Faction Imbalance at an all-time high H80-A20

[crusadernero]

its getting really difficult to commit playing my main, a human paladin. the m+ scene & pug raiding is a whole different thing on horde side. Its SO fewer players on alliance side and often enough its bad grps. When I log a horde character, I experience great runs most of the time. It sucks.

[Lochton]

And perhaps that should change. Guild-based grouping is a far more socially stable environment for the game than the current situation where a very significant number of players does PuGs. There are already communities that have half a dozen different raid groups running using discord to keep people connected. Making guild achievements impactful and bring back guild perks without the ridiculous leveling requirements would give people a good reason to join a guild/community. And letting people join multiple guilds would remove the opportunity cost. I have had people who were raiding with my guild but wanted to stay in their own social guilds outside raids because of RP/friendships and especially back in Cata with the legendaries there was a lot of pressure for them to leave their guilds if they wanted to be eligible for the legendary.
You could even make guild challenges matter again (do they still exist?). That could make people want to run group activities with their guild instead of a PuG.

Oh, I agree with you there, and yes, challenges are still a thing if I recall. The only thing I don't support is joining multiple guilds. I've been a member of a raid Alliance since TBC, half the time, I've been in a guild of the main raiders, the rest of the time, I've been on from the sideline, and the sad thing there is losing out on the social interaction until discord was made, and communities.

[ImpalerEU]

Let’s ignore that this has been an ongoing issue since the start and proceed to summon the bored Doomsayers.

“gAmE iZ dEd”

[Lochton]

its getting really difficult to commit playing my main, a human paladin. the m+ scene & pug raiding is a whole different thing on horde side. Its SO fewer players on alliance side and often enough its bad grps. When I log a horde character, I experience great runs most of the time. It sucks.

I know the feeling you have but have experienced ill and good on both sides as well.

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Let’s ignore that this has been an ongoing issue since the start and proceed to summon the bored Doomsayers.

“gAmE iZ dEd”

Was my very first line in my first comment here, haha.

Faction imbalance is going to be a thing forever, until there is only one faction.

[Coldkil]

But as mentioned, communities can fix that problem, all they need to do is implement the missing features from guilds (Ranks, and guild bank), and the rest is already there.

Yeah, i can see them ditching the old guild system and rename communities into guilds. But i would also ditch the whole perk system and make it baseline for everyone. Doesn't really make any sense to keep it alive since it's not worked on from Cataclysm iirc and you cannot simply take it away from players after years of having it.

[Lochton]

Yeah, i can see them ditching the old guild system and rename communities into guilds. But i would also ditch the whole perk system and make it baseline for everyone. Doesn't really make any sense to keep it alive since it's not worked on from Cataclysm iirc and you cannot simply take it away from players after years of having it.

Honestly. The perk I'll miss the most from the guild perks is, 'Mobile Banking'.

[Nymrohd]

Yeah, i can see them ditching the old guild system and rename communities into guilds. But i would also ditch the whole perk system and make it baseline for everyone. Doesn't really make any sense to keep it alive since it's not worked on from Cataclysm iirc and you cannot simply take it away from players after years of having it.

The leveling system (not the perk system) was a disaster back in Cataclysm. It caused a ridiculous amount of damage on the social web of the game. So many people were scammed by guild masters trying to level a guild to 25, grab the money (the insane amount of money you got from the perks) and sell the guild and then soured on WoW in general or left their small guilds to join larger ones so they could have the perks.

[crusadernero]

I know the feeling you have but have experienced ill and good on both sides as well.

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Sure, I agree. Over the years though its been somewhat more even, but now its a sad sad state of affair on alliance side. Worst thing is, it wont get better at all. More and more players will lean over to horde and I cant blame them. Im SO tempted myself, but I just cant get myself to actually race & faction change my Human Pala. Hes been my main since mid BC.

[Coldkil]

Honestly. The perk I'll miss the most from the guild perks is, 'Mobile Banking'.

Reduced HS cd is also good for me. I don't remember when was the last time i used the Bank perk.

[Nymrohd]

Reduced HS cd is also good for me. I don't remember when was the last time i used the Bank perk.

I have my argent squire bound for exactly that reason, access to the bank everywhere is useful (and I'd love easier access to the guild bank as well).

[Lochton]

Sure, I agree. Over the years though its been somewhat more even, but now its a sad sad state of affair on alliance side. Worst thing is, it wont get better at all. More and more players will lean over to horde and I cant blame them. Im SO tempted myself, but I just cant get myself to actually race & faction change my Human Pala. Hes been my main since mid BC.

I know the feeling about your character. When TBC hit, instead of changing my main to Horde, I simply went "fuck it" and when EU Horde instead. Here is to hope that 9.2.5 is opening new doors.

Reduced HS cd is also good for me. I don't remember when was the last time i used the Bank perk.

I have so many teleport methods that it is coming out of my ass.. And I'm talking about being a rogue/paladin player. I don't notice the Hearthstone cooldown for I use it like, once or twice a day, but the Mobile Bank I use at least 5-10 times a day.

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I have my argent squire bound for exactly that reason, access to the bank everywhere is useful (and I'd love easier access to the guild bank as well).

I completely forgot about my Squire... I've been relying on Jeeves and Mobile Bank..

[Accendor]

With 9.2.5, you can literally ditch the guild and make a cross-faction community. Communities have almost the same tools as guilds and will work cross-faction, for contact and forming groups for, as mentioned, planned PvP/Raiding/M+, heck, even social events.

Literally nobody will make that. Why should the horde bother with it? They already have all the advantages, they do not need to take this much worse approach at all.

Yes, there will be SOME cross faction communities, but don't count on them on being relevant.

[Lochton]

Literally nobody will make that. Why should the horde bother with it? They already have all the advantages, they do not need to take this much worse approach at all.

Yes, there will be SOME cross faction communities, but don't count on them on being relevant.

Considering the tons of raid community discords, I believe there will be quite a lot of cross-faction. It isn't that much of an effort to make a community, or invite people from it? No need for Real ID connections or anything.

[Nymrohd]

Considering the tons of raid community discords, I believe there will be quite a lot of cross-faction. It isn't that much of an effort to make a community, or invite people from it? No need for Real ID connections or anything.

I am already raiding with a raid community discord that is cross faction. We think we might be able to open at least one more raid group when we merge both factions. Definitely will help with M+ groups. Would love to turn it into a guild eventually.

[Lochton]

I am already raiding with a raid community discord that is cross faction. We think we might be able to open at least one more raid group when we merge both factions. Definitely will help with M+ groups. Would love to turn it into a guild eventually.

All they have to do is make an in-game community, assign some mods, and then drop the invite link in discord and all is rolling. I swear the community system is going to push out the guild system slowly, they already use the same window/UI. The 9.2.5 will open a lot of doors and reasons to make M+ groups, rated groups, and raiding groups for people don't have to commit to one faction.

[Coldkil]

I am already raiding with a raid community discord that is cross faction. We think we might be able to open at least one more raid group when we merge both factions. Definitely will help with M+ groups. Would love to turn it into a guild eventually.

Where do you play? Given how RealID bypasses any server limitation, i'm really considering going to a way more populated one compated to the Italian ghetto i had to pidgeonhole myself into.

I mean, i have found plenty of good people to play with, but right now both servers are just dying and the option my current guild is talking is to go into the horde one because even if it has actually less people there's more raiding guilds. and if i "have" to pay for a server change i'm just going to Draenor lol

[Evolixe]

It's not about "holding your hand", its about pressuring players into switching factions, because thats exactly what we need to do now.
It is sad, but IMO the only solution.

I don't care what its about. I want nothing to do with it.

We don't need to force anything, we just need to let people play the game together then its a non-issue.

[ifrah]

I don't think there's a whole lot that can be done about the issue itself. Symptoms could be alleviated via cross-faction PvP and/or PvE, but that'd attract opinions. Looking from the PvE side alone, alliance has nowadays decent edge over dwarf racial alone but guess the whole cutting edge scene is still mostly horde. For average players these obviously don't matter that much, and they go with their friends and/or whichever they find more pleasing. Both of these seemingly leading towards horde. Free faction changes? Probably would snowball things even harder.

[SinR]

I miss Bountiful Bags

[Biomega]

Looking from the PvE side alone, alliance has nowadays decent edge over dwarf racial alone but guess the whole cutting edge scene is still mostly horde.

Racials were one of the big things that got us into this mess. But they won't get us out of it, since it's WAY too late now. As you rightly said, racials are in favor of the Alliance now (for the most part); and while the top-end guilds all readily admit they'd be Alliance instantly if that was all that mattered, it is NOT all that matters. The fact that so much of the world-first race now depends on community efforts means that leaving Horde for a fractionally smaller Alliance population would DESTROY the community advantage for the big raiders. So it's not even a point of consideration.

For racials alone to be the thing that flips it they would have to be so absurdly overpowered they'd break the entire game balance in half - which for obvious reasons has other problems, and a whole slew of them. It really is far too late now.

Cross-faction play and - hopefully soon thereafter - cross-faction guilds is really the most realistic option at this point.