Over at the Ten Ton Hammer site they have up a discussion with members of the Warhammer Online development team, talking all about the fine process of balancing classes for Realm vs. Realm combat. RvR team members Yvonne Bridges and Brian Wheeler hooked up with Careers Lead Adam Gershowitz to answer the TTH staffer's questions. The line of inquiry primarily centers around the way classes in opposing factions interact with each other.
According to the WAR team members, it's not so much that they're tuned to fight their specific opposing faction (Greenskins have no special advantage over Dwarves, for example). Instead, classes are designed to be good at defending against specific types of damage. Players can decide to specialize (via abilities) in fighting a group of enemy players, but that's a choice left to them.
They also briefly touch on RvR questing and the role of gear in that part of the game: Both skill and gear will obviously play a role in a player's success in RvR. That is the nature of this type of game. Some players will naturally excel in combat and we don't want to penalize them for this. However, we don't want them to dominate all the time either, thus gear comes into play. Spend time in the game and you will be rewarded with gear, and you should be able to put that gear to use.
