Yea, we did a bit of that. The issue there was consistency, and sometimes the folks we got didn’t have the pull count we had, so we’d regress. Which just perpetuates the cycle of burnout. Dalaran is better then a lot of servers Ally side, but there still isn’t exactly a glut of folks to draw on for key roles. So sometimes, us as beggers couldn’t be choosers about our last minute cover options.
Factions stopped mattering gameplay wise when they killed server identity, they love to argue that the “faction war is at the heart of the franchsie” but its seriously hard to find anyone who cares at this point.
“Faction pride” was sacrificed on the altar of convenience ages ago.
9 Likes
Just one more problem Blizzard ignores.
3 Likes
It’s been a long slow death.
First alliance has zero edge to them and while that sounds like a good thing in a gamer market where hardcore gamers fashion themselves as harden outsiders they are attracted to edge. +1 for horde
Second racials were just better on the horde side since BC. Seal of blood says HI, making ret pallies actually competitive in BC but only on the horde side. This carried all the way through until now. Horde just has effective dps racials. So now you gain the number crunchers who stat and sim everything they determine the best way to go is horde. +2 for horde
The story. Not going to get into too much but Alliance play the side kick while the horde saves the world. It was always hinted at from vanilla to wrath but CATA took it right on the nose with green jesus stepping to save everyone every time. And its only gotten worse. Sylvanas gets to burn a capitial tree down killing millions of alliance, then gets the Hellscream treatment (committing genocide then forgiven for just yelling “For Azeroth”) of being redeemed in 9.1. wow okay totally not horde favoritism. So this means if you want to play the hero not the side kick you have to go horde. + 3 for horde
Now onto the playable races. Want to be a monk well horde has 11 choices alliance only 10. Want to be a shaman, well horde has 9 races for it… alliance only 5, okay what about a druid well horde has 4 options for you but alliance only 3… it goes on and on. So if you want more race/class combos well guess its horde for you. + 4 for horde.
Battle Grounds. Come on, by now you knew I was going to bring it up. Alliance players will run off and try to be a solo hero then scream in the pvp channel when they get stomped in 1v4. Horde befor the gates open will say whos taking bs? Whos taking LM? and they will go off in groups. Now horde side you still get your rager who goes of and does their own thing, dies, then screams at chat but thats usually one player in the entire bg… but for alliance its almost everyone on the team. So you want to none rated pvp and win, go horde +4 for horde.
Finally gearing. I just leveled up a druid and in a weekend of pugging reached ilvl 204 nothing stellar but it’s been one weekend. I did it by winning bgs horde side and keys horde sides. My alliance warrior has been struggling to break into groups because everyone expects you to be ilvl 225 for 6key. And bg gearing takes forever alliance side only getting 150 honor per loss vs the 500+ honor horde rake in for each win. So want to fast gear an alt army go horde. + 5 for horde.
Sorry I could do this all day.
TLDR: You want your gaming to have more players and better teamwork go Horde. Want to play a side kick and have a gaming experience of ice skating up hill go alliance.
6 Likes
Yeah. Going Horde next expac will probably be our fate - and we’re not engaged in high-end content.
Building, running, and maintaining a healthy guild was always an effort; but man, Blizzard’s continued resistance to addressing the issue via opening up cross-faction play, while maintaining the faction divide for those who prefer it - they’re just making it too hard. It’s just not worth it at this point.
Blizzard plays lip service when they acknowledge that it is the ties and the communities that is WoW’s greatest asset - but they’ve not only ignored maintaining that asset, they’ve actively undermined that asset.
OP - sorry to hear your story, but it’s a sadly familiar one. 
3 Likes
I say keep the faction stuff for Warmode and PvP, and otherwise let us group with Horde and Alliance for everything else.
5 Likes
You think this doesn’t happen to Horde guilds? Want me to put you in touch with some Horde guilds that have broken up this expansion (or last expansion)? Will that make you feel better?
Truth is, things are tough all over, have been for years. Keeping a Mythic team going isn’t easy, never has been, but with Blizzard continually crapping all over Mythic raiders like they’ve done since Legion, it just keeps getting worse and worse.
We don’t need cross-faction play. We need Blizzard to stop crapping on raiders and raiding guilds, and make Mythic raiding fun to do again.
- Restore guild control & perks.
- Restore looting options so guilds can run their own raids.
- Stop with the stupid class imbalance. Fights shouldn’t be twice as hard if you can’t field 3 Unholy DK’s or 4 Boomkins.
- Double the gear drops from raiding. Stop forcing raiders to rely on M+ or PvP to gear. Also change up the Great Vault - the raiding GV row is the worst one in the game.
- NO MORE SPREADSHEET BOSSES AT THE END. (Denathrius, Jaina, Nzoth, Ghuun, Azshara) Seriously Blizzard KNOCK IT OFF.
9 Likes
What’s funny is even if they did allow for cross faction raiding, I have a sneaky suspicion that there would still be people saying stuff along the lines of, ‘‘eww alliance, i don’t want to raid with them’’. 
But yeah, it’s on the table as Nikolo pointed out. Just don’t expect it happening this expansion. So if you want to be competitive in most areas of the game, it’s best to just bite the bullet and go Horde.
You’ll have a MUCH easier time there.
1 Like
They could have both, if they just extend the B-net communication framework into WoW. You’d only be able to understand and group with those from the opposite faction that you’ve added to your list.
It would go a long way in maintaining the faction divide for those who prefer it, while allowing those who wish to form ties cross faction. It would also be realistic, giving the two factions history in working together repeatedly.
It would also give Blizzard the option to throttle it for a slow roll out, or to restrict it so it doesn’t mess with what they see as their brand identity.
That’s how I’d approach it, at any rate.
2 Likes
at this stage of the patch many are also taking a break till blizzard actually works… so that’s not helping either.
2 Likes
they need to just get rid of the faction war when it comes to raiding and dungeons.
My druid would be night elf 100%.
but I want to heal raids so I’m tauren.
1 Like
this is a topic unto itself. their end bosses have gotten more and more complex - it’s borderline ridiculous.
we were talking last night about CN as a whole though, and I think the spreadsheet boss concept is pushing into earlier bosses. I hope that’s a trend they don’t continue.
5 Likes
A big part is that and overall structure of loot options and drops. Several months of Castle Nathria has a lot of people just ‘noping’ out and are tired of it.
And the loot structure has become very tiresome for the people I’ve heard chatting about Mythic-raiding and stuff like that in the way that it just feels unrewarding for them so they’ve also just taken a break/left/etc…
3 Likes
either raid on horde or die…
…the blizzard mentality
a fate i fell victim to
blizzard doesnt care about the alliance and would “rather you not play it”. its extremely obvious that blizz would rather see the alliance suffocate in its stacking population problems than to help by just lifting the faction restrictions.
its one of the reasons why im playing less and less
4 Likes
Why are they making contact with an alliance guild if they arent willing to go alliance lmao.
2 Likes
They need to fix raiding and get more people into it. A rising tide will lift all boats.
And one more thing: Get rid of the damn Hall of Fame. It was intended to convince people to flip to Alliance but has just turned into another source of Alliance grievance.
5 Likes
Yeah I kinda was stuck on that part for a while
the recruiter for the guild is reaching out to people they found using various tools.
that’s how it works. you use wowprogress, forums, reddit, recruitment discords, etc, to find people looking for guilds. you reach out to them. and if you’re alliance more often than not the response you get is “sorry, no alliance”
you do occasionally find the person who wants to stay alliance - once I found a horde player who was faction swapping, that was weird.
But on top of people not liking your guild times, progression, server, roster makeup, etc… you also are looking for people willing to go or stay alliance.
people on small servers have it even worse. small servers + alliance? I hope the recruiters enjoy their near part time job trying to recruit.
3 Likes
He probably means where the guild approached the player.
And as somebody who’s done recruitment for years, a 90% “no” ratio is pretty good. You’re usually looking at 95% or more.
2 Likes
There are also plenty of “Alliance only” raiders. I’ve met many.
Or just “I can’t make your times”.
Or “I’ll think it over” and then they just join another guild without saying anything.
Recruiting is a thankless job in both factions.
2 Likes