For new players. Faction based queues will impact established players - for them playing a on different server is more disruptive for them vs a newcomer with no ties to anyone.
If you want to make it really complicated. Blizzard could allow friends of the newcomer to temporary transfer out (they will still be counted as part of the server for population calculations) to the server the newcomer is waiting in. When the block lifts the friend(s) and the newcomer will transfer in automatically.
Sorry, I went back to ESO while waiting and let my sub lapse. SUBSCRIPTION LOST
My friend played for a few more months than stopped because two of his buddies werenât playing.
Meanwhile with my idea, you CAN play the game, itâs just less convenient.
âLess convenientâ is a strange way to describe waiting hours in queue.
if you use the complicated method, you can play with your newcomer friend, itâs just that you both will be on the limbo server until the block lifts.
Since weâre speculating, then we can agree that knowing what the population was from the start, it may have just as easily been rectified before it grew out of hand.
Or it would have made it worse.
You are assuming all PVP server players want a fair fight. All it takes is a few who wants easy-wins to pile on a server that is slightly leaning towards their faction of choice and suddenly you have an imbalance server that no one playing the minority faction would want to start on/transfer to.
Heâs the Tom Brady of warcraft at this point.
Change my mind
Youâre missing the point. It could have made it worse, it could have made it better. Neither position can be proven, so neither position is inherently wrong. You see the glass as half empty, I see it as half full.
Just pointing out that the other possibility is very real if not highly likely.
And Iâm saying âbased on what evidence exactly?â
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 wouldnât 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 arenât picking servers at random - despite the server population being hidden.
All it takes is some rumor that server A is âoverwhelminglyâ 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.
Iâd like to see whatever it is you and others are seeing that states what the population balance on a server is.
I donât know and I donât claim to know.
Iâm 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 thereâs some ingenious solution to faction balance and population issues, but your plans would all fail. You canât 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 canât pull extra people out of thin air if thereâs not enough on both sides). Youâll never see that in Classic. On retail they canât even entice enough Alliance to turn War Mode on with major WQ buffs. You certainly wonât get them to balance out classic servers where theyâd 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 weâll 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 theyâd 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 youâll be seeing cross-realm battlegrounds in WoW Classic when Battlegrounds are introduced in Phase 3 of the content roll-out plan.
Cross realm isnât even at the root of this issue, and itâs only a bandaid for the perceived problem. Where everyone complains is when theyâre 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