1 - merc mode - Main issue is that the alliance pvp scene will slowly move to horde. Just look at retail where finding pvp groups for arenas or RBG’s on alliance is brutal compared to horde. Other problem is that the people that will use merc mode are there for the quick queue and the honor. They have no interest in winning the game, afk half the time, and are ridiculously under geared. This is already a big issue for alliance in tbc and it would get even worse.
2 - Paid Faction transfers
Some hardcore pvp’ers will come to alliance and help out with the awful win rate. Issues - It’s unfair to alli on pvp servers that suffered ganking but horde had it easier and never had to deal with the difficult leveling experience. Not that big of a deal given that most people are leveling with dungeons and the boost being in the game.
3 - Add the pvp gear to rep vendors
This would help both factions and eliminate the 200 hour bg honor grind. Doesn’t help the queue time issue but most aren’t queueing for fun, they’re doing it for blue honor gear to queue arenas. They already changed season 1 of pvp by putting rating requirements on items and starting teams at 0 rating so adding the rep vendor items doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.
4 - Increase honor gains for all - doesn’t help horde queue times and benefits alliance
5 - Do nothing and keep telling horde to re roll alliance. At the end of the day, it is an issue created by pvp players overwhelmingly choosing one faction over the other.
I believe when Alliance were complaining about faction imbalance in Classic phase 2 the phrase I would often hear was “reroll”. It was something very similar to that anyway.
4 would be the best option actually. 1 would be bad and cause win trading on a massive scale, 2 would be bad as it only works if one assumes horde would take a free transfer in exchange for a pvp situation with afk pvp farmers, 3 is already done resilience gear might be added to rep venders season 2 if memory serves. 5 is also valid but more on an individual level.
1 would be the worse solution. 4 is best because there is a motive to get people to pvp that is the gems. Another solution not mentioned would be mount collection where mounts are part of a collection tab and the pvp mounts would be collectable.
I agree that merc mode is probably the worst option.
IMO they should go with 3 and add the rep vendor pvp items. It lets pvp’ers have a better starting point for resilience without having to queue for over 200 hours for the base blue set. And it doesn’t eliminate the need for bg’s since the epic off pieces for pvp still cost honor.
I would like to see them just increase honor gains but honestly that benefits alliance a lot more than horde and horde are the ones having the insane long queues. More honor would incentivize alli to queue more bg’s but I think horde would still have 30 plus minute queues, while alli gets almost instant ones.
#6 add honor to arena skirmishes. Was added in a later expansion but this could definitely help alleviate the problem. Would still need to pound out the marks but at least you could buy the level 70 pvp trinket earlier than 2 weeks in.
I think 3 would be a great change, will get folks into arena quickly so they can scratch the pvp itch.
I also would like to add making premade fight premade. I think this would indirectly shrink wait times because ally would not have as many premades. The serious premade folks would cue as pug, ally pug groups would not be a complete disaster, i think this would lead to more ally cueing…
At the very least waiting an hour for a bg would lead to the bg being enjoyable.
the other suggestion ive seen that you didnt mention, is increasing honor gains per time in queue. i think that would be the most impactful change while changing as little as possible.
Nobody would win trade with merc mode, there is no upside, zero.
With rated BGs then yeah wintrading is a thing because the rating matters. Wintrading in unrated bgs wouldn’t net you more honor.
Like there are arguments against merc mode that make sense, but wintrading is such a bad argument that just by bringing up you force me to take the side of merc mode.
I think the best option is to open free faction transfers for Horde to Alliance, and then stop the service once factions are closer balanced. My bet is people who are looking to pvp in BGs or gear up faster for arena without concern of having a larger partner pool will be the ones utilizing the service. The “fear” of switching factions would probably be less bc they are already 70 and are just looking for faster queues.
There is no guarantee that it will reproduce the balance prior to TBC in most servers. The horde player base will still be higher which will give more partner options for serious players (this is the biggest draw to horde imo, moreso than racials)… but it may mitigate the faction imbalance to a degree…
I think the way to exploit it would be to have your friends that queue merc go to a starting area GY and then you would kill them by yourself the entire bg getting like 20 honor per kill. I’m not sure if this would work though.
It is sort of bad, on retail. On classic the community is stronger so guilds would just feed teams of their players honor and badges with merc mode in order to get pre-raid bis. Turning battlegrounds into just a win trading hellscape with pre bads rather than the semi bad pug state.
the only thing they should do is add a small amount of honor for arena. The gear is meant to be a grind and take a while to get. and this is coming from someone who plays horde.