No Mention Of Faction Imbalance

[Torrasque]

I agree somewhat in the idea that winning uneven fights can be fun, I myself during my time with war mode on was amazed at how bad the Horde are 1v1 and even 1v2. The trouble is it has boiled down so far past that to where It is rarely anything less then 1v4, where you almost never have a chance to do anything anywhere... even when you find people of your own faction the help it still usually ends up being an unwinnable scenario, and considering the reward for lousing these encounters is nothing but wasted time it really doesn't boost ones desire to continue.

Most people have their titles now, though. The massive zergs of players are getting fewer and far between. Usually there are just C2A weekly groups... That said, killing a group of those is always a thrill.

[MoanaLisa]

Racials are the core of the issue.

I have long thought that racials should be dropped entirely. If you do that then some of this other stuff that people are talking about might work, or at least have an effect. Personally, I'm not a fan of ideas that simply rearrange the deck chairs for some temporary period. Blizzard already has massive, massive problems with unintended consequences of their changes (see: Guild Perks). I agree with you though. If there is a starting place on this racials is probably the easiest place to begin.

[Sansnom]

I think this is an issue that needs to be looked at but Blizzard always ignore it and simply say warmode is great.

This not a Blizzard issue and they can only do so much. If the majority of the players prefer one faction over the other, there is nothing Blizzard can do.

[Torrasque]

The only way I see people on Horde side being interested in switching to Ally is it would take a couple of things.

Ally would need to go through a series of changes, that makes them the "bad boys" of WoW and the Horde side the care bears.
Ensure Ally has some really solid racials that are very nice for raiding and PvP, quite frankly this will need to be OP\Broken for at least 1 Xpac
Then do some questionable bad things like give Ally the absolute best in zones and experiences and give horde the so so treatment for at least 1 Xpac. And just give Ally really awesome mounts, capital cities and other conveniences. It's not fair, but life isn't fair.

Personally, I think just making the Alliance side the bad boys would be enough, but the OP racials would be a strong plan B

Story has extremely little to do with PVP participation. The Win/Loss reward and how that effects a player's investment in playing PVP styles is everything. You can be hyped from the story as much as you like. If you are taking up PvP for the first time and you get rocked game after game, get gy camped for hours, or simply have allies bickering with each-other, you're desire to quit is going to overwhelm your decision, pushing new players back into PvP. As Horde we rarely have that issue. We have easy to follow BG strats that randoms can easily pick up on which is nearly ingained into basic Horde culture these days. Alli don't have that. They have a few dedicated masters at PvP and next to none of them ever touch random queue content. I've been in so many Horde games were 3-5 of us were killing the ratings, getting 3-4 times what our allies do in kills vs. deaths, effectively carrying randoms. I play Alli BGs and I quickly learn why they ALWAYS have lightning fast queues. They awful. Even if you do well, nearly carrying the group, you end up with people bitching at each other anyway.

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I have long thought that racials should be dropped entirely. If you do that then some of this other stuff that people are talking about might work, or at least have an effect. Personally, I'm not a fan of ideas that simply rearrange the deck chairs for some temporary period. Blizzard already has massive, massive problems with unintended consequences of their changes (see: Guild Perks). I agree with you though. If there is a starting place on this racials is probably the easiest place to begin.

I always thought that there should be a buff item, a mask that shows what race you want the racial of, and simply have that be the "visual queue" that players can have for "what racial ability do they have?" argument. Better yet, make it a profession crafted item that can be bought and sold.

[Doomchicken]

It's an issue created by the community

While that is somewhat true, it doesn't help that Blizzard has in the past and continues to exacerbate the problem by designing fights where horde racials are vastly superior than the Alliance racials and they do this every expansion. I'm not talking just numerically either, but obviously utility wise too. And once all the hardest of the hardcore choose one side, the side where utility wise and damage numerically wise they are superior and stay there, the wannabes are going to follow suit and it's just a snowball effect from there.

It also doesn't help that this expansion particularly they've gone out of their way to give literally no one a good reason to play the Alliance. You want lore where your leaders are not made to look like incompetent goofs, Play horde. You want to be on the side that actually gets their victories shown in game, Play horde. If you want to be the faction that has urgency and not passivity, play horde. You want new, fresh inventive mounts instead of recolored horses play horde. You want good racials for raiding or mythic plus you play horde. You want to actually want to win in random/world PvP you play horde.

Doing a half baked lame ass hall of fame isn't going to fix anything while everything else is still so fundamentally fucked for the alliance.

[CasualFilth]

This not a Blizzard issue and they can only do so much. If the majority of the players prefer one faction over the other, there is nothing Blizzard can do.

It IS Blizzard's fault if the sharding is imbalanced this way.

[sam86]

How do you expect Blizzard to fix this? Force players to be in a faction that is not of their choosing? That's really always been the problem with faction imbalance. What do you do when the majority of players want to be on one faction?

I'm not contradicting you but it's hard to see how Blizzard creates a balance out of thin air. In fact I think it was mentioned sometime this week that faction balance is the primary driver for warmode sharding. But you still are going to run into the problem when the imbalance is 65-35 or more.

for start they can easily stop what f8cked servers imbalance in first place, turn off faction change, but they would never do that, activision literally destroyed entire video game industry in their greed if u don't know their disgusting history, if not for good guy nintendo we may not had video games as we have now or maybe we just get now super mario out or something
of all video game companies in entire world, the worst one survived and is one of biggest, showing that in capitalism, the worse ruthless devoid of conscious u are, the more likely u succeed

[MoanaLisa]

for start they can easily stop what f8cked servers imbalance in first place, turn off faction change, but they would never do that

I don't see how, in today's game, that would really help. People would just make alts for the other faction. I have two "mains" as it were, one Alliance, one Horde. I pay for the entire damn game I want to be able to see it from the faction's perspective. I don't suppose you're a fan of boosts either but they're there and would be used.

Yeah, capitalism and making money is a thing. It's what game developers do. Nobody does this to lose a bunch of money.

[seleri]

for start they can easily stop what f8cked servers imbalance in first place, turn off faction change

So your solution to fixing the faction imbalance is to hope you can coax people into abandoning their main characters and level/gear up new characters on the other side?

Yeah, I don't see that working.

[Zyky]

How do you expect Blizzard to fix this? Force players to be in a faction that is not of their choosing? That's really always been the problem with faction imbalance. What do you do when the majority of players want to be on one faction?

I'm not contradicting you but it's hard to see how Blizzard creates a balance out of thin air. In fact I think it was mentioned sometime this week that faction balance is the primary driver for warmode sharding. But you still are going to run into the problem when the imbalance is 65-35 or more.

There are a few methods they could go about fixing this, most of which are already systems in the game.

1) Mercenary Mode: Works just like in BGs, you get a small increase(say 20% instead of 10%) when the 'mercenary' guy is available, if/when the balance evens out if you were already a mercenary and you're out and about doing WQs then the mercenary perk stays on regardless until you log out.

2) Offer extra rewards for the faction that is least represented: Basically the same concept as Mercenary Mode, gives an extra 10% to the faction that needs people in War Mode.

3) Make War Mode availability first come, first serve: While I'm sure this will be a highly disliked course of action, you open up the ability to turn on War Mode in Dazar'alor/Boralus and you have to turn it on every time you log into the character. If a faction is too represented you can't turn on War Mode. Again this is a bad idea, but it is an idea that would solve the issue.

4) Offer free faction changes: They used to do this all the time a long time ago. Offer free faction changes to players on the faction with the most War Mode representation. Again I feel this is a bad option mainly because it also benefits players who don't use War Mode, which might effect more than it should.

[Hellrime]

Have all racials mirrored on to Alliance characters, and offer a free faction transfer on imbalanced servers. Faction imbalance solved. You're still going to have the BELF problem. Most hardcore raiders, and the ones that think they are, play predominately Horde because of the small advantage of the racial abilities. Alliance really have nothing that competes. Every Man For Himself wasn't really that great, but the crybabies just couldn't stand that we had something that made Alliance competitive. Even though Horde will vehemently scream and cry on the forums, evening the playing field would make a huge difference.

[Kithelle]

Well when you show obvious biases towards a faction and show no intention of trying to change that, can't expect much to actually change.

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Have all racials mirrored on to Alliance characters, and offer a free faction transfer on imbalanced servers. Faction imbalance solved. You're still going to have the BELF problem. Most hardcore raiders, and the ones that think they are, play predominately Horde because of the small advantage of the racial abilities. Alliance really have nothing that competes. Every Man For Himself wasn't really that great, but the crybabies just couldn't stand that we had something that made Alliance competitive. Even though Horde will vehemently scream and cry on the forums, evening the playing field would make a huge difference.

Yet took seven expansions till Arcane Torrent finally got on the chopping block.

[Hellrime]

The only way I see people on Horde side being interested in switching to Ally is it would take a couple of things.

Ally would need to go through a series of changes, that makes them the "bad boys" of WoW and the Horde side the care bears.
Ensure Ally has some really solid racials that are very nice for raiding and PvP, quite frankly this will need to be OP\Broken for at least 1 Xpac
Then do some questionable bad things like give Ally the absolute best in zones and experiences and give horde the so so treatment for at least 1 Xpac. And just give Ally really awesome mounts, capital cities and other conveniences. It's not fair, but life isn't fair.

Personally, I think just making the Alliance side the bad boys would be enough, but the OP racials would be a strong plan B

It really wouldn't be a bad idea, like we unleash Bolvar: The Lich King II or something to effectively combat the Forsaken Blight or some other narrative. Things get out of hand, Bolvar loses control to Arthas, we find out that Arthas was Anduin's dad, yada, yada, yada, we're the bad guys for a bit. Bring back Green Jesus that just Medan's the hell out of everything, Horde settle back into the noble savage role instead of edge lords. Alliance enjoy the most compelling story in years and abilities that put them 1% above the Horde in all content for an expac (Meanwhile we will pretend it is raw skill that we're ahead and have counters to most of the difficult content). I agree.

[sam86]

I don't see how, in today's game, that would really help. People would just make alts for the other faction. I have two "mains" as it were, one Alliance, one Horde. I pay for the entire damn game I want to be able to see it from the faction's perspective. I don't suppose you're a fan of boosts either but they're there and would be used.

Yeah, capitalism and making money is a thing. It's what game developers do. Nobody does this to lose a bunch of money.

it will stop the first drop, i used to play on server called Ghostlands Eu and i saw myself ppl leaving from horde to alliance for raiding and more activity, kill it will start make the idea of 'i'm bored, let's jump the ship and transfer' instead of actually trying to improve ur server
and all ppl want to make money, but there are ppl who want to make money fair and square, and there is activision who would destroy entire video game industry just to make fast cash

[Hellrime]

Well when you show obvious biases towards a faction and show no intention of trying to change that, can't expect much to actually change.

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Yet took seven expansions till Arcane Torrent finally got on the chopping block.

Yea, and they made it better, lol.

[MoanaLisa]

3) Make War Mode availability first come, first serve: While I'm sure this will be a highly disliked course of action, you open up the ability to turn on War Mode in Dazar'alor/Boralus and you have to turn it on every time you log into the character. If a faction is too represented you can't turn on War Mode. Again this is a bad idea, but it is an idea that would solve the issue.

I sort of had that thought myself to make the War Mode shards work like Ashran but rejected it in that I don't think that Blizzard even wants to do anything like that again, especially with War Mode. And it's just a terrible idea to make people queue for War Mode. The Mercenary Mode idea is pretty good.

[Kagthul]

You guys... uh... you DO realize that the factions actually aren't imbalanced?

The numbers are actually pretty even across the factions in all regions - usually only a ~4% difference between Horde and Alliance.

Been that way almost since the start.

Individual SERVERS were/are VERY imbalanced; however, for instanced PvP that ceased to matter the moment cross-realm BGs became a thing, and for War Mode, its the same.

The actual balance on your server is irrelevant - its the service-wide population that matters, and they are... fairly even. All that matters is the number of people on each faction turning War Mode on.

Blizzard cant help it if Alliance dont want to turn War Mode on. Its an entirely player-created problem.

[Torto]

This not a Blizzard issue and they can only do so much. If the majority of the players prefer one faction over the other, there is nothing Blizzard can do.

Of course there is. They gave horde blood elfs in TBC to balance out the populations because everyone wanted to play a'pretty race' and so rolled alliance. Horde get favoured in pretty much everything because so few people like the horde aesthetics, unless you really don't care about that sort of thing and only worry about dps numbers etc.

As soon as balance between faction numbers start to skew Blizz have stepped in to level it out, they should do so again now because alliance is screwed.

[Sansnom]

It IS Blizzard's fault if the sharding is imbalanced this way.

And is the sharding imbalanced in this way?

And how much can sharding address the imbalanced? I do not know the PvP ratio between Horde and Alliance. I used to play on a PvP server where the Horde outnumber the Alliance by a significant margin. I would not be surprised if that ratio was around 7-1 on the server. How much can sharding do if that is kind of ratio at the moment?

[Torto]

You guys... uh... you DO realize that the factions actually aren't imbalanced?

The numbers are actually pretty even across the factions in all regions - usually only a ~4% difference between Horde and Alliance.

Been that way almost since the start.

Individual SERVERS were/are VERY imbalanced; however, for instanced PvP that ceased to matter the moment cross-realm BGs became a thing, and for War Mode, its the same.

The actual balance on your server is irrelevant - its the service-wide population that matters, and they are... fairly even. All that matters is the number of people on each faction turning War Mode on.

Blizzard cant help it if Alliance dont want to turn War Mode on. Its an entirely player-created problem.

No one has claimed there are more horde players, its the participation numbers that are imbalanced. And in case you didn't realise, for there to be a conflict there needs to be 2 sides, warmode doesn't work when only one side shows up.