Blizzard really needs to consider faction ratio limitations. Especially since it’s so easy to just reroll to level 25. World pvp depends on at least a semi balanced faction ratio, so SoD will be DoA if this isn’t gotten in front of.
We already know that they’re getting windfury, nothing else matters at this point. Everyone and their mother will be Alliance.
Nah, it’ll be fine. Horde getting BoK. Salv later. The Ashenvale pvp zone greatly favors Horde access over Alliance.
69% of statistics are made up on the spot.
Why does it matter? What do you propose should be done about it? What sort of tangible benefits would there be from doing anything about it? What does success look like? How would you measure it?
And, importantly, how would you present this to a team of shareholders in a way that shows the return on investment of resources allocated for such an effort?
SoD is built around wpvp. In any massively lopsided server, wpvp doesn’t happen and people move to other servers. Translate this to SoD, and it just means no one will play it if everything is just a one sided face roll curb stomp. It’s a big problem.
What do you propose should be done about it?
Faction limitation. When Alliance has 60% of active characters, then making a new Alliance character should be greyed out.
What sort of tangible benefits would there be from doing anything about it?
SoD wouldn’t be dead on arrival. As explained above, wpvp is exceptionally reliant on server ratio balance being decent. Otherwise the server dies. Without heading this off, SoD will fail immediately. So the tangible benefit would be viability of SoD on it’s most basic level.
What does success look like?
The elimination of faction ratio problems being a cause of server collapse and the failure of SoD.
How would you measure it?
The elimination of a problematic variable is measured by it not having catalyzed the failure of what the elimination was attempting to head off. It’s like asking how to measure the success of eliminating a 1 in code that would cause it to not work. By eliminating the problem code ahead of time, the code won’t cease to function due to that bad code. An easily predictable situation.
And, importantly, how would you present this to a team of shareholders in a way that shows the return on investment of resources allocated for such an effort?
Ladies and gentleman, we spent five minutes and eliminated a blatant foreseeable issue that could have destroyed our entire SoD endeavor; rendering all the time spent developing it, wasted dollars. You’re welcome.
Nah it won’t be.
My gut tells me 70/30, but it won’t be as bad as som.
Ally will still take the highest pop but horde has its dedicated unmoving playerbase and people are going to flock to the new shaman specs even tho enhance is still going to suck, ele and the tank will be popular and probably will be a ton more shams than normal.
Horde will be a functional lower population and I know of 4 giant guilds from classic rolling there and some other decent sized ones
Oh and the q times will probably be instant - 3 minutes for wsg early on
Well, 70/30 would be manageable on era, or som, but not sod. BGs only have longer queues to deal with, but each match has limitations on teams. Not in world pvp. Horde would never win the ashenvale event. This would cause more people to reroll alliance, exacerbating the problem to the 90% I predict. It will start off 70/30 tho, yes, I agree. But I’m thinking ahead of that.
If this is never taken care of, by the time we move to the next level 40 zone, it will be a dead season. No one will care about playing the new zone because it will just be an alliance curb stomp. No point going to it for horde.
Faction limitation are essential for SoD.
I thought about this too but I’m going to assume there’s only going to be 2-3 servers with a million layers a piece for the entire life of the server.
There are apparently stacking buffs you can get in these zones and it is probable they scale the buff depending on population in the zone.
i am sure they have considered this but we can’t know until we play.
It also depends entirely on how “good” the pvp items are from tues events.
Keep in mind alliance has always been a majority carebear pve andy faction. Half of the faction won’t pvp at all besides trying it out a time or two
If they have already gotten around this in a more creative way like this, that will work. I just hope they are acknowledging the issue needs to be addressed in some manner.
They probably won’t say anything about it till they see the results in action
I believe the easiest way for them to balance the population would balance the factions a bit better. As is, paladin is leaps and bounds ahead of shaman. I would suggest adding totem call/recall to allow shamans not have waste so many gcd managing buffs pallies give before the pull and don’t have to manage. The other massive advantage paladins have is DS, to balance the 30% group damage reduction shamans should get lust. That would keep the original balance of the game, pallies more defense and shaman more offense. Alliance would still have the advantage it just wouldn’t be as large.
I’m playing horde 100%.
Enjoy that awful ride from darn to ashenvale…horde are only a 90s FP away.
There will be considerable alliance salt at how powerful ele shamans are.
I can’t wait… popcorn is so ready
While I do not doubt this, shamans are no where close to paladins. DSac alone is game changer.
Isn’t horde the better pvp faction.
I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near as bad as you say. I think with the recent faction balance change giving horde kings that it shows blizz is going to try to balance the factions through runes. Some idiots are going to roll alliance based off the 3/9 rune slots we know about but I think a lot of the playerbase are just going to roll what they think is fun.
If it really was a problem it would be cool if they could somehow balance layers so it was always 50/50, then if you were on the majority pop faction you might sometimes be on a 100/0 Layer and don’t get to experience PvP but the minority faction always gets 50/50 layers which might incentivise people to play that minority faction so they always have PvP. Also if people tried to later hop to a 50/50 layer their party would just be removed to another layer.
I think eles will be good but they’re pretty bad pre level 40. They really need the 1 sec cast time reduction to be viable in PvP. Probably won’t be until 2nd phase the come into a good place.
I know. My boys wanted to go ally for once so that’s my Main
I’ll still be on horde for pvp tho
Pallys aren’t gonna run that in pvp… at least most wont. If they take that they don’t get fear ward or an interrupt.
I guess holy pally but let’s be real 90% of pallies will be ret chuds
My friends might go alliance… good for them. Alliance sucks in classic lol. Getting around the world is a hassle. No thanks