I still don’t feel that “if someone really likes the color red, it is hard to convince them that blue is better” is a valid answer in this context, especially since, in this case, blue used to be a LOT more popular than it seems to currently be.
We’ve seen a lot of push from the dev team to convince people that red is the best color, and now blue is having issues because of it to the point that you’ve had to introduce emergency measures to Warmode to convince people to actually touch an entire feature on the blue side, and prevent it from simply turning into a blanket 10% bonus for the red side that was threatening to make the overall problem even worse.
Can we get some frank dev conversation about factional participation rates in end-game content? Why do the devs think the Horde is dominating absolutely everything, and if it’s simply because they feel that “the Horde is the better faction” then why are they having so many problems developing the Alliance?
The train of thought you are currently pursuing tends to lead the thread deletion and bans for “trolling”. Seriously. I see what you are saying, I dont disagree, but this kind of talk is usually quietly taken out by community mods. Be careful man. Big brother definitely does not like when people point out that the alliance population passed the bad part of the downward spiral with assistance from above, especially since they niw see that may have been a mistake but the fix is just no where to be found.
Agreed. Make all the racial abilities that affect game play the same with different flavor abilities and open ogres for horde and high elves for the alliance. They would pretty much find out what the real numbers are then.
It’s their problem to fix since it’s a problem that they caused.
We literally cannot fix it for them because nobody is going to go, “hmm…there don’t seem to be many Alliance players these days, and their leaderboards seem a bit barren. Why don’t I play with them so that they can compete more with us Horde?”
Life just doesn’t work that way.
The real fun part, is that we just witnessed what happens when the underdog faction gets incentivized to try and fix major population issues. The Horde goes NUTS!!!
The ilvl 400 gear outrage was amazing to witness which begs the question: “How do you incentivize people to play Alliance without Horde players crying like the world is about to end?”
The community will resist any attempt to fix this problem. And the issue is that this is a problem that could actually end up killing WoW in the end.
The alliance is half of the overall playerbase, or more historically. If they kill the Alliance, that’s 6+ million customers they’ll never be able to get back. Ever. No business analyst would ever okay them just handing the game to the Horde unless they outright lied to him and he didn’t have the first clue what factions were in the first place (and couldn’t look up historical data).
Honestly, IMO, this game is either going to die to Horde cheers, or live on Horde tears.
I dont disagree with what you are saying. Quite the opposite. I am just trying to pass along a tip about what happens when blizzard feels threatened. Honestly, I agree with you point for point.
The raicials make little to no difference now. If you want to see why people are flocking to Horde, just look at the group finder. 2-3x more groups at all times on horde. Apply this to all end game activities now. Shorter queues, easier to find guilds, easier to find pugs, etc.
I switched to Horde this expansion, and I can 100% say it was not for a racial.
And what do you think caused all that? Why do you think Method went from Alliance to Horde? It’s a trickle down effect and hasn’t been an all at once scenario. Racial abilities have played a part in that.
I don’t disagree, I’m saying that they are not relevant now. If they made Alliance racials op today, it would take 4-5 years then the problem would be reversed. I don’t think they can do anything about it.
And you’re right. It’s not about the racials as they stand now (1% difference at best anyways, mostly negligible except for someone like Method, Limit, etc.). It’s about what happened several expansions ago, when they did matter.
When that happened, quite a few progression and even serious PvPers decided to roll Horde for the advantage. This went on for quite a few expansions and resulted in the numbers we see today. Despite any nerfs to racials, the damage had already been done. Those Alliance players who switched to Horde had whole communities full of guilds and friends. To switch back to Alliance would be foolish (I know I wouldn’t).
The only reason to switch to Horde as you also put it, is for the sheer amount of groups/raids running. The less groups/raids running the more players that are gonna be left out of content.
For the average player they’ve probably never really been relevant. This issue really is players and guilds copying what the top end players and guilds do, more players then leave because it’s easier to find guilds and groups to do things with. I still believe removing any throughput racials would have some affect on population balance, probably not enough to make both factions closer to even but it does allow players to play the race they want without feeling gimped
Well your more than welcome to take a peak at my racials. Only thing I get is a magic bonus (1%) and a thing I can check my mail with anywhere which is more handy that I thought it would be surprisingly.
And yet the top ten guilds in the current world first race are all Horde, and somehow I doubt it has to do with preferring the actual races they’re playing. The racials matter to some extent or they all wouldn’t be Horde.
You answered your own question. If the best players in the world are horde, why would a top guild swap factions to the one who doesn’t have the best players currently?