Why is Horde:Alliance ratio important?

[rytyny]

My server has long login queues and far more Horde than the Alliance, yet Blizzard offers free transfer only for Horde players. I play Alliance and want to move to a more playable server (login queues today said 31 min), but I am not offered to do it for free, like the Horde is. Why? OK, "they want money" is the obvious one, but are they "officially" doing it for the sake of faction balance? If my server would be empty on the Alliance side, I see no reason why Horde would mind?

So, am I stuck on an unplayable server for any other reason than money someone would like to drain from me?

In hope of suggestions and clarifications,
jure12

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

PvP is the obvious reason, but also the fact they can't connect factions, it's all or nothing. If one side is unbalanced, they end up being a ghost town forever.

[Santti]

It is important. Some of the worse servers have more or less turned Orgrimmar into Alliance or Stormwind into Horde city, which sucks pretty hard I'd imagine. There are also certain features that are hard to complete without any opposition, like Halaa PvP. Lovely mounts you get from that one.

[Abysal]

wPvP of course. Your description sounded an awful lot like Illidan-US.

Also, in the past there have been server wide "Event" type things. In 5.2 there was a sort of "race" on Isle of Thunder to unlock the different daily quest hubs between the factions. When factions are balanced, it is far easier for them to implement these types of things into the game. The more imbalanced the factions are, the less design room they have for these server wide events.

[rytyny]

Thanks for quick reply.

But my point is: who cares about towns being ghost towns forever? No new players would start to play there and so what? I truly do not see a problem there.

About PvP for a reason - isn't it all about BGs and Arenas? Tarren Mill PvP days are long gone. Halaa PvP? Not sure anyone plays that. Maybe I'm not seeing something here?

[Maximus345]

My server has long login queues and far more Horde than the Alliance, yet Blizzard offers free transfer only for Horde players. I play Alliance and want to move to a more playable server (login queues today said 31 min), but I am not offered to do it for free, like the Horde is. Why? OK, "they want money" is the obvious one, but are they "officially" doing it for the sake of faction balance? If my server would be empty on the Alliance side, I see no reason why Horde would mind?

So, am I stuck on an unplayable server for any other reason than money someone would like to drain from me?

In hope of suggestions and clarifications,
jure12

Try to remember that the playerbase is actively trying to fight against server balance. You said it yourself--your faction is outnumbered and you want to leave. Nobody wants to be on the outnumbered faction. Hence, no one's going to be excited to transfer to your ghost town realm.

Giving you free transfers to leave only makes the problem worse (as the smaller faction gets even smaller). If free transfers go to the bigger faction, that theoretically helps (if enough players take advantage of it).

[7seti]

The purpose of the free transfers is to re-balance the server by encouraging Horde to leave. If they offered them to Alliance, that would just make things worse for the ones who chose to stay behind.

As for your second question, are you really asking why PvP servers in a two-faction game need two factions?

[Galaddriel]

My server has long login queues and far more Horde than the Alliance, yet Blizzard offers free transfer only for Horde players. I play Alliance and want to move to a more playable server (login queues today said 31 min), but I am not offered to do it for free, like the Horde is. Why? OK, "they want money" is the obvious one, but are they "officially" doing it for the sake of faction balance? If my server would be empty on the Alliance side, I see no reason why Horde would mind?

So, am I stuck on an unplayable server for any other reason than money someone would like to drain from me?

In hope of suggestions and clarifications,
jure12

It's either a 1) money grab or 2) they are morons completely deluded into thinking that a dead faction will somehow miraculously spring back to life.

[Zardi]

Uhm... so, your server has queues because Horde is overpopulated. By making Horde migrate away, they make your queues shorter. And you complain?

[Berethos08]

It is important. Some of the worse servers have more or less turned Orgrimmar into Alliance or Stormwind into Horde city, which sucks pretty hard I'd imagine. There are also certain features that are hard to complete without any opposition, like Halaa PvP. Lovely mounts you get from that one.

Once it hits that point there's really no reason to keep the minority faction locked in. It's pretty bad on my main's server (just came back to see if I was interested in playing again), though last I checked the Horde doesn't constantly attack Stormwind. Maybe...200 were on at prime time tonight, while the Horde side is much larger and can easily sustain a raiding scene. The last Alliance raiding guild left a few months back, and we'd been noticeably outnumbered since probably mid-Cata.

Alliance just aren't going to transfer there, and it's not a server that is full enough that queues are a regular thing so Horde don't want to leave (don't even think they have FCM from the server to be honest). No reason to stay for Alliance, but the only options are to reroll or pay to leave, and there's exactly zero chance it will change due to how Blizzard handles the decisions to give FCM.

[rytyny]

This part is in the beginning of the post, yet written last. People seem to have this preconceived notion that balance is higely important, which blocks them from thinking out of the box. World PvP being dead, all that remains is some sentimental RP reason for faction balance. My main point is: one side of the server being absolutely empty would not affect raiding, dungeons, Arenas, BGs, game economy... It would affect someone's RP notions and ganking. Not actual RP game, that people do on RP servers, just some "something is missing" thing.

Because of role-playing and 'balance'. When I quest in a zone and enter an Alliance-camp, I expect to see Alliance-players. Not seeing any Alliance-members where you'd expect a lot feels bad.

Sorry to say, but sad panda argument is not an argument... I might be sad that Darnassus is empty, yet game goes on, and no one even notices it, Blizard not pretending they're trying to fix it.

Try to remember that the playerbase is actively trying to fight against server balance. You said it yourself--your faction is outnumbered and you want to leave. Nobody wants to be on the outnumbered faction. Hence, no one's going to be excited to transfer to your ghost town realm.

Well said and argued. But I say: let it be ghost town. Who cares? On the other side no one cares (except sad pandas), on the ghost-town-side there is no one to care. And no one would transfer to ghost town faction, and end up being disappointed about it.

If free transfers go to the bigger faction, that theoretically helps (if enough players take advantage of it).

Yea, but no one uses it, so it remains only theoretical...

Uhm... so, your server has queues because Horde is overpopulated. By making Horde migrate away, they make your queues shorter. And you complain?

They are not making Horde migrate. Horde simply does not migrate. We'd all be better of if you didn't type that, and you're typing?

The purpose of the free transfers is to re-balance the server by encouraging Horde to leave. If they offered them to Alliance, that would just make things worse for the ones who chose to stay behind.

No, it wouldn't, because there would be no one left on the Alliance side to be worse off.

As for your second question, are you really asking why PvP servers in a two-faction game need two factions?

And again: world PvP is dead. Tarren Mill is dead since first BGs were introduced, Wintergrasp and Tol Barad are idling empty... Ganking is non-existant on non-PvP servers and it's not even PvP to begin with.

edit:

Once it hits that point there's really no reason to keep the minority faction locked in. It's pretty bad on my main's server (just came back to see if I was interested in playing again), though last I checked the Horde doesn't constantly attack Stormwind. Maybe...200 were on at prime time tonight, while the Horde side is much larger and can easily sustain a raiding scene. The last Alliance raiding guild left a few months back, and we'd been noticeably outnumbered since probably mid-Cata.

Alliance just aren't going to transfer there, and it's not a server that is full enough that queues are a regular thing so Horde don't want to leave (don't even think they have FCM from the server to be honest). No reason to stay for Alliance, but the only options are to reroll or pay to leave, and there's exactly zero chance it will change due to how Blizzard handles the decisions to give FCM.

This. Precisely this.