I think you actually misunderstand me, I was under the impression that Ork faction had progression from boy to Nob based on older discussion on these forums, they stated that the ratio of Nobz vs boyz on the battle field was expected to be 9 to 1.

I understand all of the differences being explained and do look forward to playing Orkz, it will be my main faction from the get go.

I think the issue here is not what I specifically want but what I understood to be the case from older threads (which I am desperately trying to find).

the thing is, average nobz are equal to the basic classes of the other races, and particularly nasty nobz are equal to the elite classes of other races (meganobz, nobz who lead other nobz, etc)

Agreed, compare it to playing on the Chaos faction but being restricted to cultists and only being able to play a chaos marine as an elite that cost RP, while the Eldar have aspect warriors and the loyalists have marines as base classes...

It's a double edged sword that is going to take a lot of careful balancing, if you put an Ork boy on par with a space marine all the other faction will cry out about the lore and how boyz need to be weaker than the super soldiers etc.

If you don't let premium Ork players play on a equal footing as a space marine, chaos marine or aspect warrior (regardless if or not you call it a boy, 'ardboy or Nob) then the game will very quickly lose all of it's Ork fa base.

considering that the concept of a weaker Ork (with the ratio of 8:1 to win) was only talked about for a couple of months at the start of the forum and was then dismissed by the Devs themselves saying that Orks would be on par with SM ....

and we the forum accepted it and moved on for almost a year,

that this has come around again with the Free2Waagh boyz and Premium nobz looks like a huge step backwards,

or perhaps its a concession so that paying Ork players can get to feel superior to their Free2Waagh cousins even faster then they might of done considering the Free2Waagh limitations that had been discussed?

I think you read my post incorrectly.

ok ork boy are not weaker then sm! they are equal in terms of strength and toughness, its just ork boy has weaker armor and are bad shots, dose that make then worse then sm? no, there also not as skilled as sms in terms of combat experience, usually range but some time melee as well.

But the game will not be artificially representing my space marines 100 years+ of combat experience into the game, there will be no aim assisted, no auto block , each sm will rely on there player skills and ow situation awareness, a sm main advantage over a ork boy with be his armor and ranged weaponry, the orks main advantage over a sm will be there raw strength and melee skills, they don't need to mirror each other 100% to be considered balanced, they just need to play the battle field to there strength while trying to avoid there weakness as best as they can.

I completely agree with the way you view it Dwarf, I'm just worried that the game is going to cater to the egos of Space Marine fans.