View Poll Results: Where do you stand?

Voters
235. This poll is closed
  • I am Horde and remaining Horde

    102 43.40%
  • I am Alliance and changing to Horde

    17 7.23%
  • I am Horde and changing to Alliance

    12 5.11%
  • I am Alliance and remaining Alliance

    104 44.26%
Page 1 of 10
1
2
3
... LastLast
  1. #1

    Horde Faction Imbalance at an all-time high H80-A20

    According to several sources, the faction imbalance on both retail and classic is at an all-time high. The active player-base makes up of 80% Horde and 20% Alliance and is dropping even lower. Several Alliance dominated servers are seeing a growth in Horde population and a decrease in theirs as many people faction change their characters. Cross-faction raiding and dungeoning comes in 9.2.5 but will it even be enough to stop the numbers? It's a huge no from me. Perhaps it is time to remove the factions entirely from the gameplay and just keep them incorporated in the story to have faction pride available. You also should be able to use 'war mode' and choose a faction to support but this would easily be abused.

    At this point, the game is 18 years old. What can be done at this point?
    "You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation."

  2. #2
    People have been switching to the red team for nearly a decade. There was a mass exodus of raid guilds to Horde around MoP and there has been a drizzle to red team ever since. It's just that since last year, attrition of the Alliance population has finally reached critical levels.

    The Horde is what is unique about WoW. Not other game lets you play as the warmongering savages, or as beastmen, or as undead who are crafting a plague to wipe out all life on Azeroth, or sinister elves who suck the lifeforce out of their victims. The Horde has all of the cool races. People who like Alliance aesthetics (ie, heroic humans, pretty elves, etc) have an easy time transitioning to other games, decreasing Alliance's population. People who like Horde aesthetics don't have an alternative game with similar aesthetics and are more likely to stick with WoW. WoW has been in decline for a decade so over the years you just wind up having more reds than blues.

    It was only until the last few years when the snowball effect started kicking in. Standing in the middle of a ghost town Stormwind feels bad. People want to be on the side where they can hang out with other people. The average WoW player isn't a teenager with unlimited free time anymore. It's hard to progress on Alliance and you have to spend a lot of your precious free time waiting for groups to fill, if they even do. If you're red then you don't constantly get ganked in war mode. Even PvErs want to do war mode because it gives them an EXP buff. Playing Horde gives you an objectively better game experience. People who like Alliance aesthetics can enjoy the benefits of being on the red team while still playing a pretty human looking character by rolling Blood Elf.

    At this point, the game is 18 years old. What can be done at this point?
    Not much. You can allow players to queue and raid crossfaction, which will enable people who truly like the Alliance to switch back and still be able to effectively play, but I'd imagine that the remaining fandom at this point is overall Horde for the aforementioned reasons.

  3. #3
    Spam Assassin! MoanaLisa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Tralfamadore
    Posts
    32,405
    Quote Originally Posted by TheramoreIsTheBomb View Post
    At this point, the game is 18 years old. What can be done at this point?
    Nothing other than minimize factions in the game to irrelevancies. That would be fine and seems to be an approach that they are thinking about. Cross-faction play is a start.

    There are a lot of interesting stories that can be told at the race/tribe level that have nothing much to do with factions or only uses faction membership as a background.
    "...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

  4. #4
    I would've liked a source...

    But, if true then yes, the changes are too late. They have to merge the player populations. There is really no other way out.

    Knowing how slow Blizzard is to react, i don't expect them to solve the problem until it's far too late. So, maybe in 2 years from now.
    Last edited by Swnem; 2022-05-14 at 11:25 PM.

  5. #5
    There's two options at this point.

    1. Merge the factions, either effectively or literally. The latter is unlikely for lore reasons; the former they're basically already going to do. If we get cross-faction guilds to go along with cross-faction play (which we know is coming) then it's pretty much a cosmetic decision what faction you join.

    2. Make new factions. I thought this would be the better solution because it sets up a new lore and new investment into faction differences; give every player the choice to join something like e.g. Light vs. Void or whatever, tied into an appropriate expansion and irrespective of their previous allegiance. But it has problems too, and could just end up in the same spot some time down the line. It's also more complicated and more expensive to do.

    So yeah I guess people will just have to suffer through this until they make actual cross-faction guilds, and then it's whatever and we really only have factions for lore reasons that don't interfere with the actual gameplay.

  6. #6
    I still found it funny that castle nathria was going to be a Dwarf tier, so they changed it so Dwarves weren't so obviously the best.
    For the Alliance, and for Azeroth!

  7. #7
    The Undying Lochton's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    FEEL THE WRATH OF MY SPANNER!!
    Posts
    37,512
    Quote Originally Posted by TheramoreIsTheBomb View Post
    According to several sources, the faction imbalance on both retail and classic is at an all-time high. The active player-base makes up of 80% Horde and 20% Alliance and is dropping even lower. Several Alliance dominated servers are seeing a growth in Horde population and a decrease in theirs as many people faction change their characters. Cross-faction raiding and dungeoning comes in 9.2.5 but will it even be enough to stop the numbers? It's a huge no from me. Perhaps it is time to remove the factions entirely from the gameplay and just keep them incorporated in the story to have faction pride available. You also should be able to use 'war mode' and choose a faction to support but this would easily be abused.

    At this point, the game is 18 years old. What can be done at this point?
    Faction imbalance is going to be a thing forever, until there is only one faction.

    I started out as Alliance in Vanilla, went Horde in TBC (Blood Elf Paladin), and was Horde till end-legion, then went Alliance again.

    Another way to solve it is by making a racial talent system, have people put points into various racial abilities, the more points, the stronger/more bonus, after 5-10 points, it unlocks multiple racial activation abilities where you can select two, opening up to racial builds such as:

    2-3 stats bonuses following various combinations of activation abilities such as:

    Orc: Bonus Reputation (Human), Frost Damage Resistance (Dwarf), Increased versatility (HM Tauren), Rocket Jump (Goblin), Enrage to increase dmg (Orc).
    Human: Increased Stamina (Tauren), Resistant to arcane dmg (Blood Elf), Increased agility, Int, Str (Draenei), Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf), Shadowmeld (Night Elf).
    Troll: Increased dodging (Night Elf), Critical Chance increased (Worgen), Reduced duration of Poisons, curses, and diseases (Mag'har), Cannibalize (Undead), Stoneskin (Dwarf).

    Note: Worgen's transformation, is not a racial, but part of the race.

    Pros: There won't be racial restrictions on races and options, and with 9.2.5, you can basically pick whatever faction you wanna be, you can still raid with whatever people you are able to on either faction.
    Pros: Another selection of options for players to make their favorite race theirs to play.
    Cons: It'll more or less toss another shred of racial fantasy off, leaving only appearance, lore, and homeland as the only thing making it different from other races.
    Cons: Another system implemented.
    Last edited by Lochton; 2022-05-15 at 05:44 AM. Reason: Added another con/pro
    FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by gcsmith View Post
    I still found it funny that castle nathria was going to be a Dwarf tier, so they changed it so Dwarves weren't so obviously the best.
    Lol they fixed that real quick. Which tier were goblins the best in for a while cos of their rocket jump? And didn't trolls have a while in the sun too cos of their racial?

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Divada View Post
    Lol they fixed that real quick. Which tier were goblins the best in for a while cos of their rocket jump? And didn't trolls have a while in the sun too cos of their racial?
    ToT and SoO were good for trolls, their racial at the time gave them bonus damage to beasts, so they rocked on bosses like Horridon and the entire middle third of ToT, and Thok.
    The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by MoanaLisa View Post
    There are a lot of interesting stories that can be told at the race/tribe level that have nothing much to do with factions or only uses faction membership as a background.
    The problem is, that they decided to put the lore completely on Horde VS Alliance in BfA and escalated it in such a manner that there is no believable way in the story to get the factions actually together. The elephant in the room with Teldrassil and all the horde atrocities in BfA is still as big now as it was 4 years ago, literally nothing changed.
    If we are solemnly talking about story aspects they finally need to find a way out of this situation. They can not start to really tell others stories on a smaller scale until this is resolved and SL... only made it worse to be honest.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Accendor View Post
    The problem is, that they decided to put the lore completely on Horde VS Alliance in BfA and escalated it in such a manner that there is no believable way in the story to get the factions actually together. The elephant in the room with Teldrassil and all the horde atrocities in BfA is still as big now as it was 4 years ago, literally nothing changed.
    If we are solemnly talking about story aspects they finally need to find a way out of this situation. They can not start to really tell others stories on a smaller scale until this is resolved and SL... only made it worse to be honest.
    No. The issue with Faction War was that it DIDN'T focus on the Alliance and Horde. Most of it was focused squarely about Sylvanas and how there are those rebelling against her for pushing this war in the first place. So a lot of the Horde got focused, and even had a whole questline where they had to free Baine from the underground area below Orgrimmar. The Alliance didn't get jack other than, "Oh hey, Derek Proudmoore is now an undead forsaken!" and has this really short reunion with Jaina..

    Then there's also the questlines where you had to choose to be with Saurfang or be a Sylvanas loyalist, but sadly nothing like that for the Alliance. So again, they got shafted in terms of the lore in BfA. The only thing that was somewhat close to the Alliance being heavily involved was in Mechagon.

    You think Teldrassil is the big elephant in the room? Theramore is still a giant crater after Garrosh had them drop a mana bomb, and Garrosh decided to divert attention by trying to conquer Pandaria. BfA was less of a faction war and more of a Horde Civil War with the Alliance pouncing at the opportunity to retake lost territory in the Eastern Kingdoms. (Which according to the Mission Table reports, they did. Which is an even bigger slap to the face that these moments are all happening in the mission table stuff.)

    Stormgarde, Hillsbrad (aka the Sludge Fields), Southshore (now restored), Silverpine and Fenris Isle... all are now under Alliance occupation. Even Darkshore was retaken. AND THE MAJORITY OF THE PLAYER BASE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS It's not the issue of it being a faction war, it was the fact that the Horde got way more screen time than the Alliance.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Accendor View Post
    The problem is, that they decided to put the lore completely on Horde VS Alliance in BfA and escalated it in such a manner that there is no believable way in the story to get the factions actually together. The elephant in the room with Teldrassil and all the horde atrocities in BfA is still as big now as it was 4 years ago, literally nothing changed.
    If we are solemnly talking about story aspects they finally need to find a way out of this situation. They can not start to really tell others stories on a smaller scale until this is resolved and SL... only made it worse to be honest.
    You’re 100% right about the story being where it is… but I propose the solution is remarkably easy and fits into the WC lore… have one side surrender to the other

    Imagine if, years past in Azeroth maybe decades, while we were in SL… we return with the former king and everybody, only to see the X has surrendered to a militarized Y (it doesn’t matter who surrenders to who but the alliance should surrender since 80% of the players are horde)

    No more two factions as both factions now are the horde. There is only the horde

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Gehco View Post
    Faction imbalance is going to be a thing forever, until there is only one faction.

    I started out as Alliance in Vanilla, went Horde in TBC (Blood Elf Paladin), and was Horde till end-legion, then went Alliance again.

    Another way to solve it is by making a racial talent system, have people put points into various racial abilities, the more points, the stronger/more bonus, after 5-10 points, it unlocks multiple racial activation abilities where you can select two, opening up to racial builds such as:

    2-3 stats bonuses following various combinations of activation abilities such as:

    Orc: Bonus Reputation (Human), Frost Damage Resistance (Dwarf), Increased versatility (HM Tauren), Rocket Jump (Goblin), Enrage to increase dmg (Orc).
    Human: Increased Stamina (Tauren), Resistant to arcane dmg (Blood Elf), Increased agility, Int, Str (Draenei), Arcane Torrent (Blood Elf), Shadowmeld (Night Elf).
    Troll: Increased dodging (Night Elf), Critical Chance increased (Worgen), Reduced duration of Poisons, curses, and diseases (Mag'har), Cannibalize (Undead), Stoneskin (Dwarf).

    Note: Worgen's transformation, is not a racial, but part of the race.

    Pros: There won't be racial restrictions on races and options, and with 9.2.5, you can basically pick whatever faction you wanna be, you can still raid with whatever people you are able to on either faction.
    Pros: Another selection of options for players to make their favorite race theirs to play.
    Cons: It'll more or less toss another shred of racial fantasy off, leaving only appearance, lore, and homeland as the only thing making it different from other races.
    Cons: Another system implemented.

    Simple solution: Give a faction wide buff, something like "Last Defender: Your faction is in great peril. Being one of their last defenders fills you with resolve, increasing HP, Damage and Healing done by X%, where X is the difference in active players per faction.
    Basically right now this means alliance would get +80% HP, Damage and Healing. Applies everywhere, including instanced content and rated PVP.

    Lets see what happens, it's not like they can screw it up even more.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by justandulas View Post
    No more two factions as both factions now are the horde. There is only the horde
    While I agree this could work in general, it could not work with the horde as the winning faction, simply because it would again make no sense story wise (Alliance still has Malfurion outside of the Shadowlands as well as the giant spaceship with literal orbital lasers).
    Lets assume the horde would get rid of all that, they have already shown that there is no mercy to be expected from them. Once the alliance surrenders every single of its members will be killed, that is what the horde is right now, according to the BfA lore. From an alliance PoV surrender means death.

  14. #14
    Why there is no "I play both" option? I'm not virtual racist. My initial faction was Horde. I picked it intuitively, because Alliance races always looked weak. And overall I liked Kalimdor locations more, than WK ones. Mulgore, Barrens, Durotar. But then Alliance friend asked me to play with him on PVP server. Classical case of friend-induced wrong choice, as he abandoned me not long after that and I suffered a lot from playing wrong faction on wrong server. But I played as Alliance player for whole WotLK. Changed back to Horde and PVE server back in Cata, when new race-class combos were implemented. But started to play Alliance again back in WOD, that was very casual- and alt-friendly.

    I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Woggmer View Post
    You think Teldrassil is the big elephant in the room? Theramore is still a giant crater after Garrosh had them drop a mana bomb, and Garrosh decided to divert attention by trying to conquer Pandaria. BfA was less of a faction war and more of a Horde Civil War with the Alliance pouncing at the opportunity to retake lost territory in the Eastern Kingdoms. (Which according to the Mission Table reports, they did. Which is an even bigger slap to the face that these moments are all happening in the mission table stuff.)
    I generally agree with everything you say, but regarding Theramore I'll have to disagree. Yes, that is a huge atrocity in a long line of horde atrocities, but the difference was, that immediately afterwards the resistance inside the horde rose. It was almost universally condemned as being not honorable and a terrible thing. Cracks started to form in Garroshs horde almost immediately and during the course of the whole expansion almost the entire horde united against him and broke him down in the end. It was a clear sign of "We as a faction do not agree with this or his crimes in general and we not only condemn them, but fight against them."

    In BfA ist was the completely other way around. The war crime this time was much bigger than Theramore and yet the vast majority of the horde actually agreed with Sylvanas and stood behind her until the very end. It was not the horde who abandoned Sylvanas and decided to fight against her, it was Sylvanas who abandoned the Horde. The people who fought against her on Horde side where very, VERY few (there even was a cinematic about it) and even afterwards the general consensus was not "we as a faction condemn her and her action" but more like "Well, maybe she overdid it, better blame her to appease the Alliance."

  16. #16
    The Undying Lochton's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    FEEL THE WRATH OF MY SPANNER!!
    Posts
    37,512
    Quote Originally Posted by Accendor View Post
    Simple solution: Give a faction wide buff, something like "Last Defender: Your faction is in great peril. Being one of their last defenders fills you with resolve, increasing HP, Damage and Healing done by X%, where X is the difference in active players per faction.
    Basically right now this means alliance would get +80% HP, Damage and Healing. Applies everywhere, including instanced content and rated PVP.

    Lets see what happens, it's not like they can screw it up even more.
    Eh, sounds a bit too extreme in the simple term, as it would force people to pick something they don't enjoy. Hence my other idea with permitting players to make the racial they see fit for the race they wish to be, as overall faction instanced content is more or less gone in 9.2.5.
    FOMO: "Fear Of Missing Out", also commonly known as people with a mental issue of managing time and activities, many expecting others to fit into their schedule so they don't miss out on things to come. If FOMO becomes a problem for you, do seek help, it can be a very unhealthy lifestyle..

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Accendor View Post
    Simple solution: Give a faction wide buff, something like "Last Defender: Your faction is in great peril. Being one of their last defenders fills you with resolve, increasing HP, Damage and Healing done by X%, where X is the difference in active players per faction.
    Basically right now this means alliance would get +80% HP, Damage and Healing. Applies everywhere, including instanced content and rated PVP.

    Lets see what happens, it's not like they can screw it up even more.

    - - - Updated - - -



    While I agree this could work in general, it could not work with the horde as the winning faction, simply because it would again make no sense story wise (Alliance still has Malfurion outside of the Shadowlands as well as the giant spaceship with literal orbital lasers).
    Lets assume the horde would get rid of all that, they have already shown that there is no mercy to be expected from them. Once the alliance surrenders every single of its members will be killed, that is what the horde is right now, according to the BfA lore. From an alliance PoV surrender means death.
    I agree which is why it’s tricky. Story wise, they can’t have the horde win currently. On the other hand, the horde won the player base long ago. Can’t have the alliance win when the horde outnumbers them 4-1 or more.

    Hell, leave it up to the players. put every wow player on every server in a giant single death elimination empty field on a certain day and time, and let the realm winners overall win the war. That would mean the horde would overwhelmingly win tho too so the player base and the story are at odds with each other here

  18. #18
    Immortal Evolixe's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    In the Shadows
    Posts
    7,364
    Quote Originally Posted by Accendor View Post
    Simple solution: Give a faction wide buff, something like "Last Defender: Your faction is in great peril. Being one of their last defenders fills you with resolve, increasing HP, Damage and Healing done by X%, where X is the difference in active players per faction.
    Basically right now this means alliance would get +80% HP, Damage and Healing. Applies everywhere, including instanced content and rated PVP.
    I wouldn't want that, that sounds awful. I don't need my hand held.

    All they have to do is enable cross faction play across all levels of gameplay. Including guilds.
    When that happens you'll see the alliance come back slowly but surely.

    People are moving horde just because it has more people. The players left on the alliance right now are only die-hards and less informed people.
    Once all the cons to being alliance get removed there won't be many players already playing alliance going horde. Because they would've done that already.
    You however may see droves of horde players come back to the alliance since their preferred faction is no longer in shambles gameplay wise.

  19. #19
    Over 9000! Gimlix's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    The Netherlands!
    Posts
    9,595
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    People have been switching to the red team for nearly a decade. There was a mass exodus of raid guilds to Horde around MoP and there has been a drizzle to red team ever since. It's just that since last year, attrition of the Alliance population has finally reached critical levels.

    The Horde is what is unique about WoW. Not other game lets you play as the warmongering savages, or as beastmen, or as undead who are crafting a plague to wipe out all life on Azeroth, or sinister elves who suck the lifeforce out of their victims. The Horde has all of the cool races. People who like Alliance aesthetics (ie, heroic humans, pretty elves, etc) have an easy time transitioning to other games, decreasing Alliance's population. People who like Horde aesthetics don't have an alternative game with similar aesthetics and are more likely to stick with WoW. WoW has been in decline for a decade so over the years you just wind up having more reds than blues.

    It was only until the last few years when the snowball effect started kicking in. Standing in the middle of a ghost town Stormwind feels bad. People want to be on the side where they can hang out with other people. The average WoW player isn't a teenager with unlimited free time anymore. It's hard to progress on Alliance and you have to spend a lot of your precious free time waiting for groups to fill, if they even do. If you're red then you don't constantly get ganked in war mode. Even PvErs want to do war mode because it gives them an EXP buff. Playing Horde gives you an objectively better game experience. People who like Alliance aesthetics can enjoy the benefits of being on the red team while still playing a pretty human looking character by rolling Blood Elf.



    Not much. You can allow players to queue and raid crossfaction, which will enable people who truly like the Alliance to switch back and still be able to effectively play, but I'd imagine that the remaining fandom at this point is overall Horde for the aforementioned reasons.
    Game is re-releasing each 2 years. The game isn't 18 year old alone. It's refreshing each expansion and has a bigger userbase then most of all MMORPGS combined.
    So yeah there is still plenty of things Blizzard can do but their greed and laziness is the main reason it isnt happening.

    Also MoP still had plenty of alliance raids and overcrowded Alliance servers compared to nowadays or compared to legion.
    Quote Originally Posted by Shekora View Post
    Goddamn it, Gimlix, why do you keep making these threads?
    Quote Originally Posted by Sam the Wiser View Post
    Goddamn it, Gimlix, why do you keep making these threads?

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by justandulas View Post
    I agree which is why it’s tricky. Story wise, they can’t have the horde win currently. On the other hand, the horde won the player base long ago. Can’t have the alliance win when the horde outnumbers them 4-1 or more.

    Hell, leave it up to the players. put every wow player on every server in a giant single death elimination empty field on a certain day and time, and let the realm winners overall win the war. That would mean the horde would overwhelmingly win tho too so the player base and the story are at odds with each other here
    Player numbers don't affect the lore, it's completely irrelevant.
    They have to detach players from the factions, that's all.
    Alliance and horde have to be a cosmetic or personal character choice. For example, like that Sylvanas loyalist questline. You choose who you want to support/join by a quest choice, not the character creation screen, but in reality does not affect how you interact with the other players.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •