You are the problem players such as yourself that are presented solid data but continue to spew that everything is fine will be what puts this game in the ground.
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I’ve played both sides extensively. Both sides have “people rolling up their sleeves to get things done.” Both sides have douchebags, both sides have leeches, both sides have nice people, both sides have people willing to teach.
Stop acting like alliance players are different from horde players. They’re not. They’re just groups of people being people. Using broad generalizations is a weak form of argument and is boring.
No. No it really isn’t. What’s driving people away from alliance currently is that when they go to the recruitment channel, what do they see? Swathes of horde guilds recruiting. When they try to build their guilds, what do they see? A pittance of players attempting to be recruited. When they open up pre-made finder to participate in M+, what do they see? A relative pittance of groups when compared to the horde finder.
Why WOULDN’T you swap? If you’re just breaking out onto the scene, it’s easier to be recruited and easier to get content done if you’re currently Horde. If you’re trying to build your roster, it’s easier to recruit because there’s a larger base to recruit from. How many times does this game have to demonstrate that players follow the path of least resistance for this forum to accept it?
What’s left on the alliance? Already established guilds who are struggling to maintain their rosters unless they offer something truly unique.
And again… I’ve played both sides… extensively. So don’t pass me off as another alliance whiner. I just happen to be lucky enough to be in one of those established guilds.
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You’re falling back on this chicken-and-egg thing.
There used to be more Alliance end-game players.
Now there aren’t.
Why?
It’s obviously not “because there are more Horde players” because there weren’t.
Before this? Racials. Racials were imbalanced prior to this. To the point that it pulled top guilds horde. Nowadays, they’re relatively balanced. With some alliance racials pulling ahead for specific classes. I’ve stated before that the only horde racial that I’d still has a distinct advantage is the troll racial, but only because it’s specifically an on-use effect and as such gives the player more control over when to use it. Seeing as most end bosses have some form of burn to them, having something on-use gives you a lot more relative power. But this is really only going to set apart the top like… 10 guilds. Not the general mythic population for sure.
At this point though, it’s just down to community perception overall and community size. I was trying to find it, but someone did a nice write up of the top 100 stats, which has shown a slow downward trend in alliance participation at the top 100 level from BC on. Initially it was relatively even at around 45-55, but overtime it’s gotten to the point that we’re now in the teens.
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Alliance racials are actually better now, both in utility (see: MDI) and mathematically (see: sites like bloodmallet).
Here’s why I don’t buy the “because of racials” line of thinking:
If people were so willing to switch to the less-populated faction (Horde) previously, because their racials were better, why are people not willing now to switch to the less-populated faction (Alliance) when their racials are better?
That’s the thing that nobody has ever been able to explain. And why I think the Alliance playerbase’s obsession with blaming racials is so far off the mark.
Yes. But the issue isn’t balance of the playerbase as a whole.
it’s balance of the high end raider/m+ playerbase, and that is overwhelmingly horde.
It has nothing to do with racials at this point. maybe a long time ago racials started the slide from A to H, but now? i’ts merely opportunity.
if you want more opportunities to raid, go horde. that’s where the guilds are.
If you want more opportunities to recruit for your raid, go horde, that’s where the raiders are.
If you want to run higher key m+? go horde, that’s where the players are.
can I do mythic raiding/m+ on alliance side? yes, and I do. But not nearly as easily as on horde side. Alliance guilds go to recruit and it’s “no alliance” a huge percentage of the time. Additionally, Alliance m+ groups in LFG are far fewer than horde.
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Certainly. But one is an outgrowth of the other. You would think that a larger player pool would breed a larger end-game-content pool. That’s how it worked for years when Alliance had both the largest player pool AND the largest end-game pool.
But something changed. The question is: What? We know it’s not racials (see my previous post).
Honestly, I think the answer is attrition. Mythic raiding participation (and the value of raiding, in general) has suffered tremendous attrition. It’s just that the Horde pool has suffered less attrition, and as the flood waters rise, people are fleeing to higher ground by switching to Horde, because WoW no longer has the playerbase to sustain healthy raiding populations on both factions.
That’s the root issue. The mystery remains, however, as to why Horde was the Last Refuge of raiders, rather than Alliance.
But it’s quite clear that WoW can no longer sustain healthy populations in both factions.
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It is true that things do need to drastically change. Purely as a company stand point. The investors know something is wrong and has been wrong for a while now. Act/Bliz should be trading at or near 90 to 100 a share. They were at 83 a share 14 months ago but took a massive hit and they still haven’t recovered even the loss yet. It trades at around 52 a share recently. It can not afford another massive hit that it still hasn’t recovered from. So if they choose to ignore this issue losing let’s say 30% of players that used to play alliance will make it so nobody is playing. There will come a point where the investors will say pull the plug and it’s closer than most of you realize.
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I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Additionally, we’re playing in a world where the playerbase is both aging and lessening. The game isn’t exactly bringing in a ton of new players who will want to push mythic content.
this is a huge part of it
yep. So the follow up to that is - what are the dev’s going to do?
I don’t know. I don’t make the dev bucks. but I do know that as an alliance mythic raider, I’m on the cusp of just throwing my hands up and having the guild go horde… and I don’t want to, but it’s getting to the point where I simply don’t have a choice if I want to keep raiding.
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Since the game can’t support 2 healthy raiding populations anymore, the obvious solution is to get more people into raiding:
*Increase raiding rewards. Triple the number of drops, for starters.
*Eliminate forced personal loot.
*Put skips back in (fortunately, they are doing this for Nyalotha).
*Do something about the weekly lockout.
*Get off of the TOTALLY RIDICULOUS class-stacking that they railroad people into on Mythic.
Unfortunately, Blizzard has been doing the opposite since MoP, discouraging people from raiding and really screwing over guilds any way they can, while class imbalance gets worse and worse and they don’t do anything about it.
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Because it’s a relative better… Better by 0.3% (boomy, which ironically has HMT as the best) isn’t really that much better… Certainly not enough to be swapping for. And don’t forget that the game is more complicated and more variable on the throughput side than it has ever been. With sims showing swings of 30% in output just down to which buffs you happen’d to proc at which times.
That wasn’t how it was previously… a prior increase of 3% was a consistent increase of 3% in output.
Either way, I just flipped through a few of the specs on bloodmallet. I’m seeing multiple with horde racials at the top? What are your stats on this current alliance racial dominance? Cause from my perspective, they’re as balanced as they possibly can be without them literally just mirroring the racials.
My point was that previously it was an actual imbalance. Heck even if it wasn’t, there certainly was a community perception of imbalance. Eitherway, the top guilds shifted horde, the peons followed, and the rest is history. Just like the top guilds shifted alliance on oceanic realms, the peons followed, and the rest is history.
One piece, for one week, after which it wouldn’t have mattered because better gear was available to grind in M+ the next week as well. But they nerfed it to soothe the bruised ego of the Horde after it stopped mattering even a little.
It was fixed because people were crying. Not because it mattered.
It mattered more than one piece of heroic gear, because it lasted far longer.
There’s the problem. If you’re horde, it literally didn’t matter because chances are you had a number of blood elves in your raid, any of whom could deal with those adds.
If you were alliance, OTOH, the difference in difficulty you saw when you had two mass dispels compared to one or less was just massive. Not insurmountable, but definitely noticeable.
Which only impacts the MDI, and which the devs have promised to fix moving forward, at least so far as the season mechanic is concerned.
And why would I complain about shadowmeld? I don’t see you complaining about Arcane Torrent.
Unless it’s the horde QQing about AaO or about shadowmeld in M+ when it affects Reaping. Then it actually gets addressed even if just addressed moving forward.
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Keep flipping. The Alliance advantage isn’t universal, but it is there overall.
That still doesn’t change the fact that the relative increase isn’t enough to warrant leaving the horde community. And I can guarantee you that guilds like Method and Limit wouldn’t give two hoots about swapping. If the advantage was real, they’d be there. Hell Limit swapped their entire team for the AoO advantage (which I still was very against… I don’t want advantages for being alliance) and then back.
DK
Frost - Belf H
Unholy - Troll H
DH
Havoc - Belf H
Druid
Boomy - HMT H
Feral - Nelf A
Hunter
BM - Human A
MM - Troll H
Surv - Gnome (wtf? lol) A
Mage
Arcane - Troll H
Fire - Troll H
Frost - Dwarf A
Monk
WW - Human A
Paladin
Ret - Human A
Priest
Shadow - Human A
Rogue
Assassination - Mag’har Orc H
Outlaw - Dwarf A
Sub - Nelf A
Shaman
Ele - Tauren H
Enh - Troll H
Lock
Aff - Troll H
Demo - Troll H
Destro - Troll H
Warrior
Arms - Gnome A
Fury - Human A
Verdict:
13 H
11 A
You were saying?
Edit: I have to admit, 13 to 11 is still pretty remarkably balanced. Literally 1 race off from perfect. That’s pretty darn good imo from a numbers perspective.
Why? Probably because it’s simply more difficult to find groups to play with or a guild that’s a good match.
For me personally; I’m playing casually now. Mostly doing ranrom BGs and epic BGs. The Alliance rarely ever win epics, so I mostly stopped playing my 11 max level Alliance characters. (Sometimes I think about playing one and end up sitting there just looking at the screen in disgust at them because they’re Alliance. I guess that means I’m invested in the Horde now.) Basically if you want to play with the winning team, you play Horde.
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Factions should go die in a fire.
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None of you seem to be actually reading my posts, except Synsha and Annastasi.
Even if they did all of these things the problem would still be there. Those rewards would still more easily accessible by being on the Horde side.
Until horde is no longer the path of least resistance, the imbalance will continue to grow.
This problem can’t be solved through individual effort or will, it can only be solved through systemic changes.
Only through increasing populations (either by removing cross faction or cross server limitations) can this be addressed.
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Hey, I wouldn’t be against any of those changes though. Personally my fix was to allow cross faction guilds/grouping, but I can see how that’d cause a whole host of problems.
On a side note: Thanks you bliz… thank you for putting skips back in for Nyalotha…
Anyone with half a brain saw this years ago. But the usual apologists kept brushing it off and calling people whiners and weak. The rewards to balance it out would have to be massive at this point, ie its not happening.
Only option at this point is to join factions. The purists will cry about it, but its their own fault as they didn’t want to listen to reason years ago when this would have still been solvable with a few small fixes. Too late now.
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