I guess, this was posted number of times already. Though last time it was like 50 Horde players in top 1000, now their number diminished even more:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/leaderboards/3v3 - only 25 Horde players in top 1000!! in 3vs3 EU bracket.
But the post is not just about Arena. This situation (top PvP players going one faction), in fact, deeply affected lower brackets and PvP population in general.
How? let me explain.
1. Random BG queues
Current queue for random BG for Alliance (peak hours from 6 to 11 PM) = 8 min in average. Yesterday around 10 PM it reached 12 min.
Current queue for random BG for Horde during same hours = 2-3 min the most. I've never seen Horde queue longer than 4 min over a month.
Consider the fact Alliance characters usually have +2 BG queue options (since they don't disable the two 40-man BGs AV and IoC which favor Alliance) and what shortened Alliance queues by default in the past. Even with that, Alliance queues are *2-3 LONGER today.
2. Situation in Ashran
In nearly every Ashran instance (it's no longer realm-related, all parallel Ashrans are cross-realm now) Alliance has more players inside and is constantly winning both the events and gets boss kills.
If before the recent changes it was like "Alliance kills boss, Horde wins events" now Horde doesn't have neither boss nor events.
Alliance completely dominates all Ashrans in like 90% cases, whenever you log in. I forgot when Horde managed to kill Tremblade last time.
3. PvP guilds (especially RBG)
I have toons on number of EU realms and I can tell you that while Horde PvP guilds are extinct or hardly exist, Alliance PvP guilds flourish and get more and more members. Nearly all my Real ID / Btag friends who are PvPers rerolled to Alliance or made Alliance alts, since they can't find proper RBG teams on Horde side.
4. World PvP
Let's look on Defias Brotherhood-EU realm, the so called "WPvP capital" of Europe. In start and middle of WoD Horde side was one dominant in both PvP and WPvP on this realm, boasting several large guilds. But as it is now, more and more core players rerolled to Alliance and this led to destruction and disband of most of Horde WPvP guilds. Even devoted Horde players moved to Alliance side.
Now, when I've listed the facts based on my own experience and my friends' experience, let us ask the following question: WHY does it happen?
The answer is simple - so called "train effect".
At first it wasn't so massively felt by the community cause it only affected high-level PvP brackets with only few thousand players. However, it did affect MASSES of players in recent month or two and the situation continues deteriorating.
* *
Let us take an average hypothetic PvP player of, let's say, 1.7-2.1k XP, who wants to become better and get some titles in the future.
He reads the forums, looks for RBG guild or good PvP guild and slowly realizes that there is no chance he can get higher or find better players on Horde side.
So what does he do?
Rerolls.
This is where the key of the problem is. First it was top 1000. 2.6k rated players. Then 2.4k players, who want to play with these 2.6k players in order to make progress, start following them and reroll Alliance too to have whom to play with. Then it's the 2.2k players who reroll as well to have more and better options.
NOW the 1.8k ones also started following the trend, and even some 1.5k average gamers as well! And here it started to affect random BG timers and situation in Ashran (we assume that top players seldom go to random BG and Ashran, but 1.5k players do that quite often).
Add the racial imbalance to the picture....
My prediction.. if things go the way they go now, very soon Blizzard will have to make "Alliance vs Alliance" random BGs and Ashran instances possible as well, because there will be little of Horde playerbase left to pose any sort of rivalry even there, except noobs and bots.
* * *
Why doesn't Blizzard swiftly respond to this huge balance hole which significantly impacts PvP these days?
I honestly hope the problem isn't being ignored just in order to milk the faction change cow to its limits until Horde completely dies out in PvP and then enhance Horde racials in next expansion (?) so half the rerollers go back paying once again.