I keep trying to tell the Jews and Palestinians the same thing but that’s the funny thing when both sides keep committing atrocities. People tend to stay pissed.
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And that aspect of the playerbase is not dealing with a faction imbalance. Fortunately.
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it’s not getting new players to a faction, but luring competitive guilds to the faction is a good start. I wouldn’t have nerfed Alliance’s warmode box until factions balanced out a bit more.
Start with more compelling AR’s and not just fat people, diaper Gnomes, Dark Dwarves and whiter Draenie. You know, something that might be ACTUAL FAN SERVICE IN THE FORM OF HIGH ELVES…something people have been asking for since the inception of the game. You know, kind of like Blood Elves were handed to the Horde to fix the SAME PROBLEM Blizzard had in Vanilla.
How about SOME STORY. While Alliance was busy watching the Horde movie (that featured a WHOPPING TWO Alliance characters in TOTAL for all the FMV cinematics) this expansion…we got almost no story other then to save and prop up the Horde.
How about instead of putting all of the decisions on the Horde side, we at least be allowed to make the decisions to NOT SAVE A HORDE LEADER WE ARE AT WAR WITH in saving Baine. How many decisions have the Horde gotten to make this expansion? The Alliance can’t even make a simple one like NOT SAVING A HORDE LEADER.
How about having the Alliance do something other then just move the story forward and have uber powerful morons for leaders. You know the greatness of going to Azshara but not having Tyrande/Malfurion there AT ALL because we got all of the story of the burning of Teldrassil and revenge in killing 1 valkyr and moving along. Alliance story in Darkshore after the genocide of Teldrassil…a 20 minute game event/warfront followed by you guessed it, nothing.
How about having the VOID ELVES be involved in something that has to do with N’zoth…an old god and all about the void, nah why would we do that i mean after all they are a “race” to play with all 20 of them in lore. Story for Alliance AR’s you say? Nope, the 2 that were pulled from thin air so Horde could have 2 races with all of the lore/story of the Nightborne and HM Tauren, yea those 2 that basically pick their nose and have done nothing and i bet will do nothing in 8.3 and beyond because they are nothing more then pretty art assets picking their nose in the breeze. Not even useful when it should be content that involves them directly.
How about ANYTHING that would give the Alliance SOME PRIDE IN BEING ALLIANCE? You know, a victory in the game that isn’t only seen in “lore” or off screen, something that is actually reflected in the game. Something that isn’t a giant PYRRHIC VICTORY OF STUPID WRITING and HORRIFIC NON EVENTS IN GAME. I mean hell we are years down the road and does the Alliance have ANYTHING TO SHOW FOR LOSING Theramore, South Shore or anything else they have lost since the inception of the game? Hell our moronic leaders can’t even get Gnomeragan because that would be game breaking imbalance for the factions…are you F’N KIDDING ME? But hey when Teldrassil was destroyed we invaded UC…only to have another giant PYRRHIC VICTORY in a wasteland we can’t hold because it’s been blighted.
So many reasons to play Alliance…i can’t imagine why everyone plays the Horde. I am sure there is no bias at all in the game because all of the Horde players tell me so. Not that when there is content cut it’s Alliance that gets cut (multiple expansions) because Hordes content gets done first. Not that the game REFLECTS THE BLATANT IMBALANCE OF HOW THE FACTIONS GET TREATED AT EVERY TURN FOR THE HISTORY OF THE GAME. Hell Blizzard couldn’t even be bothered putting Varian in the game for the first four YEARS of the game because who needs racial/faction leaders in the game…and then when they finally got around to it (because the content that was supposed to introduce him got cut) they DID IN A COMIC BOOK.
How about putting some actual effort into anything Alliance instead of every left over idea and afterthought going to the Alliance? How about some fan service the the good guys and not just garbage writing and family drama with uber powerful morons that always have the ability to move the story forward but fail at basic tactics/strategy ALL THE TIME because anything less would make the Horde not a badass as Blizzard ALWAYS WANTS THEM TO BE.
So i ask YOU, given just these things here that i have mentioned… and how the ALLIANCE playerbase (what’s left of it anyways even as it dwindles to nothingness no matter how many horde players will show you statistics about level 120’s but then when you see who is actually online playing Alliance is dead) feels, not what anyone says but how the ALLIANCE PLAYERBASE FEELS, what do you think would/could/should be done to fix the problem that has been repeatedly left with nothing done.
At this point…ANYTHING that might help the Alliance feel like Blizzard gave a crap other then pandering to the Horde might help (and by anything i don’t mean some bee mount that will be repackaged in an expansion or 2 so the Horde can have one, a bee that exists BECAUSE OF HOW IMBALANCED THE GAME/STORY AND EVERYTHING ARE THIS EXPANSION). Don’t count on it though…because the story of WoW is the story of the Horde and Blizzard and it’s devs have made that VERY CLEAR OVER A VERY LONG PERIOD OF TIME.
Just wait until Ogres become an AR using the fat people model they were always made for, calling it now. It might take a year or 2 or even 3 but won’t be surprised at all when it does.
EDIT: Oh i almost forgot, the imbalance is SO BAD, that the Horde as a faction is THE ONLY FACTION WITH ANY STORY OR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THE EVENTS OF THE SHADOWLANDS is going to be about. Why is that you ask? Because the Horde is the faction that got story investigating what was going on with death and the lich king and Bwonsamdi and Vol’jin…the Alliance has NO CLUE OR STORY AT ALL CONNECTING THEM TO THE SHADOWLANDS. For all the Alliance knows everything is great after Sylvanas left…that’s it, nothing to see here.
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I’ll admit I can’t think of a way to fix it. I wouldn’t invest much time in Alliance no matter how good their racial abilities were. I just don’t find the races interesting or fun to play.
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Remove faction barriers (except maybe for pvp) so that people can actually play what they want and not be locked into going Horde for better recruitment for mythic guilds or any of that sort of nonsense.
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I will say it again, all you have to do is remove the faction/race restrictions and allow either faction to play any race they want.
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Another good issue for balance would be, if the concern was balance and not hordebait to get people to play the monster and quote ‘ugly’ races then they could just do something like Racials would be disabled in competitive pve situations like mythics and raidings just like warmode talents.
Or if they wanted it to have the theme, but still retain balance. They could go the way of say like, i think what League of Legends does is offer you an ability slot, and have each class start off with their racial as the baseline they start unlocked off with. But have like fairly trivial or moderate unlocks for the others. Say, with one slot, you could select the Belf arcane torrent or shadowmeld, but to unlock it, you’d need to get exalted with Darnasus or Silvermoon. Possibly you could have a account wide unlock where to use horde racials, you’d just need one toon with a exalted unlocked for every one of them and vice aversa. Bam, people still play both sides of the story, but put their main on the capital cities and communities they want to play on.
Since there’s no Horde stormwind or Trade chat lol. Plus, castles are fun to play in, orc huts and native american town are fun to look at, but who wants to dream and have a fantasy about playing tribal only to have someone charge in calling Tauren cultural appropriation of Minotaur Native americans?
Of course casual players notice multiple CGI cinematics featuring Horde leaders and characters. An ending to the faction war that cannot be accurately described in a way that is not ridiculous.
The absurd gap in the quality of the allied races. And the Night Elves being wiped out to serve a story that couldn’t care less about them.
It’s only on forums like this that you get some players who are invested in maintaining the pretense that there is any sort of parity in the quality of the content for the two factions.
Being casual doesn’t make people stupid. It just means that they have not chosen to play the game competitively.
Players who stick with alliance are mostly doing so in spite of the gap in quality, not because they are unaware of it. It’s treated as a given by players at this point. You can see that even in general chat for both factions.
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The end of this post reminded me that, much like how the Alliance had no in game reason to ever go near Uldir, the Alliance also has no in game story elements to make them a part of what’s going on with Sylvanas and the upcoming Shadowlands story. This is sad 
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I completely agree, the fact that one faction has exposure to what is actually going on and the other faction is just left in the complete dark…is absolutely the definition of garbage writing and piss poor game design and COMPLETE BIAS for one faction.
But hey, what does Alliance have to complain about, no bias at all in the game…things are even and fair. LOL
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Ok.
So back to the point. How does this effect the faction imbalance?
Considering there isn’t a population imbalance, but a high end raiding, m+, and pvp imbalance.
Is your point that if there were more Alliance themed CGIs that suddenly there would be more Alliance guilds clearing mythic TEP?
I am quite sure the Alliance will have some pretty strong in game story elements to make them a part of whats going on with Sylvanas in the Shadowlands story.
I mean. Are we ignoring that Bolvar is apparently back? Its not like he is Alliance based…no? You don’t think he will be rallying the Alliance?
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I already addressed the question of why so many competitive pve guilds switched from alliance to horde over the course of the 7-8 years from cataclysm to the end of legion. Read my post a little higher in the thread.
It’s common knowledge, or should be, because the very best guilds made it clear why they switched, and because alliance mythic raiders have described the problem in great detail many times. They also predicted that the problem would get worse, which it did.
But that’s the high end. Of course there are other factors. Horde offers a better experience overall, including more story content and easier wins in pvp. If you want to farm marks of honor for alliance characters, participating in pvp on a horde character is faster. If you want to raid, horde has more opportunities.
There is more/better story content as well. All of these factors add up to active players spending more time on Horde. Better pve, better pvp, and better content.
If some of these survey type addons are showing a 54/46 ratio at max level, then that is a big population imbalance, the biggest since blood elves were added to horde that I can recall. Those numbers were 49/51 for a long time (slightly in favor of alliance).
There is a lot of inertia in that number. Because people have been playing the game for a long time, and because of players having so many alts.
So 54/46 is actually indicative of a large population imbalance at max level, and all of the statistics for players completing content indicate that it is worse than that number would make it appear.
But this is also blindingly obvious to anyone playing the game.
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There isn’t a population imbalance…except for every area of the game that is played has a population imbalance.
LOL, there are no words.
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The reason they switched is twofold. One because previously racials were borked. That has been remedied. The second is that the Horde is where the active high end population. That has not.
The high end is the only place the imbalance is actually there.
Debatable. I don’t feel that BFA had more and better story content for the Horde. The story for both sides was absolutely horrible. As a Horde player, there was absolutely nothing enjoyable to see yet another Horde leader go crazy, die, etc. It wasn’t fun losing the entire expansion.
For all characters it is in favor of the Alliance. its only for 120 characters that a small difference shows up.
No. It really isn’t. Not one that should reflect the absence of the Alliance in the mythic raid scene, high end m+, and high end pvp.
The Alliance has the population to be active. They don’t have the people that want to participate. That is different.
The ol “if you disagree then you are blind” defense.
There you go. Confusing “population imbalance” with “participation imbalance”.
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Spent any time on Alliance side lately…guess why there is no participation? I know it is hard to think outside the “everything is balanced” and even and Alliance is doing fine box, but the reason there is a participation imbalance…IN ALL ASPECTS OF THE GAME…is because there is a population imbalance.
Just because you play Alliance doesn’t mean you don’t want to do content, or is that the logic you are going with?
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Rename guilds to factions. Factions aren’t necessarily required to be allied to horde or alliance. The Cenarion Circle or the Argent Crusade are factions made up of all races. This opens up the possibility of raiding or doing dungeon in a group scenario and removes the need to no longer play your favourite race because you need to transfer horde to get into the end game raiding scene.
Significance of a change like this is it is already available in the lore and it doesn’t mess with the presented issue of destroying the war in warcraft. People still want the faction war to continue despite how boring it’s become and making PvE content available cross faction would not affect the war in any way.
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They tried to increase Warmode bonuses and inducements to make Alliance participation go up. All it did was make the Alliance go for long enough to get the cheese until the cheese wasn’t needed anymore. Mechanical changes like Racials or increased rewards, Do. Not. Work. There is only one thing that matters and that is people because funnily enough, people is the one resource that the developers cannot give to players. So People will go to where the greater opportunity is.
There is not going to be a discovery of Oil or Plutonium or some miracle that will cause a population rush back into the Alliance. The closest we had was when a single guild during Dazar’alor swapped to Alliance for some extra 400 I-level pieces and when the race was over, they went back to Horde.
End the segregation. Let people play with their friends. It’s the only real solution left anymore.
Merge imbalanced servers seems like the easiest fix to me.
Switch to Horde.