I’m excited about the new wPvP features coming out in SoD. However, I’m concerned that SoD servers will go down the same path as many PvP servers in the past - players gravitating towards the majority faction until one faction massively outnumbers the other.
I’m curious if Blizzard has any plans to combat this old issue. I’ve seen private servers implement a 55/45% hard cap on character creation.
I played on a close to 50/50% server on classic launch (Grobbulus) and the wPvP was incredibly fun. It would be a shame to see Blizzard devote the dev resources that they already have into SoD wPvP but then not solve old, seemingly easily solved problems like this that threaten to ruin it.
It’s not easily solved. Forcing players to do one thing or the other will never go over well - especially when it comes down to factions. Want to play with your friends? Sorry. Don’t want to play on a dead realm? Sorry.
There’s no solution to this. It’s up to the players to self govern.
That’s fair. It’s probably not correct to call it “easily” solvable.
That being said, I disagree with the notion that by moderating Blizzard is “forcing” players to do something (though I agree with you that others will likely not see it that way). They already don’t allow you to party cross faction, or to make characters from multiple factions on one PvP server, or to mail or trade cross faction, etc.
All of these ecamples aren’t Blizzard “forcing” players to do anything as much as it is moderating the design of the game.
By doing nothing, Blizzard is effectively “forcing” everyone to play on unbalanced servers, right?
No one is forcing players to play on unbalanced servers. It’s human nature to want to be the majority and not have to be “inconvenienced” by being ganked. Blizzard isn’t forcing anything. It’s what the players want. Let’s say Benediction all of a sudden got merged with say a Horde server like, Faerlina I think it is. Do you think people will be happy being “inconvenienced” 24/7? Benediction and Faerlina exist for a reason. And it’s because the players like it that way.
It’s going to be 90%+ alliance because paladins are already stronger and the paladin runes are stronger. And these clowns can’t balance a game to save their lives. Can’t be too hard on the ADHD zoomer developers at Blizzard though, they’re making the only thing they know how to make.
Also they have windfury from druids, walking aoe tremor/wotf aura, and can now dps on par with warriors, so players are going to live out their 2h sword crusader fantasy.
Horde is going bye-bye in sod. 99% alliance servers are inevitable.
I see your reasoning, but isn’t that why PvE servers exist?
I suppose we’ll see what they end up doing (having PvE/PvP servers, etc.), but I hope that they add some level of protection to the PvP servers at least.
If a huge part of sod is to test out world pvp modes, how is that possible if server populations immediately tank to one side and one side goes extinct?
I think the developers just aren’t gamers and can’t predict the population balance will be absolute trash with the incredibly imbalanced changes they’re introducing.
I mean even very experienced developers would have trouble balancing changes of the magnitude they’re proposing.
PvE servers always had a negative connotation. Streamers didn’t play on PvE servers I don’t think. So naturally newer players would start on PvP servers. And for the longest time you couldn’t transfer from PvP to PvE. Phase 2 in Vanilla Classic started all this. It made the stronger faction more evident by ganking the other side to death. It gave players PTSD.
Up until now, I’ve been able to follow your reasoning (or your explanation of others’), but this is ridiculous IMO.
Why should people who want to wPvP have their experience suffer because people not interested in wPvP want to transform a PvP server into a PvE server?
I was just answering your question on why people didn’t just roll PvE if they didn’t actually want to wPvP. I guess the tldr; is that the people didn’t know they didn’t want a PvP server unless you played on one in actual Vanilla. Which is why I rolled PvE this time around.
Thanks for explaining that. However I think it’s a bit strange for players to have opinions on how a game mode they plan to avoid should be developed. I hope you enjoy the PvE though.
I’ll reiterate what I’ve heard some streamers say about the game: I don’t think a player should be able to make a wrong decision on character creation. IMO this issue falls under that umbrella. With some thoughtful moderation I think Blizzard could improve a long standing issue.
it is if you give good incentives to do either faction which blizzard is incapable of for some reason. all they can do is shove in abilities from expansions.
Yep, and 81% of the Classic PVP servers prior to TBCC had a decent balance of horde to alliance. Some were better than others but both sides were there. TBCC was when the absolute server disaster started, not P2 Classic.
I was thinking the same for things to be best. SoD seems like it’s attracting a lot of people though so I don’t know if only one will work.
There was a streamer on this forum a few months back, who I’m pretty sure was in the Discord full of streamers where they have a direct line with Blizzard (Note that I am NOT a fan of this and find this sort of streamer privilege be really gross as I consider streamers to be equal to every other player, but I’m just saying about this Discord where the streamers get all of this advanced notice on things) and they were trying to take it to the forums as well with their idea of horde getting paladins and alliance getting shaman because they also expected the new season to be ally dominated again. Which it looks like maybe it will be. Maybe there can still be tweaks to help the horde but it’s only a few weeks away.
This actually seems like a good testing ground to try to work on faction balance but they seem to care about other things.
As a player who likes wpvp I don’t need the crutch of playing on the majority side, I’d rather help the minority one. Looks like I’ll be going horde again.
SoM was all Alliance because the synergy between raid buffs and WF as gone.
Same thing will happen now because the dev are too myopic to even see that giving WF to Alliance requires Horde to get blessings. That would have been a better thing to give mages than heals.
Blizzard needs to explain how they are going to deal with this and deal with the the outdoor pvp zones. I have a bad feeling they just sit back and say the inevitable gaming/sorting of the factions to best achieve getting honor/rep/gear is a player caused problem.
which blizzard is incapable of for some reason. all they can do is shove in abilities from expansions.