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  1. #1

    The Decline in Hardcore Alliance Raiding Guilds

    This past week of the 50% character services sale has brought grim tidings for Hardcore Alliance raiding guilds. Namely, the number of longtime, hardcore Alliance guilds deciding that Alliance is bad enough to faction change to Horde. There's a difference between when an individual faction changes and entire 25 man hardcore guild faction changes. The former is usually caused by a person changing to join friends on a different server, joining a new guild, or one's current faction being non-existent on their current realm. The later situation is usually caused by an entire guild seeing something drastically wrong with current faction.

    This problems of Hardcore Alliance guilds faction changing to Horde has become sort of problem since the end of Cataclysm. It started out with Top 5 World guilds like Method and vodka abandoning their Alliance roots for access to better racials. Everyone brushed this off as the guilds racing for world firsts doing what they had to do. Blizzard kind of said this and shrugged it off. However, since Blizzard announced the characters services sale, another three Hardcore Alliance guilds have pulled the lever and gone Horde with whispers of a couple more to follow. The catcher is that none of these three guilds are anywhere close to pulling in a world first and only one is in the top 20 World.

    Dread of Korgath-US:
    Dread had been a longtime hardcore raiding guild that had been raiding at a respectable level with at least T3, back in classic. They may have suffered setbacks here and there, but they always found a way to bounce back. They're not a Top 20 World guild, but they're more often than not in the Top 25 US rankings. After their HC ToT clear for the week, their guild pulled the level and decided to go Horde. The kicker for them, is that they're not server transferring either. For those that aren't aware, Horde on Korgath are noticeably outnumbered by Alliance, so they didn't change to due lack of Alliance on the server.

    Intent of Kel'thuzad-US:
    Intent has been a steady top 30 US 25 man guild. While they've never competed for a world first, I've met a few of them and they're a good bunch of people who get stuff done relatively quickly by most standards. They decided to server transfer and faction change earlier this week.

    Ascendance on Alonus-EU:
    I am admittedly ignorant on the circumstances for Ascendance's faction change due to not knowing people their, but I do know they did it within the last day or so. What I do know is that they have consistently been a Top 20 World guild the past couple of tiers. They also server transferred to Draenor-EU.

    Why is it a bad thing if Alliance guilds are faction changing to Horde? Simply put, it puts pressure on the remaining Hardcore Alliance guilds to also go Horde. First and foremost, it can seriously hamper an Alliance guild's recruitment. As more guilds go Horde, the pool of LIKELY apps to Alliance guilds decreases. I've personally known some people that would not app to a top 10 Alliance guild merely because the guild was not Horde. Just because someone is looking at a guild in a specific range, does not mean that they'll also faction change if there's another guild within that range that does not require a faction change.

    Why are Alliance guilds going Benedict Arnold on their faction? It's a combination of issues to be honest. There's the fact that Alliance has kind of gotten the cold shoulder in terms of lore development compared to Horde. One could also make the argument that Orgrimmar is much better capital than Stormwind, with Org having gotten a pretty snazzy overhaul while Stormwind still has a giant blackened ruin where the Park District used to be. However, I've found hardcore raiders to be more practical people who are less concerned with lack of lore and city designs. The primary drivers for the exodus from Alliance -> Horde has chiefly been the Horde racials in PvE and the pool of likely apps.

    I already touched briefly on the pool of likely apps. Someone looking for a new guild will prefer to not faction change when looking for a guild. If 20 of the top 25 guilds in your region are Horde, it's going to be a lot easier for a top 10 guild that's Horde to recruit players than a top 10 guild that's Alliance in that region.

    The racials issue is a much more heated argument. However, if you ask a person in an Alliance guild that's even Top 50 World if they wish they had access to Troll or Orc racials for raiding, most would say yes. Trolls' Berseking and Orcs' Bloodfury are the only two racials that provide on demand burst dps. In hardcore raiding, players often have to provide a large amount of dps during specific parts of a fight. What do Alliance have in terms of dps racials? They have Pandaren, which Horde also has, Worgen which bring a static 1% crit, which is kind of a "meh" stat for most classes, and a bunch of expertise/hit racials that require a specific type of weapon but put you over expertise and hit caps. To add insult to injury, Trolls have +5% damage to beasts (which worked on bosses this tier) and +expertise will all ranged weapons. Orcs also get a 2% increased damage done via pets and +expertise with axes and fists.

    When one faction has two races that have such biased racials and the other gets peanuts, is it any surprise when guilds want to faction change? Yeah, you can make the argument that Alliance might have better tanking and healing racials than Horde for pve. However, when you boil it down, it's a pretty bad argument when you're talking about hardcore raiding. Most hardcore guilds are constantly trying to find a way to eek out 1-2% more damage during certain parts of fight. Tanks having slightly better survivability or healers having slightly higher regen is very rarely the determining factor in a fight. Can it happen, yeah. But in the current raiding environment, it's not too uncommon for even tanks and healers to look for a way to deal the most damage they can to a boss while also performing their role.

    Why am I making such a big deal out of a supposed 2% difference in dps? As an Alliance player who likes to raid hardcore, it's rather irksome to log on one day and find that 4-5 of your friends in other hardcore raiding guilds are no longer Alliance because their guilds faction changed due to said racials.

    Other guilds I've heard of recently going from Alliance -> Horde:

    Sanitas on Frostmane-EU:
    While not a 25 man guild, they are Swedish guild that happens to be World 2nd 10 man. I heard via the official WoW forums that they too faction changed from Alliance to Horde.

    Still haven't heard of a single hardcore Horde guilds faction changing to Alliance recently.
    Last edited by Vigilate; 2013-06-10 at 06:34 PM. Reason: Added other hardcore Alliance guild that recerent faction changed.

  2. #2
    The racials were good initially when they were all sort of random and not that focused on pve damage, a very RPG-like element. But I agree, these advantages, even small, cause a landslide of effects.

    I am all for keeping in RPG elements in the game today that is largely robotic and automatic, but the server balance issues are definitely a bigger issue.

  3. #3
    it's one of Blizzards clever business practices, in the future they will make All the Alliance Racial s OP, so people will transfer back
    more transfers=more money.

  4. #4
    The Undying Slowpoke is a Gamer's Avatar
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    Dread - Moved to Horde

    Intent - Stayed Horde, changed server

    Ascendance - Changed to Horde, and changed server.




    Now I don't know about anyone else, but I saw one very common thread here. All these guilds either started or ended up Horde.


    This is something I've been talking about for years. Racials are broken beyond belief. All PvPers roll Alliance, specifically Human or Worgen, for the racials. And all PvEers roll Horde because of the racials Troll and Undead get.


    And once the tide begins, more and more players are moving faction as well because they feel the only way to get a group/guild for their endgame is to be on that faction.


    If this doesn't make the clear case for racial revamps in 6.0, nothing will.
    FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)

  5. #5
    As I've said before, the combat-enhancing racials should be replaced by flavour and cosmetic racials. I fail to understand why they have even remained a thing for the last couple of years.

    The troll racial this tier was almost an insult.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by dokhidamo View Post
    If this doesn't make the clear case for racial revamps in 6.0, nothing will.
    There is no way Blizz can ignore that there is a faction imbalance and racials play a huge role in this. If you can get extra dps simply by being a certain class then why wouldnt you as a hardcore raider? Blizz needs to seriously revamp racials before the next expansion to help correct this imbalance. Im not saying to give the Alliance the edge to get people to head back to Alliance, but at minimum the bleeding to Horde needs to stop.

    The PvE and PvP powerup racials need to be replaced by fun/cosmetic racials that add a bit more entertainment to the class. This way there is no base edge to picking one race over another. If Blizz is serious about allowing people to play what they want/how they want, this is something they cannot overlook.

  7. #7
    The Patient
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    Hoping 6.0 comes with racial overhauls, either have 'em be cosmetic and whatnot, or have some choice involved so every race get get a hold of some sort of Dps boost or utility.

  8. #8
    for an Example
    if you roll an Orc Hunter as a BM
    your pet does 2% more damage
    so instead of doing 10k damage per attack you pet will do 10.2k

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Im willing to bet that 90% of the faction changers rerolled belfs to keep the alliance oooooohhh pretty looks thing going,its been an ongoing thing since the introduction of belfs in tbc.
    Looks>Racials for alliance fairy rerollers.

  10. #10
    Alliance have Panda, which is only slightly behind Troll / Orc for most specs. And Worgen is best for Fire Mage / Fury Warrior, so I don't see what the big uproar is about.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Vanillapie View Post
    Im willing to bet that 90% of the faction changers rerolled belfs to keep the alliance oooooohhh pretty looks thing going,its been an ongoing thing since the introduction of belfs in tbc.
    Looks>Racials for alliance fairy rerollers.
    LOL, you couldn't be more wrong. They definitely mostly went Troll or Orc.

    There's a reason why most of the dps in Hardcore Alliance guilds are Panda/Worgen and it definitely is not for looks.

    Intent - Stayed Horde, changed server
    I think they might have been Horde before, but I'm fairly certain that was almost two years ago at this point. IIRC, they went Alliance in mid-cata due to how pathetic KT Horde was. The fact of the matter remains is that last night, they were an Alliance guild.
    Quote Originally Posted by NeverStop View Post
    Alliance have Panda, which is only slightly behind Troll / Orc for most specs. And Worgen is best for Fire Mage / Fury Warrior, so I don't see what the big uproar is about.
    Pandas are somewhat irrelevant to this conversation due to both factions having access to them. You actually are right about Worgen being best for Fury Warriors. However, the part about mages isn't entirely accurate. While fire mages value crit, the mini-heroism provided by Berserking is just that good. Heck, Berseking is probably the crux of the entire issue. Berseking lines up extremely well with many cooldowns and gives many classes a noticeble edge during burn phases of a fight.
    Last edited by Vigilate; 2013-06-08 at 06:28 PM.

  12. #12
    Deleted
    I just wanted to be Belf Female

  13. #13
    Do you know how many people changed to human during WotLK expansion?

    You'd almost think it's a deliberate ploy by Blizzard to extract more cash from the min-maxers.

  14. #14
    3/4 of our raiding force went troll before 5.2 :P The healers and tanks didn't, but most of the dps did.


    Think about this, every 7 people that race change is paying the same as one user's yearly sub fee.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Nik View Post
    I just wanted to be Belf Female
    Be that as it maybe, especially since ToT is currently on farm, would you say that the Horde racials had a lot to do with your guild going Horde?

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Vigilate View Post
    Be that as it maybe, especially since ToT is currently on farm, would you say that the Horde racials had a lot to do with your guild going Horde?
    Going Horde? Yes. I do plan on going Troll for 5.4 progression (either that or Panda depending on the amount of Bosses classified as Beasts).

    Moving to Draenor? Taking advantage of an opportunity to both increase stuff we do out of raids (alt gearing with pug groups, general econ etc) and also to increase chances of people looking at us as a guild they would like to join (I would estimate that 30% of a player's decision whether to apply to a guild or not is based on which realm they are on).

    Slightly OT: Supermassive not planning anything?
    Last edited by mmoca6967c3bea; 2013-06-08 at 06:46 PM.

  17. #17
    I've long been in favor of removing racials or making them purely cosmetic.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Nik View Post
    Slightly OT: Supermassive not planning anything?
    Probably ~1/3 of us wanted to go to a better Alliance server a few months back because Turalyon-US is really lacking to be honest. Currently, probably 1/3 of the guild wishes we were Horde due to Berserking. Neither option has even been considered heavily, though. Even with the current on going sale, I don't think our GM would be thrilled about having to go through the logistics of transferring the guild's 6 or 7 guild banks, his own 9 toons, and his own personal 6-10 million gold fortune. Suffice to say, it's mostly the logistics and some people not seeing the point of leaving Turalyon.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    tl;dr

    consider 1 thing instead, alliance sucks and was made for kids who like Legolas the male night elf, or old people who roleplay as human in their heroic fantasy dreamworld.

    [This post was infracted for minor spam.]
    Last edited by Rivellana; 2013-06-10 at 12:21 PM.

  20. #20
    Deleted
    Good for recruits - they won't have to pay 25€ for faction change after transfer

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