Horde favoritism is only due to the fact that there is a much more active LFG scene and competitive scene on horde. If either of those things are important to you I would suggest playing horde.
Idk about total faction population so I won’t comment on that.
I personally like SL a TON more than bfa. Full disclosure I only played patch 8.3 of bfa and trying to catch up with essences and stuff was horrendous.
What are your favorite aspects of the game? I could probably answer if SL is better in those regards if I knew what you cared about most.
I think BFA had a bit more playability, for lack of a better word. Grinding essences and azerite and corruption was pretty awful, but it allowed for some interesting ways to play the game. In SL, there’s just the right way and the wrong way.
Yes, there was a bit more “mix and matching” options in BFA.
You could mix-and-match Essences fairly easily as your spec(s) required. Same thing with Corruption - you could swap out this or that piece and customize your character that way.
Meanwhile in SL it’s “this is the BiS covenant you will use, and this is the BiS legendary, and these are the BiS conduits”.
It’s pretty black and white as to what is considered “best” for a particular class/spec. There’s not much room for experimenting/tinkering with different setups.
And with Covenant-gating, it’s not easy to try out different playstyles with having to slog thru renown from 0 should you decide to switch.
Alliance had a lot of draenei lore in WoD. They had better garrison music compared to orc grunts and moans. And why is it that horde had to be the bad guys over and over again?
If you happen to really like one of the covenants and get into that aspect of it, SL is probably better than BFA. But if you don’t like the covenants, SL very quickly starts to feel like a lobby game; there is basically nothing meaningful to do between instanced dungeon/raid/pvp that is fun or rewarding.
The only part I really disagree with here would be it starting in Wrath. I think it started more so in Cata. In Wrath there was the wrathgate event. Rest of it was squarely focused on the Scourge, the Argent Crusade, and of course various humans / former humans Luke the Scarlets, Arthas, etc.
I would agree though if the sentiment were that was the start of tensions rising between Horde and Alliance. Garrosh and Varian kept butting heads despite Thrall and Jaina trying to stop them, and of course the Wrathgate happened where the end result was Varian declaring war.
The overall focus though of that expansion was definitely the Scourge however.
I think SLs could end up pretty solid if the content patches pull through. So far, if you aren’t into collecting mounts and transmog, its pretty boring. I think the main issue is how slow 9.1 is coming along.
Better dungeons, raids and itemization. However it’s still bogged down with horrendous story, awful WQs, timegating, and poor quality zones. Also they lied through their teeth about quicker flying.
It’s better but it’s also really “meh” and nothing feels rewarding, even the mounts are mostly lame.
SL 9.0 > BFA 8.0 BFA 8.3> SL 9.0 for me
bfa had me quit a month in and only come back for 8.3 after SL leaks, def playing a lot less SL atm but id take it over the start of BFA any day
