You’re missing a great deal of nuance that is particular to the PvP community.
Perception and Stoneform are powerful racials, but they are still mostly useful vs. a single class. WotF and Hardiness are each useful vs. several classes, and Orc’s on-use racial is useful in every PvP circumstance.
People who are serious about competing in Arenas - the same players capable of carrying in BGs - absolutely favor Horde because of the racials. This causes the more skilled PvP players to be concentrated on one faction, and creates a gravity problem where the next tier down of PvP players feels they also have to make the same choice - not only for the racials but also for a larger community of potential teammates, better W-L in BGs, etc.
This has a further trickle down effect, as the imbalance at the top level of the skill bracket affects BG W-L and creates a wider community perception that Horde is where the good PvPers are and Alliance just sucks.
That sounds like an Alliance problem? This isn’t changing, the white knight faction appeals to roleplayers, while the Horde is content ripping their heads off.
The complaints are pointless, Horde will always be more popular. It’s barely because of the reasons you state. Yes some players will jump ship, but the majority just enjoy the Horde itself. I’ve always played Horde and it has nothing to do with FOTM. I genuinely prefer the storyline, community and vibe.
Hard facts in this post, they gotta think and come up with creative ways of making both factions equally attractive at first sight. Only reason why you should choose a faction is because either your friends/family are playing there, or you like the lore/models/animations etc… Not because you’re forced to by an imbalance in the pvp community due to OP racials and whatnot
People pick factions for all kinds of different reasons so let’s not waste our time with overly reductionist arguments or fall into the trap of the fallacy of the single cause.
When it comes to PvP specifically, and issues involving queue times and W-L rate, what really matters is why are the Gladiator level players more concentrated on Horde? And even in that case there isn’t a single cause but there are several causes, at least two which are obvious: 1. Horde racials do in fact make a significant difference at the highest levels of play, and 2. larger community of PvPers on Horde = more highly skilled players to form teams with.
The thing is that, once the top end goes for PvP, lots of Duelist and Rival level players are going to follow, because they want to get into that elite Gladiator level of gameplay and the same social circles. And now you have a situation where the top 10% of players skill wise are favoring one faction, and that has a direct effect on BG W-L rates…
…meaning that effect is felt by all of the lower skill players, because suddenly a majority of the players capable of carrying a team in BGs are now concentrated on a single faction.
There’s lots of causes, but blood elves were the beginning of the end for alliance faction dominance. There aren’t enough serious pvp players to explain this kind of lopsidedness. Take the paladin “advantage” away and add a cool looking race, and you’re going to attract players. Alliance never offered anything like that. Mechagnomes lol?
The other major problem with classic is that the retail attitude is still so strong here. Horde has the reputation for being better and for making faster progress. Good luck unringing that bell. The funniest part is that none of it matters. Raids fall over within a few days.
Many Alliance have had to reroll on both retail and classic due to an imbalance of the PvP community and ALSO the PvE community - not enough population to play with. So yeah, this is happening and Blizzard has been ignoring it. Why must they pay attention only when it’s you?
I’m already on alliance. They’ve tried these things before. It doesn’t fix anything. Horde players do not want to play as alliance just as we don’t want to play as horde. You realize that this faction fighting is part of a badly written fiction, don’t you? You’re not supposed to get this emotional in real life lol.
No, what I’m telling you is that getting emotional over video game factions is not a good usage of your time. Horde races don’t have options for “mage” beards. That’s a deal breaker. I like the leveling zones in alliance better as well.
If I wanted to play as horde in TBC in classic, then I would. I don’t think many people are spending time leveling in order to argue with an alliance toon lol.
As someone who has played both Horde and Alliance over the years I simply do not care what faction I play.
It blows my mind that people are so one sided, “I’d never play Horde/Alliance, you’re races are all ugly bla bla”, meanwhile I’m happy playing either faction and can find a positive on both sides.
I really don’t believe this idea that there is literally not a single race/class combo on the opposite faction they’d enjoy playing, and that faction swapping is some unthinkable sin.
Honestly the reason I went Alliance at launch was because I knew everyone would be going Horde, I didn’t want to be on the faction that I saw as “the easy route”, and wanted to represent the underdog faction and help bolster their numbers to help promote faction balance.
Sadly however, I found Horde simply do not care about faction balance whatsoever, if anything, they purposefully want to see alliance wiped out from their servers, alot of Horde players see cleansing the server of Alliance as “winning” the server and actually want their “pvp” servers to become de facto pve realms by virtue of having no opposite faction to be able to pvp against…
Sure, but those players are pretty rare. I had horde toons in retail. Goblins look cool lol. For a good number of players, this faction stuff really matters. It’s like democrats versus republicans. Good luck getting them to switch sides.
I played a gnome mage when bc was current and I want to try to experience that again…or at least some semblance of what it was like. It’s weird with the old world being so dead though.
It goes beyond just faction swapping. You’re leaving behind friends and guilds. You’re also trading faster que times for a much lower win %.
Truth. Coming from someone who has played both Alliance and Horde in Classic and TBC.
Bonus XP, Gold, and Rep are probably the solution. I have Alliance toons I would probably level if the grind was incentivized. This would also encourage new and returning players to choose Alliance over horde to help with faction balance.
I’d like to think honor, but this could theoretically give Alliance even more of an advantage in competitive arena. Not the best idea. Perhaps give them PvE incentives for doing PvP? Badges maybe?
I don’t know to be honest, but either way, Blizz, throw the Alliance a bone here. They deserve it just as much as the horde do. They also want to play and enjoy the game and faction balance is healthy for the game overall.
There is literally no way to fix PvP population balance. Overall Horde Alliance Ratio is way closer than the active PvP Horde Alliance ratio. Blizzard can’t force Alliance players to PvP, if they don’t want to play PvP then they don’t have to.
If you were to somehow force balance to the PvP population then the overall population would be like 75% Alliance and 25% Horde. This would be a much bigger issue than Horde just having more PvP players.
So long as overall population remains somewhat even then PvP balance will favor Horde, and same faction BGs are the best solution.
Honestly I don’t care about wpvp drama. Yet because pvp servers are all horde I have to.
I just wanted to BG. Yes I get that alliance is outnumbered on pvp servers… I delt with that as horde in 2004. Que times for for have always been bad. Even when horde was out numbered by alliance. I’ve always wanted same Faction pvp because why separate ques? I don’t care about wows silly Faction war…I just want to BG.
Sorry but no PVP game should ever have a que above 20 minutes. If I’ve ever played another game with long BG ques then I quit. It’s not worth my time. Why should wow? Oh reroll alliance? No thank you I put time into my character already.