Honestly, are you trying to argue that what Limit did was what Blizzard intended with the feature? Because that is the implication of what you're saying.
The fact that a world first contender guild found a way to exploit the feature for a small competitive advantage doesn't speak at all to the intent of the feature. Sure, Blizzard will take the cash, but considering the size of the game, $3K from one guild doing this once off is inconsequential. If anything, these shenanigans just serve to demonstrate exactly the sort of thing that you don't want in your game, and why Blizzard would regard faction transfers as a grudge service.
Also, Limit didn't use the feature on a whim. They had a specific intent and purpose behind their actions.
And lastly, just to repeat myself, since you completely ignored it the first time (I wonder why ):
If this feature was a cash grab they would have priced it accordingly. At $30 the cost is prohibitive for most players. Blizzard would get far more cash if they lowered the price, which would encourage significantly more players to use it
Last edited by Raelbo; 2019-07-09 at 12:25 PM.
I originally got there because I wanted a fresh start, thought I'd look at how they do RP and thought I'd sell some transmog because RP people want transmog, right? Fresh start worked well, no complaints regarding RP (frankly, I turned off global chat a long time ago, but that was just because I wanted some silence, not because the chat was obnoxious), and transmog I don't sell because there are too many doing it, including the obvious Studen. Overall, no complaints. I've seen servers with better AH (faster turnarounds, more choices), but that likely has to deal with the global decrease in the number of players more than with anything else.
Anyway, enough off-topic. I'll keep in mind that whoever I see in the zones might be one of you. I am awfully polite in the game as it stands, so this won't change much, but still. :-)
I main Horde, but have an alliance alt who is almost level 120 (put on temporary hold so that I can organise Pathfinder).
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I wouldn't say that they've done nothing, they've just failed to do anything effective.
The real problem, I suspect, is that Blizzard failed to understand what they needed to do in order to fix the issue because they were always focused on trying to make the factions equally appealing. The reason that will never work though is that it is impossible to make the factions equally appealing by making changes to the factions (counter-intuitive, I know).
Aside from the fact that it is patently impossible to make 2 factions with differences truly equal (ie there will always be some small advantage to playing one over the other) through design, even if they could, there is still a significant factor which determines faction appeal that is outside the bounds of game design, and that is popularity.
You see, the more popular faction becomes more popular because it is more popular. There are many advantages to joining the numerically superior faction, and very few drawbacks. It's an inherently unstable system.
The solution, of course, would be to implement a dynamic system which actively rewards the numerically inferior faction proportionally to the faction imbalance. For example, reward a +X% damage/healing buff for every player of the numerically inferior faction (including raid instances) for every 5% discrepency in active server population. I think Blizzard are hesitant to do something like this because they worry that it will affect the "fairness" of the competitive raiding scene. And while in theory it might, especially in the short term, I think it wouldn't take very long for equilibrium to be achieved, at which point no one will have an advantage.
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
I assume you're talking about what happened at the start of BoD with the WM bonus? That was a carrot intended to get a more even participation in world PvP. And it actually did end up garnering some attention from the PvE scene in that Limit faction switched (albeit temporarily) to take advantage of the benefits. As I understand it, the faction swap also allowed them to take advantage of the Warfront cycle.
But this failed to achieve a permanent shift though because the rewards were not compelling enough. A once off 400ilvl pvp item isn't worth it given the amount of 400 ilevel gear available anyway.
As I said, put in a buff that is active in raids and I am pretty certain that you'll see some guilds taking advantage of that. Once faction parity is achieved there is no longer a recruitment pool advantage, and the small advantages from racials stop being compelling every time it starts to shift population balance.
Horde players will just throw a tantrum, and Blizzard will be forced to remove it, same thing that happened with wpvp bonuses that got heavily nerfed, because it's a catch 22, Horde players are the majority now, so Blizzard can't risk upsetting them and losing subs, but any status quo feeds the constant alliance > horde migration and makes situation worse, reinforcing the notion it's not worth caring about opinion of alliance playerbase because they're already lower in numbers, so provide less financial gain than satisfying what horde players ask for.
The bad part at the end of this line is death of 2 faction play, because if noone plays alliance, then there's no factions, even without removal of faction barrier. 2 faction gameplay requires people playing on both sides.
Alliance has more and more inactive accounts, for example websites gathering data show low level characters are more numerous on the alliance side, but when we narrow down to 120, where the actual current expansion gameplay takes place, there's already 10% disparity in horde's favour. If we'd narrow down further to people who actually play regularly - like check m+ activity, pvp activity, raiding participation, we'll see more and more horde prevalence, which means these alliance players are just not playing, or are some barely used alts. How many horde players or alliance players migrated horde still have alliance alts, but their main activity happens on horde character. This creates the illusion both factions are equally represented, because these characters exist, but majority of the end game activities happen on the horde side.
As with anything in WoW, yes, there will be some people throwing a tantrum. But there are already people who are constantly whining about the imbalance so I am not convinced that it would make the situation any worse, with at least a prospect of a decent outcome at the end.
I'd like to think that there are enough rational players out there who would see such a move in the spirit in which it's intended, which is not a snub against Horde, but as a snub against imbalance. It would be a fair system that over time would see neither side gaining an advantage because pragmatic players and guilds would switch factions to take advantage of the situation. What would really help would be if Blizzard offered a free faction transfer window to coincide with the introduction of the system.
The other option, as you allude to, is to remove existing faction barriers to participation in group activities.
People complaining about imbalance - mostly the people who are alliance and affected by it, so minority.
People who are proud of being horde, joining the winning faction and claiming "lolol alliance sucks can't do anything while WE clear raids, m+, dominate in pvp" (even coming from players who don't participate in any serious end game just feel "belonging" to the winning faction) - majority, since horde is the bigger faction.
Blizzard won't upset majority to please the minority even if that means in the end there will be no one willing to stay on the abandoned faction.
The time to keep balance has passed long ago, when factions were still relatively balanced and keeping status quo would be easier than trying to intervene and stop the landslide after it rolled halfway the slope.
I remember the times when servers like Draenor EU had both factions with healthy representation - that was somewhere in wotlk. After paid faction changes got introduced, many servers followed the same fate as Draenor EU or Ragnaros EU - going from 40:60 split to 10:90 split or worse. Everyone started joining "the winning faction" and the disparity from small grew to enormous and Blizzard put no restrictions except "pay up".
It's been years and years of no restrictions, no mechanics to balance factions, no incentive to join the underdog, and every incentive to pile up on the same side.
If you try to change status quo, people will rebel. They joined the winning side to reap the rewards. To be torn between incentives of playing horde (bigger recruitment pool, higher m+ activity, better organized pvp, more top end raiding guilds) and some artificial incentives implemented by Blizzard to play alliance and eat all the downsides? Can't happen.
Basically every discussion about this subject reveals to me typical horde attitude is "alliance sucks", "alliance should step up and do something" and basically "someone should play alliance to balance it out, just not me, not my guild and not my friends". They don't want incentives to swap. They want to play horde and keep all the benefits. They WILL object if Blizzard adds any incentive to alliance, like they objected to warmode buffs.
People don't even care about balanced factions, especially in world pvp they want to join the wolves against the sheep, the problem is nobody wants to be the prey, so they just turn wm off and we have the endless qq why alliance doesn't wanna "step up" and play in warmode. Guess why, cuz no one wants to be the fodder for someone else's "fun".
megaservers would be bad that would break up guilds.
You can't take what ya can't see... *rolls d20* You rolled a natural 20* The skill of stealth is successful.
Duelingnexus name: Jaina1337
Blizzard Battle Tag: Jaina1337#1396
Alliance figured out that mythic raiding is pointless and a waste of effort for the reward you get which is why they only stick to heroic.
Megaservers, what an absolute shite idea. How about, they keep up what's been going just fine for 15 years, and leave it up to the players to congregate where it wants? Free will.
But, cross-faction instance/guild membership for PVE wouldn't be too offensive should they want that for the game. I sure want it, it'd instantly give me the freedom to play whichever race I want without giving up my guild.
Lul'd, yeah, that's why.