The faction imbalance is going to strangle this game

Community General Discussion
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The faction imbalance is one of the most significant, and under acknowledged issues with the game currently; Blizzard’s response to the question of cross faction content at Blizzcon being focused solely on the mechanics, and not acknowledging the underlying issue regarding the factions was disheartening to say the least.

This YouTube video was released prior to BFA and has only become more relevant as time has passed.

The suggestions posed as solutions for this issue are often as incorrect and misguided as the explanations for why the factions are as imbalanced as they are in the first place.

Years ago things like racials, faction-centric story-lines, and other faction specific differences may been relevant variables in the disparity of players on Horde vs Alliance. Racials in the game today are largely balanced; some might argue they are in fact tilted in Alliance’s favor with shadowmeld being unmatched in m+.

The advantage Horde holds over Alliance is not something you can easily see in game. It isn’t a racial, or a city, or a quest line; the true power that the Horde holds over the Alliance is the population. Individual players choices adding up over a decade has resulted in a massive imbalance in the number of players on each faction.

Nothing holds a candle to the fact that Horde players constitute the VAST majority of even moderately competitive players. This has a knock on effect down to the somewhat competitive players, and eventually now that enough players have transferred to Horde, the moderately casual players.

Look at the front page of wowprogress, look at how many pages of Horde guilds you have to click through to add up 20 Alliance guilds. You would think M+, a smaller group form of content would be somewhat better but it isn’t. Look at the front page of the All Run/Timed run raiderio; at the time of this posting, in the top 200 timed runs, there are 24 Alliance keys, compared to 176 Horde keys.

It isn’t just the people who play the game seriously though, it’s the player base in general.

https://i.imgur.com/VsFQ3Wq.jpg

This comparison shows the population difference between the top 16 highest populations of Alliance players vs the Horde, as well as the number of servers each faction has with more than 11,000 players.

  • EDIT

  • Realmpop data has been touted by many posters in this thread, indicating a fundamental misunderstanding of what that website shows, and what the true nature of the issue we face is. Realmpop shows you total characters, it does not give you any indication of those characters pertaining to a number of players. WoWprogress on the other hand, which is where the image I created and linked in this thread is from, tracks max level players using the following:

  • Population - amount of unique players that meet any of the two conditions:
    has a level 110 (or higher) character that killed something in Tier 20 Heroic Mode (or any tier after)
    has a level 110 (or higher) character in a guild that killed something in Tier 20 Heroic Mode (or any tier after)

  • As you can see, these are very different data sets that imply very different things, Realmpop tracks situations where 1 player has 50 characters on Alliance that they never log into, and 1 character on Horde where they spend 100% of their time. Wowprogress tracks players and only players who’ve engaged in raid content in the past 2 expansions.

This is a problem that is only going to get worse.

Looking at the Q&A Thread for questions to be asked at Blizzcon it felt like every 6th or 7th question was about faction imbalance and cross faction content. I know personally in my guild, many of us were banking on cross faction content being announced for Shadowlands so we could avoid transferring over to Horde, and with the in-game cinematic in 8.2.5 it really felt like it was coming.

It almost feels like the game design team was about to do it but were prevented at the last second so Blizz can cash in on faction transfers to Horde one last time, before the issue becomes so bad that the game is effectively unplayable for Alliance players, and then allow cross faction content.

No racial, no allied race, no achievement or story-line can fix this problem, the time for that was long ago. The only option is to allow us to play cross faction, now, while the story-line makes sense for it, and the problem hasn’t gotten so bad it can’t be fixed.

EDIT

No single image can show exactly how significant this issue is like this one can. The staggering difference in just AoTC participation let alone any mythic progression is a stark reminder of how bad things have gotten, I couldn’t ask for a better indication of our plight.

https://imgur.com/EzD1GMw

Thanks to Koroun for this great image.

#XFaction

205 Likes
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There are plenty of servers like emerald dream that are literally 50:50

I don’t think you guys understand that wow is the most balanced mmo faction wise ever in existence

Most mmos aren’t even close to a 40:60 ratio while wow is a 53:47 horde favored game

It can’t be anymore balanced stop with the waterworks

57 Likes
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Server faction balance is irrelevant, all content is cross-server and all zones are cross-server zones. The question is about faction balance across the region (the imbalance is just as significant in EU), not per server. Over all, the imbalance is significant.

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Horde > Alliance :smiley:

In my experience (in playing both factions) it seems like alliance is more community oriented and laid back, while horde seem to be more focus driven on higher end content.

I for one am happy there is no cross faction content, like horde and alliance grouping up together to run mythic + or whatever. I’d always feel like I’m helping the enemy >:O

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Please don’t use the realmpop as a reference its so badly skewed in an actual substance to the real population issues. A good link to read:

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This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue.

Look at the imgur link posted in the OP. Look how many higher population horde communities there are, larger pools of players to recruit from without requiring a server transfer, so many more stable economies and overall a much larger, denser community to play with that on average contains most of the better players that play the game.

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Did you realize as Horde we’ve been ‘babied’???
:crazy_face:

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Maybe try forming your own groups for content in an attempt to get your faction to participate.

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I joined horde because they get cool races and mounts. Alliance only got two cool allied races, dark iron dwarves and kul’tiran are cool. Where as horde got zandalari, vulpera, nightborne (though customization on this is kinda bad). BUT nightborne get an entire real city for the horde. Suramar is more of a city than any “city” in the game, and it belongs to the horde.

I’d play alliance again if they ever make high elf playable, but more likely they’ll give blue eyes to blood elves in their upcoming customization additions.

No high elves, no alliance

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The issue, is that the players aren’t there to participate in the first place, because the players that remain on Alliance, for all intents and purposes, don’t play most of the game.

As someone who has 120 characters on Horde and Alliance, the difference between the groups looking for keys in the group finder at peak times is staggering.

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Oh well. There’s nothing to do about it.

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Eventually this problem will become such that there is no option other than to allow cross faction content. When enough people like myself transfer and re-roll Horde like I’m doing for Shadowlands, there will be no one left, and there will be damage done that is hard to recover from.

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I personally think everyone has different experiences… Alliance run rampage for me, so hard to get anything done…

Thank god i can fly now.

Nazj pvp Alliance always win.

I’m considering making an Alliance haha

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The Daedalus Project.

Posted on July 28, 2005.

'Players who prefer the Horde score significantly higher on the Advancement, Competition, and Mechanics motivations than players who prefer the Alliance. In other words, players who prefer the Horde tend to be more achievement-driven, more likely to enjoy provoking and challenging each other, and more likely to be min-maxers. On the other hand, players who prefer the Alliance tend to score higher on the Role-Playing and Customization motivations than those players who prefer the Horde.’

This has been the Horde/ Alliance demographic and dynamic since the beginning.

Player choice has a lot to do this this; players choose how they encounter and interact with this game.

I cannot see that this was ever an issue Blizz created, more likely an issue of the type of people who associate themselves with being in the ‘good’ side, who prefer a softer, more human experience, versus those who aren’t really too fussed and prefer a more fantasy-world experience, and enjoy being on the rougher, less perfect side.

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Dude over all its pretty much an even 50/50 split.

I 120 its basically 53/47 horde favor. That is a 3% difference, which is not really much. Infact thr factions being within 3% of each other is pretty good for endgame level characters.

Faction imbalance is a false issue.

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implementing cross faction would make me unsub and I know a few people I play with would do the same

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Facts prove there is a giant issue, servers being 50/50 means nothing when the below facts exist

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Yet alliance by its nature is a product created by and marketed from blizzard…and all products end up being consumer driven one way or another. So if a company is failing say 50% of their product its now a customer created problem with no fix?

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we didnt need another thread post in the other one

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Which is a very good point, which was why even when Alliance was dominating in pvp due to broken racials back in WoD, Horde still had a good amount of competitive people both for pve and pvp.

The same doesnt hold true in BfA though, because the people who were playing ally for the competitive advantage went back to the horde and now there is 0 reason to play alliance.

In other words for any hope of achieve a semblance of balance in competitive activity alliance needs the edge so people jump over to the alliance and their followers follow while horde remains a dedicated good base because horde

3 Likes