If TBC becomes a thing, Blizzard needs to make "change" to prevent faction imbalance

[Kralljin]

Blizzard change what they want

Non Argument.

Like paladin reckoning is nerfed, av can be group qued ect.... There is many changes.

Reckoning was a fixed before 1.12, so there's that.

There is already pretty big issues and TBC will be worse

The serious fear i have in that regard is that they use their Classic approach at verbatim, use 2.4 as template and plaster any content over it in its 2.4 state.
Which means:
Nerfed Heroics / Raids.
Removed Attunements.
Karazhan will become flyover content because you can just collect loot from the free loot bosses in SSC / TK / Hyjal.

Then again, Blizzard also got rather heavy backlash for implementing the 1.12 AV, which already had a rush meta back in the day rather than prolonged battles.

[WernerCD]

Blizzard made MASSIVE changes to WoW Classic so that it is nothng like vanilla.

The core of vanilla gameplay is an in-game community. The FIRST thing they did was strike at the HEART of that by adding layers. That prevents people from being forced to socialize to organize quest kills at low levels. So they FIRST thing they did was try to KILL the in-game community. Right off the bat. That promoted an antisocial game play that did not exist in vanilla. Then they made the servers incredibly huge, which ALSO attacks and destroys the in-game community because with small server sizes found in vanilla, in-game communities are much easier to form.

So don't tell me they won't change anything. They absolutely did. And the changes were massive and missed the entire point of classic.

Did you play a different game than me?

I was always surrounded by people when phasing was active and never had an issue meeting people to quest with.

I'm now in a guild with 2 MC/BWL groups with a very active community dynamic.

I won't disagree that the Vanilla is different than Classic - because there are quite a few differences from info available, 1.0 bugs that aren't available (IE "Bugged" hunter pets that aren't possible in Classic), Vent vs Discord, etc...

But to say that communities aren't forming and aren't strong is simply ignorant of reality...

Phasing was a solution to an obvious problem of having literally thousands of people in the "same" starter zones. Classic would have been unplayable without them.

[Coldfrostzero]

It is a non issue on PvE servers so it really doesn't matter for the most part.

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What were the ability differences I completely forgot.

IIRC Seal of Vengeance stacked to 5 and every stack increased it's damaged dealt to whatever the max was per tick. It was really really good for tanking since you could get to 5 stacks, switch to SotR and then switch back when it was about to fall off. Seal of Blood did direct damage that was better than SotR and more sustainable than SoComm, but I believe it dealt 5% of the damage back to you (10% for judgement?).

They eventually got rid of Seal of Blood and I think it was they buffed SotR to the SoB damage in Wrath. Which they also made SoV for both factions and that was eventually changed to 5 stacks and then every time you refresh it you deal direct damage, thus removing the need for SotR swapping. Which lead to Ret using SotR and then SoComm being removed since it was RNG and the burst wasn't worth the difference in the sustained DPS of SotR.

So essentially in BC and the beginning of WOTLK, you had to do a lot of Seal Twisting to maximize your damage. It was the most fun I had as a Ret Paladin in BC to maximize DPS from SoB into Judgement from SoComm with swing timers/Crusader Strike.

[Xalvia]

The CRUCIAL time to NOT have layers is when servers first opened, because that's where you can force social interaction and cooperation with lots of people in the starting zones. Turning them off later does jack shit.

Can't have social interactions in the fkn queue though can you

Layering was fine, they kept the promise and removed it.

[tru]

Paid faction transfers destroyed populations to begin with. Make people have to invest in their time and not have a $ way out they will stick with their decisions or hell reroll. But regardless some people want to play on faction imbalanced servers. Thats never gonna change.

One way they could do it is just have normal servers an have war mode. Or just deal with it. Nothing new move along. Nobody forces you to pvp. If there are no guilds progressing on your server well maybe you should have backup plans
PvP one sided? Have a backup plan. Dont complain and dont ask for changes not needed. Let that crowd do them. You do you and enjoy it. Gonna be a helluva ride and im so ready.

[Luxeley]

Blizzard absolutely refuses to address/ fix faction imbalance on retail, let alone acknowledge its existence. So, I seriously doubt they'll do anything to address a potential problem with TBC servers.

[erifwodahs]

Can't have social interactions in the fkn queue though can you

Layering was fine, they kept the promise and removed it.

I think he wanted the communities which were appearing online in forums, when the servers were offline for 2 days after patch... the only thing layering destroyed... or did it? people raging in a single fist under blizzard pots about 7hr que times on layered servers.. resembles a community! he must have missed it... Obviously servers should have been capped at 3k according to that guy so after I decided to ditch my lvl 12 mage like shit ton of others players did it would have ended like a dead town and then this guy would blame blizz for not foreseeing a player drop down and not raising the server cap during the launch. I mean he can't loose, he would be blaming someone anyways!

[Naraga]

Non Argument.


Reckoning was a fixed before 1.12, so there's that.


The serious fear i have in that regard is that the use their Classic approach at verbatim, use 2.4 as template and plaster any content over it in its 2.4 state.
Which means:
Nerfed Heroics / Raids.
Removed Attunements.
Karazhan will become flyover content because you can just collect loot from the free loot bosses in SSC / TK / Hyjal.

Then again, Blizzard also got rather heavy backlash for implementing the 1.12 AV, which already had a rush meta back in the day rather than prolonged battles.

I agree with this, I would love for them to move the content through a few carefully selected big patches rather than like they do in Classic where they just make everything 1.12 and then gate the content.

But realistically I fear Blizzard won't do this, because there is no one at Blizzard left that understands these things. If they understood, then we wouldn't be having Classic to begin with as Retail would actually be a playable experience.

Blizzard absolutely refuses to address/ fix faction imbalance on retail, let alone acknowledge its existence. So, I seriously doubt they'll do anything to address a potential problem with TBC servers.

But they don't need to fix faction imbalance in retail. World pvp doesn't exist and bg's are against your own faction. Basically retail is a single faction game regardless of server balance.

[Unholyground]

IIRC Seal of Vengeance stacked to 5 and every stack increased it's damaged dealt to whatever the max was per tick. It was really really good for tanking since you could get to 5 stacks, switch to SotR and then switch back when it was about to fall off. Seal of Blood did direct damage that was better than SotR and more sustainable than SoComm, but I believe it dealt 5% of the damage back to you (10% for judgement?).

They eventually got rid of Seal of Blood and I think it was they buffed SotR to the SoB damage in Wrath. Which they also made SoV for both factions and that was eventually changed to 5 stacks and then every time you refresh it you deal direct damage, thus removing the need for SotR swapping. Which lead to Ret using SotR and then SoComm being removed since it was RNG and the burst wasn't worth the difference in the sustained DPS of SotR.

So essentially in BC and the beginning of WOTLK, you had to do a lot of Seal Twisting to maximize your damage. It was the most fun I had as a Ret Paladin in BC to maximize DPS from SoB into Judgement from SoComm with swing timers/Crusader Strike.

I guess from what I decided to research seal of blood was 11% of the damage done per hit, and 33% from the judgement, not too bad if you are tanking and getting healed constantly anyways.

[BSwitch]

Right now in Classic, factions are remotely balanced. On most servers horde outnumber alliance, but it is a playable balance. Some servers unfortunately have slipped away from this playable balance and we've all seen the numerous threads complaining about it.

However if nothing is done, the issues with faction balance we currently experience will seem like a complete nonissue compared to what TBC will bring us.

We know from private server data that at the start of each server we see a 70-30 to 80-20 faction balance favouring horde. Then in a manner of days to weeks this imbalance will quickly compound to 95+-5- balance as Alliance players quit or factionswitch because the game is literally unplayable for them.

What are the reasons for this? Outside of subjective reasons like blood elf aesthetics or faction psychology, the main reasons for faction imbalance on TBC servers stems from the fact that horde racials are considered slightly better for PvE and much better for PvP. But one of the largest difference is in Paladins as the Horde Seal of Blood is a huge buff over Alliance paladins. This means that from an objective point of view, both PvP and PvE players have no reason to roll Alliance.

With the min-max mindset we see in Classic, I'm fully expecting this private server trend to continue into Classic TBC. Even if current servers are progressed into TBC as is, I fear many Alliance players will straight up reroll.

Now I don't want to suggest massive game overhauls as I simply do not trust current Blizzard to make such changes. The same reason why I wouldn't want to see Classic + as I have no faith in their ability to execute this. As such, the options we have to prevent this Alliance exodus are limited.

Balancing the PvP racials would be too extensive of a change, and as such we simply need to accept some imbalance will exist. However I believe that for PvE we can make a very minor change that would make a huge difference, and that is making Seal of Blood available to all Paladins regardless of race. In a way it is a very minor change that fits in with the TBC design philosophy as many Vanilla racial class abilities were either removed or made class-wide, making Seal of Blood an outlier. While this would do nothing for PvP players, at least it removes a large incentive for PvE players to reroll to Horde. Combined with progressing current servers giving incentive to people to continue to play their current characters as rerolling would put them behind (as opposed to starting fresh servers) we can hopefully prevent private servers scenarios from happening in Classic. I would also suggest faction locks, preventing players who don't already have a character of level 60 to make new characters on factions that are outnumbering the opposing faction.

I know this will not please purists, however I believe that in order to have a playable experience for both factions that resembles actual TBC as closely as possible, this one minor change needs to be made.

P.S
Please no retail players ITT that spam #nochanges out of spite, thanks.

One big argument against this is the fact that raiding is almost universally recognized to favour Alliance currently, due to Paladin buffs being better than Shaman totems, Dwarf priest fear ward, etc. (For a raid environment, looking at min-max). This being the case, and being well known, there is still an imbalance in favour of Horde on servers. It seems as though people decided, "I know what faction I like and what I want to play, and min-maxing is less important." Yes, for PvP there are certainly better racials - Orcs stun res is op, for example.

Now, I'm a Paladin main. Would I like to have Seal of Blood? Of course I would. I've never played with it, and all the numbers I've seen make it look amazing. I don't believe they'll make it cross-factional for TBC, but I'm also not likely to reroll Horde due to that one seal. My guild in all likelihood would continue Alliance and we'd be just fine. Basically our entire officer core is Gnome, and I doubt they'd reroll Troll. Even though Human sword skill would be better for our Gnome MT, he knew what he wanted to play.

Now, certainly for the cutting edge try-hards they'll likely reroll if currently Alliance. However, while we personally may be slightly sub-optimal, we're also among the most progressed guilds on our server, and are full of people dedicated to clearing content - whatever our comp. Point being, yes there may be some rerolling, but largely I don't think it will quite be to the extent you're worried about. I'm not against the seal being allowed to both, but it won't be a game-changer for me.

[Boricha]

I'm down for giving seal of blood/martyr to Alliance. Faction locks would be too intrusive imo. Arena is going to be miserable anyway. Every warlock is going to be SL/SL with Void Star Talisman, every warrior is going to go straight for Stormherald, etc..., but maybe this time more pvp focused players will go Alliance since gnomes are bis for warrior and they know Horde will have crazy queue times.

[Coldfrostzero]

I guess from what I decided to research seal of blood was 11% of the damage done per hit, and 33% from the judgement, not too bad if you are tanking and getting healed constantly anyways.

Ah, I couldn't remember the % as I know it "sounds" like a lot, but really wasn't. I think what made SoB better for DPS was because it scaled with Attack Power more than Spell Power, where SotR is the opposite. Since Consecration also scaled with SP until Wrath, it was common to wear SP things as a Prot Paladin.

Which, if the GBOK spam that works in Classic works the same in BC, it might not be as necessary to wear SP gear really at all. Tanking threat got a tuning pass in 2.0.1 anyway so threat really wasn't much of an issue for tanks. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of a massive BC community since apparently it's not as popular in the private server sector?

[Kralljin]

But realistically I fear Blizzard won't do this, because there is no one at Blizzard left that understands these things.

I don't think it has to do with them "understanding it", i think the primary issue was a technical one.
In their Blizzcon presentation they said that they only had a backup of a backup of their 1.12 state, which implies that Blizzard didn't have a lot of data of previous patch(es).

Next to that, it may have also been an economical decision, having a more progressive style would obviously been more work (disregarding the possibility of them not having the data).
Blizzard obviously did not expect the success of Classic that it had, the months leading up to Classic with Name reservation has shown that.
They didn't even want to launch with language specific servers in the EU, now Germany and France alone have like 10 Classic Servers in total.

In particular in regards to Attunements, they would be repeating the mistake of AV, except it's even easier to restore the Pre 2.4 state and cause a far bigger backlash, Attunements is one of the quirks why TBC has been such a famous time.
Same goes unnerfed Heroics, most of the time, Trash just had more HP and hit harder, that's about it, nothing fundamental or something that would need a lot of work to implement or might cause any problems once you transition to the 2.4 state.

I mean, it's entirely possible that they take the easy path but then they would be taking a lot of things away why TBC has become such a famous expansion, despite it being rather easy to restore (as opposed to similiar elements in Classic).
I think it would also be a decent marketing element, because it would be far closer to "how TBC actually happened", rather than "It's Classic but everything is already in its 1.12 state."

If they understood, then we wouldn't be having Classic to begin with as Retail would actually be a playable experience.

It's where this discussion goes a bit offtopic and while i generally disagree with the devs in a lot of things, i also do not envy them on some of the issues or problems they face.
The team that developed the earlier expansions also had an easier job on a lot of things that people are currently criticizing about the game.
Take something such as class changes, throw in a bunch of new spells that fix some of the issues that a class has, boom, done.

But that's something that's going to cause problems down the line, i'm not defending pruning but the spellbook isn't something that can grow forever in size before things start to fall apart.

While i dislike the approach of Retail on a "philosophical" level in some aspects, the majority of issues on Retail stem from execution, which is a different problem altogether.

[Unholyground]

Ah, I couldn't remember the % as I know it "sounds" like a lot, but really wasn't. I think what made SoB better for DPS was because it scaled with Attack Power more than Spell Power, where SotR is the opposite. Since Consecration also scaled with SP until Wrath, it was common to wear SP things as a Prot Paladin.

Which, if the GBOK spam that works in Classic works the same in BC, it might not be as necessary to wear SP gear really at all. Tanking threat got a tuning pass in 2.0.1 anyway so threat really wasn't much of an issue for tanks. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of a massive BC community since apparently it's not as popular in the private server sector?

I tank as ret in classic, works well too lol.

[Synical123]

The only way to balance the world population between the two factions is to make world PVP fair. Since next to no one playing on any PVP servers wants fair world PVP, the population will never be balanced. Since PVPers don't want fair PVP while also not wanting to be on the disadvantaged faction, they will simply reroll or transfer to servers that are imbalanced in their favor. If Blizzard comes down and tries to take an iron-fist approach to force players to play on a server they don't want, or not to play on servers they do want, those players will just stop playing WoW.

Unfair, no rules PVP leads to imbalanced servers ==> leads to folks in the lesser populated faction not going out into the world ==> leads to the death of World PVP.


WoW open world PVP is like playing checkers where you start with only 4 checkers and your opponent has all 12 of his. You complain that it's not fair, and voice suggestions on how to make checkers more fair. For your trouble you are told that this type of checkers isn't for you, that you should play against the computer or not at all. Then your previous opponents starts complaining that there isn't anyone to play checkers against and bemoans the fact that Milton Bradley isn't forcing people to play checkers with him.

I really wouldn't be painting everyone under the same brush. You are right that a majority of people who are attracted to world pvp are the ones who just want to dominate it. Honestly, I think a majority of the OG players from TBC and around that era do enjoy balanced pvp. The servers were way more balanced back then than they have been recently.

I am a pvper, and I love pvp servers, and basically the majority of my time spent in this game is just pvping. But I roll Alliance. Not just because it's the faction I prefer, but when I am out in the world pvping, I would much rather be on the side of fighting for my life pvping in order to accomplish something than be on the side where it feels like I'm playing a pve server where I can just 20v1 someone every 10 mins.

Of course this sucks most of the time especially because there are people who just want to grief and camp you as 5 rogues when you are just trying to level and such, but it's slightly better than the alternative which is basically a pve server.

Honestly, I know they would never do something like this, but I truly and honestly believe they need to add in some sort of a faction q system. Not saying servers need to be completely 100% 50/50 at all times. But if a server is something like 80/20 or something, there needs to be a q for the leading faction so it at least stays semi balanced.

If the horde TRULY want to play horde and roll that faction just because that's the one they prefer, then they can. Just give them a warning when rolling onto a server that it may give you a long q when trying to login.

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Non Argument.


Reckoning was a fixed before 1.12, so there's that.


The serious fear i have in that regard is that they use their Classic approach at verbatim, use 2.4 as template and plaster any content over it in its 2.4 state.
Which means:
Nerfed Heroics / Raids.
Removed Attunements.
Karazhan will become flyover content because you can just collect loot from the free loot bosses in SSC / TK / Hyjal.

Then again, Blizzard also got rather heavy backlash for implementing the 1.12 AV, which already had a rush meta back in the day rather than prolonged battles.

Idk if you played classic but the only thing that was '1.12' at the start was the class balancing and talents. They didn't even have some quests available during launch that was in the 1.12 patch.

If they went off of 2.4 there is no way they would release the game without attunements or SSC/TK/Hyjal opened up. Sure, it won't be like it was exactly back in the day with the 2.4 balancing and such but it for sure wont look like what your referring to.

[Aeula]

No changes.

[Synical123]

Blizzard absolutely refuses to address/ fix faction imbalance on retail, let alone acknowledge its existence. So, I seriously doubt they'll do anything to address a potential problem with TBC servers.

Does faction balance even really matter on retail? Also not suggesting they are going to fix it but this thought process is sort of flawed. Just because one version of the game has the same problem that's not addressed, doesn't mean they won't with another. Look at how premades in AV were addressed in classic. There are premades in retail right? But they decided to go through and fix it in classic because it actually means more than what it does on retail.

[plz delete account]

Blizzard made MASSIVE changes to WoW Classic so that it is nothng like vanilla.

The core of vanilla gameplay is an in-game community. The FIRST thing they did was strike at the HEART of that by adding layers. That prevents people from being forced to socialize to organize quest kills at low levels. So they FIRST thing they did was try to KILL the in-game community. Right off the bat. That promoted an antisocial game play that did not exist in vanilla. Then they made the servers incredibly huge, which ALSO attacks and destroys the in-game community because with small server sizes found in vanilla, in-game communities are much easier to form.

So don't tell me they won't change anything. They absolutely did. And the changes were massive and missed the entire point of classic.

Pretty certain layers were removed before phase 2 was implemented.

[Kralljin]

Idk if you played classic but the only thing that was '1.12' at the start was the class balancing and talents. They didn't even have some quests available during launch that was in the 1.12 patch.

The only quests that weren't available in Classic are the ones that are part of a specific event or patch, such as the Cenarion Circle quests in Silithus.
Hubs such as Thorium Point in Searing Gorge were pretty empty at the release of Vanilla, similiar to Hinterlands for the Horde, yet were part of Classic right off the bat.

Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Searing Gorge has a new quest hub for both Alliance and Horde players called Thorium Point.
Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07):
The Hinterlands has a new Horde quest hub known as Revantusk Village, located on the eastern coastline.
A new graveyard has been added near the east coast of the Hinterlands at the Overlook Cliffs.

For reference, Patch 1.5 was the patch that introduced Battlegrounds.

If they went off of 2.4 there is no way they would release the game without attunements or SSC/TK/Hyjal opened up.

I'm merely pointing out that this how TBC would look like if they're going to use the same philosophy as they did for Classic.
I don't think (or rather hope) that they're doing it that way.
But truth be told, i don't have high hopes that they implement the pre nerf state of Heroics / Raids.

[Synical123]

Pretty certain layers were removed before phase 2 was implemented.

Yeah, anyone advocating that classic wow was 'massively' changed is just a drama queen. It's pretty freaking similar. Sure class balances are 1.12 and you have a COUPLE things here and there that are different, but christ... half the things they complain about have since been removed already. (layers etc..)

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The only quests that weren't available in Classic are the ones that are part of a specific event or patch, such as the Cenarion Circle quests in Silithus.
Hubs such as Thorium Point in Searing Gorge were pretty empty at the release of Vanilla, similiar to Hinterlands for the Horde.

Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07): Searing Gorge has a new quest hub for both Alliance and Horde players called Thorium Point.
Patch 1.5.0 (2005-06-07):
The Hinterlands has a new Horde quest hub known as Revantusk Village, located on the eastern coastline.
A new graveyard has been added near the east coast of the Hinterlands at the Overlook Cliffs.

For reference, Patch 1.5 was the patch that introduced Battlegrounds.


I'm merely pointing out that this how TBC would look like if they're going to use the same philosophy as they did for Classic.
I don't think (or rather hope) that they're doing it that way.

But it wouldn't be...lol. They didn't release ZG/Naxx/BWL at the start right? Then why would they release SSC/TK/Hyjal

That's what I'm referring to.

Also, the quests thing I'm talking about is quests like the warlock epic mount, the pally epic mount, the class specific quests in ST. If they went straight off of 1.12 all these things would have been there at the start, but they weren't. So there's no reason to think they would do something like removed attunments at the start just because they are basing it off of patch 2.4.3