Originally Posted by
Naraga
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.