Is the Alliance and Horde imbalance as bad as people say it is?

[Fawkess]

So basically with all this down time before Shadowlands I was thinking of working on my Alliance characters, doing quest lines, getting rewards, and gearing them up and I was wondering how the raiding, pvp, mythic + scenes are looking on that side? I see a lot of stuff online about the imbalance between Alliance and Horde so I'm just wondering from an Alliance players opinion how it really looks and feels compared to horde side?

[Luxeley]

It depends on where your end game passion lies and how competitive you are. The Pug opportunities will be there for M+ raids and pvp on the alliance side. Where things start to get quite a bit "less than" on the Alliance side is Mythic raiding and competitive Pvp, M+ dungeons not so much an issue.

[this is caranthir]

There are several alliance server with big mythic guilds.
Random epic BGs as alliance are infuriating, other than that I would choose the faction you like the most.

[Rogue Karl]

It depends on how far you want to take the game. The population at the high end is drastically smaller for alliance compared to horde and still shrinking although more slowly then in legion.

The top end have chosen their faction and there servers. If you are going to try to play end game look up realm populations and pick a raider server with a comparable time zone for you.

[Wheeler]

So basically with all this down time before Shadowlands I was thinking of working on my Alliance characters, doing quest lines, getting rewards, and gearing them up and I was wondering how the raiding, pvp, mythic + scenes are looking on that side? I see a lot of stuff online about the imbalance between Alliance and Horde so I'm just wondering from an Alliance players opinion how it really looks and feels compared to horde side?

Raiding - Normal/Heroic you'll be fine. Mythic is a ghost town on Alliance side. Guilds constantly falling apart and unable to find people to fill spots.

PvP - You'll lose most BG's. Arena is arena.

Mythic+ - Fine on alliance side. Shadowmeld and such.