If TBC becomes a thing, Blizzard needs to make "change" to prevent faction imbalance

[Naraga]

Faction balance is almost purely player-driven. People will flock to Horde or Alliance for a huge variety of reasons: aesthetics, races, racials, friends, lore, etc.

it is impossible for Blizzard to create 'balanced factions' without enforcing a "you cannot make a character of that faction in this server" barrier when the balance pendulum is swinging too far in one direction, which means actively prohibiting people from transferring or creating new characters of that specific faction in that server.

Which I imagine won't go well with the players. At all.

And I did acknowledge in the OP that faction imbalance cannot be combated as a whole. And of course, it is player driven. But to repeat once more, we aren't talking about a "minor" 65-35 faction imbalance. If left unchanged the data we have available shows us that every single server ends up as a single faction in a very short amount of time, drastically and permanently changing the way the game is experienced for both factions. I am not aiming to perfectly balance the factions, but this one relatively minor change will single handed remove a huge incentive for PvE guilds to reroll to horde.

And yes, faction locks are most likely needed as well. What do you believe will go down better with the players: Faction locks or every single server being Flamelash-EU?

[Lieutenant Commander]

Keep it belf only, I want to see how long the bg queues can get.

[Drusin]

And yes, faction locks are most likely needed as well. What do you believe will go down better with the players: Faction locks or every single server being Flamelash-EU?

I think that'll just have the effect of making servers imbalanced and then having players waiting on the inevitable new servers. I wouldn't play a faction just because the other is locked and if all the servers had the faction I wanted locked then I just wouldn't play.

[erifwodahs]

The CRUCIAL time to NOT have layers is when servers first opened, because that's where you can force social interaction and cooperation with lots of people in the starting zones. Turning them off later does jack shit.

And yet thousands were waiting in the ques. What did you want? Blizz add 100 servers so 80 of them would go dead two months later? And what to do to stop people registering for the same realm? Everyone was going into same servers because "this server won't die". What would you do ? Stop players from playing with friends by turning off char creation? If they did do a hundred servers, after all the tourists left they would be merging realms and you would yell that it destroyed communities. Because UNLIKE VANILLA, Classic peak popularity was always going to be the launch while Vanilla had constantly increasing number of players.

[enigma77]

Agreed.

#nochanges died long ago and with good reason. There are certain grievous issues that need to be addressed, like AV premades or extreme faction imbalance.

World of Warcraft is not supposed to be a one faction game and with the current mindset (much different from back then) people WILL reroll Horde for Arena and a pve advantage on top of that. They should give Alliance Every Man for Himself in TBC already, if they want to make it remotely balanced.

If you don't make changes, here's what is going to happen: Mass Alliance Exodus, pvp servers are all pve servers, 3 hour queues for EVERY BG. And LOTS of players unsubscribing, refusing to play Horde, but being stuck on dead servers and a dead faction.

Basically if they don't change minor things, TBC is DEAD ON ARRIVAL.

[Evolixe]

The CRUCIAL time to NOT have layers is when servers first opened, because that's where you can force social interaction and cooperation with lots of people in the starting zones. Turning them off later does jack shit.

Were you even there the hour classic launched?

Without layers nobody would be playing at all. It was bad enough as it was.

[pinkz]

if you listened to all the doomsayers for classic WOW, you would think no one had a chance at raids unless they have a dwarf priest in a raid. no point in rolling any other race...considered meme. yet many are using res druids and hpals for raids.

2007 first 3's WOW tourney was held in Wuhan China. held by WSVG. winning team warrior, mage, paladin.

first Blizzcon 3s tourney in 2008 winner was Warrior, lock, druid. second place team same and i believe they were alliance and HU for perception (except druid..of course)

when RMP became a thing, there were tons of and rerolls to dwarf priests for fear ward, and other again HU for perception. this totally negated undead WOTF and BE arcane torrent rogues. there was alot of perception racial QQ on WOW forums, going into WOTLK perception got nerfed but still a advantage for HU rogues have +1 stealth detect, and NE rogue/druids still having +stealth. still RMP is still over rated in players memories

Blizzcon 3s tourney in 2009, first place team DK, warrior, Hpal. second place Warrior, hunter, Hpal. believe both teams were horde

[Mysterymask]

I don't agree with the guys, but it's pretty obvious what his argument was.

Ok dumb it down for you

If someone when trying to make a character gets stopped and forced into the other faction instead of playing said other faction they will just not play

9 times out of 10 that is what will happen

[Nobleshield]

They need to make changes because #NoChanges was revealed to be a load of bullshit anyways so it shouldn't have been listened to anyway.

[Relapses]

Using private server launches as an example is hardly a convincing argument. We have no fucking idea how Blizzard intends to roll out the servers to begin with. You're inventing a problem then demanding Blizzard solve it before it exists. And while I appreciate 4-dimensional battle Chess just as much as the next dude, I don't know what you want to gather from the community with this thread other than faux-outrage.

[PenguinChan]

EXP Buff (Stacking with rested) / Honor Buff
Graveyard timers reduced (Dynamically increased with more allied players nearby / decreased with hostile players nearby)
Remove durability loss to player deaths
Reduced trainer costs (Profession, Riding, Classes)
Reduced AH listing fees
...

The list can go on. If Blizzard truly wants to provide an incentive for heavily imbalanced PVP servers they can. But they won't. #NoChanges people would scream bloody murder, and Blizzard has notoriously been against providing incentives for this - even when retail had blatant issues on the actual servers.

And this is mostly an issue on select PVP servers. I highly doubt every TBC PVP server will have this issue.

[Relapses]

EXP Buff (Stacking with rested) / Honor Buff
Graveyard timers reduced (Dynamically increased with more allied players nearby / decreased with hostile players nearby)
Remove durability loss to player deaths
Reduced trainer costs (Profession, Riding, Classes)
Reduced AH listing fees
...

The list can go on. If Blizzard truly wants to provide an incentive for heavily imbalanced PVP servers they can. But they won't. #NoChanges people would scream bloody murder, and Blizzard has notoriously been against providing incentives for this - even when retail had blatant issues on the actual servers.

And this is mostly an issue on select PVP servers. I highly doubt every TBC PVP server will have this issue.

That's the kind of shit that you see on private servers. I doubt Blizzard wants to copy this model.

[Synical123]

Ok dumb it down for you

If someone when trying to make a character gets stopped and forced into the other faction instead of playing said other faction they will just not play

9 times out of 10 that is what will happen

Doubt that 100%

- - - Updated - - -

They need to make changes because #NoChanges was revealed to be a load of bullshit anyways so it shouldn't have been listened to anyway.

Sure, what changes are you suggesting?

[Relapses]

Sure, what changes are you suggesting?

I swear, some players who wanted #NoChanges legitimately thought Blizzard would be creating a time machine and rewinding the internet back to 2004. Since this isn't possible, they're now blaming Blizzard for their apparent inability to manipulate the space/time continuum.

The idea that since they weren't able to do this that now they should just do the exact fucking opposite is, well, pretty out there. The bigger problem with #SomeChanges is that if you asked 10 players what they'd want changed you'd get 10 answers. If you asked 10,000 players, you'd probably still get thousands of answers. So then the question becomes whether Blizzard should design by majority vote -- effectively game design by democracy. If this ever were to come to fruition, it will be the end of the game as we know it because no matter what changes Blizzard implements, there will be a vocal minority of players who will be alienated by it. The easiest thing for Blizzard to do is exactly what they've already done with Classic: Try their best to create a museum piece as close to the original product as possible.

[Nobleshield]

Sure, what changes are you suggesting?

Most importantly I'd say give Alliance what was it, Seal of the Martyr? The equivalent to Seal of Blood they added in I think the pre-Wrath patch.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

It will be worse in TBC than Classic for sure.
Classic actually favors Alliance for PVE. That's no longer true in TBC.

I would not expect anything to change either.
If it doesn't in Shadowlands, no reason to expect it in old versions.

[Relapses]

Most importantly I'd say give Alliance what was it, Seal of the Martyr? The equivalent to Seal of Blood they added in I think the pre-Wrath patch.

It's Seal of Blood. I'd rule out anything private servers do, if simply on principle alone.

[Jazzhands]

Right now in Classic, factions are remotely balanced. On most servers horde outnumber alliance, but it is a playable balance. Some servers unfortunately have slipped away from this playable balance and we've all seen the numerous threads complaining about it.

However if nothing is done, the issues with faction balance we currently experience will seem like a complete nonissue compared to what TBC will bring us.

We know from private server data that at the start of each server we see a 70-30 to 80-20 faction balance favouring horde. Then in a manner of days to weeks this imbalance will quickly compound to 95+-5- balance as Alliance players quit or factionswitch because the game is literally unplayable for them.

What are the reasons for this? Outside of subjective reasons like blood elf aesthetics or faction psychology, the main reasons for faction imbalance on TBC servers stems from the fact that horde racials are considered slightly better for PvE and much better for PvP. But one of the largest difference is in Paladins as the Horde Seal of Blood is a huge buff over Alliance paladins. This means that from an objective point of view, both PvP and PvE players have no reason to roll Alliance.

With the min-max mindset we see in Classic, I'm fully expecting this private server trend to continue into Classic TBC. Even if current servers are progressed into TBC as is, I fear many Alliance players will straight up reroll.

Now I don't want to suggest massive game overhauls as I simply do not trust current Blizzard to make such changes. The same reason why I wouldn't want to see Classic + as I have no faith in their ability to execute this. As such, the options we have to prevent this Alliance exodus are limited.

Balancing the PvP racials would be too extensive of a change, and as such we simply need to accept some imbalance will exist. However I believe that for PvE we can make a very minor change that would make a huge difference, and that is making Seal of Blood available to all Paladins regardless of race. In a way it is a very minor change that fits in with the TBC design philosophy as many Vanilla racial class abilities were either removed or made class-wide, making Seal of Blood an outlier. While this would do nothing for PvP players, at least it removes a large incentive for PvE players to reroll to Horde. Combined with progressing current servers giving incentive to people to continue to play their current characters as rerolling would put them behind (as opposed to starting fresh servers) we can hopefully prevent private servers scenarios from happening in Classic. I would also suggest faction locks, preventing players who don't already have a character of level 60 to make new characters on factions that are outnumbering the opposing faction.

I know this will not please purists, however I believe that in order to have a playable experience for both factions that resembles actual TBC as closely as possible, this one minor change needs to be made.

P.S
Please no retail players ITT that spam #nochanges out of spite, thanks.

Unless Blizzard forces hard restrictions, which they never will, "PVP" servers will ALWAYS hit this imbalance because people don't actually want PVP, people will naturally migrate to the "winning" faction on their server or eventually move to one where their faction "won". Blizzard will never do whats necessary to stop this, because Blizzard will never force people onto certain factions.

And... do you really think Seal of Blood is THAT big a deal? Ret paladin is still terribly boring and not over all that amazing (not bad anymore, but yeah). It's no where near a strong enough factor to cause a population imbalance, because a tiny amount of the population would be playing it. Even if all the Ret paladins went Horde, I think the Alliance will survive. Also, isn't the Alliance seal better for tanking? I can't remember, but someone told me that once. Better than SoB at least, and Prot Paladins are actually like, important and really really helpful in certain raids, Ret paladins don't bring anything other Paladins don't, and less DPS than actual DPS classes. So yeah.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Using private server launches as an example is hardly a convincing argument. We have no fucking idea how Blizzard intends to roll out the servers to begin with. You're inventing a problem then demanding Blizzard solve it before it exists. And while I appreciate 4-dimensional battle Chess just as much as the next dude, I don't know what you want to gather from the community with this thread other than faux-outrage.

It's also frankly an unfair comparison. You're comparing a super try hard community where every starts at level 1 to what will likely be the same kind of community as Classic now, and with a transfer option so you start at 60.

Also frankly, #NoChanges if those changes are just "make it like a private server with double exp, a cash shop, and custom abilities" like this thread seems to like suggesting.

- - - Updated - - -

if you listened to all the doomsayers for classic WOW, you would think no one had a chance at raids unless they have a dwarf priest in a raid. no point in rolling any other race...considered meme. yet many are using res druids and hpals for raids.

2007 first 3's WOW tourney was held in Wuhan China. held by WSVG. winning team warrior, mage, paladin.

first Blizzcon 3s tourney in 2008 winner was Warrior, lock, druid. second place team same and i believe they were alliance and HU for perception (except druid..of course)

when RMP became a thing, there were tons of and rerolls to dwarf priests for fear ward, and other again HU for perception. this totally negated undead WOTF and BE arcane torrent rogues. there was alot of perception racial QQ on WOW forums, going into WOTLK perception got nerfed but still a advantage for HU rogues have +1 stealth detect, and NE rogue/druids still having +stealth. still RMP is still over rated in players memories

Blizzcon 3s tourney in 2009, first place team DK, warrior, Hpal. second place Warrior, hunter, Hpal. believe both teams were horde

Heck if we're talking PvE BC made life better for basically everyone because tier sets are now attached to spec instead of classes. So it's no longer a "meme" to be a Prot Pally wearing Healing Gear.

[Lora]

no changes period. if you want tbc, you get tbc. not tbc altered.