The faction imbalance is going to strangle this game

Community General Discussion
617

You think that what’s missing to get good players is teachers, when in fact, the vast majority of players hadn’t ANY teachers. This is a game with large amounts of data available online, and the only thing that’s needed to become a good player is will power and determination.

I went from full clicker in Cataclysm to only keybinds in Mists of Pandaria, and this change alone made wonders, in 5.1 I get my first Cutting Edge, and I had ZERO people teaching me. I learned everything from Google, YouTube and Twitch Streams, and ofc practice, and all this only happened because I really wanted to be able to clear Cutting Edge content.

Later in that same expansion, Mists of Pandaria, Blizzard announced the 20-man only size for Cutting Edge content. But we were a 10-man guild in a small realm with only a bunch of other 10-man guilds (around 6 cores) and we decided that fusion would not be a good idea, so we spent literally one year recruiting and teaching other players. But even with all that effort we only managed to kill Mythic Imperator Mar’gok, we weren’t able to kill either the nerfed Garrosh 25-man HC or Blackhand Mythic, and our guild broke up for good in Hellfire Citadel.

Hopefully, I made some good friends in Mists of Pandaria that allowed me to get both Garrosh 25 HC CE and Blackhand M CE nearly touching the deadline, but I only left said guild when we broke up in Hellfire Citadel.

You’re clueless about your solution, the biggest challenge when we were recruiting and teaching other players was because said players wanted to clear Mythic content, but they hadn’t the determination and will power to do so. We lost countless people that thought that wiping too much isn’t fun, that criticizing others is bad and toxic, and even that good players should carry the bad ones… they weren’t good players, most of them only wanted to be carried.

I left the Alliance for good after trying another two guilds at the beginning of Legion, and my former realm is nearly dead now.

The least that Blizzard should do to fix the problem without bribing/luring Horde players are:

  • Bring back 10-man Cutting Edge Raids;
  • Allow Cross-Realm Mythic Raids on the beginning of each tier (no more Hall of Fame BS);
  • Allow both player AND guild faction changes from Horde to Alliance for free;
  • Remove ALL combat Racials (flavor racial like Vulpera Backpack, Nightborne Mailbox stay);

These things are not meant to bribe Horde players, it’s meant to bring back former Alliance players that are now Horde. But even with those things, I wonder if they’re not too few too late.

So, please, stop with your nonsense about teaching other people, you can keep spitting this “solution” all around, but we all know it’s not going to change the situation, if Blizzard keeps doing nothing, the imbalance is going to get worse regardless of what is discussed or done by the people that post in these boards.

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618

You spent all this time to say nothing. I sont care about ypur backstory.

Nor did I state there is a lack of teachers. You are so colored by your bias you are not able to read clearly.
The only thing I am ckueless about is how people such as you constantly go

“Omg alliance needs help” and your solution isnt to expand but instead, demand the same group in the horde go.to the alliance.
That fixes things yep. /s

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619

One of the only fixs that Blizzard can put in place currently is free transfers both to and from both factions.

Years ago this or that made Horde stronger, whatever it was at the time, it varied from racials in some peoples eyes to Alliance being more children like along with the RP element of the Horde looking stronger than the Alliance.

The minute Horde started to gain an advantage in game due to the better players starting on, or transferring to Horde, it was over and there was nothing Blizzard could do to stop it.

Offering transfers has historically been garbage where the offer was limited in both time and what server you could transfer to, they never really let you choose where you wanted to go and when the decision was made, it was too late for some. The almost always waited until a server was so full that players left due to queue times, or so dead they left due to no one being here to play with.

My guild faced this issue, there was so little players on our server we almost lost enough that we came very close to missing raiding, there was no one left on the server to recruit as they had all left and if we did not pay for transfers we may have very well lost the ability to raid at mythic levels.

The other fix, which is a lot harder, is to remove factions and allow us to work together. The story is there and ready to be used to make this possible.

620

LMAO, if Alliance has the resources (players) then what is missing is people to teach the casuals. It’s clear that Alliance is lacking good players, they’re all leaving dude.

If this was the case then I think you’re not doing a better job than me.

The solution like I said isn’t about luring Horde players, BUT FORMER ALLIANCE PLAYERS, these people didn’t want to be Horde, they’re here because it’s the only way to clear end game content.

If there’s someone biased here it’s you. You don’t even recognize the fact that many Horde players are still Alliance and became Horde only to be able to do stuff. Had Blizzard announced Cross-Faction play you would see many people going back to Alliance races while raiding with their Horde guilds.

A month or so ago, some people from my current guild, that was always Horde, talked about this, right after 8.2.5 launched, and 6 of our players said they would change to Alliance races if Cross-Faction became a thing, including me ofc.

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621

That is a non-logical process. It is simply a matter of being unwilling to train those casuals and bring them up to par. Stating a lack of resource does not mean you lack the means to educate the other. Your idea they are intrinsic is unsupported to say the least.

Basically, its a matter of being an employer and complaining you cant find any employees. If you spent more time understanding these recruitement dynamics, and less on unoriginal comebacks you would have a better understanding of the issue as a whole.

Cross faction does not change the fact that the alliance lacks participation. It just means now both sides raid as a singular pool, rather than uneven ones.
You would still possess more horde based raiders.

Ypur evidence of bias is not even directly admissable. It is circumstancial within the confines of your head.

622

In several posts in this thread he’s stated the issue is the lack of people willing to “teach” these players, you can very clearly see him trying to walk this back.

I don’t believe he genuinely misunderstands the issue, I think he’s trying to be an edgy contrarian.

The problem is not a lack of teachers although that is also happening, the issue is a lack of students. These Alliance players who make up the population we do have are not missing a “raiding” education, they aren’t people who have an interest in raiding in the first place, it isn’t the reason they play the game.

The demographics that make up the games population have shifted over time, and we are left with a situation where the majority of players play Horde, and the players who do play Alliance largely do not have any interest in the end game.

It’s not even really relevant to the rest of my post, but wtf are you even talking about here.

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623

???
Did it somehow notify you?

624

Or maybe because casuals just wanna be casuals. I explained to you that I was part of one guild that helped casual players to improve so they could be part of our 20-man roster, it didn’t work, and we also lost many veterans in the process.

The constant process of teaching and losing players became so stressful that when our raid leader stopped playing WoW everyone agreed, including officers, to just disband the guild.

You said that teaching people make them loyal, that’s false, especially for 20-mans. Raiding 20-man Mythic gives little room for friendship since when we’re doing progress we need to focus because social conversations while raiding detracts performance for most players. When the raid is over most people just left Discord/Teamspeak instead of interacting with others.

Raiding with 10 people, however, are a completely different history, because there’s more room for social conversation while raiding since there are way few people talking. Between 2013-2014 our 10-man group changed just a couple members, that was also true for the other 10-man guilds in our realm. The friendship bonds that hold us together were so strong that we used to raid using Group Loot.

If Blizzard hadn’t changed the raid structure to this arbitrary 20-man size, I and my former guildmates would be still playing, raiding, and as Alliance.

Like I said there are resources but most people either don’t wanna become a hardcore player or lack the will power to do so, most of them figure that out in the learning process. Raiding today is hard and sometimes even boring, requires a lot of concentration to learn mechanics and a lot of patience to handle hundreds of wypes, most people simply lack the commitment (skill is not the only problem).

I agree, but this would stop the mass exodus since people would be able to play the faction they want without having to sacrifice the ability to do end game content.

Nobody loses with Cross-Faction play, and everyone wins.

It’s not me who refuses to acknowledge the imbalance as a problem, if there’s someone biased here, that someone is you. I’m suggesting things that even I don’t know if they are enough to make things better because they don’t really make Alliance more attractive, they would be like just an incentive for people that left the Alliance and wants to come back.

Yeah, I agree. I noticed this in the past.

625

Sometimes you can’t force a horse to water bud. You’re still trying to recruit from the 45%, rather than the say, 3%.
By no means will it be a guarantee to succeed, and it is easy to determine who is and who is not worth the process of training through first impressions alone. Knowing how to vet individuals is an important process.

You make the claim that I am biased because I do not acknowledge the imbalance, when I have done the opposite. I acknowledge it, I do not agree with the proposed solutions. hence, the bias is in your head.

626

I keep hearing from all these “subjective” percentages from 3rd party pages trying to take a faction population count, when none of them can separate account from character, separate alts from mains, tell which is bank alts/gathering alts, coupled by the fact we as players can and most tend to play both factions. Or for that matter tell me which side each account mains on and which just has alts to play for story or even play the AH house. We and the 3rd party pages cannot…Blizzard can…and will not release that information. Have some perspective in the discussions at least.

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627

You’re not proposing multiple solutions though, you’re proposing only one, and one that’s not going to be applied by the vast majority of the Alliance players, and at the same time, you are disagreeing with countless solutions proposed here if not all.

Do you still think you’re not biased? Okay, so I’m going to list some solutions here, then you can either agree with them or you can make a list of yours:

  • More Utility Racials for Alliance Races such as Rocket Jump/AoE Dispel, change Void Elf Teleport to a Blink for example, and change all Combat racials of the game into passives, or buff a bit Alliance passives;

  • Bring back 10-man as an option for Cutting Edge content and allow Cross-Realm for Mythic Raids on the beginning of each tier, no more time gating;

  • Remove all combat Racials, keep only flavor ones such as Mailbox/Anvil, and increase Hall of fame to 250 guilds in each faction and allow free faction changes for both guilds and players from Horde -> Alliance until things get better.

  • Allow Cross-Faction play (Neutral Mode) for PVE content only, there’s no need to remove War Mode or factions just allow people to do PVE content together, make instance entrances neutral with no faction NPC’s nearby.

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628

Yeah, I agree. These sites say nothing about player activity on each faction or active accounts, many of all those characters could be people that are not even subscribed anymore.

By the way, I have two 120’s one Horde (this Mage) and one Alliance that I log in once or twice every month. According to these sites, I’m a player that play both sides equally 50/50, since I have one 120 character on each side. :sweat_smile:

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629

Exactly this. It’s been beaten to death, but Realmpop is wholly irrelevant data to reference in this discussion, counting characters effectively tells us nothing about the problem.

The important metric to track is players, not characters, and the important players to reference are those with an interest in the end game content the game has to offer.

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630

It will strangle, well kill off actually world Horde vrs Alliance PVP, (end game raiding is beyond repair for alliance at this point) one of the main reasons some people did not want cross faction play. They will have to just enjoy the world pvp as told by npc cinematics.

631

Allowing Cross-Faction play doesn’t mean that we must kill World PVP or PVP, they can literally replace the War Mode Off with Cross-Faction Mode, this way everyone will need to disable Cross-Faction to be able to do World PVP.

It’s really simple.

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632

You don’t have to convince me its the naysayers and developers that need convinced.

633

I know, I just tried to clarify how World PVP and PVP can survive with minimal work.

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634

You would think that alliance LFR queues would be healthy, since the competitive raiders mainly moved to horde due to better racials at the time.

But LFR queues don’t even work for alliance. On horde there are plenty of LFR queues happening.

I play both factions.

This is clearly a player population issue.

Blizzards response is to yet again, give the horde a better race in Vulpera versus Mechagnomes.

Gnomes and Goblins have never been popular, so rather than a new Goblin skin, they made Vulpera.

While Mechagnomes may end up with an OP racial, Vulpera racials are clearly more attractive to role players, which is the only aspect of the game that alliance still dominate.

Soon alliance won’t even have roleplay to boost their ranks, when many roleplayers will move to horde.

First blood elf good looks, next better racials, next better roleplay.

Blizzard continues to give the horde the carrot on a stick and give alliance a radish.

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635

I will create 3 vulperas!
I will spend at least 4 months (?) Working to reach level 60.
Does anyone think I’ll have time to see something in the alliance that will only have the vile junkgnome as encouragement?
Blizzard appears determined to kill the alliance slowly.

C’est la vie

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636

Cross faction play is the only answer. No one is going to leave their faction and lose the friends they have played with for the last 5-10 years. I have been playing with the same people since WotLK, and I am not going to roll Alliance and lose those friends.

That is the core issue at its heart.

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