No it didn’t.
In Vanilla Alliance had all the serious players because paladins were super powered in raids.
Then they released TBC and horde racials were objectively better (most notably seal of blood but also berserking + blood fury).
And ever since that time, the serious PvE player base has been gradually bleeding over from Alliance to Horde. It’s never “teeter totter back and forth”, it’s been a consistent trend that has been ongoing since TBC.
I agree, I’ve said it for years. If they want to keep cosmetic racials or ones that have no impact on combat, that’s fine. But get rid of the rest. In this time of multiple added abilities, we don’t need one more.
I think this is a bit of generalisation. People are people, regardless of what faction they play and I don’t see how being one or the other makes for a stronger community. In fact, I see a lot more nasty language, abuse and tacky behaviour in Horde chat than I often do in Alliance. Sure, we get our share of it, but it seems a lot more laid back on the whole.
Except that Alliance was the more populated side for 14 years, so by your logic people should have continually been transferring to Alliance and it would still be the more populated faction.
They won’t coz then of they do people won’t pay for faction change
Faction changes are a pretty trivial part of the puzzle. There aren’t more Horde players now because all the Alliance players swapped factions; there are more Horde players now because more Alliance have quit than Horde have quit (although plenty have quit from both sides).
But people in this forum generally don’t understand that.
If blood elves were taken away tomorrow I would still play Horde. Alliance have many pretty races, Horde literally have one. Void elves are basically blood elves, if that didnt fix the disparity, then it’s obviously beyond cosmetics.
In the beginning stages of WoW, Horde were severely outnumbered. This changed the Horde spirit and brought the community closer.
People enjoy the Horde story more because Alliance are too “lets hold hands and skip to the end”. People don’t want to play that story, people want drama and tension. Alliance story is just predictable. Horde will never win in these stories, people like playing the underdog scratching their way to the top. When I play Horde, I feel like I am apart of something. Horde gets blamed for everything that goes wrong (even when Alliance have done the same things) and I believe that brings Horde players together.
Sadly, Blizz has written themselves into a corner on the whole goody Alliance story. Many Alliance players would quit if they started to spice up their storytelling. I don’t even understand why Anduin is listened to at all. He’s a child for god’s sake. But people who play Alliance like those story lines. The Alliance lacks passion, and much of that comes from the community themselves.
Lmao. You realize Alliance have more attractive races right? Horde have one, and you got those too. Its beyond cosmetic.
Here is my solution. In PvP, Horde can merc as Alliance because Alliance needs help and Horde que times are ridiculous. Allow mercing in PvE content. Maybe Horde players get a bonus for mercing as Alliance players, or just allow Alliance to merc as Horde. End of story.
While I agree, the Horde story has been more interesting, this part…
Makes me scratch my head a little.
People have been (correctly!) calling out warchief shenanigans and more recently, Sylvie’s plot beats since at least Mists. It is spicy, and there is at least something going on, but I’d severely hesitate to call it ‘unpredictable’.
It does, however, have something going on with it, whereas the Alliance feel really static and lacking in any particular dynamic. It’s almost as if the writers aren’t sure what to do with the Alliance when they’re not being outright heroic.
Damn shame, too - the Alliance, or Alliance-adjacent people/factions should be so easy to make interesting. Human nature alone should have given us another Defias-style faction by now, or maybe someone should have gone rogue. The pieces are there to create something great, they just … don’t.
Instead, we get an occasional, really clumsy “look, guys, they’re bad!” like the removed WQ where they light Vulpera on fire. But it’s not as if they haven’t done interesting stories with the Alliance in the past.
WRA if you want to be majority Horde. MG Horde are serious underdogs. Killing rares this week its usually me and 3-4 Horde and about 50 Alliance. I’m There specifically for peace and quiet.
And it would have been that way had Blizzard not attempted to intervene and caused the exact same problem but switched sides.
Most Horde I know are passionate about staying Horde. Would make sense that Alliance have a different answer. If you mean people on the forums, I don’t think that is an accurate view.
I’m willingly to bet this is a majority of peoples stance on both sides.
People forget these forums are a very vocal and whiny minority that isn’t entirely accurate to the general feelings of the game. There are plenty of people who play Alliance and are passionate about it.
Acting like the Alliance is a dead faction with no players is hyperbole at best.
I completely agree. The zombie thing is a good example. There are so many people enjoying the event. I’ve seen 2 or 3 moaners in tradechat, but everyone else is having fun. But if you had of used the forums as an indication of peoples enjoyment, you would’ve thought 70 percent hated it.
People on the forums just like to whine. Theres one or two who are a bit more professional at it than the others 
Racials are not a reason people are on horde. A long time ago it was a reason to swap.
But let’s be real, people go horde because its more competitive. Most of the alliance are casuals that prefer to transmog farm, hang out in boralus, gold farm, you know, casual stuff. The horde has more people that want to push harder content like high keys or ce raiding.
This divide is furthered by people on the alliance continuing to pursue casual content instead of trying to join a better guild or push themselves as a player.
Alliance quite literally complain day in and day out about the horde taking their raiders or how blizzard is horde biased. But this wouldn’t be a thing if you did something about it. The more you push yourselves to become better players, the more players there is to field from for raids. This leads to a need for more high end raiding guilds, which means more will be made, which means more roster slots for people.
If all you do is complain about it as a faction then its going to stay the same. It takes more than one egg to make an omelette alliance.
I always keep a leveled Alliance alt in case I need one, but I consider it an ugly chore. But like a lot of people, I love my faction. Horde to the bone.
I went alliance to a degree though I am mostly horde.
I still like two alliance races though.
I have two worgens and I have a void elf.
I still have them, but I barely play my void elf anymore due to recent changes to the race.
I also still play my worgen.
Then, I have to focus on my mains.
So let me go into why I don’t play void elf much anymore.
When the idea that a faction of mostly blood elves from Silvermoon rebelled and continued to experiment with the void even under being warned to stop by the rest of the blood elves.
And then this faction was exiled and were changed by the void. I really liked that idea.
Two reasons though I stopped playing void elf for the most part.
It meant, that their eyes glowed outward instead of inward now. I much preferred that outward glow then the new inward glow.
To me, combined with a dark blue hue and some voidy like hair my void elf at that time represented a being that really had been transformed by the void, which has specific colors.
I felt those original eyes represented the power of the void emanating a bit out from my character and I thought he looked great.
Then two things happened.
Patch 8.3 came out and they got rid of those outward glowing eyes. My void elve’s eyes looked kind of dead.
Then a very recent change, added so many more customizations to void elves even though I could pick some version of glowing blue eyes now different from the dead man’s ones given to my elf in patch 8.3
I still didn’t really like the exact blue tone I could pick for my void elves eyes and I still wanted that outward glow again.
And lastly, when I saw void elves not really looking void anymore, I felt this entire new race that has just been established in the lore was losing it’s uniqueness and this kind of threw me out of the immersion aspect of the game.
So now, for the most part he just waits to be used.
As for worgens, well not much except some new fur coats were added so they are still pretty much okay for me.
Though I wish I could choose a few more smooth faces. I don’t think adventurers who are suppose to be in their prime years should always look so ragged in human form.
Just join the horde and enjoy a robust Mythic raiding / key community.
And that’s another reason actually.
I did mythics for awhile as alliance. However, after I got to a certain point I couldn’t really get invites and I just feel alliance (not all, but in general) are filled with casuals which is fine but for those who want to compete and do well?
And what do I also mean by do well? Well, alliance isn’t as good at working together as a group.
Horde players seem to work better with one another. If more of the base is of course casual on alliance side this might explain that.
So it’s just kind of easier to do high level content over on horde side.
I have a feeling the Alliance storyline is going to get more spicy because of Tyrande. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if Tyrande is the end boss of Shadowlands.
But that will make no difference to faction balance. People don’t play Horde because of storyline. They play Horde because that’s where all the other serious players are.
In an ideal world this is what would happen, but what realistically happens is that people just do what is easiest, which is transferring to horde if they want to do high level PvE.