We need to balance our factions and how to do so

Moon Guard
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We have weekly blasts to list all of the events going on that are Horde and Neutral. There is also an event channel for people to list in.

Not all guilds are willing to go on the forums themselves to recruit and some do it naturally in game. You also have the Monthly Guild Expo that’s been running for some time now.

I am sorry this ever happened, it shouldn’t be and I completely agree no one should be discouraged at all.

We have some fantastic people here for sure! However, many of us that are active don’t actually blame or tell people ‘go to WRA’ - they’re trying to help bring people back in. To be fair, I don’t remember the last time it was used as an excuse or blaming, personally, of course.

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I’ll come play MG horde but I need new friends to play with me.

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I’d also like to note something; the horde RPers have been doing all they can with events both weekly and monthly. The continuous threads coming up ‘this is how you fix Horde’ - we know and have done all the things people keep saying.

Game popularty has fallen, the Horde story isn’t to everyone’s liking, a ton of people have unsubbed. There are other reasons to how things are. But we; myself, Flywheel, Tyrinade, Jab’trah and all of the other Horde members have been working to get RP going where we all can. Be it small or large events.

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Despite the problems that people keep citing as to why they tried Horde and couldn’t stay there, it pretty much always boils down to “smaller population, fewer choices”. I accept this, and I understand. All we can do is just keep trying to encourage people over. It is working, very slowly. Little by little, I feel we have turned a downhill slide into an uphill battle. We’ve passed rock bottom, and we’re on the way back up. We still have a lot of work to do, but attitudes are changing. We’re like a fresh guild trying to get off the ground. We have to just take whoever we can, and try to build our foundations. Yes, that’s going to mean recruiting alts and people who aren’t active all the time. But 50% or 20% is still a contribution. We have to work out who we are, what our strengths are, and what makes us different.

MG Horde: just keep fighting, and keep working. We’re doing all the right things. We can’t satisfy everyone’s requests right now, but we do have our main bases covered. We will get there in then end, so long as we don’t give up!

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Just wait until Vulpera.

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Ooops. I missed this initially, Orogun. My apologies!

In general I’d say Orgrimmar. More specifically the Valley of Honor. However if your main will be a blood elf and you would like a more elven-centric experience, maybe check with Moranai and the Convocation of Quel’Thalas group. I recommend them since I don’t have any blood elf characters and they could advise you better than I. Welcome to MG Horde, Orogun! I’m glad you’re here.

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We try and do as much as we can. We advertise events in multiple discords, the forums here, tumblr, and even Twitter.

But it’s the fact that ether:

  • people don’t like the horde in game story
  • people quitting the game for other MMOs or roll20
  • people listen to others with the whole silly wra this mg that nonsense

Flywheel, Moranai, myself, and several others have been working on and on to pull rp with events. As Moranai said, we had a two day event called Carnival of the Sun that brought well over 40+ individuals to line the city of Silvermoon again (and raised money for charity!).

It’s not like people are not trying. It’s the fact not enough do or have interest.

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To be honest, BFA is a really poor expansion to be encouraging more Horde RP unless you purposely want people to roll villainous characters. Horde-side RP has a lot of talented storytellers but there’s only so much you can do with Blizzard’s current storyline concerning the Horde unless you just toss it out entirely.

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We actually have a Reliquary storyline that started yesterday! Feel free to join the discord if you want to join in and we’ll keep updates up!

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I’m all for more Hordies! Cinderhammer here is my Alliance main but for a while I only RPd Alliance side rarely. I second the desire to push forward the message that the RP is there.

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That seems such an incredibly silly thing to say. There’s plenty of room in the Horde for good guys. It’s like saying in Cata and MoP, there was no room for good guys in the Horde - especially since this is basically just the same plot but with 100% more blight. Or it’s like saying there’s no room in the Alliance for roleplay as bad guys because their High King has cried twice after winning battles in the war.

You can’t just toss out the whole the story and ignore it. Different groups and guilds won’t have a single cohesive alternate plotline to work with. So some sort of common ground is going to be found. Guilds and other groups can certainly ignore it a certain extent, but most aren’t big enough to do so alone, and most people will want to still roleplay their others outside their guilds.

Working within the confines of the story is completely doable - and a certain part of my enjoys making it work within the limitations. It’s what I’m attempting with my current guild, clearly. Yeah there’s fanon surrounding it to justify it and build up a backstory or add flair and flavor to the guild and other such stuff, but it’s not just tossing out the whole actual lore either.

There’s plenty to work with for Horde players.

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At least with Cata and MOP you had leaders openly opposing Garrosh. Hell, Vol’jin practically threatened to kill him at least once. Meanwhile, every Horde leader except for Baine and Saurfang is complicit with Sylvanas’ acts of genocide and mass destruction. And Baine’s arrested and probably on the chopping block and Saurfang is …somewhere on the run. Everyone else is saying “hmm this isn’t right” and then just does nothing. There’s also no Thrall figure to rally around even if he was purely symbolic.

It’s really hard to feel heroic and play Horde and it’s been something I’ve been struggling with doing this entire expansion since Teldrassil went up in flames. It really is a rehash of Mists’ plot but much worse.

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Whenever I roll a toon on Hordeside I’m always met with the same thing: racist orcs yelling at my non-orc toons. Now, I get that this is RP and there are racist humans that do this to elves, but when I’m trying to find a guild or get help finding people and all I’m able to do is find the most pro-orc orcs around, I get a little discouraged.

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Race variation is severely lacking, unfortunately, or else the races that aren’t blood elves don’t appear to be marketing themselves very actively, as I only saw them around occasionally while I was hanging out in Orgrimmar- the place you’d expect them to be.

I find that Horde MG has a similar issue to what Wildstar had, in that it’s population was tiny and claimed to be super friendly- and it was, when you first walked in the door. Then as soon as you poke around and try to find a place to fit, the doors start to close until you’re left discouraged and wondering where all that promise of a friendly, active community disappeared to. Only later on does it become painfully clear that the entire entourage is being run by a very small handful of people with very little activity or interest from anyone else and that the only reason the people who aren’t the face of the movement are there is to have their name on something.

Which is fine, as nobody should be expected to bear the burden of a community. Nobody is indebted to MG Horde as a whole, and none should feel that they are. I feel rather bad for people working as hard as they are to bring people over to the other side, in any case. It’s a losing battle when nobody else is on board but you and a few of your pals.

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This actually describes what I’ve experienced pretty well. People were really friendly on the Discord but when it came time to be on the server they weren’t online and no one was engaging me except the naysayers. I tried a couple of characters out but it was the same thing every time with different characters yelling at my toons to get out of their Orgrimmar.

The experience on WrA is just so much easier to get into. It feels more inclusive and there are many more visible options other than the same like… maybe 5 guilds. It just doesn’t make sense to tell players it’s their fault for not going to a realm that can’t seem to engage them when there’s one already established that’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

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Just because the narrative of the Horde does trend negatively doesn’t mean that there aren’t no guilds or storylines being run in the background given Sylvanas’ tendency to publicly arrest dissent. The Horde may be run as an Autocracy more so than the Alliance but most of the Horde RP-wise would NOT be okay with how things are going outside of the more extreme factions which does tend to be a minority given the Civil War the Horde underwent during MoP.

There are guilds working with the narrative despite its negative and downward tone, but despite the narrative of the war, there is a lot to work with as Vaknosh mentioned.

As for the comments Aran and Rovena mentioned above me, I’ll tackle one at a time. MG Horde does have a smaller population compared to WRA and MG Alliance but despite the setbacks we’ve experienced as a community, MG Horde has been growing and the main reason I posted that MG Discord Server listing thread was specifically to counter the sheer effort and work someone new to the overall community in MG would need to do to learn, regardless of faction.

The entire entourage isn’t being run by a handful of people but a slowly growing number of folks who want to better the server in its entirety by having a thriving MG Horde scene. I don’t do what I do for my name or reputation. I can honestly say that I don’t do what I do for the rep because I don’t really care about it to begin with. MG is my home and I want my home to be better, flat out.

As for Rovena, I’m sorry that you’ve experienced such things mainly with the naysayers but we all know that walk-up RP or interactions of that sort will always be a 50/50 coin toss in being a good or bad. I’m merely sorry that you haven’t been able to enjoy or find good interactions in-game with the MG Horde. That said, please don’t dismiss MG Horde as a whole as we are doing what we can to better it and have more positive interactions and RP.

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I appreciate this and I wish I’d run into more people like you. I must have had my bad luck shoes on because, without fail, my pandaren and my shal’dorei always found the worst people for them to interact with. I do want to make a character that is interesting on Horde side! It sounds like I just need to wade through a bit to get to the better RP. I also want to avoid rolling belves, not because of anything other than trying to not over-saturate the population even more than I’m sure it already is.

I’ve been considering making a Forsaken actually. Then again, I don’t know if that will ever be my main over Rovena. If I had friends on Horde I would go Horde in a more serious way. Maybe I’m just babbling now XD

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I don’t think anyone is asking anyone to switch completely from one side to the other. Having alts is cool, and ideally it’s best for both halves of MG to have folks interacting and playing both sides.

That’s why I have a gnome warrior.

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Okay then. Consider the alternative. An RP server with only one faction - Alliance- because the dominating force declared that they were better, and used their numbers to reinforce that statement at every opportunity.

And so the Horde population shrinks even more.

From 40%, to 30%, to 25% (which is about where we’re at now) to 20%, to 10%…and then people stop playing on MG Horde altogether.

RP-PvP campaigns? Forget that. You’ll have to use NPCs or hit up some other server to find bodies (and why would they want to help you?)

Cross-faction RP? Nope, it won’t exist.

A chance to play all your alts on the same server? It wouldn’t happen. Those 50 character slots would be useless.

By refusing to support Horde, you folks are effectively wiping out half of the game on Moon Guard. Do you think that people will want to play on a server that has only one faction? Get real. People are already citing ‘faction imbalance’ as a reason not to come to Moon Guard. World PvP is laughable. Eventually, as the problem gets worse, the whole server will begin to suffer, including the Alliance that think they’re so safe up there in their Stormwind castle. Faction imblance affects the population as a WHOLE. Too much of one thing is NEVER healthy.

Every time one of you Alliance folks comes on these forums and says “I played Horde and I didn’t like it” or " Horde is no good because of X reason" - all of you are contributing towards a Horde faction wipeout on MG. You are building destruction. You are persisting the reasons not to play Horde. You are the ones creating the imbalance, by disencouraging others. You might as well be driving people away with pitchforks.

Don’t kid yourself thinking your comments are ‘constructive’. They’re not. They’re DESTRUCTIVE. Every single reason I’ve seen is an EXCUSE that can be overcome. If WrA can have a thriving Horde population, then so can we. The only thing these negative comments do is batter the small Horde community that is struggling and fighting so hard JUST TO STAY AFLOAT.

If you are not willing to put in any effort to improve the situation (e.g. by moving to Horde, creating a guild, starting walk-up RP, or making Horde events) then PLEASE SAY NOTHING. You are not helping. YOU ARE HINDERING US. We are trying to make Horde more appealing to players. Please do not jeopardise our efforts. Yes, there is only a small group of people that are willing to get off their butts and not just sit in their comfy armchairs, and actually try to FIX the faction imbalance issue. Please do not make our job harder than it already is!

If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. There is no middle ground here, and don’t try and pretend there is.

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PS: I did all of that. For just about three months. Three months is an awful long time to commit to something that isn’t giving anything back, and to be uncomfortable around people that were claimed to be friendly and welcoming. You say “do something to improve the situation” but play ignorant to the fact that many of us have tried, and failed, to do so. There is a presiding issue on hordeside that is keeping people from staying. What that is, I couldn’t tell you, but to pretend it doesn’t exist at all, and that people like me are just out to get you, is a bit of a denialist mentality that I can’t get behind.

I promise you that the problem is a heck of a lot bigger than a couple naysayers. If that side of the server was as great as you say, the naysayers wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference and there’s plenty of evidence to that concept in things other than just WoW communities.

You’re not doing yourself any favors by pointing fingers and trying to play the blame game. As soon as you stop coming to these forums to lambast every criticism your faction receives, you might just start seeing some improvement.

TL;DR the victim mentality really needs to go.

Edit:
Actually, here’s an idea, because I’m a person of solutions, not of complaints: Instead of blaming everyone else for the horde’s lack of activity and putting the burden of “repopulation” on everyone else’s shoulders, why not try embracing the small server culture you’ve got over there and work on improving relations between guilds and groups? My biggest issue was that for every guild I approached, only one of several had any interest in speaking to me at all- it was as if nobody was recruiting, or actually cared if someone joined the guild or didn’t.

I have created a conversation. I am now no longer “part of the problem”.

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