I don’t think it’s imbalance so much as Horde just not interested. Lot’s of Horde on my sever in WM letting me get stomped out there.
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Thats not the point.
The point is, anyone serious about PVP is playing as a Night elf, or with their night elf friends.
Therefor, everyone is Alliance.
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Serious wow players, in PvE or PvP, are a minority. The casuals out number them, I’d guess 10:1 if I had to pick a number. Could be more, who knows?
Q up for a random/epic BG or three and see how many min/max’d race/class combos ya see. You’ll see a few, but not every druid is a nelf, not every warrior is a gnome. It’s kind all over the place, cause it’s casual.
In fact, it’s the trends in casual play devs have to watch the most closely, I’d imagine. Well, if they want the bills paid.
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Remove racial’s from the game
Remove war mode and bring back pvp realms
PvP being opt-in necessarily means you will have faction imbalance when one faction has the objectively better PvP racials.
People optimize. This optimization has a demonstrable negative effect on WPVP. In prior iterations of the game seeking to balane faction populations was sufficient but that doesn’t work when PvP in opt-in.
No, but that same minority set the meta that the majority inevitably follows. Even if most players aren’t hardcore min-maxers, they still gravitate toward whatever gives them an edge, especially when it comes to racials.
If serious PvPers flock to Alliance because Shadow Meld and other racials are better, casual players follow. Why? Easier wins in both WPvP and battlegrounds by being on the dominant faction. It’s not about every casual player fully understanding the meta—it’s about following where success is more likely.
The same logic applied back when PvP servers existed. Players didn’t pick servers where their faction was outnumbered; they went where they had the numbers advantage. That’s how you ended up with servers like Sargeras or Bleeding Hollow, where one faction became overwhelmingly dominant. Serious players may be a minority, but their influence shapes the game’s landscape far beyond just the competitive scene.
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I think that this is probably 100% true as much as it pains me to say it.
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This.
Many people seem to think the argument we’re making is “Alliance has all the skilled pvpers”
When the actual argument is “they have all the pvpers”
Because a 2400 AWC Glad player since TBC is still getting stomped if 5 other players jump them.
Numbers matter. And racials demonstrably result in an imbalance of numbers.
Yes Horde don’t try but that’s because they are outnumbered so badly that they have been condition to not try which itself creates a negative feedback loop which bleeds more pvpers from the Horde.
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You know Troolys. I’ve seen this argument. And you may be right. I also know that the serious folks set the meta and a lot follow.
You are absolutely correct about pvp servers and players migrating to ones with high pop on their faction, thereby killin wpvp. We’ve all seen that a number of times over the many years.
But, many players I see in casual BGs do not conform to this min/max race/class combo. I don’t see 20 nelfs in an epic BG, I see all the races.
I don’t think Blizz is getting rid of racials. There are some buffs coming. I wonder if things will change?
I wonder if this will help:
PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER
- Cross-faction groups can now queue for unrated PvP.
From here:
Ohh I bet we hear more about premades lol. Doh!
It’s the power of suggestion.
Does anyone not high on the ranked ladders need to switch races? Nope. But people will do so anyway which sets off a snowball effect where one faction becomes more dominant in all areas of pvp due to larger player pool.
I think I maybe stand corrected.
I’m in a Wintergrasp atm, we’re winning pretty hard. The Horde are gonna lose hard. Been there done that, not this time, though.
Anyway, I’m looking around and I see a variety of race/class combos. But I never really set down and counted them. So, with this convo in my head, I figured, why not, I’m just in a cata burning 'em like a meanie, sooo…
So out of 40 players, 12 are Night Elves. That’s near 1/3 and the highest fraction. The next closest is human at 9 or so, a few of all the rest, give or take.
Well, that data point does kinda give more cred to your points. Okay enough typing a post while gaming.
Edit: We won. It was brutal. For my (many) sins in that WG, in 34 min when I can restore a toon, I will restore a Hordee and Q there tonight.
Edit edit: My next Ashran on Alliance had 10 humans and 9 nelf, lot of void elves and a good variety of others. So 1/4 human, 1/4 nelf, etc …Maybe elves (both void and night) and humans are popular for RP reasons too? We won again. Yesterday, I won none all day as Alliance solo q’in.
Anyway, I’ll leave this here. idk what the fix is. I do know that Horde did not do well in WPvP in DF, and myabe a bit before. I saw that myself. I see posts here re: TWW WPvP, but my direct exp with that is mostly just fighting Horde in SW now and then as DF was pretty bad faction balance-wise. If the balance can be fixed, I’ll certainly try it again. But, how does that happen? Maybe racials? idk…
Edit edit edit: I finally finished leveling a Highmountain Tauren and Q’d an epic BG (IoC). There are 18 Blood Elves on the Horde side in this one. Also, we’re gonna win this one looks like, won the first engage pretty decisively. So yeah, I’m just not certain about the racials. Could be wrong, though…I’ll admit that.
It was like that for alliance last 2-3 expansions. Maybe you shouldn’t expect to get carried all the time and learn to pvp
Yes it does.
It’s not just people who aspire to push the super high on the pvp ladder.
It unlocks M+ skips which can do quite a lot to overcome a group’s lacking performance otherwise.
I know a few healers in random BGs who lament not being able to just drop combat and drink (especially in epics like ashran or AV where you can get NPC aggro from healing people and you just have to walk away for 30 seconds to break combat and drink). It’s not really about “I need this to push my gameplay to the next level” as much as it’s “Sure would be convenient to simply drop combat right now”.
Even just the potential to shadowmeld > mount while doing stuff out in the world is a big draw whether it’s pvp or mobs you don’t feel like taking two seconds to kill.
If you were anything besides a Rogue I might have read that and taken it seriously.
Rogue nerfs were very sizeable and if you’re losing to one, that’s on you. Period.
Rogue nerfs are always negligible, Rogue has always been a high skill ceiling class.
If you’re underperforming, that’s the literal definition of a skill issue.
Shadowmeld does not turn the tide of a battle, especially versus Rogues that can literally do the same thing and still move around.
Log in and let me show you who’s underperforming lmfao. If I win, you can just dodge reality and say my class is overpowered, if you win, you can just say I’m under perfoming to help yourself feel better about being bad at pvp.
What would us fighting prove anything about Shadowmeld?
Have your eyes rotted out of your sockets? I’m not a Night Elf.
Not to mention I’m a MM Hunter, thanks to the nerfs (that were applied twice thanks to Blizzard oversight) that we’ve been dealing with since the Anniversary patch until Tuesday we will remain the most underperforming spec according to statistics and win delta in PvP.
Trust me, I’d love to press Rapid Fire once and just delete your HP bar but it’s not in the cards for my class balance right now.
It doesn’t matter. I’m glad we’ve now both established that you’re wrong and don’t know what you’re talking about.