An interesting observation about the H/A ratio

[Sentynel]

They should just enable cross-faction play at this point. 16 years of H/A is boring as fuck. If people want faction pride classic is there for them.

[WintersLegion]

That's one assumption, the other is it would even out while people went where they wanted to go rather than where they felt like they needed to be.

Alternatively, let people guild up, dungeon, and raid fross faction, because the faction war is an outdated concept that has run it's course not once, but twice, and hasn't made any sense in the story since Azeroth started facing world ending threats on a yearly basis. The player characters work with cross faction NPC forces all the damn time, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do PvE content together with cross faction players.

And they would feel like they need to be Horde because the majority of the top raiders are Horde. There would have to be some other benefit to going Alliance besides just customization.

[LordVargK]

What are they supposed to do? Make the alliance racials overpowered and force everyone to pay 30 dollars a pop to faction change? You have no idea how much anger that would cause in the community.

Horde has a bigger community to pug and recruit with now. Besides just making horde blatantly underperforming with a -30% damage debuff, how will they compel people to switch instead of just being fine with where they are?

Just make PvE cross faction and let everyone play what they want.

In other games an underpopulated faction would get permanent buffs to encourage players to switch sides. But WoW does not need that, because factions in WoW have no function anyway. So you can enable cross faction play and be done with it.

[Tradu]

That's one assumption, the other is it would even out while people went where they wanted to go rather than where they felt like they needed to be.

Alternatively, let people guild up, dungeon, and raid fross faction, because the faction war is an outdated concept that has run it's course not once, but twice, and hasn't made any sense in the story since Azeroth started facing world ending threats on a yearly basis, the Horde and Alliance would not be attacking eachother under that circumstance. The player characters work with cross faction NPC forces all the damn time, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do PvE content together with cross faction players.

This is the actual solution.

One month of free faction transfers wouldn't make people even out across the factions, it'd make everybody move to the same one. Even permanently free faction transfers would likely have that result, because it's much more convenient to be on the same faction instead of having to switch back and forth depending on who you want to play with currently.

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Pretty clearly, the free faction changes would only be from Horde to Alliance.

SMH.

That said, it likely wouldn't work without significant incentive, it's not worth giving up on an active player base most of the time.


At some point they will bite the bullet and merge the factions from a queueing/content point of view.

You'd think so, but they set up the perfect opportunity for it with BfA's ending and then decided not to do it and to tell us it'll never happen "because muh orcs vs humans".

[Marrilaife]

You can come up with whatever numbers you want when you ignore all the data that contradicts the point you're trying to make.

I literally posted the numbers. 469 CE alliance guilds on wowprogress vs 1091 horde. Now show me "your data".

[Sinte]

Wouldn't fix shit, racials are not a relevant part of the equation anymore. Doing that would just make the remaining Alliance players who are serious about PvE go Horde. Initially just the ones who actually don't really care which faction they play, then eventually even the die hard Alliance ones because there wouldn't be enough people left to play with(especially not to form guilds which requires people to be at vaguely the same skill level)

Man you are dense as a rock, they obviously meant free faction transfers from horde to alliance, not full on open factoin transfers. Just like they do free transfers from congested servers to new/empty ones. Use that thing you have between your ears.

Obviously cross faction would be better, but that's never going to happen until WoW either goes free to play, or alliance as a faction literally dies.

[Tradu]

Man you are dense as a rock, they obviously meant free faction transfers from horde to alliance, not full on open factoin transfers. Just like they do free transfers from congested servers to new/empty ones. Use that thing you have between your ears.

Obviously cross faction would be better, but that's never going to happen until WoW either goes free to play, or alliance as a faction literally dies.

Should've specificed that, then. And it wouldn't do shit, because why the hell would people switch from the bigger faction to the smaller one? There's no upside to doing so, unlike with big -> small server(although even that barely has any, especially now). Hall of Fame is a joke, and not worth throwing away recruitment/ability to play with other people, especially when everybody knows Alliance HoF is a joke.

[Saltysquidoon]

Racials were the reason the snowball started, but we're so far beyond that now it doesn't matter. There's just no way to fix the problem.

[Dziubla]

Can we put this bullshit to rest already?

Tell me one tangible reason why high-end pve guilds must be split 50-50 H/A. Just one.

I'm trying to find anyone talking about any "50-50" in the entire thread, and you seem to be the only one.

No one cares about 50-50, or even 60-40. But once things reach 80-20, 90-10, or 100-0...that is problematic, and if you don't see that by yourself, I honestly don't think I will be able to explain it to you.

Since obviously horde players won't be able to understand Alliance perspective, so try to understand this - we are reaching times when Alliance won't be able to fill the Hall of Fame soon enough, therefore you either won't have cross-realm mythics at all, or Blizzard will have to lift the HoF requirement for it to open.

Not to mention more and more people quitting the game, since not every raider/m+ guy want to roll horde.

Things are fucked. And the way Blizzard (and hoards) is sticking their heads in the sand...I don't know. I don't know how they can talk about "hurr durr Alliance vs horde has always been the core of Warcraft", when pretty much since forever, lore wise, we've been cooperating against Big Bads every single expansion. I'm not expecting them to get rid of factions alltogether - no one wants that. But when PvP (you know, the game mode actually revolving around A/H) can have things like mercenary mode, it's definitely interesting to me why they won't make something similar for PvE.

Sure, the 12 year olds will be mad, and kicking the other faction from their parties, but I want to believe that most of the playerbase is more mature than that...granted, this thread, and others like it, definitely make me question that assumption, seeing some of the posts from the horde...

[Gorsameth]

Man you are dense as a rock, they obviously meant free faction transfers from horde to alliance, not full on open factoin transfers. Just like they do free transfers from congested servers to new/empty ones. Use that thing you have between your ears.

Obviously cross faction would be better, but that's never going to happen until WoW either goes free to play, or alliance as a faction literally dies.

And no one that cares about raiding uses those free transfers because it means going from a server with lots of guilds and a good AH to a realm with neither.

How does a transfer no one uses solve the problem?

[Gaidax]

What are they supposed to do? Make the alliance racials overpowered and force everyone to pay 30 dollars a pop to faction change? You have no idea how much anger that would cause in the community.

Horde has a bigger community to pug and recruit with now. Besides just making horde blatantly underperforming with a -30% damage debuff, how will they compel people to switch instead of just being fine with where they are?

Yes, give alliance substantial benefits, enable XP/AP/Whatever warmode bonuses outside PvP, give more Renown, legendary materials and what not until the whole shit balances out. There is already frikkin' anger in the community, you just don't give a fuck about it because you sit in your shining horde castle.

Situation is critical and your precious Horde crybabies can take this shit for couple patches. I and the guild don't want to be forced to switch Horde because that's where everyone went. There is literally no more time for this tap on a shoulder shit they tried in BFA which barely mattered.

They either need to forcefully rebalance the whole thing or do away with factions, because one more expansion of this crap and there literally won't remain any Alliance for higher tier content.

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Racials were the reason the snowball started, but we're so far beyond that now it doesn't matter. There's just no way to fix the problem.

They can fix the problem, they don't have the balls to fix the problem. If they consider factions to be so integral to Warcraft, then they should go ahead and give Alliance big benefits in Shadowlands to reverse the tide, otherwise they will effectively end up with one faction anyway.

Frankly it's a shame that there is barely any questions raised by streamers and interviewers to developers about this, but then it just shows how the tide gone red to the point nobody prominent blue-side left to even raise that concern.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Remove the combat racials. Make the rep buff racial available through quest line [free with Humans] or... OR... allow cross-faction.

[Saltysquidoon]

They can fix the problem, they don't have the balls to fix the problem. If they consider factions to be so integral to Warcraft, then they should go ahead and give Alliance big benefits in Shadowlands to reverse the tide, otherwise they will effectively end up with one faction anyway.

Yeah, I was unclear. There's no way to fix the problem of faction imbalance, cross-faction raiding can fix the problem of Alliance raiding extinction.

[GreenJesus]

Yes, give alliance substantial benefits, enable XP/AP/Whatever warmode bonuses outside PvP, give more Renown, legendary materials and what not until the whole shit balances out. There is already frikkin' anger in the community, you just don't give a fuck about it because you sit in your shining horde castle.

Situation is critical and your precious Horde crybabies can take this shit for couple patches. I and the guild don't want to be forced to switch Horde because that's where everyone went. There is literally no more time for this tap on a shoulder shit they tried in BFA which barely mattered.

They either need to forcefully rebalance the whole thing or do away with factions, because one more expansion of this crap and there literally won't remain any Alliance for higher tier content.

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They can fix the problem, they don't have the balls to fix the problem. If they consider factions to be so integral to Warcraft, then they should go ahead and give Alliance big benefits in Shadowlands to reverse the tide, otherwise they will effectively end up with one faction anyway.

Frankly it's a shame that there is barely any questions raised by streamers and interviewers to developers about this, but then it just shows how the tide gone red to the point nobody prominent blue-side left to even raise that concern.

Well.. now that most of the players are on Horde, blizzard would be angering most of the playerbase. They need to just offer free faction changes to Alliance and maybe even allow for cross faction play in PvE instanced content like mythic+ and raids.

[Gorsameth]

Remove the combat racials. Make the rep buff racial available through quest line [free with Humans] or... OR... allow cross-faction.

racials have not been the reason for the move to Horde for years. At this point its a snowball effect. Horde has more raiders so guilds with recruitment problems move to Horde to have a better supply to recruits. Which causes more Alliance guilds to have recruitment problems and move to Horde, which causes more Alliance guilds to have recruitment problems....

[Garymorilix]

I'm trying to find anyone talking about any "50-50" in the entire thread, and you seem to be the only one.

No one cares about 50-50, or even 60-40. But once things reach 80-20, 90-10, or 100-0...that is problematic, and if you don't see that by yourself, I honestly don't think I will be able to explain it to you.

When talking about the balance of a two faction system based on participation the core assumption of every normal (read as: not retarded) human being is a 50-50 ratio.
Twist it however you wan to, this is common sense.

Secondly, please explain why that is problematic. Like actually provide tangible evidence that the top 1% (lets say top 100 mythic guilds) being majority H or A diminishes the gameplay value for every other player below them OR even for them.
Saying "buuuuh if u dont see it u stoopid and i wont need to explain why" no, fuck off you actually do need to explain.

These players can play whatever the fuck they want. They want to play Horde.
Limit literally spent money on going to Alliance for one quest reward and instantly transferred back.

You have zero argument other than "but I'm alliance and I feel like I need extra validation that my faction doesn't fuckin suck".

[Gaidax]

Well.. now that most of the players are on Horde, blizzard would be angering most of the playerbase. They need to just offer free faction changes to Alliance and maybe even allow for cross faction play in PvE instanced content.

Please, I think you are intelligent enough to realize that nobody gives a fuck about switching to Alliance even for free without any "substantial" perks.

Time for these soft taps is over, they literally need to go after this hard and fast - there is no more time for these trials and failures. They tried these warmode benefits, free chest and it still did nothing.

So yes, they need to clench their teeth and start giving that faction more meaningful benefits - playerbase will survive this. If they have to make sure all alliance DPS racials are 2% benefit instead of stock 1%, then so be it - that alone would be enough for at least some leading guilds to take the bait. Horde will survive it and Alliance will get that life support injection before it collapses.

[Frozenbeef]

Horde races and faction with goldshire would be awesome.

(Not even joking, having conversations with random people in goldshire has been the highlight of my past few weeks, just don't go inside and you are fine)

[Swnem]

Yes, the issue snowballs and yes they need to make racials overpowered to balance it or remove the faction wall in pve.

[Gaidax]

Secondly, please explain why that is problematic. Like actually provide tangible evidence that the top 1% (lets say top 100 mythic guilds) being majority H or A diminishes the gameplay value for every other player below them OR even for them.

Because at this point you effectively start struggling replenishing members in guilds or finding groups for content. It's not rocket science.

We're rank ~430 2 nights mythic guild existing for many years and it becomes increasingly more difficult to find worthwhile replacement players. And heck we're attractive proposition - RL friendly guild that clears mythic raids every tier at 6 hours a week total, among the best guilds there are with that schedule and even WE have issues finding healer replacement nowadays.

Imagine guilds below that. It is an issue.