Yes, but the problem, as stated above, is that WoW’s raiding pool is too small now to support 2 healthy raiding populations. Heck, WoW’s playerbase AS A WHOLE has dwindled so much this expansion that it can’t support 2 factions.
If the raiding population overall was increased, at least it would stem some of the exodus of Alliance players who go Horde simply because raiding Alliance-side is no longer sustainable due to lack of people. It would eliminate the issue of Horde being the Last Refuge of people who want to raid.
And, as also pointed out above, it isn’t the Horde everywhere. On Oceanic servers, Alliance dominates all aspects of the game and is the Last Refuge of Oceanic raiders. In fact, Oceanic Alliance guilds are among the best guilds in the world.
You’re not wrong. And yes stimulating raiding in general would be good for both factions. But at that point, why not just let the factions work together? As Myschyf said, the purist will balk at it for sure, but at the end of the day I’d rather we just had an overall healthy raiding population.
It’s especially annoying since everything in the story in MoP and BfA has been about ending the cycle and unifying and how now we’re different…
Sure there’d still be an Alliance/Horde divide in participation, but it wouldn’t matter as the gameplay problem would be solved on the raiding front.
Well, speaking just for me personally, I wouldn’t want to be put in with the US Alliance playerbase. I think the US Alliance playerbase has a lot of issues, and after pointing the finger at, and complaining about, the Horde players for so many years, I think it’s pretty outrageous that their suggested solution is for the Horde playerbase to (effectively) come in and bail them out, at this point.
Well that was my attempt at levity. In either way, I’d say that the vast majority of alliance players aren’t whining about this divide. More like noting it’s existence at this point. If you’ve tried to recruit for a guild on this side, it’s no wonder you may become jaded about the divide…
As for ML… I think I’ve been quite out-spoken on the topic and have made my stance known. I’m avidly against its removal. That doesn’t change the fact that I’d rather we had as healthy a raiding population as we can.
And the ability to cross faction, would just increase the pool for both sides.
Faction choice is a very personal thing, and I’m certain you’d have to search long and hard to find many that have the same exact reasons as to why they chose a specific faction over the other. For me, it’s about perception. I like the idea of playing the faction that is about “the blood in the mud” (my perception of horde) as opposed to “being a squire, going to court and drinking tea” (my perception of alliance). I’ve played both. I just prefer the aura of the horde.
As it stands right now horde is 49.4% overall and alliance us 50.6% overall. This is factoring in all levels.
Slide the bar over to 120, and now its 46.6% alliance and 53.4% horde. Round those numbers and its 47:53.
The top 10% of players does not dictate overall population and the game should not be balanced around that.
The problem there is players are choosing to swap factions. Blizzard cannot force people to play a faction they dont want.
Correct, this is a player created issue.
Both the horde and the alliance community are to blame. Yes the horde doesnt take it seriously and makes fun of the alliance. And on that note, i do believe that this is over all a non issue, the factions are withing 3-4% of each other (semantics from earlier be damned) and i dont care what the top 10% are doing.
But as a new player who sees how the alliance community acts, why would i ever want to go alliance? All i ever see alliance players doing is complaining how much greener the grass is in the other side! So what are you expecting (royal you not targeting anyone)?
If everyone tells me burger king is trash and mcdonalds is so good, why are you surprised that people are going to mcdonalds instead?
It’s probably true. In fact, it probably featured strongly in why Blizzard did nothing about the faction imbalance for so many years, because, population wise, there were more Alliance players.
They knew their actions would cause Alliance players to horde but it wouldn’t matter.
The problem they did NOT foresee was that the majority of remaining Alliance players were RPing or casuals. That’s when the problem blossomed.
