Blizzard please send help

[Bakis]

Well if factions go away this won’t be a issue any more will it?

The game is built around the factions. Can't take that away when every other bonding feature of the game has been removed like the social aspects or the realm community.

Hell, even Shattrath back in TBC as a neutral city was percieved as a novel but perhaps bad idea. Nowdays the factions band together at times, while fighting each other at the same time.
That shit from developers make no sense.

[Wries]

I really just hope they give up and let us group up cross faction come next expansion.

I'm not really asking for a big revamp, deflection-ability or for an Orc to be able to walk around freely in Stormwind. Just that guilds and group systems ignore factions.

Jaina and Thrall can form a party so we should be able to as well.

[Spiral Mage]

It's always felt more like a maturity thing to me. More serious players play and relate to the Horde more.

[Bakis]

I really just hope they give up and let us group up cross faction come next expansion.

I'm not really asking for a big revamp, deflection-ability or for an Orc to be able to walk around freely in Stormwind. Just that guilds and group systems ignore factions.

Jaina and Thrall can form a party so we should be able to as well.

Would probably be the least bad solution I agree. I mean we can already queue up as mercs to join "as Alliance" for faster BG queus so why not spill that into raiding.

It would only matter for the really hardcore guild though and do nothing much for the rest but it would put and end to the myth of 'racials are unblanced'.

[Thelyron]

The only thing that needs to happen is for people to stop caring about competetive raiding.

[Bakis]

It's always felt more like a maturity thing to me.

For me that is not my experience, it's been fairly even but the 'I want to be a hero in shining armor saving the world'-nerd players stood out as Alliance to me.

More serious players play and relate to the Horde more

i tend to agree with this but obviously my scope is limited and as I said it wasn't a problem back in the days but became one as time passed.

I've played since TBC as Horde but had to faction change in order to join a hardcore raiding guild.
I got sort of your feeling after Wrath and in a mild dose. As time passed I still used some Alliance toons some times but not much but that feeling increased by each expansion that passed.

Back when battlegroups were created it was so obvious in the PvP section (for at least my battlegroup). I would be sure that out of 100 games played the win ratio would be ~60-70%.
The 3 chars I played the past 2-3 expansions all sit on mostly 60% up to 78% win ratio in bgs with the exception of AV of cos

I have a ton of xp form servers I'm not allowed to speak of too on the subject but lets leave my thoughts from there out of here.

[Aphrel]

Im hoping they get rid of factions completely.

And instead come up with a mercenary system where you fight for local rep factions (and kill players who fight for the other local factions in warmode).
They could finally also even out the shards if blizzards puts some incentives to always fight for the "underdog" faction.

[Soikona]

Easiest solution is just to remove factions rules. Since raids are pretty often, especially towards the end of an expo, the horde and alliance teaming up to bring down a big evil, why not let the factions really group up and take it down? Makes sense from a lore standpoint if we allowed cross faction raiding and things like that.

Ofcourse they can't completly get rid of factions due to pvp. But then again they could spin it as that still existing because from fighting eachother both sides end up stronger and its all in prep for the next big evil.

Cross faction raiding would be pretty neat, might have a few lightforged draenei show up in the horde raids then.

Secret world handles factions well. PVE was for the greater good but then fought over areas for control.

[valky94]

Let me take a guess, the posters above are hordes. It kinda illustrates the problem we face.
Horde (and thus the majority) don't want Blizzard to do anything about this issue. Simply because their gameplay is better than ever.

there isnt much blizzard can do, if they buff alliance racials, everyone would just switch alliance and then it would be the same mess just blue instead of red

[SirCowdog]

there isnt much blizzard can do, if they buff alliance racials, everyone would just switch alliance and then it would be the same mess just blue instead of red

I mean, they could just release High-Elves as an alliance race with even halfway decent racials, and it would probably have a fairly significant effect on population without completely unbalancing things.

That is, of course, assuming there's actually a real problem in the first place.

[Popastique]

Do what? There are only 2 solutions - Faction Merge and Free Faction Change for limited time. And we all know second one is not coming anytime soon. I would love to play on Alliance side since racials do not play that great of a role, but i am not willing to pay X amount of money to faction change all my horde characters.

[ls-]

Do what? There are only 2 solutions - Faction Merge and Free Faction Change for limited time. And we all know second one is not coming anytime soon. I would love to play on Alliance side since racials do not play that great of a role, but i am not willing to pay X amount of money to faction change all my horde characters.

Even if they do the latter, and we somehow reach an even A:H split among the top guilds, eventually one side will become dominant once again. Spreading out evenly between the two factions is counter-productive for the hardcore raiding crowd.

[LadyLisanna]

It's always felt more like a maturity thing to me. More serious players play and relate to the Horde more.

Yeah ... No... No.. No.. Noo.

It has been about numbers and recruitment.
The Alliance has a SEVERE player drought when it comes to raiding.
Seeing as PVP and raiding are the two bigger parts of the game the Racial imbalance of the past has had a dramatic effect on today.
I think the Guild Midwinter used to be alliance, they turned horde last year or so...

[Goldfingaz]

I mean, they could just release High-Elves as an alliance race with even halfway decent racials, and it would probably have a fairly significant effect on population without completely unbalancing things.

That is, of course, assuming there's actually a real problem in the first place.

Void Elf racials put them on par with Trolls. Feel free to sim and see the difference, it's maybe 100dps difference in the end.

[Sxq]

"What can they do??"

They can fix the problem by allowing guilds and pve to be cross faction..... And they need to do so for the sake of the game.

[ls-]

Yeah ... No... No.. No.. Noo.

It has been about numbers and recruitment.
The Alliance has a SEVERE player drought when it comes to raiding.
Seeing as PVP and raiding are the two bigger parts of the game the Racial imbalance of the past has had a dramatic effect on today.
I think the Guild Midwinter used to be alliance, they turned horde last year or so...

And here's their reasons for the FC:

Have some exciting news to share: our Guild will soon be moving over to Horde! While the Alliance fan boy in me is a little sad, it's hard to argue against the logic behind such a move. The main factor involved behind this decision would be the dwindling Alliance population among the more competitive player base, which is especially beneficial when activity within the guild has died down a bit which is pretty standard during the downtime between expansions. We will be remaining on the Sargeras server for the time being. It's possible we may decide to rock the Blue again before BfA is launched if Blizzard makes Alliance more appealing leading up to the new expansion, but the current faction imbalance has become too hard to ignore, even for us, and we will embrace the new look for the foreseeable future. See ya boys on the other side!

And there's plenty of guilds who FC for this very reason, but nope, it's all lies...

[LadyLisanna]

Warmode buff is at 30% that means that WAY more horde are in Warmode over alliace then EVER ... If that buff did not exsist. I would NEVER NEVER NEVER Turn it on cause why ? To have horde harass me ?

[zlygork]

The best solution to this is abolishing the faction barriers. Other than that, it's first and foremost a community problem, not a gameplay one.

[Greengrim]

Back to your holes, alliance scum!! FOR THE HORDE!! ....hmmm but which Horde? Sylvans'? Hell no... MMmMmmMmmM!!! Yo Anduiniu, got spot for another orc in your ranks over there?

[Arainie]

I mean, Legion was a good xpack in the eyes of many, but hardcore guilds still were transferring to the Horde or at the very least were planning and/or announcing their transfers. There's just no point in playing on a side that has such a small pool of hardcore or semi-hardcore players to recruit from.

BE silence was utterly broken for M+ and for KJ Mythic specifically you needed to be able to counter the knockback during intermissions which meant play a class that can handle it or go goblin for the jump. Those two things specifically made things significantly worse than they already were, and the higher the faction imbalance is among top end players (Raiding, M+ and PvP) the more people participating in those activities will gravitate towards the more favourable faciton.

The only way to solve it that I can see atm is to offer the Alliance significant advantages or to merge the factions (or at least allow cross-faction guilds), all of which I think are bad solutions. There's not a massive imbalance overall, there's just a massive imbalance in more difficult end-game content.

Also Ravencrest since 05 wooo!