I agree it is a player created problem that Blizzard exacerbated with paid boosts. Alliance main but you want to play horde? Boost a horde and you’ll only level 2 more levels in tbcc than you would on your alliance main. Ezpz!
This “fix” treats the symptom and not the cause. It’s short sighted and has the potential to cause long term damage that will be much harder to “fix” than horde queue times.
I don’t, but I remember people complaining about it a lot. I know it was overwhelming. Drastic enough that they introduced Merc mode.
I mean if you’re playing horde and there’s zero wpvp to be found because alliance are dead and your que times are an hour? You’d log into your alliance alt to play. If you do, so does your friend.
I was horde vanilla - legion. I made the hard swap to alliance in BFA to help with faction balance, play with some friends that swapped for the same reason and faster random bg que times. Also for wpvp because that was always one of my passions in the game. I got tired of trying to fight 1v1s and having 5+ horde hop down and turn it into a gang bang. Trust me it happens man. Tauren and Cairne are my absolute fav. There’s a reason I post on this guy despite not playing him anymore.
I legit wish people would remember how awesome this game is when wpvp is good and factions are close 50/50. “Back in my day” I used to absolutely have a blast leveling and getting into skirms all over the world. Only reason I play to this day lol
Yeah I’d even be open to them doing Merc mode as I think just the extra effort and stuff is slightly less intrusive. It would be a slightly quicker short term solution. Alongside FREE swaps and boosts for alliance that is.
Hvh battlegrounds are actually the worst idea I’ve ever seen for long term fun of this game. Blows my mind.
Didn’t reply to this part as it’s kinda the only thing I agree with you on. It’s a player created problem. Still they can either just dismantle factions (which I’ve said) or they need to actually commit to two. They’re clearly commiting to two so they need to implement actual good fixes. Faction balance will never be perfect, it never was. Still a 60/40 split is a pretty reasonable goal to strive for.
Merc mode + FREE swaps and boosts for alliance would be way healthier for long term health.
I don’t think TBCC could have been as successful as it is without paid boosts to be honest. It was a necessary evil.
I really don’t like merc mode either, but at least it doesn’t promote a system that functions without one faction even queuing. This one does.
This change is just too much. I played through retail and over the years, watched a lot of my friends faction swap in order to do high end content as it became harder and harder to do that on alliance or my diehard alliance friends just quit the game. Meanwhile Blizzard did almost nothing to stop the bleed.
I won’t stick around to watch it all happen again in classic, especially when they are not only making the same mistake of ignoring the actual problem, they are making rash decisions that not only ignore faction imbalance, but enable it.
horde queues are better this way though, we dont need two healthy factions. The alliance were really bad on my server in tbc anyway, it would feel authentic to me if the faction died lol
It was a money grab. Nothing more, nothing less. They saw a way to make money on an old game and they took it. There were no stipulations on boosts except the new races. That’s an open invitation to screw faction balance. Players even complained this would be a problem when the boost was announced and that feedback was ignored. I really don’t think Blizzard cares at this point.
How about the players who couldn’t care less for classic, but would love to come back for TBC? I dabbled in classic, but bailed after lvl 40. Classic didn’t appeal to me and I had a very “Been there done that, this is too grindy mentality” BC comes out and Absolutely yes I’m in. But I had reps and things to grind in retail to get ready for 9.1 with a limited window to play.
There are also plenty of M+ raiders who were focusing on things in retail and didn’t have the time to play classic, or just didn’t want to.
As for the faction imbalance? This was inevitable. I don’t know why anyone thought it was going to go any better.
Wow. I’m so disappointed in the game “ive loved since I was a child”… The only people who ARE happy or possibly COULD BE HAPPY about these terrible changes are 1) Horde and 2) Retail ANDYS Who have no idea what faction balance means in Classic. Wow- Blizzard you really messed up and I can’t wait to move onto a better game where the devs and community aren’t straight up morons.
I was so pumped when I heard the devs were doing this…the horde had 30 min to 1 hour + que times compared to instant on the alliance. I didn’t think ANYONE would object to this change as it was broken how much faster the alliance could gain honor…but I get on this thread and see mostly whining. They talk about horde OP racials…but ask a UD rogue if he’d switch WOTF for perception. Ask a warrior if they would like to have the gnome racial. The racials are fairly balanced. In summary - if you’re alliance, and have been enjoying your instant Qs, you have no place to complain when we finally get a taste of that. I was SO disappointed this morning when I q’d and saw we were back to huge Q times. Devs - you did a great thing allowing the faction v faction qs, please put it back up or pvp will be dead again outside of arenas (where the alliance are decked out in full honor gear and the horde has to make due with pve gear)
Can’t say enough how much I loved this change over the weekend. I played and loved original TBC, both raiding and PVP, and came into TBC Classic planning to do both once again.
But when facing 1+ hour queues to get into a single BG and get maybe a few hundred honor if you win (and far less than that for a loss, particularly against premades that can be hard to score against), I found myself totally demotivated to PVP at all. It felt like going to an amusement park on a crowded day where the lines are so long that it becomes exhausting to go on rides at all.
This weekend, several buddies and I queued up for BGs for hours. It felt great to actually be able to play the game! Same-faction BGs have totally reinvigorated my excitement for TBC PVP, which to me is a critical part of the game since it’s the most fun things (IMO) to do between raids. I applaud Blizzard on the decisive action to implement this and hope to see it made permanent soon.
I’m a pretty chill guy, but I’m literally fuming over the selfishness of these alliance guys against the change. We weren’t asking for an advantage, just equality. Make them sit in hour long q’s and tell us this change was a bad idea.
Good job blizzard, getting to actually play the game, was going to unsubscribe soon due to the long wait.
Folks using world pvp as a reason this change was bad, please really take a look at ‘world pvp’ and try not to glorify it like we used to about the original classic world pvp. For the past 15 years, world pvp is just bullying. Whether its using superior numbers, superior lvls, timing an attack when the other has mobs on them, or simply one party being prepared to fight and initiating the engagement, it’s bullying to make yourself feel good, not about pvp.
This is the tiniest part of the problem if you actually read the issues created by this solution 
The luls… This is 100% a player created problem and the horde that want it are insanely short sighted and actually the selfish ones.
What happened to # no changes there bud? Lol
I’ve read the arguments above. I’m not saying this is the perfect solution, I’m just saying its a hell of a lot better to actually let the horde play the game vs not. Would offering free (or fairly cheap) xfers from horde to alliance in unbalanced zones be a good option? Maybe. I’d be all over it if my guild would too. We didn’t choose horde over alliance for ‘op racials’, we did it because its what we played the first time around. Of course, many are complaining above that offering such services haven’t led to balance. I have no idea if that’s true. What I’m asking is how is the alliance worse off for these changes vs no action by the devs. They still have almost instant qs…they still have the same racials…the only thing they are ‘losing’ is the horde can actually work on getting honor gear the same as the alliance can (and has been able to). If you cant live with that, then why even pvp in the first place (unless you’re just looking to bully undergeared folks…in which case you can read my post above about world pvp and apply it.
This is not a change to an enclosed environment, changes like this affect the factions and game as a whole.
The Horde is already the dominant faction when it comes to PvP, leading to their queue times.
The only advantage Alliance has when it comes to BGs is the queue times. By taking away the only disadvantage Horde has, you incentivize people going and staying Horde because there’s no reason to not be the dominant faction.
Think about it, why would you go the smaller faction when there’s zero drawbacks, and only positives, to going the larger faction?
The lesser faction consistently bleeding population leads to a worse AH, a worse PvE scene, and a worse PvP scene. This is known, because we’ve already been through this throughout the span of retail.
Retail got to the horrible imbalance it’s at because of changes like this, this is history repeating itself but being sped up by Blizzard and that part is being ignored in favor of the benefits for the Horde. The desires of the Horde are being put above the health of the game as they always have been.
This is why people are upset, the same mistakes that led to the Alliance being an effectively dead faction are being repeated but even faster this time. It really shouldn’t be a surprise that isn’t something Alliance players are happy about.
Perfect, then let’s advocate for that option. For real let’s not be greedy Blizzard either so people actually do it. Short term FREE alliance boosts and sawps. Clearly would help.
Populations were not this overwhelmingly horde back in the day. They were pretty close to 50/50. I actually played horde back in the day and purposely chose alliance to help with faction balance So this may be true for you but it obviously isn’t the case for the majority.
I’m not asking for no changes. Just not garbage ones.
This heavily negatively affects alliance by murdering their participation. Want to have enough people to raid? Have to reroll horde because that’s where you have enough players. Don’t want to get gang banged in wpvp 10-1? Gota go horde.
Seriously man it’s a short sighted, greedy horde player created problem. I’m not saying there should be no changes. I think there need to be better things done. FREE swaps and boosts to alliance. Hell I’d even be okay for a temporary Merc mode to help a bit until populations reach a closer healthier 60/40.
Hvh BG’s are a horrendous short sighted fix that will break classic.
make pvp great again! even do 2v2 same faction
let the pvpers pvp!
please bring this back. with out it I have 4 friends quitting very soon