Proof the Horde faction is inherently more powerful, kind of long post.

[Bonkura]

So I learned that some BG's favor different factions due to map layout. Well that was pretty damn obvious wasn't it.

[Hb]

If horde was significantly more powerful in terms of racials, they would win AV too as it's a PvE BG (Which horde supposedly have MASSSSIVE advantages in, not the actual minor advantage)

Except alliance is dominating IoQ / AV because how the map is designed. It has nothing to do with racials.

[moremana]

Shite, the conspiracy has been identified. I must roll alliance now.

Ever think that maybe good players favor the horde rather than the alliance? Personally, If I had to play alliance, I would probably stop playing wow, the models and characters (besides female humans) look so ridiculous. I mean what kind of person thinks the male human looks good?

See what I did there?

[Deleted]

I am still waiting for the IoC imbalances that actually favor alliance so heavily which would explain the statistics. Travel time to docks is virtually identical for both teams.

[Crruor]

I am still waiting for the IoC imbalances that actually favor alliance so heavily which would explain the statistics. Travel time to docks is virtually identical for both teams.

Both IoC and Av are usually blacklisted by all decent horde players, leaving noobs and bots, while alliance players like them so they blacklist others. So you only have people who dont know how everything works and/or are undergeared and a ton of bots on the horde side.

So they lose, and due to them beeing 40 man you cant simply change the flow with 2-3 good players so you cant simply turn it around. And so once teh noobs start knowing what they are doing they start blacklisting it.

[Deleted]

Why is IoC blacklisted by good players? map has no real inherent imbalances favoring alliance that would warrant the statistics.

[foxHeart]

500 is a grain of sand in sample sizes. And that'd be true even if you were to do it on every server out there. Even then...what is the point? Pixel pride? But not pride of what you've accomplished, personally, but rather pride in what people you don't know have accomplished while choosing the same faction as you in a video game. It's silly, just like having pride in the country you were born in solely due to the fact you were born there.

[Illana]

Why is IoC blacklisted by good players? map has no real inherent imbalances favoring alliance that would warrant the statistics.

its a pve fest

when i sign for bgs i expect pvp, kind of logical really.

[Cobaltius]

I believe the official Blizzard stats confirm Horde dominance in most BGs aside from IoC and AV. The IoC layout clearly favours alliance because of the position of the docks and the massing effect glaives have on the game. AV also favours alliance because of the bridge.

The other battlegrounds are all very symmetrical though, so it makes little sense that one side should have an inherent advantage. And since I don't believe the OP in his assertion that Horde are simply buffed 10%, there must be some other explanation, and the only logical explanation is that Horde are better at pvp.

Which seems strange, but I have a plausible explanation:

It's about subscriber numbers: Alliance outnumber Horde, ie more people play Alliance than Horde. One immediate implication of this is that if you play Horde, you get to play more battlegrounds. Why do I say this? Well imagine there are 100 people queuing for Horde and 200 queuing for Alliance in one evening. Now lets say that 40 Arathi Basin battles happen that evening. That means that there will be 600 Arathi Basin spots available for each faction. Because Alliance spots are divided by 200 people, each Alliance member gets 3 games. Because Horde spots are divided by 100 people, each Horde member gets 6 games.

This means Horde players get more experience and more opportunity to get better at the battleground. Not only that, but Horde players get more Honor points in an evening, meaning they land up with a gear advantage which then sets up a feedback loop - as they win more Honor, the gear gap grows, they win more, get even more honor.

If that were true then the Horde que times should be instant and Alliance very long but it is the reverse which would suggest Horde PVP player base vastly outnumber Alliance.

Why would that be?

Perhaps because they indeed win a lot more and people don't like losing so it is human nature to migrate toward the winning side.

[Delekii]

What advantage(s) would there be in WSG? EotS? SotA?

I'd agree that maps like AV, IoC, AB and some of the new ones I can't remember could be argued to be unbalanced, but the maps that more or less are symmetrical?

Besides SotA, they aren't symmetrical. And, in turn, SotA is by FAR the most balanced map in terms of longtitudinal outcomes, depending on which set of statistics you listen to. I tend to use oqueue, because it tends to show outcomes from the PoV of organised groups, which are more likely to capitalise on potential biases in map design. Look at results from oqueue: http://imgur.com/a/3YDSI

You can't be "more or less" symmetrical. For whatever reason, the relative layouts in each given case gives enough of an advantage to cause a skew in the results for that map. That skew then causes a trickle down of follow-on issues.

From my own personal point of view as a long term horde player who has in the last year started playing alliance characters too.

Gilneas - there is NEVER a time where horde doesn't reach WW in time to interrupt a cap. For whatever reason, there are often times where horde is capping in time for team-mates to drop cc on incoming alliance. After that initial engagement, if there is no decisive initial cap, there is no real further bias - it then depends on which team has the better tactics in holding or retaking bases. Getting the initial 2 cap and holding your home base is a _MASSIVE_ advantage in gilneas.

WSG - I don't really know what the intrinsic advantage is here - perhaps it is something as simple as horde being able to travel in the air while cc'ed assuming they are jumping, since they are travelling downhill, while alliance can't do the same travelling uphill, allowing horde to be less impeded by slowing/rooting effects. Like I said, the difference doesn't have to be great - just enough to give the perception of imbalance, combined with a MASSIVE imbalance that causes horde to filter AV and IoC, so that the alliance that "want to win" filter WSG. You can also safely get much further with the flag as horde than as alliance thanks to the extension of the base exit which is both longer than the horde version and at a higher elevation than the horde version, meaning that you can be much further into the "run" before having to hit ground level, especially if you have slow fall, but I don't see this getting used a lot except when I do it myself. What I mean by this is that the roof of the exit of the alliance tunnel is a much better launch point and much more easily reached than the horde counterpart.

Arathi Basin - Horde tend to get to BS in greater numbers earlier, and tend to get to LM flag as alliance rise up the ramp. Again, it doesn't have to be massive, and it doesn't have to occur 100% of the time - just enough to skew perceptions. As a result of LM tending to favor horde, alliance tend to rush GM, which is grossly less strong than LM is to hold.

Twin Peaks - One of the most unbalanced maps as far as favoring horde. The design of each base is not even close to the same. Alliance can use waterwalking to maybe skip a small area if their direct opponents have no way to damage them and drop waterwalking. Horde can fly over half the map without risk of danger. The alliance mid graveyard is precluded by a massive pit that blocks line of site to friendly healers/grips, while the horde gy has full los the entire duration.

SSM - don't even know what they were thinking on this one, grossly horde favored.

ToK - this one is purely mirrored, and as a result, alliance often holds the balance on oqueue - it flips between the two factions, where the others besides SotA never do.

As far as AV/IoC - despite what anyone says, I have never reached docks flag as a horde player in time to even contest an alliance tag, and certainly not without being well ahead of the rest of my faction because I am a paladin or dk at the time. AV also has the bridge, but honestly that isn't really a factor in the way the game is played now - I feel like currently the reason AV is so imbalanced in statistics is because horde players who want to win filter it regardless. That said, if horde players who want to win started unfiltering AV again, the bridge would again become a factor. People continue to make assertions that there are no differences where there clearly are differences; they are reflected in my personal experiences and they are definitely reflected in the statistics.

Remember that in each case, we aren't talking about an issue that presents itself 100% of the time, or has an impact 100% of the time. We are talking about an imbalance that has a minor impact, but an impact large enough to be perceived as such by the players and lead to altered behaviors (expectations on play style, filtering settings). It could be an issue that makes a difference as small as a few percent, and snowball into a resultant 70:30 win ratio or even higher.

[Mihalik]

It's about subscriber numbers: Alliance outnumber Horde, ie more people play Alliance than Horde. One immediate implication of this is that if you play Horde, you get to play more battlegrounds.

That hasn't been true for years. Horde significantly outnumber Alliance players both in PvP and PvE. Almost every single PvP realm is heavily Horde populated. Most "serious" PvE players also mass migrated Horde due to the racials (Just see the SoO HC race, the only Alliance guild half participating was Midwinter, otherwise the entire playing field was made up of Horde).

Horde had outnumbered Alliance since the introduction of Blood Elves, whom are essentially the Horde's Humans, making up 50%+ of the player base.

[Tinsoul]

This thread was logical and had reliable and well-presented evidence

I didn't read any of the OPs conclusions. And I get all the "ancedotal" blah blah blah.

But aren't these numbers exactly what one would expect to see for a solo-queuing prime-time-playing Alliance player? Are all those questioning the numbers suggesting this guy is an out-lier? Really?

People want to win. When the winning % moves from 50-50 it causes a feedback loop. If you get your ass kicked often enough you either switch teams or stop queuing. Good alliance players are either playing horde or a just finding other stuff to do.

Queue times are the salvation. The horde queues need to get long enough that some better horde players stop queuing or switch to alliance.

[Matt0193]

Ioc should not favor alliance at all, the travel distance to docks is virtually the same, even if horde really comes there 2seconds later than alliance it has no effect at all.

I want to hear the real imbalance in IoC

There isn't any, it's because the Horde in IoC and AV are typically any of the following:

Undergeared
Don't want to be there because they're blacklisting something else
Bots
HK Farmers
Want a quick loss so they can requeue

Now, here's the thing. Alliance can get to Docks and take it, if they have a Paladin or DK with Engineering and the Horde team doesn't send a Paladin or a DK to interrupt it. Same for Hangar, Horde can take it as they can jump from their keep to the bottom of Hangar's hill and be there at around the same time as Docks.

Now, if Horde Rogues had a brain, they'd destroy the glaives but typically they're sat on a teleporter waiting to pick off bots. Then you've got the Catapults (Which everyone overlooks) which throw people into the keep where they can drop bombs for around 10k damage (2 glaive shots). At this point, most of the Horde are still glaring at the Teleporter waiting for people to leave, or just running into West gate expecting it to magically go down. And then not to mention no one goes for Quarry, as it benefits Siege damage and the majority of people don't think this affects them.

Now, in theory Hangar is the most secure way to win. You can't stop the gunship from doing damage save for taking Hangar. Docks is counterable by merit of killing the Glaives and Catapults, then killing anyone who jumped in. If you're running a 40m premade then Workshop is the strongest, as you'd run 36 bombs, 4 Demos and just blow the gate up in a single run, however as the majority of the Horde are those mentioned above, this doesn't happen and 9/10 is the base Horde rush to because "It's what they always do".

AV is exactly the same, if the Horde defend they have a natural advantage by merit of having more choke points than the Alliance do that cannot be skipped. They also have better towers to defend in, so they can base defend more efficiently (Explosive trap on just about any point can throw anywhere between 1 and 5 people off, generally). That said, it's also easier for Alliance to defend said towers should they take it but the idea is you don't, so. If Alliance defend Dun Baldur, they can just be starved out as they'll lose possession of both mines and will slowly be whittled down by DKs gripping people out and knockbacks to disrupt any line the defenders try to make. Once inside, the Horde can spread much easier than the Alliance can spread at frostwolf. The only upside that the Alliance has in AV, imo, is that Vanndar is so much more powerful than Drek'thar.

Basically, Vanndar has Avatar. He increases his damage by 50%, which stacks with Marshal buffs, which essentially make it much harder for Horde to rush than the Alliance. Meanwhile, Drek'thar's wolves are cleaved and his shitty knockdown is ignored and healed through.

[Fahrenheit]

They're aren't any more powerful in some hidden clandestine way. The typical players one would run accross in a random BG aren't any better or worse on either side either.

Horde racial are slightly better in terms of PvP through put in random BGs, they wait longer in queue so there are less bots and more incentive to do well once in, so you didn't "waste" that 13 mins in queue. That's about it. The rank and file in random BGs are the same caliber of player on both sides.

Furthermore, I believe a quality player (even a non healer) CAN swing the tide in their teams favor (even Alliance) in small scale 10v10, and to a lesser extent 15v15 random BGs. I've always won more than I lost dating back to Classic WoW, solo queuing as a Feral Druid, and I still do.

The only BGs I have losing records in are EotS, but it's very close. SSM though my win percentage has climbed to nearly 50/50 now after the fix, so I'm winning more post fix than I lose. DG lost the first few times I got it and it's been black listed since.

[Korgoth]

Or maybe since Blizzard rigged the game for the Alliance in AV and IoC, and everyone knows it, all the good Alliance players are just chain queing the 2 BGs they know are EZ wins; while the non retarded Horde players are blacklisting those 2, causing AV and IoC to become good alliance vs idiot horde, and the other BGs to become good horde vs bad alliance.

[ypolt]

Having 15 minute queue times (horde) makes you alot more eager to do what you're supposed to once you're in the BG than having a 10 seconds queue time (alliance). EOD.

[Ralikon]

Followed it til I read the bit about the American theory. Haha I think that it has nothing to do with America, or Blizz being "anti-American" seeing as they're based on the West Coast. I think you have to research how much WoW is involved in other parts of the world, such as Asia before you post again.

Your post got downright whacky, and past that, it made no logical sense (when using the theory about America), and either this is a troll thread, or your just fantastically uninformed.

[Illana]

They're aren't any more powerful in some hidden clandestine way. The typical players one would run accross in a random BG aren't any better or worse on either side either.

Horde racial are slightly better in terms of PvP through put in random BGs, they wait longer in queue so there are less bots and more incentive to do well once in, so you didn't "waste" that 13 mins in queue. That's about it. The rank and file in random BGs are the same caliber of player on both sides.

Furthermore, I believe a quality player (even a non healer) CAN swing the tide in their teams favor (even Alliance) in small scale 10v10, and to a lesser extent 15v15 random BGs. I've always won more than I lost dating back to Classic WoW, solo queuing as a Feral Druid, and I still do.

The only BGs I have losing records in are EotS, but it's very close. SSM though my win percentage has climbed to nearly 50/50 now after the fix, so I'm winning more post fix than I lose. DG lost the first few times I got it and it's been black listed since.

whut horde racials

human> all

Solo queueing will end up in more losses than wins

queueing when undergeared will end up in more losses than wins

being a bad player will end up in more losses than wins

There is no faction better than the other, only variable is the quality of the player.

[bertinrow]

I apologize for the probably stupid question, but what Horde Racials are "completely" overpowered?

[Socialhealer]

129-4, lol well easy honor farm then, you lose once every 26 bgs...oh no poor you.