Faction balance is truly hopeless now.

[Djuntas]

So looking back last 5 years we all know that the horde has largely decimated alliance in population. But Shadowlands launch truly shows just how bad and dire the situation is now.

Only a SINGLE, O N E , alliance realm globally from what I could gather going through Twitter-Blizzard-tech-rep and blue posts had any queue time or connection issues, and that was Silvermoon EU.

I fear the day I haft to move from Ravencrest to Silvermoon, cause Ravencrest will also die out. Its gonna bloody happen with the way things are going. I had hoped I found a stable and true-high pop realm back in WOD else...Now I see only Silvermoon is true high-pop, the way an MMO should be played.

It's time to be RADICAL BLIZZARD. Give alliance major bonuses like War mode 100%, racials so good it's broken (BUT disable them in raids, pvp etc)...Anything to keep the population alive. Or at the very least offer free migrations once every 2nd year or so.

[Etamalgren]

Really? Tell that to the roving kill squads of alliance I've seen in War Mode.

[Fullmetal89]

Amazes me that people still cry about faction balance. Blizzard already gave up on it years ago, the game has tilted heavily towards competitive PVE environments which the Horde have dominated since BC.

[melzas]

My guess is they are doing nothing about it because they are preparing to remove factions as we know it in the future instead of horde/alliance, you will have system like covenants, and PvP will resolve around them fighting each other (but both horde and alliance can join either) while pve will be one big family.

[Sithalos]

Only a SINGLE, O N E , alliance realm globally from what I could gather going through Twitter-Blizzard-tech-rep and blue posts had any queue time or connection issues, and that was Silvermoon EU.

Imagine complaining that your servers aren't having issues.

[Djuntas]

If you don't warmode, and you're not top 100, no one gives a f...

For the rest, well, you made your bed, now you get to lie in it.

Erhm, wrong thread you posted in? Being on a high pop changed the game forever for me. I have made millions, in fact I crossed 50+ million gold, and it's all due to moving to a high pop. My AH playing is 100% based on having more people playing, means I sell more. High pop is money making machine, AS WELL! It makes raiding so much easier, and so many more opportunities, bigger community etc. Shit just happens more.


..Also it was so fun back in Cata when I last raided in WoW and my guild back then was 1# alliance on realm...With a world rank of 4000 and we could not even recruit a DPS...Then I moved to Auchindoun, which also started to die out, then I moved to Ravencrest...

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Imagine complaining that your servers aren't having issues.

Can you kindly go post somewhere else. I'd rather have 2000 queue log in, then having a dying realm and paying 200-300 euro to migrate all my characters or whatever the cost will be.

[Relapses]

"Servers having queues" is a laughably silly metric to gauge faction balance with. It proves that most "megaservers" slant Horde but it does nothing to speak of the faction's popularity across all servers.

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Amazes me that people still cry about faction balance. Blizzard already gave up on it years ago, the game has tilted heavily towards competitive PVE environments which the Horde have dominated since BC.

We didn't see an exodus of high profile guilds transferring Horde until MoP, when Horde racials actually were simply better than Alliance.

[Misuteri]

I wonder how many gamers there were like me that quit rather than drop hundreds of dollars to transfer long established characters off of realms that could no longer put raid teams together on either faction.

[Release]

Racials should have been removed long long ago, only reason they weren't is Blizzard saw dollar signs with whole guilds faction changing so chose to ignore it.

[Tradu]

My guess is they are doing nothing about it because they are preparing to remove factions as we know it in the future instead of horde/alliance, you will have system like covenants, and PvP will resolve around them fighting each other (but both horde and alliance can join either) while pve will be one big family.

They had the perfect opportunity for it after BfA and even tested tech for it in BoD. Then they said they're never gonna do it because it's fundamental to the game in their opinion.

[Darththeo]

Racials should have been removed long long ago, only reason they weren't is Blizzard saw dollar signs with whole guilds faction changing so chose to ignore it.

Racials are a hold over from the table top RPGs that lead into video game RPGs.

And honestly, it is hard for me to play a game where races are involved where there aren't racials of some kind. Those games feel naked to me.

---

But, you aren't going to have pure faction balance.

And even with Horde being favored now, that is more so because the game is old and people who are fans of the series just either find the Alliance boring or are focused on PvE content. There is no perfect balance between the factions because any choice you make could have far reaching side effects that you cannot play test out.

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They had the perfect opportunity for it after BfA and even tested tech for it in BoD. Then they said they're never gonna do it because it's fundamental to the game in their opinion.

Hell, Legion opening had Alliance and Horde players in the same instance achieving goals.

It would be interesting to have cross faction Dungeons or Raids, maybe not all of them.

[TyloBedo]

I really want to play alliance but all my friends play horde. If they allowed cross play I would definitely swap to alliance.

[Aurabolt]

Hell, Legion opening had Alliance and Horde players in the same instance achieving goals.

It would be interesting to have cross faction Dungeons or Raids, maybe not all of them.

You mean the Broken Shore Scenario. THAT. WAS. FUN. Damned shame that was a one-time thing.


Its predecessor is the Battle For The Undercity Raid from Wrath (removed mid-expansion). That raid had a different route if you were Alliance or Horde and players from each faction aren't there at the same time.

Excluding MoP's Wandering Isle, The DK and DH Starting Experiences are both common cross-faction experiences but you can't group with people of the other faction. On the Wandering Isle, you can group with anyone if you want since no one is assigned a faction until you're ready to leave and you have to pick one..

[melzas]

They had the perfect opportunity for it after BfA and even tested tech for it in BoD. Then they said they're never gonna do it because it's fundamental to the game in their opinion.

They didn't say they're never gonna do it.

[loras]

So looking back last 5 years we all know that the horde has largely decimated alliance in population. But Shadowlands launch truly shows just how bad and dire the situation is now.

Only a SINGLE, O N E , alliance realm globally from what I could gather going through Twitter-Blizzard-tech-rep and blue posts had any queue time or connection issues, and that was Silvermoon EU.

I fear the day I haft to move from Ravencrest to Silvermoon, cause Ravencrest will also die out. Its gonna bloody happen with the way things are going. I had hoped I found a stable and true-high pop realm back in WOD else...Now I see only Silvermoon is true high-pop, the way an MMO should be played.

It's time to be RADICAL BLIZZARD. Give alliance major bonuses like War mode 100%, racials so good it's broken (BUT disable them in raids, pvp etc)...Anything to keep the population alive. Or at the very least offer free migrations once every 2nd year or so.

All that's keeping them from balancing stuff is greed.
If they wanted they could create progressively scaling discounts for faction or server transfers, depending on the target realm's faction balance and it'd quickly resolve itself.
Likewise an increase in price for changing to an already overweighted faction could help.
Think of bonusses ranging from 100% discount for switching to the worst balanced shite, to 0% discount for perfect balance, to 150% increase when trying to move ti the overweighted side.

[cparle87]

Racials should have been removed long long ago, only reason they weren't is Blizzard saw dollar signs with whole guilds faction changing so chose to ignore it.

Blizz said in a blue post way back in MoP that if we they could send one message back to themselves in alpha it would be no racials that do anything besides cosmetics.

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All that's keeping them from balancing stuff is greed.
If they wanted they could create progressively scaling discounts for faction or server transfers, depending on the target realm's faction balance and it'd quickly resolve itself.
Likewise an increase in price for changing to an already overweighted faction could help.
Think of bonusses ranging from 100% discount for switching to the worst balanced shite, to 0% discount for perfect balance, to 150% increase when trying to move ti the overweighted side.

I could just imagine the outrage of players quoting wowcensus and other things claiming that Blizzard is lying about the numbers to charge them too much.

[loras]

Blizz said in a blue post way back in MoP that if we they could send one message back to themselves in alpha it would be no racials that do anything besides cosmetics.

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I could just imagine the outrage of players quoting wowcensus and other things claiming that Blizzard is lying about the numbers to charge them too much.

There are always drawbacks, but it's not like such changes are core part of the game. Blizzard could safely ignore such outrage, as they can with most sorts of outrage.

Besides, a balancing impulse would be worth more than a few tears.

[Marrilaife]

We didn't see an exodus of high profile guilds transferring Horde until MoP, when Horde racials actually were simply better than Alliance.

How many times troll racials were OP and only nerfed AFTER world first race was done. Meanwhile dwarf racial proves OP for Nathria - nerfed before it even gets out of beta.

I wonder how many gamers there were like me that quit rather than drop hundreds of dollars to transfer long established characters off of realms that could no longer put raid teams together on either faction.

Tbh if people rather unsubbed than paid for transfers / faction changes Blizzard wouldn't be so negligent on the matter. Half of my alts are still on low pop realms that Blizzard didn't even bother connecting despite promising to deal with the situation, they only connected a handful of realms here and there and even Shadowlands delay didn't help them to actually go through with it to the end.

They don't bother because milking people proves more profitable than solving the problems and keeping customers happy. They're not losing enough money to consider it a priority issue (or any issue at all).

Watch Alliance Hall of Fame only contain Australian and Chinese guilds, very very soon.

[deenman]

So looking back last 5 years we all know that the horde has largely decimated alliance in population. But Shadowlands launch truly shows just how bad and dire the situation is now.

Only a SINGLE, O N E , alliance realm globally from what I could gather going through Twitter-Blizzard-tech-rep and blue posts had any queue time or connection issues, and that was Silvermoon EU.

I fear the day I haft to move from Ravencrest to Silvermoon, cause Ravencrest will also die out. Its gonna bloody happen with the way things are going. I had hoped I found a stable and true-high pop realm back in WOD else...Now I see only Silvermoon is true high-pop, the way an MMO should be played.

It's time to be RADICAL BLIZZARD. Give alliance major bonuses like War mode 100%, racials so good it's broken (BUT disable them in raids, pvp etc)...Anything to keep the population alive. Or at the very least offer free migrations once every 2nd year or so.

100% bonus and op racials wont fix anything,it will just make the problem go in reverse,and likely much more by these sugestions

no...the only true solution to this mess is alow cross faction play,make it in to a mercenary system to fit lore wise or something,but thats the only way to do it at this point

just removing performance racials wont do it either as people have established groups now and wont just transfer cuz aliance r gud guyz and gnomes are cute

[Zyky]

It's time to be RADICAL BLIZZARD. Give alliance major bonuses like War mode 100%, racials so good it's broken (BUT disable them in raids, pvp etc)...Anything to keep the population alive. Or at the very least offer free migrations once every 2nd year or so.

No thanks. It'll just become the opposite problem at that point. The correct solution is to just open up cross-faction play, keep PvP the exact same, but allow any/all PvE content(open world, M+, raids) to be done regardless of faction. And if you turn on Warmode it disables cross faction play. It's not a complicated fix and the reality is there are very strong Alliance racials that some specs would rather have, but it's not realistic that a whole guild is willing to swap alliance to gimp themselves on recruitment and other activities that require grouping just for mostly even racials.