The problem isn’t population imbalance.
The problem is skilled raider imbalance.
Server connections won’t do anything to address that really.
(dead servers are a whole nother topic)
Even if they smushed all the servers into one, the percent of players who do high end raiding is still overwhelmingly hordeside.
I don’t get how that’s Blizzards fault or problem to resolve. Sounds like digital darwinism.
Pretty much. And maybe blizz is OK with 100% end game raiding happening on a single faction.
I don’t think they are, but that’s where we’re going.
Sure, which is why dramatic steps were taken to change that. Looking at the game’s history, I doubt that there would be anything that correlates more strongly to the overall number of people playing the game than the two factions being relatively balanced.
That doesn’t mean that it is the driving force, but it would be silly to dismiss it as a factor.
True, I’ve been horde since day one and have never made an alliance toon.
You know as well as I do that your problem is player created. Your “side” can do all the content. They choose not to.
You’re 6/8. I’ve been 3/8 for months (thus is an alt). Raiding is tough… horde side the plethora of raids makes life harder. Top players leave progressing guilds to join more accomplished raids. Robust cross server PUGs make joining a raid less important… etc.
In the end it has to do with player choices. Merging servers may alleviate the problem, but they’ll never do that.
You never hear the horde on the forums complaining about the gross imbalance for pet battles, fashion contest winners, or Goldshire shenanigans. We don’t care. You do you.
Mog is cute though 
I have been reading this for years. The sky is falling chicken little.
Rift was going to kill WoW too and here we are.
Ah, that is why this has nothing to do with me (or probably lots of other players.)
I think your heart is in the right place, but the direct reason I heard for the top guilds being Horde was the racials. So even if you could play “cross-faction”, how do you think that would fix it when they might just say, “Sorry, Horde character only since they are the best which is why we are Horde…”
I think they should either do away with racials, or make them equal, or put them in a pool. An example of a pool would be taking the “Combat Racials”, and letting anyone pick them per character (rather than locked to the race they are.) Call them something other than “racial”, like “perks.” Then allow each race to still have racial perk racials (perhaps improving them, A LOT FOR SOME OF US) like “Mole Machine” for dark iron dwarves, “Camp” for Vulpera, “Shadowmeld” for Night Elves (though somewhat useful in combat situations.)
I think of having a racial that MAKES someone want to be Horde, for raiding, is the biggest design mistake in the game.
THIS! ^ 100%.
Out of lvl 120 characters, there are significantly more Horde. That’s fine though. It wouldn’t be so bad if it’s getting skewed more and more every expansion.
In Shadowlands it’s set to be between 55% to 60% Horde max toons to 40% to 45% Alliance. The Alliance needs a cultural morale boost from Blizzard. More than just racials.
Pretty much true.
I’ve seen this and this preaching the gospel honestly. This is the truth. In fact this video needs to be updated. We need Wonton to make a 2019 version of this.
This is the problem. People think racials are where it’s at. It’s not. It’s the fact that there isn’t 2 separate playerbases. There is 1. 100% of the community knows if you want to get into Mythic raiding you go Horde.
The Mythic Raiding community is one community. Not the Horde and Alliance versions. It’s 1 single homegenous community, and they choose Horde.
Blizzard needs to address this reality and combat it and provide a reason for the community to be split. I mean hey, they’re the ones that say the Faction division is necessary to the community. So instead of having one Hardcore community that chooses the Horde, intentionally divide it into 2 somehow beyond just faction choice.
Pretty much.
That’s because the hardcore community is a single community. Those saying “Alliance particiaption” makes no sense and that’s a farce.
There is ONE hardcore community, not an Alliance and Horde one. We need to take this Hardcore community and divide it intentionally because Blizzard wants a divided community. So give us a divided hardcore scene. Do something about it, don’t just talk about it Blizz.
Getting worse indeed.
This is the problem.
We already confirmed that the Hardcore community in general is homogeneous and a single large community, that chooses Horde willingly. Alliance participation doesn’t exist because it’s not the Alliance we’re talking about. It’s the players who are Hardcore. That’s the playberbase regardless of faction, and they choose one faction because they know everyone who raids goes Horde.
Probably the only way at this point.
Other than that they could provide Mythic Raiding rewards for being on the Alliance that are unique only to the Alliance. It won’t work if you faction transfer either. You have to receive Ahead of the Curve as an Alliance character to get this specific reward for example.
Just even something as simple as that could see people wanting to go Alliance.
They need to divide the Hardcore community and make them go Alliance.
The issue is that the damage is done.
Maybe changing racials years ago might have stemmed the tide a bit, but honestly this is an inevitable problem, eventually people will self segregate in the same way that they have and the result is one of the factions having no viable end game community to play with.
The only way to prevent it from becoming an understood reality that Alliance is not a faction that is able to take part in end game content, is to allow cross-faction group content.
This change would actually allow people to play whichever faction they want, and would remove a lot of the pressure to transfer Horde just to be able to viably play the game.
I think a lot forget about the other aspects in the game, yes racials were probably one of the larger factors, in term with mythic raiders, that causes a snowball effect at the time. I don’t think racials now have the same effect on the populace.
What I do think is forgotten is Blizzard writes the stories, they promote, or lack thereof alliance, they either choose to instill a sense of pride or enjoyment with their design, questing, creation of allied races or they fail in doing so. This in my opinion is not a player created issue. If they want the alliance side to have a bigger participation they need give them a purpose and make it feel like home.
There is and always will be casual and other aspects of the game raiding is not the only thing, this traditionally existed on both sides of the faction divide.
You succeeded in giving horde pride and bravado through PR/Q&A/blizzcon and forward motion through story, even if it is internal conflict, because it is still story. You have not given equal measure in that regard with alliance. That is why it has to be blizzard fix, because the players cannot do that, we buy play and spend money as any consumer would on what we want, and how we want or not at all. Your product design is key
They’re not going to help the Alliance.
They’ll throw up their hands and enable cross faction (though open races to whatever faction would be better, IMHO) which will just relegate all Alliance players in endgame content as filler if horde need them.
It won’t help ANYONE reroll to Alliance and that’s the problem.
Blizzard rightfully looked at the horde problem as a population/participation one and their goal was to make changes that would entice people to reroll horde.
That’s where the difference in their solution is; their goal is to buff the Alliance somewhat, not to entice people to reroll Alliance.
if it makes you feel any better, I just leveled up a human priest so i can unlock Mechagnomes, best racials in the game for tanks, and arena and mythic raiding in general
That’s what I thought about DiD…until they nerfed them FOUR TIMES, including a stealth nerf.
What are the odds they get nerfed?
I’ve tried to play alliance a few times. I gave it the college try as they say.
I was just bored. Stormwind is nice. I like some of the locals, but overall Horde just provides too much variety for me to stick with the blue team.
Then get more of you friends to play Alliance. I enjoy the Horde because it’s lore is better and not goody two-shoes… And I don’t want to play with Alliance.
My thoughts on reading the title of this thread:
Nah , I will just have less losers to bother me 
These guys are just trolling, you can say that by the first response where the person said that even 40/60 would be optimal and acceptable… 
These guys will deny the imbalance until Alliance is done, then they’ll say that Alliance died because the faction is bland, has bad lore, bad characters, and all kinds of non-sense.
Don’t expect any empathy from Horde players in these forums.
So the solution is simple. If the racials are balanced now, just make Alliance racials overpowered. Wait for about half the raiding guilds to transfer, then change them back. If they go back to horde, buff Alliance racials again.
OR…
Play up the racial resistances. Granted, with allied races and each side having like 12 different races or whatever, this is kind of stupid, but back in the day, Alliance had night elves with nature resistance, dwarves with frost resistance, and gnomes with arcane resistance. If you were to put out a raid with heavy nature, frost, and arcane damage, Alliance would naturally have an advantage.
I guess nowadays it would have to be some kind of alchemy or inscription item that can only be used (or crafted) by one faction.
You think if Alliance had a 20% buff to all damage/healing/damage reduction in raids that people wouldn’t transfer or reroll?