Based on historical evidence of the 1.12 AV?
No
Based on current evidence it’s impossible to say as alliance are not even trying to play the map as a majority.
With these two answered being compared the conclusion can be made that if the map favors the horde it’s a small amount at best because the sample size of data (15 years of historical data from vanilla, then private servers using 1.12 AV) to 1 year of classic data show an alliance favored results yet current data suggests otherwise.
So then we have to look at what has changed? The number one answer to that is the players.
So then we look at how the players could have changed. Was a new strategy found that was unknown for the 15 years? No, the strategy currently called scorched earth by alliance was known for at least 12 years but didn’t cause such drastic changes in win rates as we are seeing in this 1 year of classic.
Did the player base priority on the map change? Yes, it is not as an effective HPH farm for alliance because of the forced delayed que times and because many alliance have already reached exalted on their main character for AV they are not prioritizing going into AV with good gear because they are playing it to exalted for alts now.
This means that because the HPH priority is gone, the priority changed to reputation, which once achieved will not see the players main character in AV again and it’s now time for an alt to go to AV, which typically has considerably worse gear. Adding this to the average for alliance means their team is usually undergeared compared to horde who still play AV for HPH due to all of the PvP BG que times still being somewhat long.
So in general there is a gear level difference that is a considerable factor in win rates.
Next we look at both teams priority in the game. Alliance want to maximize reputation, horde want to maximize honor.
This means alliance will directly hurt their win condition for more rep while horde get the most honor for going for objectives that directly benifit their win conditions.
And with considering this and that alliance priority BiS not honor but rep, it shows us that players who are playing AV as alliance are more interested in pve rewards they get from AV reputation. This means the average AV alliance player is not a skilled pvpers but a pve player doing PvP for the rewards that help his pve performance. This equates a skill difference on horde vs alliance inside of the AV map on average because the horde inside of AV are typically more focused on PvP in general than the alliance in AV and will on average be better at reacting to non scripted PvP conditions instead of the scripted pve conditions that many alliance players in AV are more focused on.
Lastly we look at motivation to win each individual game instead of going to the next one. With the que times being what they are for alliance it’s not all that hard to get into AV, but for horde it’s hours of waiting and resulted in more motivation to try in that AV instead of try again on the next one. This means horde don’t give up 10 minutes into a losing game on average while alliance do because they can lose, and just go to the next one. It’s a negative side effect of “instant gratification” for wait times for things in terms of alliance motivation.
The que times also ha e a second hand effect, farming for consumables. Horde are more likely to use a consum inside of AV than alliance purely because we have more time to farm because of how long we have to wait to get I to an AV vs alliance wait times. This compounds the skill and gear difference to be more impactful as horde will have more Mana health or raw stats (potions/elixirs) or more damage CC utility (engineering) or both as they will have more time to farm these items or gold to buy these items and use them more freely than alliance on average.
With all of these factors being considered it makes it hard to view if the map is the problem, but then we add in AV weekend. Where the alliance winrate jumps up by a good 30% on average when the PvP focused alliance main characters come back to AV as it’s finally close enough to the HPH farm requirements to let them play AV without feeling like they are falling behind in the honor farm.
This evens up the average gear/skill levels of the map by quite a bit (still not perfect because the alliance alt rep farmers are still in the games but enough to show the impact the gear/skill difference is having) with this we see a near 99% loss rate going to 60-70% loss rate on average. And considering this AV weekend still doesn’t remove the alliance alt rep farmers and just adds the good PvP players with gear back into the equation we will say it puts them at 50% good PvP mains and 50% rep farming alts. This means that if it was a 100% good PvP mains team the win rate would be at least near 50% because just putting half of them in at an even 50% ratio pits them at +30% win rate. So it would be a +60% winrate until you add in horde adapting to the change in player base, which is why I took 10% off that winrate. This results at an estimated 50% winrate.
There is a lot of factors to consider for this issue and I have likely just scratched the surface with this explanation but in general is the map the issue was your question.
No it’s not.
Could it be causing a 5-10% winrate different one way or the other? Sure it could, but there’s a lot of factors that can’t be looked at individually until the other factors are made more even. And with the difference in player gear / skill on average it’s very hard to say how much of a factor the map is having and I can say with certainty it is not the cause of the 99% loss rate for AV alliance alt rep farmers.
And considering historical evidence shows alliance have the map advantage and that’s a 15+ year sample size vs a 1 year sample size of classic. I’m inclined to believe the evidence that shows the map does not favor the horde especially considering the other factors that contribute to the win conditions as shown above.