Severe Faction Imbalance is the biggest issue with Classic. When one faction makes up more than 60% of the population, meaning the other makes up less than 40%, that is ‘severe’ faction imbalance. Not all servers have severe faction imbalance, servers with severe imbalance have both Horde and Alliance in the minority. However most of the imbalanced servers have Alliance in the minority.
I see a lot of people suggesting paid server transfers will fix the problem, but it wont. If they implemented paid server transfers with no limitations the problem will just get worse. Many people will continue to take the easy route if they have that option, they will transfer to servers where they have faction majority, not to servers where their faction is outnumbered. Just look at what happened on Skeram, a great deal of alliance moved off the server making the imbalance worse, few horde transferred.
Furthermore this problem only exists because of how Blizzard has bungled the launch. They have allowed new players to roll on servers that were overpopulated since before launch. They allow/encourage server transfers from factions that are severely outnumbered which continues to make it worse.
My point is, this whole situation is Blizzards fault, why should I(Or any of you) have to pay 25-50$ extra to server switch to a server with a healthy faction balance? I’m not going to roll another character on a more balanced server. I’m not going to pay to move, I’m just going to stop my subscription.
Now some of you may call me a carebear, or tell me I should have rolled on a PVE server. Well here is the thing, I like PVP. I actually want to play on a PVP server. I want people to try to gank me. Turning a gank around has always been my favorite thing about Vanilla WOW. What I get on Skeram is not PVP. I am more likely to run into 3-5 horde characters in the world before I run into 1 other Alliance. The best odds I can hope for is that I am only up against 2 other horde, I have a slight chance then if I do everything right and they make some mistakes. That is not usually the case though, usually I am attacked by more than 2 at a time.
Alright, rant over. Have a good day.
2 Likes
Blizzard can’t be blamed for the fact that most people simply want to be on the winning team.
As someone else put it so well, nobody wants to be the change they want to see.
Another damned if they do, damned if they don’t situations.
2 Likes
paid faction transfers are in retail and they have a number of 90/10, some even 95/5 faction splits. Anybody not completely dumb knows that faction transfers won’t fix faction splits, all they want is to leave their lost server to a server that’s either more balanced or maybe even their faction favored.
Blizzard is never going to even try to faction balance servers. It’s just one of those sucks to suck, chose the wrong faciton bro sorry issues.
4 Likes
Just give me paid transfers so it is complete my choice which situation/server my character is on.
4 Likes
I didn’t leave Skeram before because I didn’t want to be on an unbalanced server where my faction severely outnumbered the opposing faction.
Hands up who saw this coming.
This is why I have not rolled a character on a PvP server. Faction imbalance.
After 13 years of being on the minority on Barthilas (20 to 1 during Legion), I simply did not want the same migraines again.
Blizz has to enforce faction balance in some form or the same old problems will occur and nobody (except gutless gray campers) will win.
1 Like
You could count on one hand the number of players willing to leave the winning side to join a total underdog on a lesser populated realm.
If Blizzard truly wanted to balance servers(and upset the player base), they would force merge and connect those imbalanced realms together. Mankrik is heavy Horde, while Pagle leans hard Alliance. You connect the two and now there’s more of a balance(and massive queue)
1 Like
Faction imbalance is part of the game.
Get over it.
1 Like
Blizzard straight up stated that faction imbalance is not going away. Its part of the meta of wow.
Kids who complain about it need to grow up.
1 Like
PvP servers are overrated… and yes I play on one. Arcanite Reaper which I believe is Alliance heavy.
Probably explains why I got ganked a whopping 5 times while leveling to 60. Alt is 44 and hasn’t been ganked at all…
LOL
Still, I support paid transfers.
1 Like
Bliz cant fix it. There are countless reasons why an imbalance happens.
Unless blizzard moved people around from server to server to balance out factions it would never work. And that wouldnt work because it would piss off the majority of people who got moved to a server they didnt want to be on.
1 Like
Where did they officially state this?
I disagree, there are a LOT of things they could do.
- Faction specific transfers. IE: Don’t allow transfers to a server where your faction makes up more than 60%, they have the information to determine this.
- Faction specific queues. IE: If your faction severely outnumbers the other one you are placed in a queue until it’s your turn.
Both of these would at least combat the problem. They could also do more extreme things, minor and negligible bonuses for the outnumbered faction. I know some private servers tried to combat balance in this way. Stuff like discounted or free lvl 40 mounts. I’m sure if they offered a blanket 5% increased experience gain to severely outnumbered factions it could motivate some to switch factions.
1 Like
That would be a bandaid over a severed limb.
Blizzard has had 15 years to get faction balance right. They’ve changed racials to try to balance things, which ends up creating a huge portion of FOTM players to swap to the strongest Race. All of which has made them a fortune.
1 Like
Well Blizzard can’t force people to roll a specific faction, so it’s pretty much catch as catch can.
Only if “faction balance should be our number 1 goal”. Which it wasn’t. So Blizzard “bungled” something they were not even trying to do. They only “bungled” in your mind because they “should” have been trying to do this.
You claim that if Blizzard had done something different, every realm would have perfect faction balance? How do you figure that? That sounds like “pure fantasy” to me.
Now you’re blaming Blizzard for an event that has not happened!
I’m pretty sure your rant is just an attack on Blizzard, trying to blame Blizzard for “not having the perfect PvP fantasy game that exists in my mind”. Of course you are right – this is the real world and a real game.
Paid transfers will make faction imbalances worse.
They should have had population caps and faction caps (and more servers) at the start. The whole launch was a mess.
Might as well be PvE if it’s 90:10 
after that clustermess of a launch and groups of friends being split up from the confusion id love to be able to transfer my hunter instead of reroll to play with my damn friends
2 Likes
This is such a simple concept and request. Blizzard should be helping the population while making money. Win Win.