Yeah, because forcing people to play the faction they don’t want to play would go over oh so well.
Person 1: “Hey man, I think I’ma come try this classic wow thing.”
Person 2: “Awesome, I play on Alliance on server Y” Person 1 tried to make alliance character on server Y, is told too many alliance on that server already
Person 1: “Says too many alliance on that server.”
Person 2: “Sorry, nothing I can do about that.”
Person 1: “It’s fine, maybe I’ll try it some other time.” they probably never do
Anyway, even if they did enforce factions being equal on servers, it still wouldn’t fix the horde queue issue as we already know most alliance don’t care about pvp in the 1st place.
No they won’t. People aren’t going to transfer servers just because blizzard enforced population parity on servers. They’re just going to get mad and come to the forums and complain that their friend can’t join them on the server they’ve already established themselves on because of a dumb policy that doesn’t actually fix the issue at hand. Because again, even if factions were evenly split 50/50 the horde would still have to wait in long queues because most of the alliance doesn’t care about pvp.
People do it in games that are not wow all of the time. I realize this relies on actiblizz not being the nickel and diming money grubbers that they are, but it does in fact work if people actually care about playing with their friends like you guys are constantly claiming.
Do tell, what makes you the representative for the ‘Mass Majority’
Some of my greatest memories are from WPvP, I believe I was on Frostwolf back then, Horde Dominate but only by a little. Nagrand was like a HUGE BG’s that ran 24/7; honorable mentions - Ele Plat and obviously Halaa.
Horgan is claiming that players tend to trend towards the faction with the perceived advantage. You are calling his claim ‘BS excuses’, and I am saying that we have Retail to show population trends that tend to follow the balancing of the game. You follow?
It’s a good, well written post, but I’m pretty sure Blizz won’t walk back this decision even if better alternatives exist. Smol muscles blizz cuts twice and measures none.
No. People choose factions for very simple reasons. They choose it because it appeals to them or because their friends play that faction.
This is what no one ever factors in.
PvP-only players are more aggressive than PvE-only players and that–that alone–accounts for the majority of the imbalance you see.
Sure, for a hot minute in the past, when this content was current, the biggest and most powerful PvE guilds (which are the ONLY groups that choose something like faction or race changes en masse over tiny advantages on a spreadsheet) went Horde. That change was never reversed, and there was a massive exodus from the Alliance at that time. Seriously, though, that was over a decade ago, and it just is what it is. The perception of Horde players being “better” players was also birthed at that time, and you see it still persists. That’s because the best players in the world DID make a change back then, and all the little guys followed them to get some of that glory splattered onto their own cloaks. Again, though: that was 2007 and 2008.
Today, in 2021 Classic, the imbalance is about personal preference and where our friends play. There aren’t many Classic players who chose based on faction racials and the convenient location of flight points.
Giving us shinies from a cash store or in the form of improved game rewards will not change the imbalance, and Blizzard knows that. They’ve tried ALL of it before, despite all the whining that Blizzard “won’t fix it.”
They did fix it…the only way that would work. We might not like it, but there it is.
They should just cap the new character creation on unbalanced servers, aswell as incoming server transfers. My server was 50/50 in classic and is now 30/70. Blizzard should just lock the character creation for horde and lock incoming horde transfers on servers heading in this direction. I see this as the only fair option to pursue faction balance.
Why do most people’s friends play Horde? Why is Horde the only one with the chain reaction where one friend goes and all the other friends, and then their friends, and then their friends, follow? Is it possibly because the first friend said “We have great racials, c’mon! I know you’d rather play Alliance but trust me, this is the right choice to come Horde.”
I can definitely see Horde winning as a friend group debates which faction to roll, it is not hard. Especially now that they can also say, “And most people play Horde anyway. Easy to find groups! Plus we don’t even need to wait for BG queues and we win all the time because great racials or at the very least equal to the other Horde we play against sometimes!”
In most cases, the people who go Horde do it because the best PvE guilds in the world went Horde back in '07, so the population of the player base has been weighted in favor of Horde since that time.
It’s habit, and it’s personal preference. The average WoW player is a (relatively) young adult male, and men prefer orcs to elves, on average.
The personality of the Horde is more aggressive and warlike, and the Forsaken rogue has more appeal to that player archetype than a human one. Orgrimmar has more appeal than Stormwind to that player archetype.
Most WoW players with a history in this game have been in one faction or the other for the last 10 years, and they’re comfortable with it. That’s why they pick it, and it has almost nothing to do with racials or spreadsheet advantage for the vast majority.