I have been farming VoA for weeks now (gold, mounts, tmogs) and I have seen the portal either in Horde control or Alliance control plenty of times. This week, I have seen no portal since the Tuesday reset, and last week it felt like most of the week the portal was not up. I made sure to even queue for the Wintergrasp PvP to try and get it spawned and it still has not for either faction. I have been checking several times a day at ~3 hour intervals and have seen no change.
I play on Pagel NA and don’t know if this is the case for other servers.
Just checked on a Pagle Horde toon. Essence of Wintergrasp buff was active when I got to Dalaran, and the portal into the fortress was active when I flew to WG. I was able to zone into VoA with no problem.
Bit late to respond but to my knowledge someone on your server has to be part of the win. I’ve checked both factions multiple times some days and we won’t have the VoA buff. My Ally didn’t have it, my Horde didn’t have it.
No idea how it works now with the merge but I’d still guess it’s based on your server so in short… I suspect nobody from Pagle won on your faction.
I’ve been experiencing this for weeks. And I have WON many WG battles and the portal and NPCs are never there. Not sure what the deal is, but it sucks.