hands on a particular area. This is not something that can be universally translated to any game, but has to be specifically made for particular titles where it actually makes sense to use it.
So in either of those cases, we have different but very similar problems at this time - that the coolest games on either platform has to be specifically made to only that system (..except I guess natal-games would also work with the move, just without the entire "dip your hand into the cyber-water" thing... :/ ).
In fact, it's like you say: the presentation Sony had wasn't very good. It's strange to cut Sony for advertising too much - but that's the problem here. Instead of showing what they have, which actually is impressive, they opted for more commercials and glossy fake families.
..admittedly, no one complained about that when MS did the same earlier, but hey..
But the tech behind the move is solid. There should be absolutely no doubt about that. It's accurate, it's real, it works, and it's the PC developer's dream to a much higher degree than any infra-red camera, or virtual gloves, or anything like that. It's also cheap, durable and without moving parts. It's solid, it works.
The question is if there will be more games like Kung-Fu Rider made (with dynamic animation fitted to the move-controller, and action that really is responsive to what you're doing at all times, not just in waggle-events) - or if we end up with a slew of "console-games" with waggle support. That's what's going to make or break this.
And it's almost the same with the other systems - it's whether games are specifically made to them that will make them work well, or be worth buying. Whether we will get some hotspot on the rails experiences with Natal that really are smoking hot, just as whether Zelda is going to work neatly on the wii+.
Of course, you will notice that only the move is actually capable of mapping some accurate movement, and that it's the only system on the market with 3d orientation. So that it actually doesn't require devs to create gestures to work in particular games, and will be able to go further. We could for example see the first space-sim on a console now (someone hire Particle Systems back, hm?). Or imagine playing Homeworld or Nexus: the Jupiter Incident style games on your HD screen? This kind of thing could be freaking great.
But... Sony. So until they stop deliberately screwing everything up... skepticism. ..just not for the reasons you gave there in the article..
The tech behind the Arc.. move... is solid. It's something that should have been what introduced motion gaming, and it's a much easier system to port from other kinds of peripherals because of the mapping in three dimensions (along with the twist along the z-axis). The occlusion detection as well is extremely good - if you've seen it in action, you're starting to wonder why in the world no one is actually interested more in this part of the move. Because we're really having some monstrous potential going on here.The possible fail that can happen here, is that Sony manages to blow their first and third party support, and never get another title developed for the move-controls specifically during the life-time of the console. And that we're going to be stuck with wii remakes and hand-waving.
Basically, console devs may turn up with a one-hit wonder, but then get drowned out by devs using the same scheme and abstraction for motion gaming as is there with the wii, and that will be specifically made for 2d gestures, rather than tracking an object in 3d.
It's a bit on the same track with the Knitectt..Kint.. Natal. It won't actually work with hand-gestures, and with depth-perception we're talking about very simple motions. For example, instead of pushing gradually on a Katamari, we're talking about either off or on based on two distinct layers, or else we're talking about sensing activity with the hands on a particular area. This is not something that can be universally translated to any game, but has to be specifically made for particular titles where it actually makes sense to use it.
So in either of those cases, we have different but very similar problems at this time - that the coolest games on either platform has to be specifically made to only that system (..except I guess natal-games would also work with the move, just without the entire "dip your hand into the cyber-water" thing... :/ ).
In fact, it's like you say: the presentation Sony had wasn't very good. It's strange to cut Sony for advertising too much - but that's the problem here. Instead of showing what they have, which actually is impressive, they opted for more commercials and glossy fake families.
..admittedly, no one complained about that when MS did the same earlier, but hey..
But the tech behind the move is solid. There should be absolutely no doubt about that. It's accurate, it's real, it works, and it's the PC developer's dream to a much higher degree than any infra-red camera, or virtual gloves, or anything like that. It's also cheap, durable and without moving parts. It's solid, it works.
The question is if there will be more games like Kung-Fu Rider made (with dynamic animation fitted to the move-controller, and action that really is responsive to what you're doing at all times, not just in waggle-events) - or if we end up with a slew of "console-games" with waggle support. That's what's going to make or break this.
And it's almost the same with the other systems - it's whether games are specifically made to them that will make them work well, or be worth buying. Whether we will get some hotspot on the rails experiences with Natal that really are smoking hot, just as whether Zelda is going to work neatly on the wii+.
Of course, you will notice that only the move is actually capable of mapping some accurate movement, and that it's the only system on the market with 3d orientation. So that it actually doesn't require devs to create gestures to work in particular games, and will be able to go further. We could for example see the first space-sim on a console now (someone hire Particle Systems back, hm?). Or imagine playing Homeworld or Nexus: the Jupiter Incident style games on your HD screen? This kind of thing could be freaking great.
But... Sony. So until they stop deliberately screwing everything up... skepticism. ..just not for the reasons you gave there in the article..
Well the point I'm making here is that it took both the Trooper and the Jedi working together to actually put down a Sith. What's more one of the major problems with this game to begin with is the perceived viability of non-force wielding classes. This would have been an awesome time to have some troopers clean house on a bunch of force users, but that isn't the approach we saw. Rather we got to see another battle that degenerated into a Jedi Vs. Sith battle with the Sith coming out ahead until another hero intervened enough to turn the tide.rsvp42 said:
Now, we know from the movies that relatively normal guys are supposed to be able to take down force users. I mean Qui-Gon himself pointed out that Jedi aren't invincible. Yet really the only guys we've seen who came close to fitting that bill were the Fetts... oh and wait, the Sith side has both the Sith *AND* The Bounty Hunters (who should be neutral, but there is no neutral faction).
The issue as I see it is that right now we have seen TWO major cinematic trailers, and both pretty much could be summarized as "look, the Sith faction is made of pure awesome!".
Even if there is game balance, it's important to note that this kind of promotion is going to CREATE a numerical imbalance. What's more if this is what's inspiring the artists, I think it makes bias in the development really obvious.
All this comes down to opinion, but again consider that we're nearing the release and I don't think I've seen anything that has really shown much favor towards the good guys.
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Otherwise I *DO* stand corrected on the bit about World Of Warcraft being the first faction based game.
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Also as far as the pics of the various sides someone put up, it does make a point. However I see no real reason why the good guys can't be made just as cool for the MMO. I mean honestly, when we played KoTR Jedi/good guys could put on some pretty cool looking armor themselves for example.
We'll see what winds up happening, but right now it seems like this needs some really, really serious work.
That's a pretty good analogy. I'm still quite happy with my Playstation I just wish they would give up trying to be what they aren't.DeadlyYellow said:
Perhaps, but only in the areas of promotional content. It looks like the game itself is shaping up really nicely. We've still got a year until the anticipated release and that's plenty of time for a Light Side media blitz. Looking at the video lineup on their site, I'm guessing the dark side just has the most development so far. That, or they have a specific plan for releasing content and some dark side stuff has just happened to come first.Therumancer said:
I don't have any intention of changing your mind or anything, I'm just calling it like I see it, same as you. If you're basing this on the cinematic trailers, both of them just make me want to play the light side more, which is strangely the opposite of how I am with WoW; I'm a diehard Horde fan. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who feels that way and that these two factions won't be copies of WoW's factions in terms of player make-up. If your concern is based on the other content that has been released, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Sith Warrior is the only class with an official preview video right now, save for that Bounty Hunter armor progression. And we've seen Smuggler and Trooper gameplay in one of the preview videos. It's not like they won't release any official Jedi info before the game comes out. And when they do, it'll probably look better because the game will be further developed. Or it'll happen next week, who knows?
Again, I think it's just too early to make any calls. I think your concerns are valid though, don't get me wrong. Player balance will be tough when the two sides are basically good vs. bad. There will be a lot of players who will automatically choose Sith because they're "evil and awesome," but that can't be helped. There's probably a large pool of players ready to whip out some green and blue light sabers. Lets hope that when we see the Jedi dishing out justice, people will get psyched about that too.
Another thing though, when it comes to gameplay, do we know much about how pvp will be set up? Faction balance is only really important if the pvp makes it so (or if there's competition in PvE). For instance, if "battlegrounds" consist of instanced, skill-based matchups, then imbalances on any given server are less noticeable. If it's open-world combat zones, then a less-populated or weaker faction could be a major problem.
So I'm saying you're right to be concerned, but you're probably concerned too early
EDIT: I'm actually reminded of how Blizzard handled the Starcraft 2 information. For the longest time, we didn't see much in the way of Zerg content, but there was never any risk of the Zerg getting jilted. Sometimes developers just have quirky ways of updating the fans.
rsvp42 said:Perhaps, but only in the areas of promotional content. It looks like the game itself is shaping up really nicely. We've still got a year until the anticipated release and that's plenty of time for a Light Side media blitz. Looking at the video lineup on their site, I'm guessing the dark side just has the most development so far. That, or they have a specific plan for releasing content and some dark side stuff has just happened to come first.Therumancer said:
I don't have any intention of changing your mind or anything, I'm just calling it like I see it, same as you. If you're basing this on the cinematic trailers, both of them just make me want to play the light side more, which is strangely the opposite of how I am with WoW; I'm a diehard Horde fan. I'm hoping that I'm not the only one who feels that way and that these two factions won't be copies of WoW's factions in terms of player make-up. If your concern is based on the other content that has been released, correct me if I'm wrong, but the Sith Warrior is the only class with an official preview video right now, save for that Bounty Hunter armor progression. And we've seen Smuggler and Trooper gameplay in one of the preview videos. It's not like they won't release any official Jedi info before the game comes out. And when they do, it'll probably look better because the game will be further developed. Or it'll happen next week, who knows?
Again, I think it's just too early to make any calls. I think your concerns are valid though, don't get me wrong. Player balance will be tough when the two sides are basically good vs. bad. There will be a lot of players who will automatically choose Sith because they're "evil and awesome," but that can't be helped. There's probably a large pool of players ready to whip out some green and blue light sabers. Lets hope that when we see the Jedi dishing out justice, people will get psyched about that too.
Another thing though, when it comes to gameplay, do we know much about how pvp will be set up? Faction balance is only really important if the pvp makes it so (or if there's competition in PvE). For instance, if "battlegrounds" consist of instanced, skill-based matchups, then imbalances on any given server are less noticeable. If it's open-world combat zones, then a less-populated or weaker faction could be a major problem.
So I'm saying you're right to be concerned, but you're probably concerned too early
EDIT: I'm actually reminded of how Blizzard handled the Starcraft 2 information. For the longest time, we didn't see much in the way of Zerg content, but there was never any risk of the Zerg getting jilted. Sometimes developers just have quirky ways of updating the fans.
Well, with the time it takes to develop content and such I think six months or so is the right time to be concerned, if you expect there to be any changes. I mean if you notice the problem a month before release... well there is nothing that can be done at that point.
As far as overall competition goes, well if the game has any kind of open-world PVP... not "PVP anywhere" but specific objectives people can flag for in order to fight periodically and gain some kind of global advantage... overall balance issues become a factor. One of the big problems with "Warhammer" was that while it had instanced PVP, it also had castles and such out in the world that were fought over periodically on all servers. "Warcraft" has had control points on almost all the zone maps since Burning Crusade as well.
Controlling spirit towers in Burning Crusade for example allowed your faction (and only your faction) to collect spirit shards from PVE instance bosses as long as you held it. Those shards being tradable for gear (which was very nice when BC first went up). There have also been things like global damage boosts, rep rewards, etc...
Not to mention the simple competition to complete content and the like... as well as the fact that a faction that does well PVE also tends to do well in PVP due to better gear. If your side is stronger and is clearing instances quickly and more efficiently it means that when the PVPers from your side head into battle, even if there is no inherant character imblance within the PVP mechanics there is going to be a gear imbalance which will acheive the same thing.