I’ve been playing this game since Vanilla and even recall waiting hours just to do a Warsong Gulch as a low level Druid.
PVP has always been a big part of my end game content, but the state of BfA and its attitude towards the Alliance has caused it to not be fun for me anymore. Here are the reasons why:
- ILVL and win rate differences.
I have been able to consistently compare the average ILVL of my Alliance BG team to the ILVL of my opponents’ ILVL and almost always, the Horde’s on average, is higher. The reasons why have been well documented, they had access to easy gear earlier than the Alliance. Also, by getting a set amount of conquest points each week, players can get a high level piece of gear. Also, we can see that most PvE content is completed by Horde guilds/players. The mythic plus and raid scene is dying among the Alliance when compared to the activity on the Horde. Therefore they are getting higher Ilvl gear from multiple sources whereas Alliance can’t get the high ilvl gear as easily. Horde are winning more, therefore are getting better gear faster which only hastens the disparity. How do I know Horde are winning more? In my case, I’m able to look up the percentage of wins that my opponent has as well as their ILVL. I then in turn compare it to my team’s ILVL and percentage of winning. By collecting this data, I was able to confirm what I suspected. As a whole, Alliance are playing with teammates who lose MORE often with worse gear than the Horde teams. Here are two examples:
I lost both Warsong Gulch random BGs that I participated in tonight. Both times, the Horde team had the higher winrate by at least ten percent. Also interesting that both times the Horde team as a whole had a significantly higher ILVL than the Alliance did. https :// imgur. com /a/K6TQOZp
The devs already confirmed that they reward those with a higher ILVL in PVP.
So why as an Alliance player am I being punished for playing on the underrepresented faction while the Horde gets rewarded with teammates who win more and have better gear? It makes no sense that I have to work harder for my wins than the Horde does. In Legion, it was tolerable because it seems it was undoing what was done in WoD, but the pendulum never swung back to the Alliance’s side. If anything its speed went from 0 to 60 only compounding the Alliance’s problems while increasing the Horde’s benefits. Well I’m not going to play that game.
-
Disparity in healers
I just got out of an IoC BG where the Horde had 9 healers and the Alliance had 3 healers. Let’s say that if each team was split equally the horde would have had 3 healers at each node and the Alliance would have had 1 healer at each node. You tell me, is it easier to focus ONE healer among many DPS or is it easier to kill 3 healers all healing each other? Obviously, our team was routed. I’d like to point out tonight that I wasn’t even able to get the conquest reward for the Epic BGs whereas and I’m constantly hearing the same thing from other Alliance players. We can’t stay up all night trying to win when Blizzard won’t put effort into balancing the teams. Horde can usually one shot for their conquest then move onto other things. -
Faction imbalance
This one is easy, Horde have more numbers thereby allowing for more options, thereby allowing for better teams. Alliance numbers are so low that Blizzard is scraping the bottom of the barrel to even fill a 10 man BG. I am constantly put in the same BGs as those who played the last game with me. Why? Because there are so few of us, we see each other more often. From my understanding, this makes it MUCH harder for Blizzard to make matchmaking balanced, but they’ve known there was an imbalance since Legion and didn’t do anything about it. So even now, due to so many Alliance losses/lack of PvE groups, Alliance are fleeing to the Horde where you get paired with better players against the lone stalwarts who refuse to leave.
As an Alliance player, this is a lot to overcome, barriers that Horde never even has to think about. I know they claim that they suffer due to queue differences, but I’ve tested it on my Horde toon and it isn’t even that much longer. Waiting five extra minutes for a random BG is not any sort of punishment or disadvantage when it comes to playing this game. Waiting an extra 10 minutes for an Epic BG is a pretty low motivation for queuing for Merc mode when you can expect to easily win against those who are lower geared and who lose more often. I’m not going to do it anymore. I’ve accepted that Horde gets two expacs of PVP domination after a small break during WoD. From Vanilla to Cata, Horde won the majority of BGs.
Either Blizzard needs to add more incentive for Merc mode, or lengthen the Horde queue times to give the alliance a more balanced and equal team. As I mentioned earlier, PVP was my main end game content and seeing how it isn’t geared towards me as an Alliance player, I may let my sub run out in 3 days.
TL;dr
Alliance players are punished as a faction since they consistently play against those with higher gear and higher win rates. They must put in more effort to win. Overall, Horde has more robust team comps because Blizzard has a larger pool to matchmake from, whereas the Alliance team comps are horrible because there are so few of us.