The Decline in Hardcore Alliance Raiding Guilds

[Floopa]

As I've said before, the combat-enhancing racials should be replaced by flavour and cosmetic racials. I fail to understand why they have even remained a thing for the last couple of years.

The troll racial this tier was almost an insult.

That +5% damage on bosses like Tortos, Ji-Kun and Horridon was so game changing. Berserking is ridiculous though I agree.

The OP could've summed up everything to two words: Horde racials.

[JudgePayne]

That +5% damage on bosses like Tortos, Ji-Kun and Horridon was so game changing. Berserking is ridiculous though I agree.

The OP could've summed up everything to two words: Horde racials.

I dont know 5% of say 4million is an additional 200,000 for nothing.
When you combine that with berserking then yeah that 5% can be fantastic.

[Armourboy]

The problem was just created by Horde Racials and things like it over the years, the problem now is its reached its tipping point with hard core guilds to where I wouldn't be shocked to see 99% of them Horde by the next expansion. While the Racials contributed to it, the biggest reason now seems to be recruitment, which is understandable.

The general player points and laughs and says so what? What the general player doesn't realize is that with new people coming in and especially vets, those looking to step up to normal or heroic raiding are going to go where the raiders are. Thats going to continue to increase on the Horde side and decrease on the Alliance. Eventually what you end up with is it tipped so far over that everyone lets everyone else either coming back or starting new know they need to go Horde for end game.

You can see an example of it with server faction imbalance. For the most part it started off small, but once they reached a certain point they just went all the way over.
Take Shattered Hand for example. Back in Vanilla it was a pretty balanced PvP server. It was more heavily PvE Alliance due to guilds like Death and Taxes and Drama, but much more PvP heavy on the Horde side. Once Death and Taxes bailed alot of those raiders went to the Horde side and started a new guild that would dominate the server until Cata. Thus everyday more and more the server went Horde, and then when faction transfers were allowed that was the death nail for Alliance on the server. When Cata arrived our Alliance guild jumped ship to another server, deciding not to deal with the massive imbalance. Today from what I've been told, you would be hard pressed to put a 25 man raid together period on the Alliance side.

The same thing will eventually happen game wide if they don't do anything about it, except for maybe very casual servers where raid progress isn't that big of a deal. ( Thats kind of how my current server is now)

TBH it may already be too late though. Its not exactly easy to stop an avalanche once its started.

[JudgePayne]

The problem was just created by Horde Racials and things like it over the years, the problem now is its reached its tipping point with hard core guilds to where I wouldn't be shocked to see 99% of them Horde by the next expansion. While the Racials contributed to it, the biggest reason now seems to be recruitment, which is understandable.

The general player points and laughs and says so what? What the general player doesn't realize is that with new people coming in and especially vets, those looking to step up to normal or heroic raiding are going to go where the raiders are. Thats going to continue to increase on the Horde side and decrease on the Alliance. Eventually what you end up with is it tipped so far over that everyone lets everyone else either coming back or starting new know they need to go Horde for end game.

You can see an example of it with server faction imbalance. For the most part it started off small, but once they reached a certain point they just went all the way over.
Take Shattered Hand for example. Back in Vanilla it was a pretty balanced PvP server. It was more heavily PvE Alliance due to guilds like Death and Taxes and Drama, but much more PvP heavy on the Horde side. Once Death and Taxes bailed alot of those raiders went to the Horde side and started a new guild that would dominate the server until Cata. Thus everyday more and more the server went Horde, and then when faction transfers were allowed that was the death nail for Alliance on the server. When Cata arrived our Alliance guild jumped ship to another server, deciding not to deal with the massive imbalance. Today from what I've been told, you would be hard pressed to put a 25 man raid together period on the Alliance side.

The same thing will eventually happen game wide if they don't do anything about it, except for maybe very casual servers where raid progress isn't that big of a deal. ( Thats kind of how my current server is now)

TBH it may already be too late though. Its not exactly easy to stop an avalanche once its started.

Agree 100%, people are focusing on the small issues when the large issue is that unless blizzard takes drastic action the alliance playerbase wil continue to drop and this is where mmo's die off when one faction becomes the dominant force.

[oblivionx]

If you find you need to switch to a populated server (which has, is and will be an issue) your choices are heavily skewed to picking horde on a server. Even some medium to low dying servers are really only dead alliance side.

The imbalance of horde->alliance feeds the transferring from alliance to horde. The racials are just icing.

[Incarnia]

The problem was just created by Horde Racials and things like it over the years, the problem now is its reached its tipping point with hard core guilds to where I wouldn't be shocked to see 99% of them Horde by the next expansion. While the Racials contributed to it, the biggest reason now seems to be recruitment, which is understandable.

The general player points and laughs and says so what? What the general player doesn't realize is that with new people coming in and especially vets, those looking to step up to normal or heroic raiding are going to go where the raiders are. Thats going to continue to increase on the Horde side and decrease on the Alliance. Eventually what you end up with is it tipped so far over that everyone lets everyone else either coming back or starting new know they need to go Horde for end game.

You can see an example of it with server faction imbalance. For the most part it started off small, but once they reached a certain point they just went all the way over.
Take Shattered Hand for example. Back in Vanilla it was a pretty balanced PvP server. It was more heavily PvE Alliance due to guilds like Death and Taxes and Drama, but much more PvP heavy on the Horde side. Once Death and Taxes bailed alot of those raiders went to the Horde side and started a new guild that would dominate the server until Cata. Thus everyday more and more the server went Horde, and then when faction transfers were allowed that was the death nail for Alliance on the server. When Cata arrived our Alliance guild jumped ship to another server, deciding not to deal with the massive imbalance. Today from what I've been told, you would be hard pressed to put a 25 man raid together period on the Alliance side.

The same thing will eventually happen game wide if they don't do anything about it, except for maybe very casual servers where raid progress isn't that big of a deal. ( Thats kind of how my current server is now)

TBH it may already be too late though. Its not exactly easy to stop an avalanche once its started.

I think you sums it up great... We are still Alliance, <Immersion> Frostmane EU - and I count on the fact that we will stay Alliance in the foreseeable future, but, I feel somewhat concerned.. I'm an ex-raider whom no longer got the time to put into raiding as I once had, but I do know our guilds atmosphere and that is to progress and to stay in top.

[Kuntantee]

This is something I've been talking about for years. Racials are broken beyond belief.

what? they are not broken its just top tier raiders try to use every bit of advantage even if its sooooo small. so yes the difference almost doesnt exist. I am oppose to everything which will bring more homogenisation.

[JudgePayne]

what? they are not broken its just top tier raiders try to use every bit of advantage even if its sooooo small. so yes the difference almost doesnt exist. I am oppose to everything which will bring more homogenisation.

top tier are u joking me, This week alone from wildhammer eu about 73 heroic lvl raiders not top end but normal 5/12 heroic switched horde and all of them became troll for the bonuses and guild oppurtunities.

[Kuntantee]

top tier are u joking me, This week alone from wildhammer eu about 73 heroic lvl raiders not top end but normal 5/12 heroic switched horde and all of them became troll for the bonuses and guild oppurtunities.

Just checking wowprogress, there are ally guilds finished heroics so it can be done without horde racials. Maybe people should blame their skills rather than their racials? If people want to get some more advantage so be it but that doesn't even slightly means racials are BORKEN BEYOND IMAGINATION. The more people cry for slight differences, the more game will be homogenized. I am all in for more distinctive classes, racials, everything even if it's going to be imbalanced to a certain degree. The game is not balanced anyway.

[Thallidomaniac]

Just checking wowprogress, there are ally guilds finished heroics so it can be done without horde racials. Maybe people should blame their skills rather than their racials? If people want to get some more advantage so be it but that doesn't even slightly means racials are BORKEN BEYOND IMAGINATION. The more people cry for slight differences, the more game will be homogenized. I am all in for more distinctive classes, racials, everything even if it's going to be imbalanced to a certain degree. The game is not balanced anyway.

The highest ranked Alliance guild (Midwinter) took 11 more days to get to 13/13 compared to Method.

[Deleted]

2005 - my realm (zenedar) horde 3:1 alliance!
2013 - my realm (zenedar) horde 179:1 alliance.. :O

sup?

* some stats might have been swayed but it might be even worse. There is no alliance now.

[Kuntantee]

The highest ranked Alliance guild (Midwinter) took 11 more days to get to 13/13 compared to Method.

Which indicates racials are broken beyond imagination? No, I don't think so. You are exaggerating. Racials are totally fine.

[Keoren]

there are ally guilds finished heroics so it can be done without horde racials.

This argument can be used against practically everything. It is an especially pointless one in the competitive scene.

The game is not balanced anyway.

That does not mean that it should not be balanced better. As far as distinct races go, the combat-enhancing racials offer nothing that cosmetic and flavour racials couldn't.

[Thallidomaniac]

2005 - my realm (zenedar) horde 3:1 alliance!
2013 - my realm (zenedar) horde 179:1 alliance.. :O

sup?

* some stats might have been swayed but it might be even worse. There is no alliance now.

Gravitation towards a dominant faction is quite common. Kel'Thuzad-US is 99% Alliance, so it swings both ways, although these 99%/1% servers tend to be Horde favored. (Other examples include Area 52, Illidan, Mal'Ganis-US)

Which indicates racials are broken beyond imagination? No, I don't think so. You are exaggerating. Racials are totally fine.

Nobody usually cares about guilds that get World/Region/Realm Seconds and beyond. Which is why you hear a lot about Blood Legion, Paragon, and Method, but you don't usually hear about Midwinter.

Also, people who want to do end-game content would do themselves a disfavor by not going to the faction/guild with the furthest progression that will accept them.

[Kaxxy]

This argument can be used against practically everything. It is an especially pointless one in the competitive scene.



That does not mean that it should not be balanced better. As far as distinct races go, the combat-enhancing racials offer nothing that cosmetic and flavour racials couldn't.

i just wanna be green keoren :'(

[Normie]

top tier are u joking me, This week alone from wildhammer eu about 73 heroic lvl raiders not top end but normal 5/12 heroic switched horde and all of them became troll for the bonuses and guild oppurtunities.

All that tells me is that there are 73 Alliance lemmings who are now Horde lemmings. Welcome, er, I guess.

[Ailerist]

Out of my entire wow career, I have spent 5 as horde and 4 as alliance, dual mains. This is my opinion and only my experience but I have found the alliance to be a infestation of casual type players. In my 5 years, I have never received a ticket for language on my horde toons, on alliance if you say "ass" or "dousch" some uppity like bitch will report you. As a player, I'd like to consider myself a harder then average raider usually us 200, I can assure you the alliance lore has nothing to do with why I would faction change. Hard core raid guilds will never transfer because of lore, ever lol. It has been my experience that the alliance community is a do nothing community. Granted I have players on Anetheron(now dead but was kicking during lich king), Uldaman(during lich king and cata and the start of mop) and firetree(BC) but those communitys were once thriving with people and now are pretty much deserted. While they were thriving though, the community was just one extreme of being arrogant try hard pro or complete noob. It was the same on all 3 servers, and after personally trying to show new players raiding ethics in cata with it dismally failing I gave up. Excluding ToT because of the troll racials, I don't believe racials really have to do with it. If your looking at 1-2% damage thinking hey these racial's would push it. Maybe if it were a beast boss and you had 10+trolls lol. If your looking for that 1-2%, then your raiders arn't exploiting the same bugs everyother HM guild is doing out there. iceblocking on H council, juicing IQ etc. I really feel that the alliance community is the reason why many guilds are going horde, they are too good know it all stuck people for the most part. In my experience. If you do some research on worldoflogs and look for ranking players, the majority are alliance and not horde.

[JudgePayne]

Out of my entire wow career, I have spent 5 as horde and 4 as alliance, dual mains. This is my opinion and only my experience but I have found the alliance to be a infestation of casual type players. In my 5 years, I have never received a ticket for language on my horde toons, on alliance if you say "ass" or "dousch" some uppity like bitch will report you. As a player, I'd like to consider myself a harder then average raider usually us 200, I can assure you the alliance lore has nothing to do with why I would faction change. Hard core raid guilds will never transfer because of lore, ever lol. It has been my experience that the alliance community is a do nothing community. Granted I have players on Anetheron(now dead but was kicking during lich king), Uldaman(during lich king and cata and the start of mop) and firetree(BC) but those communitys were once thriving with people and now are pretty much deserted. While they were thriving though, the community was just one extreme of being arrogant try hard pro or complete noob. It was the same on all 3 servers, and after personally trying to show new players raiding ethics in cata with it dismally failing I gave up. Excluding ToT because of the troll racials, I don't believe racials really have to do with it. If your looking at 1-2% damage thinking hey these racial's would push it. Maybe if it were a beast boss and you had 10+trolls lol. If your looking for that 1-2%, then your raiders arn't exploiting the same bugs everyother HM guild is doing out there. iceblocking on H council, juicing IQ etc. I really feel that the alliance community is the reason why many guilds are going horde, they are too good know it all stuck people for the most part. In my experience

I tried horde for cata dragonsoul era and have to say that I had the opposite reaction.
The alliance seemed to be the more mature playerbase on average and the main reason for this is that a lot of new younger players like the idea of playing undead or tauren or belf and from my research they find the alliance races boring in comparison although worgen got a few people's choice.

I will admit the horde do have the larger and thus older crowd also but from my experience the typical alliance player by which I mean a raider or pvper is around 20-35. I think in all my years playing wow I have met 7 alliance players under the age of 18.

[Thallidomaniac]

I tried horde for cata dragonsoul era and have to say that I had the opposite reaction.
The alliance seemed to be the more mature playerbase on average and the main reason for this is that a lot of new younger players like the idea of playing undead or tauren or belf and from my research they find the alliance races boring in comparison although worgen got a few people's choice.

I will admit the horde do have the larger and thus older crowd also but from my experience the typical alliance player by which I mean a raider or pvper is around 20-35. I think in all my years playing wow I have met 7 alliance players under the age of 18.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that Moon Guard's Goldshire still exists the way it is, people will continue to use that as an example of the Alliance player base being immature.

[anyaka21]

Interesting and well thought out post. Some people are dismissing the racials, but all things considered and especially where server 1sts and world 1sts, and top 100 etc, those things actually matter. The difference between 1 and 2% can and is the difference in downing bosses.

It's also an interesting notion, at least in terms of guilds that most higher end guilds are gonig horde, if indeed it's true and can be backed up with statistics. It makes sense. If you want to new players, it's much easier for a player to transfer to your server if he doesn't have to faction change. He's much more apt to join your guild over another guild if it's a difference of money, esp in regards to multiple toons.

For example, I'm a horde and my guild has died, I'm looking for another guild, and find a few on different servers. Your best options are a horde guild and an alliance guild. If you're horde, it's just cheaper to transfer your entourage. Let's face it, if you are a raider, chances are you don't only have 1 toon. You have multiple alts, gatherers and crafters,etc...

And if you're an alliance guild and needing people, and you are trying to recruit, but most of the raiders are on horde side, you're fighting a losing battle. Best to change and give yourself and your guild a chance.

edit: As of right now, in the top 100 guilds, according to WoW progress, over 70 of them are horde. Thus if it becomes a trend, at this point in the life of WoW, it might be unrecoverable, at least in terms of alliance raiding. One of the main reasons I left was because our guild was dying, and I didn't want to spend the money to not only server transfer but to also faction transfer. 5 toons, $50 a piece if it meant moving all of my major toons and faction changing as well. Wasn't worth it. I quit instead.