Proof the Horde faction is inherently more powerful, kind of long post.

[Deleted]

Fact: Alliance get to Docks 2 seconds faster than Horde
Fact: Alliance get to E/W towers 19 seconds faster than Horde gets N/S (due to being able to avoid mobs)

At the end of the day, the numbers are fairly even.

And arena number doesn't matter, cuz no one really cares about that.

AV mobs are not a problem at all, why would they slow any lvl90?

[Cobaltius]

Or... you're really bad at PvP, so you lose battlegrounds with fewer members, where individuals are more important.

The plural of anecdote is not data. You're one player and that means that:
1. Your sample size is way too small compared to the overall battleground playing player base.
2. You're only getting one point of view of battlegrounds and don't have a control group to see how your ability plays into winning and losing.
3. You haven't controlled for time of day, when more or less players of a faction may be online, skewing the player base.
4. You haven't controlled for gear level.
5. You haven't controlled for class distribution in battlegrounds.
6. You haven't controlled for self-selection bias, since players can choose to queue for individual battlegrounds or blacklist two.
7. You haven't controlled for self-selection bias in that better PvPers may choose one side over another for any number of reasons, even if game play is balanced.

I cannot emphasize this enough: the plural of anecdote is not data. Based on your misunderstanding of that basic concept, I assume you haven't taken a statistics course, ever. I urge you to either sign up for a course at your current educational institution or, if you are not currently attending an educational institution, seek out a nearby community college and sign up for an introduction to statistics course.

1, I don't see how 5000 would turn out any different than 500

2, I don't see how the rest is even relevant?

It is a completely random environment with a consistent lopsided win/loss pattern whether it is AV & IoC or the lump sum of the others.

- - - Updated - - -

As others have said, you can't take out two BGs and cherrypick the others to make your point. That's complete fail.

I beg to differ, AV & IoC are in fact different from the rest of the BGs in that neither side has to face their opponent head on to win them, they are more of a PVE BG where the rest are PVP and you have to fight your opponent head on to win. So separating them is not only logical but necessary to show the drastic difference between the two BG types.

[Deleted]

1, I don't see how 5000 would turn out any different than 500

2, I don't see how the rest is even relevant?

It is a completely random environment with a consistent lopsided win/loss pattern whether it is AV & IoC or the lump sum of the others.

You are right-5000 wouldn't be any different, but not for the reason the reason that you think. The post you quoted was saying "the plural of anecdote isn't data" as long as proper sample size isn't determined. As long as the OP determines his data from BGs he himself is in then his "data" hasn't taken into consideration his own ability which (excepting the 2 40 mans) could see him, at best, as 6.6% of a team. Hell, even using the 40 mans each individual is 2.5% of a team which is too high a number not to be compensated for and weighted against in such "data". It's not a "completely random" set of data; it's BGs the the OP himself has a direct and large influence over.

[Deleted]

If horde had really 10% more damage than alliance, they would kill AV bosses always before alliance by extremely large margin.

[Urmydinner]

Your conclusions are steeped in theory with no real solid proof other than a lop sided BG win list. It could be a simple matter of more pvp oriented players play Horde and thus you get more of a win rate for the Horde on every other bg except for 40 mans. If you're able to post some real numbers on this matter of being 10% more powerful around the board, I'd like to see it and might subscribe to your theory.

[Celawien]

Why does alliance win av and ioc so much? IoC has same travel time to docks as horde.

Then why does Alliance ALWAYS arrive at the docks flag first in time to cap it before the first Horde can even get close to it for an interrupt? When ever I do play IoC it is on Alliance and this is what I ALWAYS see. The path for the Horde to the docks is a longer run by at least 100 yds.

[Tyrean]

I think the only real data point that is interesting is the queue times. It is a non disputed easy to verify fact. Alliance has near instant queues, Horde has between 8-15 minute queues. All of the other data points in this discussion can be skewed and made to fit an agenda.

What you can infer from that fact varies. It could mean that people who enjoy PvP play horde and thus have more people queuing, it could mean that there are just more horde characters than alliance, it could mean that lots of people have characters on both and just play the winning one because it feels better to win, etc. In the end we can never truly know why the PvP system behaves as it does. There are too many variables to track and some of the most compelling of those variables to the outcome are something that is intrinsically unscientific... human behavior and emotion.

[Crruor]

Isnt in the US all serious pvp done on horde side? So it stands to reason that they are better, on eu i have never met a clear victor (bar av but even there its 60/40).

Also premade groups have a huge effect on bgs, and of course if you dont use them you never get to play in the bgs where your faction wins.

Lastly, always remember the one constant factor in all the bgs you lose is not the popel you play with its you. So it might just be you that is bad.

[Ermelloth]

Every Man For Himself says NO.
Arena ladders from EU with 90% Alliance in it beyond certain rating (and 70-80% of these Alliance - Humans, with the exceptions of Druids and Shamans) also say NO.

Yes, it's a bit different on US servers, the people there proved to be more faithful to their faction and habits. EU, however, is swarmed with FOTM rerollers. Since EMFH was introduced, more and more PvPers are rolling Humans.

[Matt0193]

Why does alliance win av and ioc so much? IoC has same travel time to docks as horde.

From my experience, it's because Horde would rather have fast losses than slower wins. Whenever I call out in /bg that "Glaives inc" there's usually at best 1 other person with me and they're generally not a Rogue (The one class that solo's them because lolcds). This generally means the Alliance are inside the keep within 2 minutes, as they also take both Refinery and Quarry, as the Horde're too busy just running into the West gate of the Alliance base wondering "URRR GUIS Y WE STUK?".

That, and it's generally a bot-ridden map; particularly for Horde, as any decent PvP'er blacklists it because you can go the entire game without seeing someone to kill, and usually the only people you find are stragglers (No competition) or the main body of zerg, in which case you're overwhelmed.

[Cows For Life]

The OP must have missed WotLK and the huge rush to humans when EMFH was introduced.

[Deleted]

i think playing a healer can help your ratio alot too,
on my horde healer i have 737 random bgs played and ive won 561 of them, being a healer can make a big difference to the outcome of the games and you can basically win the game for your team.
79WSG battles 90 WSG flag captures
84 twin peak battles 88 twink peak flag captures
play the objectives and play to win

[walkingtall]

Fact: Alliance get to Docks 2 seconds faster than Horde

And you can't kill them after they've capped? And a DK can get there in time to prevent a cap. Just saying that maybe that 2 seconds doesn't mean too much.

Also, historical numbers are much more even than what we have today which is basically 85%+ Ally wins in AV/IoC and at least 60%, probably more like 75% in the other BG's for Horde. If you want the why of the large discrepancies look to blacklisting and the dilution of real players by bots in AV/IoC. The problem is almost totally driven by blacklisting.

[Mihalik]

I made the effort of reading the entire post...

You lost me at the whole... The Alliance=Americans, Horde=America Haters. You know this game is played in places like Europe too, and it is very uncommon to see European players playing on American servers, Americans playing on European ones are not unheard of but still rare due to the latency issues.

And what the fuck do you mean by Blizzard being an Anti-American company?

The damage/healing output difference between Horde/Alliance is very simple to explain. Horde teams tend to have more/better geared healers and tend to play healing hybrid classes and have no qualms about self healing/off-healing, which means they will stay alive longer thus do more damage and healing overall.

Put together a well structured capable Alliance team and you will have the same results.

[jwlol]

The logic in the original post was just laughably awful. /facepalm

[Mormolyce]

Now on the surface 240 wins to 263 loses appears pretty even however when you take away the IOC & AV wins/losses it reveals an unbelievably lopsided picture, 71 wins to 257 loses!

I would bet of those 257 loses less than 57 of them were even remotely close games.

Even more stark is the AV and IoC stats (I play them non-stop when they are the Call to Arms BGs and to farm honor for motes, plus IoC seems to pop a lot doing random) 169 wins 6 loses!

Let me stop you right there.

This is caused by BLACKLISTING. Prior to blacklisting win/loss rates were close to 50/50 across all BGs. I saw these stats back then, and it was about the same in my personal BG stats. When Blizzard allowed blacklisting, HEAPS of Horde players blacklisted AV and IoC because of widely held community beliefs that Alliance is stronger in those BGs (they actually weren't, they had slightly more wins at best). What this meant is that the Horde teams that did get into AV/IoC were composed of, on average, poorer geared and lower quality players. This exacerbated the Alliance's intrinsic advantage.

So more Horde players blacklisted AV and IoC, and the Alliance quickly realised what was going on and all the smart Alliance players do NOT blacklist AV and IoC, and furthermore farm them all day during CTA. This pushed the win/loss ratio even further in the Alliance's favour, which caused even more Horde players to blacklist, which attracted even more Alliance players, etc etc.

So what happens is that AV and IoC are completely lopsided, all the good Alliance players are more likely to be found in there and all the Horde players are terrible. The good Horde players spill over into the other BGs, giving them a higher win % in non-AV and IoC BGs. If you want to see this in action, queue for a random BG as Horde without blacklisting AV or IoC. You will get those two BGs like 80% of the time, because the queue is struggling to find enough Horde players to fill BGs with the swarms of Alliance players. And you will have about a 10% win rate or less when you do get in. The skill differential is shockingly obvious.

If you run normal BGs on AV or IoC CTA (like the last couple of days) you'll find your win % as Horde is huge, because every decent Alliance player is queueing for AV/IoC while every decent Horde player is blacklisting them.

TLDR: Blacklisting causes massive separation of quality players and vastly exacerbates intrinsic imbalances in BG design. It should be removed, but of course that would be highly unpopular.

- - - Updated - - -

Fact: Alliance get to Docks 2 seconds faster than Horde
Fact: Alliance get to E/W towers 19 seconds faster than Horde gets N/S (due to being able to avoid mobs)

At the end of the day, the numbers are fairly even.

And arena number doesn't matter, cuz no one really cares about that.

The tower design really should be looked at, but the win/loss rates are actually a bit worse in IoC than AV.

The actual map advantage is tiny, it's more the mentality of Alliance vs Horde players. RAWRS IMA ZERG DEM REDS gets you a loss in AV and IoC, you need to play smart.

But that only explained about 5% of the difference in win/loss, pre-blacklisting. The actual win rates are like 9-1. That is completely due to blacklisting.

[Uproot]

Now on the surface 240 wins to 263 loses appears pretty even however when you take away the IOC & AV wins/losses it reveals an unbelievably lopsided picture, 71 wins to 257 loses!

I read that as, the numbers seemed pretty even until I decided to take away the 2 bgs that alliance wins the most. After doing that I noticed Horde won more bgs. /boggle how you can go from you yourself skewing the data, to ascertaining Blizzard is some kinda anti-american company?

I really don't get it...

[Zylos]

Let me stop you right there.

This is caused by BLACKLISTING. Prior to blacklisting win/loss rates were close to 50/50 across all BGs. I saw these stats back then, and it was about the same in my personal BG stats. When Blizzard allowed blacklisting, HEAPS of Horde players blacklisted AV and IoC because of widely held community beliefs that Alliance is stronger in those BGs (they actually weren't, they had slightly more wins at best).

Horde blacklists them because they are unbalanced in favor of the Alliance. AV has a much larger advantage in all aspects. Horde towers are easier to defend from back capping than alliance. The alliance base is set up MUCH better than the horde base. The bridge is a major bottleneck should the alliance choose to defend it, and alliance towers can easily hit players on the bridge. Upon entering the base its hard to not aggro the entire blacksmith camp and 1 of the towers can hit people all the way to the flag making ninja capping a lot more complicated. Horde base towers are way out of range from the flag and the building can serve as protection from arrow fire. Additionally alliance can slip around the west tower making a bottleneck a lot harder to achieve.

In IOC the main advantage is the dock. Alliance gets there sooner (meaning by the time the horde gets there trickling in, the alliance is already grouped up). Alliance attacks the dock side gate from a much more defensible position than the horde can on their dock side meaning its easier for alliance to kill off horde glaives than vice versa.

That isn't to say some bgs don't favor horde; AB most certainly does, but if these 2 were more balanced and (let's face it) actually pvp oriented horde would probably do them more.

[Kaleredar]

Horde blacklists them because they are unbalanced in favor of the Alliance. AV has a much larger advantage in all aspects. Horde towers are easier to defend from back capping than alliance. The alliance base is set up MUCH better than the horde base. The bridge is a major bottleneck should the alliance choose to defend it, and alliance towers can easily hit players on the bridge. Upon entering the base its hard to not aggro the entire blacksmith camp and 1 of the towers can hit people all the way to the flag making ninja capping a lot more complicated. Horde base towers are way out of range from the flag and the building can serve as protection from arrow fire. Additionally alliance can slip around the west tower making a bottleneck a lot harder to achieve.

This argument is horseshit. People play up the Alliance who play AV as some sorts of "grand technicians of the map, deftly using every little hill and tree to exploit LOS and maximize their ability usage while using every terrain advantage to maximize precious seconds in capping time." That doesn't happen. I can't even RECALL the last game I was in that was seriously decided by "map topography." The horde just languishes and flounders all the way up the northern part of the map, gets split up between north and south, and then just generally falters from there.

The horde's strategy just sucks in AV. That's it, plain and simple. Oh, towers are too hard to back cap and too easy to defend? How about friggin' DEFENDING them from the start, hmm? If they're so "impossible" to flout a force from, (which is a specious claim itself; I've seen it done many a time) then go with that.

In IOC the main advantage is the dock. Alliance gets there sooner (meaning by the time the horde gets there trickling in, the alliance is already grouped up). Alliance attacks the dock side gate from a much more defensible position than the horde can on their dock side meaning its easier for alliance to kill off horde glaives than vice versa.

IoC is even WORSE. Even if the horde GET docks, which they do once in a blue moon, (they hardly ever even try for it,) what do they do with the glaives? Roll up and attack the west gate. Sure, it's closest. But you know what their demolishers are doing? Attacking the FRONT gate. Bombers? East gate. That's THREE gates that are being attacked sub-optimally even when the horde have the BEST of factors going for them. It's like they fundamentally don't know how to even play the BG. And as for glaives... Glaives are practically made of glass. Five horde could, undisputed, but down both ally glaive throwers pretty damn fast, before they even got one shot off on the door. But VERY rarely do I see ANY concerted effort by the horde to kill glaives beyond two or three people trickling in their general direction. But on the rare occasion when horde get the glaive throwers (usually late in the match,) they don't defend them at all. Sometimes they drive them right up to the alliance keep to the gate.

[loki504]

so basicly its says you suck and wants to blame it on your team......