classic wotlk is full of paladins, rets and pregs, but enhance shamans population is almost zero
take a guess
People shouldnât care⌠itâs really not going to matter to 99.9% of us shmucks who just wanna play the game. But WoW, and especially Classic WoW, has developed this meta where everybody thinks you need to be the absolute best. Retail has it a bit but itâs so much more prominent in the Classic versions.
My theory is that itâs one part being a âsolved gameâ (not that SoD is yet) and another part the streamer phenomena. Everybody just wants to be like their favourite streamer who, in turn, has to promote an atmosphere of being the best, or superior, in order to attract views? I dunno.
I asked that person what the actual impact of those skill bonuses was and they were good enough to respond with the mechanical advantage they had (better hit and lower chance of glancing blows), but I also asked what the relative DPS difference might be. I think they were going to get back to me but maybe forgot.
Iâm really interested in what that difference is though. Iâm with you in that it likely lands on 5% (ie, human warrior and tauren warrior, exact same gear), but I am curious to know. If it is 5%, that really shouldnât matter that much, though I do feel like Blizzard could have made things a little better by putting an axe or two on the BFD loot table.
Living flame and wild growth are nothing but shamans on horde. I rolled a shaman first and every group had at least 2, one almost always being a tank. I rerolled to alliance shortly after hitting 25 so i could play with friends, but even now when i log on my shaman its loaded
One of the biggest arguments that I noticed when trying to convince my group to go horde was that âalliance are getting windfury and horde isnât getting blessings so alliance are going to be betterâ. Blizzard showing the windfury rune in blizzcon when they said they wouldnât have a ptr so that players will be clueless when SoD launches was antithetical. Sure it hyped everything up, but that limited knowledge it seemed to have swayed a lot of people going into alliance since now they have blessings and wf. Maybe if they didnât show that or if they showed hints of horde getting blessings it could have evened things out a lot. Better yet if they mentioned that theyâd be tackling weapon skill stuff earlier than they did then weâd likely see more horde than alliance!
it used to be that the allliencess were the roll playing faction and hrode were the try-hard faction.
now the alliences are the try hard faction who also happen to roll play and the horde are the bad guys
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pallys nuff said
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The Alliance favoritism is apparent to anyone without an agenda. Just go look at how many runes require going deep into Alliance territory. Also, the most valuable materials and best farming spots are ALSO in Alliance territory. Paladins are ridiculously OP, and Alliance got windfury.
This isnât anything new. In retail, you can cite dozens of examples throughout the games history. Remember when Orc shoulders were super tiny for months in TBC? Remember how many times they âfixedâ AV? They moved the Horde starting tunnel farther away a couple of times. The Alliance already had OP towers, where the archers could hit you from any angle. The Horde archers can just be LoSâd by walking inside the CLOSED tower. The Alliance also already had a huge chokepoint before entering their base (narrow bridge). Then they took away the ability for Horde to enter from the back.
Like I said, the list can go on forever. Itâs disgraceful.
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In SoM and Hardcore Alliance was more popular.
But in 2019-2021 Classic Horde was definitely the most popular faction.
I assume Alliance is now more popular because more players played Horde in 2019 and wanted to change it up.
I did the opposite, played Alliance in 2019 but also leveled and lightly raided as Horde in Classic and TBC and am Horde now in SoD.
They literally had to do that. The Horde could meet the Alliance at Stonehearth Graveyard. The Horde start was WAY too far forward. Both raids would clash at SHGY. Even if Alliance wins, theyâre low hp/mana and then have to fight the Horde AGAIN because they canât make it to IBGY before they rez.
And Horde has a worse chokepoint at Icewing Bunker.
The Alliance have to fight uphill and cannot jump up the cliff compared to Horde jumping off the cliff to bypass it.
Once you play both sides of Vanilla/Classic AV you really see the Horde favoritism.
Classic is very Horde favored in everything except PvE instances (Paladins are OP)
But I do agree that most of the SoD Changes have been very Alliance favored.
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Iâm usually a horde player and after getting bored in wrath, I played Alliance in classic era just to try healing as a holy paladin since Horde donât have them in classic. It went okay, but I missed the Horde and couldnât wait to return in SoD. I didnât like the travel setup on Alliance side and questing didnât feel as streamline. The NE city felt useless and empty other than getting a mage port there to fly nearby, while I love all three of the Horde cities.
The only thing that Iâll miss is all the goodies paladins will get in SoD since I loved my paladin back in TBC/Wrath. Maybe in another season theyâll give both factions paladins/shamans, but not sure Iâll be still around by then, weâll see.
One thing I wonât miss is feeling like I needed to go drawf priest for fear ward or human for melee classes b/c of racials.
On retail wow, I had almost always played on RP servers and normal servers. I did level a Shaman in vanilla on a pvp server to get the experience. But from my perspective, Alliance seemed to be the most populated faction for raiding on most server types. The racials for pvp on horde were very good though, and it seemed faction balance started to change around Cataclysm. As population over time was reduced in wow, I think Alliance felt it more.
Tapping into their ancestry
Not to mention, extremely high level guards patrol the zeppelin start/end points and Alliance have nothing significant by the boats.
Horde do not have better racials. Sword/Mace spec is the best racial in the game.
Attempting to fight back in a 1v1 vs a Paladin higher level than you is just a waste of time.
Iâd rather just die faster so I can res and go on leveling.
PvP in wow isnât fun, that is why most people avoid it.
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the streamers all went ally
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its bc people like to feel immersed in mmos and alliance has humans and elves. Thatâs literally the only reason.
well i would argue it continued into tbc since space goats had that 1% hit aura. in wrath though most gravitated towards horde
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Because most of the horde races are ugly.
Blizzard added blood elves to The horde to give players a choice of a nun ugly race and blood out quickly became not only the most played race, but one in 3 horde toons are belf.
When your race choices are so uniformly bad that one in three players who choose that faction choose the elf really tells you why they struggled in vanilla with player count.
Nevermind that blizzard was, in a LOTR heavy era, asking you to pick between the fellowship and the bad guys.
Is Alliance dominating in faction popularity? While Iâm not entirely sure how accurate Raider IO is itâs prob the closest thing we have to check.
- Crusader Strike 49% Horde - 51% Alliance 111k + Population.
- Lone Wolf 60% Horde - 40% Alliance 71k+ Population.
- Living Flame 42% Horde - 58% Alliance 54k+ Population.
- Wild Growth 49% Horde - 51% Alliance 32k+ Population.
- Shadowstrike 58% Horde - 42% Alliance 18k+ Population.
- Lava Lash 5% Horde - 95% Alliance 11k+ Population.
- Chaos Bolt 64% Horde - 36% Alliance 6k+ Population.
- Penance 9% Horde - 91% Alliance 1k+ Population.
They seem pretty close to each other in terms of faction population, Iâm actually really impressed Wild Growth as a PvE server is so close to each other. Might have to check that out in future!.
Out of the 8 servers, horde beat Alliance on 3 of them, the rest of the more populated servers are literally within 10% of each other, the only servers thatâs truly Alliance dominated is Lava Lash and Penance which are PvE Server that didnât get the lock out either.
And Iâd argue Penance which such a small population compared to others isnât worth counting.
Considering really only 2 server out of 8 is really the only server favoured by one faction, I think itâs safe to say they pretty balanced. 6/8 servers I think as Horde youâll have an awesome time.
Personally if I was on Lava Lash and was upset about Horde population, you have plenty of other servers that are PvE, PvP and even RP PvP all in the same time zone that have an insanely higher Horde population, and better to switch early then later.
Where are you getting your numbers? Iâm on Lone Wolf and they locked Alliance on Day 1. How can there possibly be more Horde?