Faction balance is truly hopeless now.

[Relapses]

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.

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.

I think you're painting Blizzard's decisions with an unfairly critical brush here. I doubt Blizzard made Horde racials OP just to fuck over Alliance in the long run. Much like the Fire Mage Mastery stacking in 8.3, it was an unintended side effect that they couldn't just press an undo button on after it happened. An argument can be made that they waited too long and the damage had already been done by the time they began to reign in racials again -- this is fair criticism -- but it's still a bit outlandish to say that Blizzard "let" the situation spiral out of control due to complete apathy on their part.

[Marrilaife]

I think you're painting Blizzard's decisions with an unfairly critical brush here. I doubt Blizzard made Horde racials OP just to fuck over Alliance in the long run. Much like the Fire Mage Mastery stacking in 8.3, it was an unintended side effect that they couldn't just press an undo button on after it happened. An argument can be made that they waited too long and the damage had already been done by the time they began to reign in racials again -- this is fair criticism -- but it's still a bit outlandish to say that Blizzard "let" the situation spiral out of control due to complete apathy on their part.

Whole MOP was Troll dominance and that's where majority of negligence happened. It took them the whole expansion span to even react. But when the situation spins around - alliance gets advantageous racial, it gets nerfed very swiftly, before it even comes to live. That's in a world where many people wonder whether giving alliance "OP racials" should be the answer to faction imbalance (personally I'm not sure it will help, but every time the discussion is up, someone says "just give alliance OP racials").

Horde racials weren't OP for 1 patch like fire mage example. They were OP for 2 expansions straight, Cata and MOP. Blizzard did nothing. Then Legion happened and Blood Elves were OP in m+. Again, nothing until the end of expansion, 2 years of people constantly transfering to horde for competitive m+. Not even mentioning Goblin racial on Kil'jaeden.

It's not "unfair" to call negligence when they could nerf something in a patch, but every time decided to wait the whole expansion out, damaging alliance population.

By the time they implemented hall of fame the damage was so big that it was too little, too late. BFA I've seen every semi-serious remaining alliance guild transfer one after another. I can probably count on my fingers the alliance guilds in my region that have a chance for hall of fame.

It's basically - you see a leak - you patch it asap. You don't wait 2-5 years to do balancing job.

It's the same story with realm merges, they were extremely slow to do anything, wake up by the end of MOP that the sub numbers dropped by 50% since wotlk, started doing something, but it was half-assed and many low pop servers weren't connected. Then they waited another 3 expansions (!) to do another round of connections... and didn't even get all the low pop servers done!

For example I have an alt on Moonglade EU (dead RP realm). Back in MOP it was connected to 2 other dead RP realms (Steamwheedle and Sha'tar) and wasn't connected to anything bigger like Argent Dawn or at least the Earthen Ring + Darkmoon Faire cluster. 6 years later it's extremely dead... and gets connected to nothing. Meanwhile DMF + ER gets connected to Defias Brotherhood (the old RP pvp cluster). If this isn't a definition of apathy and negligence, I don't know what is.

[Gaidax]

This is an issue, but at this point I'm not sure what Blizzard can do, aside from offering free character faction transfers from Horde to Alliance and some tangible benefits for being Alliance that are not tied to Warmode or Famed Slayer.

[Hinastorm]

The factions still being separate in this day and age is just so bad from a game design standpoint. Just so so bad.

Not only do you meaninglessly cut your player-base into 2 halves, the horde being favored makes picking alliance a noob trap, essentially.

Yes yes, lore. Gameplay should always come first.

[Saltysquidoon]

Not at all, keep trying though bud.

I've been agreeing with you that switching up the racials wouldn't fix the problem the whole time. Maybe try reading what I wrote instead of popping off witty zingers.

The problem isn't racials, it hasn't been for years. The problem is population.

There are more raiders on Horde, so Alliance guilds with recruitment problems switch to Horde and get access to more recruits. Alliance characters who can't find a guild switch to Horde because there are more Horde guilds. Its snowballs and has been snowballing for a long time and it WAY beyond the point where its about racials or power.

Its purely a case of player numbers now.

Yes, the problem now the self-perpetuating issue that raiders roll horde because horde has the raiders (and m+). I'm not debating that (or that racials are the solution, the alliance allied races tend to be pretty strong and the horde allied races are dogshit).
My point was blizzard's inaction for 15 years got us to the point where the population issue took over.

[Hinastorm]

Just merge the player base and save PVP ques and Alliance competitive PVE... Keep War mode, but everyone for themselves. No more A vs H...

Exactly. 10char

[Relapses]

Whole MOP was Troll dominance and that's where majority of negligence happened. It took them the whole expansion span to even react. But when the situation spins around - alliance gets advantageous racial, it gets nerfed very swiftly, before it even comes to live. That's in a world where many people wonder whether giving alliance "OP racials" should be the answer to faction imbalance (personally I'm not sure it will help, but every time the discussion is up, someone says "just give alliance OP racials").

Horde racials weren't OP for 1 patch like fire mage example. They were OP for 2 expansions straight, Cata and MOP. Blizzard did nothing. Then Legion happened and Blood Elves were OP in m+. Again, nothing until the end of expansion, 2 years of people constantly transfering to horde for competitive m+. Not even mentioning Goblin racial on Kil'jaeden.

It's not "unfair" to call negligence when they could nerf something in a patch, but every time decided to wait the whole expansion out, damaging alliance population.

By the time they implemented hall of fame the damage was so big that it was too little, too late. BFA I've seen every semi-serious remaining alliance guild transfer one after another. I can probably count on my fingers the alliance guilds in my region that have a chance for hall of fame.

It's basically - you see a leak - you patch it asap. You don't wait 2-5 years to do balancing job.

It's the same story with realm merges, they were extremely slow to do anything, wake up by the end of MOP that the sub numbers dropped by 50% since wotlk, started doing something, but it was half-assed and many low pop servers weren't connected. Then they waited another 3 expansions (!) to do another round of connections... and didn't even get all the low pop servers done!

For example I have an alt on Moonglade EU (dead RP realm). Back in MOP it was connected to 2 other dead RP realms (Steamwheedle and Sha'tar) and wasn't connected to anything bigger like Argent Dawn or at least the Earthen Ring + Darkmoon Faire cluster. 6 years later it's extremely dead... and gets connected to nothing. Meanwhile DMF + ER gets connected to Defias Brotherhood (the old RP pvp cluster). If this isn't a definition of apathy and negligence, I don't know what is.

Exactly what would you have wanted Blizzard to do? If they nerf Horde racials mid-expansion, a bunch of people would feel like the race swapped for nothing (and likely wouldn't swap back) and if they buffed Alliance racials to compensate then all the people who already swapped would just feel like Blizzard is having a knee-jerk reaction and still wouldn't swap back. Nevermind the fact that even in the best situations Horde racials weren't so much better than Alliance racials that it made a huge difference -- it's like many things in this game... people saw the top 1% of the 1% doing it and figured that they had to follow suit.

Ion addressed this in a recent interview with Forbes:

We are obviously aware that it's a problem. The challenge is, at this point, primarily a social one. There isn't a mechanical advantage to being one faction or the other.

But the division between Horde and Alliance has been such an integral part of World of Warcraft. We are grappling with reconciling that with the natural desire to play with your friends, or have more-ready access to groups. But we have nothing to announce at this point.

...the problem is largely social and doesn't have an easy answer. You have to respect the developers for understanding the "easy" solution of "just making all content cross-faction" isn't one that they're taking lightly. And while you will find almost unilateral support for faction merging on forums, these forums are not reflective of the perspective of most people who play this game.

[Saltysquidoon]

Exactly what would you have wanted Blizzard to do? If they nerf Horde racials mid-expansion, a bunch of people would feel like the race swapped for nothing (and likely wouldn't swap back) and if they buffed Alliance racials to compensate then all the people who already swapped would just feel like Blizzard is having a knee-jerk reaction and still wouldn't swap back.

While I agree it's a social problem at this point, so the quibbling over racials is largely moot (beyond the historic value).

But with respect to the quote, Yes. Only blizzard (or more specifically largely only WoW for some reason) has this issue of leaving problems to fester for expansions, with every other company if something is op it gets nerfed. Yes, there are situations where balance changes should be put on hold (like the world first race or tournaments) but those situations should never be expansions.
Beyond that, financial investment (like race and faction changes) shouldn't even factor in. You buy an op champ in lol with rp and it gets dumpsterd in the next biweekly patch too bad.

[Relapses]

Beyond that, financial investment (like race and faction changes) shouldn't even factor in. You buy an op champ in lol with rp and it gets dumpsterd in the next biweekly patch too bad.

I agree with that but in the example you used usually champs are busted to the point where you're an idiot if you're not playing them. In the case of factions, the difference was always less than 5% (in the best scenario); the long term shift of guilds from Alliance to Horde wasn't because you were an idiot if you weren't playing Horde... it was because due to the nature of WF competitions, that small 5% difference was the difference between WF and World Fifth or below.

[Helander]

Hi Stormrage-US would like to refute your claim.

I'm a huge supporter of just removing faction "gating" or whatever you want to call it. Let me play with my orc friends. World PvP can still worg through war mode. Could even add a layer where you represent a faction that would normally just be a rep grind, and fight other faction loyalist in a togglable system.

[varren]

It was clear they were done with faction balance way back in BC when they added Arcane Torrent to the game. Vanilla/Classic is the only era of the game where Alliance had the edge.

[Marthenil]

There has been zero will from Blizzard about this. The fact that Mercenary Mode is still a thing in Shadowlands (where Honor and BGs matter) just solidifies this. The Alliance is abandoned. I've been away from WoW and its fandom for a while due to IRL. The decisions Blizzard has made through BFA and into SL are troublesome. On one hand they breed animosity amongst the playable races through the lore, on the other they clearly favour one side.

Given their recent history, I have to concede the possibility that they're completely out of touch with reality and what they're doing.

[ohwell]

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

OR the constant 20 sitting and camping from Torghast to the Maw exit so people can neither quest nor leave without hearthing. I'm on one of Ravencrest's merged realms anyway and the OP is lying.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

The problem blizzard has is they've pinned themselves via inaction. They clearly don't want racials to be a big deal in combat, almost every change they make to racials is to reduce their impact on combat. But at the same time by not ever buffing the alliance racials is how we got here.

They did buff Alliance racials and made the racials irrelevant (aka balanced) in WoD, but the damage was already done during the 6 years of WotlK, Cata and MoP, when Horde racials were significantly better than the Alliance ones. The biggest offender was Cata and MoP, with Berserking being at its most broken here (it was made into Haste% in Cata, it was just attack/casting speed before that afair), coupled with Cata and MoP being the two expansions where snapshotting was most relevant and abused the most with various trinkets.

Any non Troll Shadow Priest, Boomkin or Warlock simply couldn't compete with a Troll of the same class during these two expansions.


All the guilds going Horde in WoD and later did so because of greener pastures with a higher raiding population to recruit from, not because of racials.

[Marthenil]

snip

But the Belf Racial was also amazing in Legion. And they completely removed the "inconvenience" of being the dominant faction by introducing W̶a̶r̶ ̶M̶o̶d̶e̶ ̶ EDIT: Mercenary Mode.

[varren]

The notion that it only effects the 1% or whatever is bullshit too. A lot of friends I have who are casual/mid tier players switched to Horde due to the trickle down effect

[Djuntas]

Hi Stormrage-US would like to refute your claim.

I'm a huge supporter of just removing faction "gating" or whatever you want to call it. Let me play with my orc friends. World PvP can still worg through war mode. Could even add a layer where you represent a faction that would normally just be a rep grind, and fight other faction loyalist in a togglable system.

Oh, so that was the only US alliance realm that had queu time or disconnects?

[Huntermyth]

i know a solution to this : revert every man for himself to the original effect and at the very least pvpers will flock back to the blue team.

[rrayy]

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 are not removing factions. They already stated that the Horde/Allaince thing is at the core of World of Warcraft. They ceratinly aren't going to do to a 16 year old game something that would require a massive re-write.

- - - Updated - - -

So far the whole SL experinece points to that.

Not happening. Every expansion "pointed to it" and the factons are still here. They aren't going anywhere.

[keelr]

i know a solution to this : revert every man for himself to the original effect and at the very least pvpers will flock back to the blue team.

PVE was dominated by horde already and then they removed the strongest racial for pvp making horde having the strongest racial for pvp. Also then they said that end of the season pvp title will be calculated for both factions induvidually. They rly did all they can to make the faction balance even worse.