Heres my issue with the whole “alliance only wanna do it for rewards” deal though. Back when it was the same perks for both at the beginning Ion said it was essentially even. I dunno how even, but I did WM early on and there were a lot of even matches.
Then yes something went wrong with their sharding and horde who didnt want to PvP but wanted the perks were emboldened. Thats not trash talking the horde who had it on for PvP, for the record. Then alliance started leaving. Im guessing it got pretty low if blizz decided to step in. Then yadda yadda Q&A, AOO was born, want those extra horde to turn it off and for alliance to turn it on.
This is the issue I see. They put a price on WM. Now there is a tangible value placed on time in WM instead of it just being something to do, so yeah now the carrot drives the players (and thats still for both sides, mind you because remember there were people who got used to the XP and reward bonus on horde). Its like how some players still complain about pathfinder. Once something is implemented with rewards its very difficult to backtrack. So 1it makes sense that players want stuff for their time now that rewards were made the way they were.
I don’t see how any of that relates to the fact that Alliance still don’t show up like they used to.
I’ll say that probably most players that turn on WM do it for the bonus. It’s a bonus rewarded for the risk of WPvP. However, it’s a lopsided amount of Horde with WM on. And it’s not due to a glitch. There’s already been plenty of carrots to get Alliance to turn it back on. But they won’t. Even when their carrot is bigger.
A definitive statement is that Alliance players, on the whole, are more adverse to WPvP compared to Horde. Yes - it’s a theory that Alliance are more scared of WPvP. But it’s a theory supported by evidence (AOO going to Alliance over and over while Horde never see it, and many posts from Alliance players saying they won’t turn it on without the heroic gear). None of the evidence presented would suggest Horde are more cowardly than Alliance, on the whole.
That’s for you to guess. My theory is that Alliance had it on for the same reasons Horde had it on - because there was no enemy to deal with right out of the gates. You’re leveling pretty much untouched so everyone was turning it on to get free WM bonuses to leveling.
Obviously Alliance bailed when the sharding bug occurred. But that’s a past issue. And Alliance were further incentivized with free Heroic gear, so they started coming back. And some Horde who were only there for unchallenged rewards bailed. But, the closest it ever got back to was something like a 15% bonus for Alliance. This shows that Alliance did come much closer to equaling Horde.
But Horde have never seen AOO. They have never had the bigger bonus. Alliance gets both of those repeatedly. At best, Alliance were close to equaling Horde numbers. At worse, they were keeping WM off in large numbers.
Alliance being more afraid of the risks in PvP is a fairly straight-forward assumption with very little evidence to counter that. Any theory you have come up with is falling down the path of occam’s razor as there’s too many random factors for yours to hold water.
Now youre not making any sense to me. WPvP was supposedly healthy and thriving at the start, but there was no enemy? Do you think it was only even until people hit 120? Cause thats a pretty big leap.
We alreqdy covered that. Ion said he doubted it would ever swing the opposite direction, but that doesnt mean the alliance cant match the horde which is the optimal result.
I think I provided examples as to why scientists dont go off of assumptions earlier in this thread. Youre free to make claims of course since this isnt a scientific study or anything serious, but it wont stop people from telling you that youre pulling it out of thin air.
You literally have the patience of a saint and I admire that. He literally repeats the same talking point over and over again about the Alliance only being cowardly, but when you try to bring up opposing evidence, he just ignores it and repeats the same talking point.
He doesn’t even understand the basic premises of how to construct an empirical argument (he unironically said that deductive reasoning was the same as evidence), and that’s extremely difficult to work with because you have to basically go on a tangent on the fundamentals of a high school philosophy course lmao.
I like debating and as you can see I am pretty obsessed with studying something from every angle. I like studying wildlife, biology, animal behavior and such so when I think about things like how players act in WM and react to changes its pretty fascinating to me. I like to try and think about things beyond the surface though.
My friend was playing on an alt on tuesday and he could use a 395 piece so when he mentioned maybe doing AoO I jumped on it and practically dragged him out to do some WPvP since its been awhile and sometimes I like doing it. I couldnt get an upgrade from it at this point even if they put it back at 400, but I didnt care since I was helping a friend and it gave me a reason to mess around with WM.
I dunno I guess I fall in the coward category, but I tried getting my friends to run around with WM on and it was always annoying going to a summon stone and 1 person was in WM while the other one wasnt so there was no way to summon. Running to dungeons and raid is honestly the only thing that gets me out in the world these days though.
Ion stated that the numbers were even, bugs happened, Alliance turned it off, Horde turned it on who normally wouldn’t.
Rewards were added to bring the Alliance players back and make Horde players turn it off.
Even after the FP camping, the Tortollan quest camping, the roaming groups of Alliance raid who could get the AOO that way during the first couple weeks… none of that brought the Alliance back to even. Even when they got closer to even with 400 ilvl loot, they dropped off again in the weeks to come. What evidence does any of those true statements I made imply that Horde are more cowardly than Alliance? What evidence do you have to counter my statement that Alliance or more risk adverse than Horde players, currently? You can keep talking about Alliance and Horde being close to even at the beginning, but why after the bug being fixed and rewards for Alliance being much greater than Horde - why are Alliance still not turning it on in record numbers? You have no theories… or your theories you provide have too many assumptions or very little evidence to support such claims.
And yeah, Alliance can match Horde… but have they? Months after AOO came out? Have they? No. So you’re waiting around for something that has yet to happen and the incentives are never going to get better. The best they were is when Blizzard gave Alliance free Heroic gear when the newest raid dropped. And they stated they won’t make that mistake again. So why would the situation ever change? Why would the Alliance ever match Horde when they couldn’t even do it when the rewards were the best?
And let’s not play the semantics game of scientists and assumptions. Call it a hypothesis then. Scientists use those all the time. I have a hypothesis that supports the evidence we’ve seen. You just try to pivot with random tangets that don’t discount my hypothesis at all.
Seriously, stop trying to create smoke screens for the truth - Alliance just don’t want to turn WM on as much as Horde do.
Dude, what opposing evidence? The only opposing evidence that it was even at the beginning which I gave a reason why it could have been that way. None of that “was before” changes what it is currently - Alliance don’t match Horde in WM=on. And there’s no counter-theory to mine.
And you need to read a little better - I never said that only the Alliance are cowardly. I said, on a macro level, Alliance are more cowardly (and definitely countering your statement that Horde are more cowardly from your tried and true metrics of some horde running back to their towns and hiding there - as if horde are the only ones to do it).
I repeat the same talking points because the lvl 13 hunter has yet to give a valid counter and instead just throws out wild theories. The hunter isn’t even going for a proper alternative theory… he/she is going for a zero-sum solution where no hypothesis holds weight. And that’s hardly “scientific” as they keep trying to pivot to.
And you should stop talking - I already showed you the door when I found empirical evidence that the bug for sharding was fixed. You have shown zero empirical evidence for any of your theories.
Well, I have 2 or 3 theories as to why alliance havent gotten back to even. One I already pointed out.
No use on doing WM now that they put an actual value on it, especially if turning it off may make it better next week.
Trap shyness. Now alliance can measure whether or not theyre outnumbered and they were burned before by WM so maybe players still have bad morale and they know it wont be fun . Its like random BGs. The alliance feel like theyre getting stuck with bad teams so they say “screw it, I wont BG as alliance anymore” which feeds other alliance and the cycle continues. On the flip side horde can look at what rewards alliance have that week and feel more bold when deciding if they want to turn it on. The horde number goes up when alliance rewards go down, alliance numbers tank again, and AoO is back the next week, then alliance turn it back on, and horde start turning it off as more alliance turn it on.
WM and the expansion are old news by now so the excitement of trying the system is gone. I bet a lot less people do island expeditions now than in the first two months of the expansion.
Alliance haven’t been even since the racials “balancing” in Warlords. 1:1.5 is a pretty reasonable place given the current population and end game activity imbalance.
But according to what little we know it was even (or at least pretty even according to Ion) for a time. I dunno how long or what the numbers were or are now, but thats the only thing we have to go on currently.
What do you mean? Are you saying Alliance are only turning it on when they see AOO is available and then turn it off when it’s not? Why then, when AOO is available, has it been available for several weeks in a row? Why is that AOO has never caused Alliance to get to enough of a level that there’s zero bonus the following week? Even after the most optimal week (1st raid week of BoD) did it not completely go away the following week? This goes back to my point - even at the best rewards, Alliance couldn’t match the Horde as per the levels Ion states were even at the beginning. Thus my hypothesis that, currenlty, Horde are less risk adverse compared to Alliance. Your point 1 does not counter that argument and neither does the evidence I just presented.
“shyness”, “bad morale” - that seems to support my statement that Alliance are more risk adverse. If nothing else, your hypothesis merely supports mine. You’re playing semantics by trying to call cowardness “bad morale” or “shyness”.
This can be true… but all things being equal, Horde and Alliance should have the same percentage drop offs. No evidence we’ve seen have shown that Alliance are more bored of WM compared to Horde. So unless you have some evidence to show Alliance have been more bored by WM, you can’t count this theory in that it has skewed any numbers - thus once again you haven’t countered my point.
We don’t know the numbers but we know the ratios that put the Horde either slightly above or greatly above Alliance with WM on as evidence by AOO being available for Alliance. If the Horde never greatly outnumbered Alliance, Alliance would never get the quest.
Because 385 and 395 really are poo ilvl rewards when one is sitting at ~415? Like I said, WM was fun just to do in the beginning, but now theres a carrot attached to it so I dont really need to waste my time.
Oh we are back to name calling. Alright.
I guess it doesnt make sense to go do something more productive than get swarmed by the other team. I also guess those horde who whined about FPs getting camped while trying to do their WQs (not out looking for PvP mind you) and the ones who complained about guards and the ones who complained about AoO sending the alliance out in droves are also cowards by that logic, since we are back to this. It was only okay when it was in their favor.
Sadly, you havent proven yours either. Neither of us can and we can go in circles for weeka because we dont have access to the data to actually see who is doing what.
This is hog wash. I already see more alliance then Horde. Last month or soo Battlegrounds have been alliance cake walks. Atleast that has been my experience.