Define “imbalance”. We talking PVP performance, Server Populations, PVE performance, Storylines… what exactly are we trying to balance? All of it? Which is the most important on the list? What is the least important?
5 Likes
I’ve said it many times. Just let them q lfd/lfr together. That alone would solve a whole bunch of queue time issues. As for the top end premades, I’d leave that untouched for now.
There. A perfectly good example of what Blizz could do.
6 Likes
Well, the “imbalance” is a participation imbalance in serious endgame content and not a significant numerical imbalance. That being the case, and not wanting the faction barrier dropped, the question really becomes:
“How does Blizzard incentivize people doing endgame content to consider coming back to the Alliance without providing ridiculously OP racials that would just swing the pendulum hard the other way?”
The problem doesn’t have an easy fix, in fact it may be there is no fix on the PvE side and that for the Mythic raiders it simply is the way it is. It’s probably easier to address in PvP because it’s one thing to get individuals or small groups to move and quite another to expect content-pushing raiding guilds to move.
4 Likes
Oh this is incredibly easy imo. Just give increased rep, exp and loot to the faction that does content on the less populated faction. Give a constant x2 chance at a loot table to the smaller faction and s*** will fly in a direction fast for people trying to cash in. Lmao
8 Likes
Free faction changes for Horde would go a long way.
5 Likes
Continue to profit off of the Warmode incentives and not worry about it 
2 Likes
Free faction transfers to Alliance only. Population levels drive the majority of faction imbalance, players want to play on the servers that have a) less resistance and b) a larger playerbase to draw from.
The only way you can potentially encourage players without breaking the game and simply making Alliance broken or OP is to allow players on mass to have the option at no cost to swap to the minority faction.
Should a reasonable number of players then take up that option that faction ends up being more appealing in the long run and more likely to see healthy populations.
Any physical restrictions or incentives to force faction balance is ultimately unhealthy for the game.
Let Alliance and Horde interact with each other. That is, remove most of the faction restrictions. Of course they’ll never do it because faction warfare is a hill the devs are willing to die on for whatever reason.
11 Likes
I don’t think this is the case. Overall population is not that badly skewed. Just a few % either side of a 50/50 split. The issue is that the alliance are collecting transmog and battle pets while the horde are killing raid bosses.
2 Likes
I’ve tried to play alliance and I just don’t like the questing, story etc.
Stop giving benefits and rewards to one faction over the other. Like OP rewards and racials.
I wouldn’t mind a 3rd faction with the forsaken leaving the horde (not that it would ever happen).
Overall population wise that is very true. However that’s due to population dynamics.
Servers are generally either vastly Horde dominant or vastly Alliance dominant.
Players that want to play Alliance would never really consider doing so on a 4:1 Horde favoured server and vice versa.
For OCE reference if you play Horde PvP you roll on Barthilas, if you are Alliance you roll Frostmourne.
Players typically don’t do the opposite as it gimps their player pool to do content.
Just buffing and making Alliance Racials overpowered would just shift things to the other side. Then the Horde would get their Racials buffed again and the cycle would continue.
A permanent solution for the imbalance problem, at least in the PvE side of things, would be cross faction grouping and Guilds. Put a option for that and faction imbalance would vanish completely as both could do from the most casual to the most hardcore content together, with no difference in participation or progress between them.
In PvP they could enable a Mercenary mode option that you can queue for the other faction while you race is changed to one of them, just like in Battle of Dazar’alor. The thematic of Horde and Alliance would still exists as battlegrounds were the two faction battle each other are a thing of the past, but you could play from both perspectives.
5 Likes
The pendulum is too far one way, they need to force it move, overpowered racials, exclusive mounts, free characters transfers, until is near the middle.
2 Likes
Bribery
The Alliance is waiting for ye!
Fixing faction imbalance would be very simple. We simply make it so any faction with a 2-1 majority or greater gets a debuff where if they die their character gets permanently deleted.
5 Likes
The whole blood elf purpose was to fix the faction imbalance in the past, maybe a cleary overpowered and beautiful new race for the Alliance.
Or just relax with the faction restrictions
8 Likes
I don’t understand why people act like alliance needs buffs. The highest end mythics, see MDI are run with alliance nelfs, nearly every arena team in worlds is full of alliance to the point the commentators low-key freak out when someone is horde. Battlegrounds are structurally balanced to favor alliance in terms of geography and building design. Alliance get a massive warmode and pvp bonus. Horde story has been disgustly awful for years and years. Like… what else do you want? You have literally everything.
3 Likes
The faction imbalance only effects good alliance players.
Eliminate factions and only have instanced PvP.
2 Likes
I am very against doing away with factions. I probably would stop playing at that point.
3 Likes