Could we see a faction swing?

[Sevaara]

In the past (a VERY long time ago) there was significantly more Alliance presence when it comes to the worlds best guilds. I mean, Method themselves were Alliance. Once world first races became more competitive, guilds started switching to Horde for superior racials and of course, if you look at WoW Progress, the majority of top guilds are Horde.

While 8.3 has only just hit PTR and is undoubtedly going to change, Mechagnome racials feel incredibly strong for both raiding and mythic plus. Shadowmeld has seen some recent switches from Horde to Alliance for the more serious M+ players (although not permanent.. yet) and I can't help but feel that Mechagnome will be in the interest of M+ players too.

Does anybody think a single race is enough to cause another major faction swing? I personally don't think it's enough but I feel as though it's a step closer to having guilds transfer 'for the edge'.

Curious what others think/what else would be needed for a major faction swing.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You'd need OP racials for every role to get a real outflow from Horde to Alliance.

Mechagnomes look OP for tanks and PvPers, okay for DPS, not great for Healers.

[Kithelle]

LOL

I highly doubt people are gonna be faction changing for Mechagnomes...Shadowmeld is more a fad for M+ competitions...

[Shelly]

I'm worried that my fun and casual friendly guild is all going to jump ship from the Alliance for Vulpera.

[Irian]

Doubt it. I think you greatly underestimate how much people actually to some degree care about aesthetics.

Yeah if they were absolutely broken everyone would move but they're really not that insane. They're pretty solid but they're not going to make a faction shift happen.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Doubt it. I think you greatly underestimate how much people actually to some degree care about aesthetics.

Yeah if they were absolutely broken everyone would move but they're really not that insane. They're pretty solid but they're not going to make a faction shift happen.

Nah there's a sizable population that cares about min/max racials. Basically any guild that does Mythic Ahead of the Curve would care.

But one racial is not going to suddenly balance the factions. You need to make an entire raid group imbalanced.

[Alvito]

One cluster of racials wont be enough. Recruiting and doing things like mythic + is so much harder on the Alliance side due to the pool of people you have to pull from. It would have to be something clearly OP and broken to bring enough people over and knowing that it would be nerfed or undone would keep people from caring about it. If nothing else people getting upset or thrilled about the new racials on day 1 need to temper their expectations, if it is super strong it will be altered while on the PTR.

[sunxsera]

To be honest, alliance will loose even more players with vulperas.
Also if the alliance stays the faction that only reacts and never, ever gets revenge it will loose even more.

Even though i play horde i understand alliance players`frustrations. A bee mount doesnt fix a fucked up faction, that is so much stronger in lore but looses every battle ingame.

[Flutterguy]

It wasn't just racials. One of the biggest shifts came when Blizzard offered free faction changes for a week during MoP or Cata to fix PVP realm imbalances. Certain high end Alliance raiding guilds took advantage of the free transfers and it really damaged the Alliance raiding community, which was on life support already as far as world first races went.