Alliance NPCs would be neutral outside of warmode, obv lol.
Alliance guards are NOT neutral with war mode turned off.
In a world of cross faction, they would be. It would be the end of the war. lol.
Again, obv.
pretty sure 8.3, the alliance had WAY better racials than horde. Human spirit was nuts. Most of the top dps class races in the sims were humans or dwarves
I dumped Alliance after my 50th straight loss in BGsâŚall the high end players play HordeâŚso âFOR THE HORDE!!!â
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Shadowlands seems like it could have been a good opportunity to experiment with cross-faction instanced content given that allegiances are to covenants.
Cross-faction bg/arena/dungeon/raid w/free faction/race changes from horde to alliance. See if that has any impact on balancing the populations? At the very least it would speed up que times and make groups easier to fill in LFG.
The race/aesthetic hodgepodge might be a bit jarring though.
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Equalizing the factions wonât fix it. The problem is that Horde now has the advantage of a large pool of players to draw from, especially at the upper ends, for things like raids, m+, and pvp. If tomorrow we woke up and found out that any race could be a part of either faction and racials were going to be removed from the game, the needle wouldnât even move.
The only hope of achieving faction balance is to provide an incentive to be Alliance that is strong enough to entice Horde players to swap, and then turn it off once balance is achieved. And thatâsâŚeasier said than done.
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Yep, theyâd have to introduce racials so broken that theyâd force people to pay 25 dollars to faction swap.
But how many would quit in response to such a gross move?
In general the players on horde are just better. Alliance tends to attract more kids than horde does.
Alliance already have the best pve racials in mechagnomes
Alliance are equal for pvp racials with human racials.
As someone who plays alliance I would much rather play horde but I have more friends on alliance.
Youâre right. If it was cross-faction, they would make me do something like go into literal Hell to rescue the leaders of the other faction right after a war and then constantly work alongside them for an entire expansion. Can you imagine? We canât have that!
Can you imagine?
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Just make transfers from horde to alliance free for a period of time after instituting the changes.
Thatâs not what you pay them for
And it was dumb. No question.
The game needs LESS of that, not more.
Think back to Wrath. Did Alliance players get off the boat in Howling Fjord and report to Sylvanas? No. That would have been ridiculous.
Did Horde players go through the Dark Portal in Burning Crusade and report to Danath? Again, no. Equally ridiculous.
Blizzard is being cheap by making a âone size fits allâ story.
They should have had a Horde experience and an Alliance experience in the Maw. The basic story can be the same, but the characters should have been different.
Just like Halls of Reflection in Wrath. Same dungeon, but it had Jaina or Sylvanas depending on which faction you were.
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Surprised I havenât seen this tidbit of (classic) news talked about here:
(edit: better link)
Basically a lot of what has been said already, this gameâs population isnât what it once was and dividing the players further doesnât help at all. Just allow cross faction grouping for PvE and be done with it. Cities can still remain faction specific.
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I donât disagree
That being said this imbalance has multiple factors which have led to the imbalance that presently exists.
A multi part problem, requires a multi part fix.
Fix the racials, figure out a way to bring back the alliance numbers.
Or just unite the factions and let everyone play togeather but Iâm not sure how it would play out in reality.
Yup, unless they want Blizz forcing them to a faction and server.
Which people are going to hate more than unbalanced factions and servers.
Honestly Iâm in the âlet players group, guild, and play with each other cross-factionâ camp. Itâs time.
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There were windows of time where blizzard could have done something but now itâs too late.
Horde is at critical mass. We have all the groups for all the content.
Just let people group cross faction. Itâs over.
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Once upon a time, there were mechanical advantages to being Horde. Which prompted people to go there. The balance wasnât thrown too far out of whack though. At a certain point, they demolished that mechanical advantage, and actually gave it to Alliance. And people swapped over.
They scrapped that, and the people who bounced over just for that reason, went back to Horde. Horde has the number advantages at this point. Now itâs not too large around then. Itâs an advantage, but not too much.
But there are still more opportunities over there, more raiders, more pvpâers. As time goes on Alliance people move there to group up with these people. Every person who does, increases the divide. Making the other side that much more attractive.
You let this situation sit for years and it gets worse and worse at an accelerating pace.
Now? Even if you made Alliance OP mechanically(âŚarguably some racials are) but itâs not enough to draw people back. Because the grouping opportunities flat out outweighs that advantage. Youâd have to make Alliance so OP youâd break the game almost to convince people to jump. Which isnât a viable scenario.
This is why you address issues before they turn into problems. And before those problems approach becoming disasters. Weâre well on our way to disaster territory at this point and theyâre still sitting there ignoring it.
The faction divide is dumb and needs to end. You can keep factions, but stop leaving them divisive. Move them to be more like covenants, where they have stories, they have their areas, and you can be in one. And best of all you can have more than 2. More opportunities for story, more opportunities for growth, more opportunities for players to find people to play with.
Just move pvp in the world to be either FFA or keep it based on those factions and just make everyone in your party/raid âgreenâ to you.
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