And I’m saying “based on what evidence exactly?”
Can you cite an actual example and consequence of this alleged imbalance?
Not a(nother) theoretical one - an actual example.
The statistical relevance of population imbalance is absolutely negligible if any of the census numbers can be tested. Show me 7:! or more and then you might have an issue, assuming they are all active 60s, and manage to consistently bump into each other at the same time, and the same place.
None. Same as you.
Well then we can both agree that you and that other guys opinion is just as worthless. 
I wouldn’t say worthless. We are both pointing out that 2 possible outcomes that could happen if the server population was known to the players - I also added a possible way in which it could occur.
On further consideration, statistically speaking, if players picked servers at random most servers should be balanced - or as close to balance as possible given the choice of faction of individual players; if more players choose Horde … you are going to get more Horde players.
However, I got a feeling players aren’t picking servers at random - despite the server population being hidden.
All it takes is some rumor that server A is “overwhelmingly” faction X and faction Y players will avoid it like the plague - making it a self-fulfilling prophecy even if the rumor is a complete lie.
I’d like to see whatever it is you and others are seeing that states what the population balance on a server is.
I don’t know and I don’t claim to know.
I’m just conjecturing how server imbalances could happen.
My overall take is, a small imbalance (<1%) will overtime become a big imbalance as players who want easy-wins pile into the majority faction of those servers. Once a server becomes significantly imbalanced, the minority faction will only get smaller percentage-wise as players avoid that faction on that server.
If people in this thread are right, this is exactly happened to retail (former) PVP servers - as people race change and server transfer to the dominant faction of a server.
People always think there’s some ingenious solution to faction balance and population issues, but your plans would all fail. You can’t force people to play a specific faction. If you try to tightly control faction and population all you accomplish is driving people away or preventing friends from playing together.
The best solution for faction balance in WPvP is War Mode shards that automatically balance the numbers of each faction (this also results in overflow shards where some people are basically alone with just their faction since you can’t pull extra people out of thin air if there’s not enough on both sides). You’ll never see that in Classic. On retail they can’t even entice enough Alliance to turn War Mode on with major WQ buffs. You certainly won’t get them to balance out classic servers where they’d have to xfer (potentially cutting them off from one or more friend groups since we have no x-realm grouping) or re-roll for no meaningful incentive at all.
Merc Mode is the best solution to faction BG queue differences, but we’ll also never have that in Classic. In retail even with Merc Mode Horde still have 2x the queue time (though merc mode NPCs are kind of hidden, perhaps if it was built into the UI and more easily accessible they’d be a bit closer).
They stated it before Classic even launched:
Q: Will there be Cross Realm Battlegrounds when those go live?
A: Cross-realm battlegrounds were a feature of 1.12 and are important for matchmaking, so you’ll be seeing cross-realm battlegrounds in WoW Classic when Battlegrounds are introduced in Phase 3 of the content roll-out plan.
Cross realm isn’t even at the root of this issue, and it’s only a bandaid for the perceived problem. Where everyone complains is when they’re running around the world and get jacked by multiple enemy players.
I doubt that would have been well received by players who wanted to play with their bestest friends, family, etc.
lol that would be even worse mate
If people see 60/40 horde/ally they would roll horde even more because nobody wants to get ganked all the time and obviously everyone would like to be on the dominant side. Except people like me who want to play paladin
Taken from the Wowwiki for patch 1.12 “Drums of War” which was released Aug 22nd 2006
For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, you will be able to face off against players from other realms in the Battlegrounds. PvP Battlegrounds link [Alterac Valley], [Warsong Gulch], and [Arathi Basin] so that players from several realms will be combined into one huge matchmaking pool. Replenish your mana, sharpen your blades, and get ready for some brand-new challengers!
That is complete nonsense. Yes, they could continue to roll horde on that server, but the faction queue would be worsened for them.
Yes, I know. That’s what I said earlier in the thread that cross realm BGs came with patch 1.12.
Choosing the stacked faction on a lopsided PVP realm would be for all intents and purposes exactly like choosing a realm like Herod with overall queues.
Again, you are espousing from your seat of comfort on a nearly perfect balance realm. Doubling down by bringing up CRBGs, which would not be necessary, had the realms been faction balanced better.
Agreed. As well as a at-any-time limit on percentage of a server that can be signed in as either faction.
If friends of mine roll Horde and then I am forbidden from rolling Horde because of some nonsense like ALL REALMS HAVE TO BE BALANCED, I’m just not going to play the game at all.
All this talk is speculative. When they opened up transfers they shouls have only made it for the weekend instead of an entire week or more. thata where all the damage was done because peoplw who might not have transferred just started to jump ship
Its not, when we are talking about populations as large as they are.