The Gamble: Is nostalgia powerful enough to keep enough profitable subscriptions up if half the game is broken?
Using census data from WoW Head, we see that out of a population of 2,206,988 players, 1,403,054 play on PvP servers, which means 63% of the population playing WoW Classic are playing on PvP servers.
This population is experiencing a 14% faction imbalance favoring horde. This means that there are 188,128 more Horde players on PvP servers than Alliance. On average, that means 9,400 extra Horde per PvP server.
False Hope #1: “Battlegrounds will solve everything!”
By default of how the mechanism works, Battlegrounds will never be able to absorb the extra 9,400 because there isn’t an additional 9,400 Alliance for them to match with. It will only absorb some of the most obsessive and coordinated small-team PvPers on a server. Meanwhile, any combination of the 9,400 extra Horde per server will still be in queue, continuing their WPvP grind unabated. The statement that “Battlegrounds will solve everything!” is really “Battlegrounds will absorb the most effective and economically-minded small teams”
WPvP problems do not stem from the small and talented outliers. They stem from an extra 9,400 Horde running around per server, camping every single 50+ zone and picking off 50-59s for free honor. Battlegrounds will temporarily displace raw volume of PvP-oriented Horde, but there will always be less than 9,400 Horde wandering about WPvP, waiting for 9,400 other never-existent alliance for Battleground match ups.
Do you really think they’ll sit in capitals all day, waiting to get matched up, knowing there is a 9,400 Alliance gap?
False Hope #2: “Just switch servers!”
Every Alliance that leaves in frustration to the honeyed lands of PvE servers will increase the amount of extra Horde that exists on PvP servers, which will accelerate frustrations for Alliance, increasing an exodus drive.
Eventually, because of the lack of cross-server PvP, Horde will remain unable to match up with anyone, making the PvP server a wasteland of totally dedicated masochists on Alliance and bored sadists on the Horde. (Might as well skip the chase and name them BSDM servers) Because this imbalance is only going to increase, the problems identified in False Hope #1 expand with it.
Finally, at present, there is no way to transfer characters, so all Alliance leveling before the Honor System that didn’t result in T1 gear became a sunk cost with no buyers, no recoup, and no value recovery mechanisms at all. Total economic dead weight, which means the psychological pressure to abandon PvP characters entirely dramatically increase for Alliance. Paying $25.00 to move out of a bad investment means $15M for Blizzard. Your misery is their profit.
False Hope #3: “Git gud nub!”
The PvP-oriented outliers mentioned above are too busy grinding free honor to be engaging in forum posts, and no amount of forum posting has ever generated invitations to these exclusive enclaves of highly-effective Horde PvP operations, so the “git gud nub” trope appears to be coming from the equivalent of chihuahuas who only bark when they believe they are in the presence of exceptionally talented wolf packs. (Wolf packs that will never invite them or represent them in any meaningful way whatsoever. Wolf packs they pray to in the hopes they can receive sweet free honor in the future by simply attaching to a raid) This false hope can be ignored entirely because of these frighteningly common psychological origins.
False Hope #4: “But it’s really just like original Wow!”
Original WoW did not have nostalgic players from the start who understood every mechanic in advance, gaming every possible optimization as effectively as possible, and with over two decades of modern social gaming coordination experience. We were all noobs when WoW started. Almost two decades later we are social gaming veterans who know how to organize as packs in one manner or another. And we also understand you cannot out-organize 9,400 additional enemies in this game. Zergs always win in WPvP. The gear stats progression is so tight-fisted, an additional PvPer ally is like wearing level 80 equipment.
Furthermore, we have life priorities now. Families, jobs, hobbies, and millions of games that will happily take our time and money. For 62% of the WoW Classic population, 47% of them have much, much higher pressures to justify opting out of the BSDM experience entirely.
The game might be a good-enough emulation of the rules and systems, but -we- have changed. -We- no longer rationalize being ground under the foot of population distribution problems. -We- know that there are no solutions for population distribution coming from Blizzard. (No cross faction PvP to eliminate queue time, no free character transfers)
Game theory explains why I unsubbed, and it explains why 600,000 alliance are also tremendously pressured to unsub as well.
Forums be messin’ with me.)
