Server Balance, Faction Change, & Blizzard's Failures

WoW Classic Cataclysm Classic Discussion
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Been on Whitemane since day 1 classic vanilla. Picked it ahead of launch because of estimated 50/50 balance. It was (roughly) 50/50 for all of vanilla and half of TBC. Slowly the alliance had people leave for ally servers until horde started to dominate.

The ally still on the server after the first chunk left got overrun, left, and then more followed for the same reason. This has happened on ALMOST every single pvp server to one faction.

The ally leaving after the imbalance happened arent leaving because they want an only ally server, theyre leaving because a quarter of the pop wanted that, left, and now they are outnumbered so they leave too.

The horde just notice their quests are easier to complete until now there is no alliance at all. Sure a percentage of the horde prefer this outcome, same as the part of ally pop that first left for ally only server. There is still a large majority of players who chose their server because it was pvp and roughly 50/50. Because they enjoy wpvp as a break from questing, leveling, or just fun 1vX. They chose a PVP server with similar balance not a PVE server.

This situation where there is only 1 balanced pvp server is not because all these people decided they wanted a pve server. Its because a fraction did, left, and the rest were overrun then abandoned the uphill battle.

Every pserver, the reason classic exists, was generally 1 launch at a time so everyone was same server. Pvp server thats roughly 50/50 is ideal for most ppl that enjoy pvp. This situation isnt what the majority of people on pvp servers currently or ever actually want. Next to nobody would be willing to stay on a dwindling faction or be the first to start it up. So the faction empties out and never recovers. Not because this is the demand of the majority, but the effect of some leaving.

There should be faction change service in wotlk. It was a wotlk service. Just like LFD and dualspec are wotlk systems lol.

The reason given for no faction change, and im quoting loosely, “role player’s immersion”…

Has that ever been the case before? No.
That a problem in retail that offers FC? No.
Has anyone else ever heard this excuse? No.

AND if it is some big RP world shattering immersion scuff then restrict it on RP servers and move on…

This is only 1 of the many ways to help fix faction balance. Merge/Mega-server is another option but the simplest solution would be to stick to what wotlk was and have faction change. Let try hards go human and see where the dice land on balance. At the very least the server’s players can populate both factions that way.

Oh, wait blizzard is counting on that 2nd and 3rd account for that I see thats more money than a 1x faction change. This should be fought against loudly, but we’ve become used to blizzard’s mistreatment so like an abused partner we’ve gone quiet. This isnt okay what they’ve allowed to happen & it isnt okay that they use it for their benefit.

Dailies on the Isle of Q was the thing I was personally most excited to replay in TBC completely for the close quarters wpvp aspect. People killing eachother all over every day was just casual fun to me. Instead after choosing my 50/50 Whitemane which had near that population for years even into p3 TBC is now completely empty of alliance. Im a 2k+ cr multibracket multiclass pvper and I just want my casual wpvp schenanigans that are a part of vanilla tbc AND wotlk(cata+mop as well). Maybe ill have to go elsewhere to replay something closer to actual wotlk if blizzard wont provide it.

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Pretty sure it’s more to do with wanting to find groups than it is with being outnumbered. I rerolled Alliance on Whitemane in late WoW Classic in anticipation of playing Alliance for TBC Classic.

There are some, but not enough to log in and expect to be able to fill a Kara PuG; though a normal or heroic dungeon group might fill up.

While I am sure that some people do enjoy WPVP, and do enjoy balance, I have no faith in your assertion that it’s a large majority; I doubt it is anywhere close to even a slight majority.

If you look at the historical populations (ironforge.pro demographics shows this), there seems to be a double impact on population on all the severely imbalanced servers: both large influxes of people moving in on the major faction, and people from the minor faction leaving.

It’s quite possible that a lot (most/all?) of this was driven by player-driven speculation, and became self-fulfilling prophesy.

Umm. Sure? I personally doubt very much that it would have much of an impact, but I’m certainly not opposed to it.

Or merge all servers, or all regional servers at least.

Ah, a forum troll… rip, and I thought this was a serious thread.

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Blizz needs a system which promotes healthy/“fair” real world pvp, and incentives that style of gameplay with rewards.

Three things Blizzard could do would be:

  • Drastically reduce honor per kill if you engage a player at less than 100% health. Conversely, drastically increase honor per kill if the enemy player is full health. Maybe you get 50-100 honor per kill if the player starts at 100% health, and it drops down to 1-2 honor if the player is sub-50% health.

  • Drastically reduce honor per kill if you engage a player who is already fighting another player, or while in a group.

  • Penalize high level players with dishonorable kills if they kill low level players.

Three simple changes which would not change the gameplay of WoW, would not destroy the community, and which would promote healthier gameplay.

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but they wont
that level 70 rogue WILL corspe camp you ALL DAY if he needs to and no zero honor will stop him from doing it

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But at least they’d be penalized for it with dishonorable kills and a removal of honor points. You could even take it a step further and start penalizing a players’ reputation gains for being a “dishonorable” player. Come up with some story about how the orcs of Orgrimmar are proud of their warrior culture, and frown upon allies who engage in dishonorable combat with their enemies.

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wpvp is not about honor
is about grief
and boi people LOVE to grief

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All Blizzard had to do was put a cap on factions and limit transfers to lower target destinations ONLY. But they didn’t do any of that. Selling transfers/boosts means they profit off the blood of dying realms. Some people move a row of characters. Blizzard laughing all the way to the bank.

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Warmode was always the solution. Its a shame the failed classic so badly by not including a lot of the features that made the game better.

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Its not a troll at all its common sense & open eyes instead of head in the dirt.

Also my assertions are mostly accurate with the % that left at first then the rest of the population falling behind the dominate faction leading to more and more leaving until eventually what you brought up about trouble finding a group became the problem for the rest that left. The point of it not being player demand for single faction server stands its a fraction of the pop that dips and weakens the server then dominos.

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I believe that you believe that.

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bla bla bla undead rogue bla bla i cant corpse camp lowbies bla bla sunday post
didnt read any of that

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No, it just is accurate. 15% of the server leaves, faction crumbles and the rest scramble to leave and nowhere to go but dying factions or one sided factions and theyre leaving a dying faction so they go to a dominant server for them. This is all easily understandable from watching ironforge.pro this entire time and common sense. You are wrong that the majority fled 50/50 servers because they wanted 99/1 lol. 50% goes to 35% because of that reason then the 35% flee from getting their sh!t pushed which is the effect of the 15% leaving. Use an ounce of common sense instead of condescension.

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Lol. Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of bed! Hope your day gets better.

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you realize this same thing happened back in OG tbc and accelerated in Wrath, look at most of the PvP servers starting in TBC they start to get dominated by one side, until eventually the other side quits. I was on underbog I bounced after Wrath because the pop was so lop sided the only time we had wintergrasp was during Christmas or maybe 4am on a Saturday morning. It wasn’t fun, and a bunch of the rest of us left. This is what happens, even grob will eventually fall like the other servers did, its destiny.

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Uh retail never had this problem from my experience which is anecdotal. My server always was balanced with wpvp even up till end of MOP, quit for first time in wod

Pservers recreation is 1 server at a time so they end up balanced with wpvp. Pservers are the basis of classic and why it came about, ie nostalrius. The years SOME of us have spent replaying these xpacs and the original versions of them had balanced servers. The entire classic community coordinated balancing servers even before vanilla classic launched. Its what pvp servers strive for. What is currently going on has made them pve servers. Blizz let unrestricted migration $ and let servers die without a plan to fix the problem, because again $.

There needs to be faction change, server mergers for dead servers, mega server etc something has to be done.

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Lol its debate 101, its not my fault you fold. Have a good one.

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Is it a debate? You just seem to be in a bad mood. I don’t think you’ve actually brought anything substantive to support what you’re saying, but that doesn’t really matter; you do you.

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I agree with almost everything, that’s exactly why I’ve been fighting for so long here and on other BLIZZARD forums, I fight for BLIZZARD to fix this pointless situation of PVP Servers, because we choose PVP Servers and not PVE servers, we choose because in them there is a immensity of content that does not exist on PVE servers, in addition to always having both factions so that there is its infinity of world content, and it makes no sense to be destroyed leaving 99.9% of a single faction.
We are not to blame for this situation and it is not fair to be harmed by it, as from the beginning of the classic we chose our right server, if PVE players don’t like PVP and the content that PVP servers offer, then in the first place they should have created your characters on the PVE servers that have been around since the beginning of classic, not on the PVP servers. That’s why Blizzard needs to correct this completely pointless situation.

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What was your server, because in by mists the pvp servers where all lopsided from what I remember, at least a 65/35 split minimum

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Bleeding hollow. In mop we had a lot of wpvp on the walls and while leveling etc. It was more horde but even 60/40 is acceptable. Nowadays i have no idea whats become to retail but i supposed warmode + server mergers put people wherever they want to be.