That wouldnt fix anything though…
The problem is you have the best players for a given activity all flocking to a single faction… changing the incentives doesnt change this problem, it only changes the colors from blue one to red… namely you just swap the labels
If you want ‘balance’ youd need to alter the systems that lead to clustering of high end players towards one faction (either one)
How about an expac or two showing the Horde losing at every step while the Alliance wins everything? I mean the story doesn’t matter to everyone, but having your only wins in books or a side comment at a con doesn’t make you want to play as the Faction that only loses in game.
Competitive people want to play on a winning team. When you show one side only as winning, that side is gonna attract winners.
Personal soapbox comment:
Nothing that effects our in-game understanding of the world we’re gaming in should be hidden away in books or any other out of game source. “Go read X and you’ll understand.” should never be the answer to “why am I seeing this in the game?”
Right, that’s why I suggested adding some more ‘interesting’ races to the Alliance. It’s additive, not reductive - so you’re not going to chase skilled players away. And you’ll draw some - not all - of the skilled players from the Horde. You don’t want to leech too many, or you just reverse the problem. But you do want to shore up the base a tick.
The rest will have to be grown organically.
Edit: right now they’re demoralized and have no will to fight. Scrapping with the Alliance is almost like kicking a lame puppy - it isn’t even fun anymore. They need an in-game reason to grow some fangs. I really don’t know where to go if burning down Teldrassil didn’t do it, but there’s gotta be something that will light a fire under them again.
In the US at least, people love the story of an underdog… pretend or otherwise
Id be surprised if the narative would have any meaningful impact on the faction makeup… baring the introduction of a mew faction
As AA will tell you - first step to getting better is acknowledging there’s a problem.
Blizzard hasn’t even acknowledged faction imbalance is an issue. So I’d say start with that.
I mean I would love to look at real statistics, but we don’t actually have them only blizzard does. The 3rd party pages cannot tell me account from character, where each account mains are are, which characters and or alts are bank alts, gathering alts, AH playing alts, or even if they are horde/alliance alts that only play opposite faction for story (by contrast this why I find people call alliance casuals). I personally think the endgame community is not separate at all…its one system and people have moved mains in one direction or another due to development trends/lever and or ignored balance issues of the past. But people have many alts on both sides, but for the most part only focus endgame/higher pvp on one.
The only issue is that only Oceanic servers are having this reversed where majority of their playerbase is Alliance. but a slow shift is showing.
I only feel Blizzard’s refusal to address the problem is because there is a split of imabalance in both areas.
That would be the current expansion.
Tell me exactly how are they superior? The Alliance racials ONLY favor niche content where majority of the time the racials that are meant to self-dispel a kind of debuff. But typically fails to do any of the sort.
A common problem is Every Man for Himself (Post Nerf) and Escape Artist are said to be able to clear a specific problem. (A stun or Slow/snare) and yet they fail to do so because its a mandatory mechanic. Mechanics like that make the racial use in PvE content ignorable and worthless. Even the passive racials fail to give much use.
Shadowmeld, Haymaker and Gift of the Naaru are the most viable Alliance racials which only two actually has a means to turn tides. Shadowmeld provides a target drop, while GotN just heals a target on an obsurd Cooldown. Haymaker at least provides a strong pushback and stun that can help despite being a single target blow.
Darkflight is the poor man’s sprint that doesn’t offer much beyond 40% run speed. Can help into positioning but it doesn’t offer much.
Fireblood, Stoneform, and Spatial Rift are niche that require so much to occur. Spatial rift needs to assure not a single bump in the road can halt it, or it breaks entirely. (Go test it out and see how badly worked this racial is.) Fireblood needs more debuffs that it CAN purge to maximize its potential. While Stoneform is best for melee / tank classes as it reduces damage and removes most dots.
The Alliance’s racials just do not have the same viable usage that you assume is there. There are raid/dungeon mechanics that ignore these self-dispels because its crucial to the mechanic. The Horde do not need to fear this and even tried to abuse it when racials like Rocket Jump was strong in the Kil’jaedan fight.
And yet no one knew that the Alliance had won the war until a mention at Blizzcon because it’s not shown in game.
Excuse me??? The reason Teldrassil did nothing was because, AGAIN, Tyrande’s revenge was not shown in game.
The Alliance gets the punch. Then we get another because we’re given a quest that we cannot win and all of that is in game.
Horde never have to feel that loss. Cannon loss is only for the Alliance.
Ion has said several times that it is a serious problem but they’re just talking about it.
Here’s what he should do; switch the A Team who normally develops horde content and tell them they’re working on the Alliance. Then tell them that they gave to quote am interesting story that the house can react to.
They have to be as passionate for the alliance as they are the horde.
If you are lactose intolerant, you shouldn’t work at Dairy Queen.
…But racials have always been such a cool difference maker in pvp. Human/nelf teams are not “weaker,” than undead/orc teams by any means, they just have different little advantages.
So for sh**s 'n grins let’s say it’s TBC. And Horde burned down Teldrassil. Even if Tyrande’s revenge wasn’t shown in game, Alliance would have reacted to it - and strongly. Fast forward to BFA, and I almost think it bothers me more than it bothers Alliance players. Horde should be feeling the repercussions from that in Battlegrounds, World PVP, Arenas, you name it. Instead what do I see as a possible ‘solution’ by the fifth post from an Alliance player?
“End the faction war.”
Sure. We just burned your holy World Tree to the ground and left Night Elves homeless…but let’s all hold hands, dance, and sing around the maypole. That’ll totally solve all the PVP related problems!
Except it won’t. It’s just sweeping them under the rug while simultaneously removing a key element that makes World of Warcraft what it is. But at the same time, Horde just burned down a main city for the Alliance and the players are behaving like whipped dogs. So you tell me, if that doesn’t stoke the fires of vengeance and sound the drums of war among that half of the playerbase, what will? Should it have been Stormwind (again) rather than Teldrassil?
I mean realistically we’re not talking about a gigantic gap between Alliance versus Horde population. It’s %53 to %47. But there is a gap in skill - both PVE and PVP, as well as motivation. Horde for the most part still wants to swing over and kick over the Alliance’s sand castle. But instead of getting enraged after said sand castle kicking and punching the Horde in the mouth, the Alliance just wants to cry over the ruins. Basically I’m pondering how to put the fight back in the %47 of the playerbase that seem to be lacking motivation to crack Horde skulls.
I completely disagree with this, the only downside of leaving the Alliance was that I like blue and Alliance themes more, everything else is better on the Horde side.
Relax faction barriers. I would like to see some more factions. I could see the Nelves splitting off from the alliance. Undead from the horde. It would be interesting if they dissolved factions entirely and everyone went back to doing theit own thing. Now War-mode is a true free-for-all and anyone can attack anyone. No more imbalance in war-mode.
I would end the archaic red team vs blue team farce that is factions. Wow is a pve game now, there is no need for warring factions ever since Legion.
Arena and rbg has you fight members of your own side too so what is the point in red vs blue anymore? Just so you have somebody to trash on the forums? Give me a break.
The Alliance already lost, and will lose every time as they did in the past ten years. Right now all players are leaving and the few people that wanna keep playing the blue side already lost their hopes and all their faction pride and don’t care about factions anymore, they only want to keep playing the races they love.
I mean I get that, but the bolded part baffles me. Blizzard plot devices aside, there was always something special about killing Orcs, Trolls, and especially Undead. I wouldn’t need a plot line, a victory guaranteed by cannon script, to want to make every last one dead that I could. Similarly, plot lines that guarantee a ‘loss’ wouldn’t demoralize me. Very much the opposite. They might’ve won the battle, but the war’s not over yet!