I feel like most of you just started playing last week or something.
No, but that one racial is definitely a factor in why Alliance participation is so high in WPvP. 
doubtful. its not like its new.
No, but other racials have been nerfed over time while Shadow Meld has remained untouched.
It’s no coincidence that from SL to TWW, Night Elf representation in PvP has increased substantially while representation for other races has declined. As other racials were nerfed, Night Elves emerged as the clear meta pick.
As I mentioned earlier, while not everyone will choose Night Elf specifically for the racial, it still has a ripple effect across the player base:
There are more NE in rated pvp than ALL Horde races combined.
The idea that Racials are not causing imbalances is just not a serious or informed opinion.
I’m begging these peeps to visit Drustvar and filter all categories by race and see how NE DOMINATES by an egregious margin
These people just want to pretend that Alliance win WPVP because of merit and their skill. And not because they outnumber Horde by 10 to 1
In rated, sure.
Not in the game overall.
Horde is still present in Warmode, they just dont go to crates. Thats a fact. And why Horde doesnt ever get the buff Alli used to get, when they actually were outnumbered…
Im sure NE racial is a problem in rated, and probably does cause people to switch to alli.
But its not whats causing the disparity in War Mode. Thats a whole cluster of crap. And its not going to change if they nerf Shadowmeld. Itll just stay as is.
I mean I get where you’re coming from, but I still think Shadow Meld’s impact goes beyond just rated PvP. Back in BfA and SL, Horde significantly outnumbered Alliance in War Mode. Alliance received a 20-25% War Mode enlistment bonus along with the “Against Overwhelming Odds” quest to encourage participation.
Fast forward to TWW, and the situation has flipped. Horde went from dominating War Mode to receiving a 15% enlistment bonus for a few weeks at launch, something we never seen before.
I don’t know, I just find it hard to believe that this sudden shift is purely coincidental. If Alliance players were always willing to enable War Mode in large numbers like they are now, they would’ve done so back in BfA or SL, but they didn’t. It’s not unreasonable to think that the combination of racials being nerfed while Shadow Meld stayed untouched played some role in this. Serious PvPers race changing for the competitive edge in rated PvP creates a trickle down effect in my opinion that encourages more Alliance participation everywhere, whether intentionally or passively.
As for Horde avoiding crates, I agree there’s more to it than just racials—but the reality is, Horde often avoids them because we’re outnumbered. I’ll never forget when we were in the same raid group at a crate in Ringing Deeps and almost got overwhelmed by uncoordinated, random Alliance players despite being in a structured group.
The new zone this patch, Siren Isle, highlights this disparity even more. In the other TWW zones, it’s easier to assume Horde are just avoiding crates and we can’t get a clear picture because the zones are massive. But Siren Isle is a very small contained area where it’s clear how outnumbered Horde is. Every time I’ve fought for a crate there, we’ve had maybe 5-15 Horde total show up while my WeizPvP shows 20-30+ Alliance swarming the crate. That’s not just Horde ‘avoiding’ crates—that’s being overwhelmed by sheer numbers
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ALL PVP IS OPT IN.
This means when you have a huge imbalance in rated it trickles down to all other forums of pvp.
It doesn’t matter if a server’s population is equal, if the population of pvpers isn’t then you get an imbalance.
PvP is very unfriendly to new players and doing it at all requires totally different gear and talents than PvE.
The idea that WPvP would be done by anyone other the dedicated PvPers is a flawed understanding.
The Racial imbalances influence this. I also willing to bet that NE are over represented in all forms of PvP
Furthermore it’s not JUST NE. Black Iron Dwarves are also over represented as well because their Racial is extremely powerful comparatively.
Ive been WPVPing for 15 years.
As youll notice if you look through my achievs, I dont care about rated.
WPVP has always been its own thing with its own set of people. Sure there is overlap. But a lot of rated people dont even like WPVP or know wtf is going on when they go do it.
I dont care what your Rated statistics show you, its not reality.
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I don’t care what your personal anecdote is, it’s nit reality. That you do WPVP doesn’t mean anything.
Especially since the whole point is numbers of players anyways. In stats you’re what’s known as an outlier buddy.
When were talking about war mode participation, yeah it matters.
Rated is a very small part of the player base.
All forms of pvp are a small part of the player base.
And again given how pvp works there is no reason to believe wpvpers are a meaningfully different pop from rated pvpers.
THIS VERY MUCH.
For those not familiar with this - somebody thought it was a great idea to give the faction with less activity a piece of heroic-raid level gear for participating in world pvp.
Alliance turned out in massive, massive numbers. For that first week, playing horde, you couldn’t even turn on warmode if you weren’t a stealth class, because you’d just get killed instantly and camped, even in the capital city. It felt like there were raids of alliance everywhere, all day long, every day, but that’s not exactly true because you couldn’t get credit in a raid - it was just dozens of five man parties.
And I never went back.
You ran to your safe areas a lot for many years… don’t blame the rest of the horde… just saying.
Always the most fun 
I wish I had whatever prescription you’re on.
It’s more than that. A good example is the BG’s. If there is an adavantage for Horde it is fixed asap if it is for the alliance (shrug) all good.
Most likely is because they play alliance (true). I play both but it is tilted. Love my Alliance toons as much as my Horde but the fact is the nods go one way.
Horde was on top until very recently.
All I’ve learned is that all the “wpvp” guilds and groups on horde that cried about not having anyone to fight were actually just full of …
As soon as they had to start making an effort they bailed or are on here crying.
DF was Alliance and I would even contend they were on top in SL’s. BG’s they were still tilting them in SL as well.
Horde was on top until, coincidentally, some of our racials were nerfed. Now Alliance is suddenly the “PvP faction”. 
Dragonflight was about even for WPvP. Shadowlands still leaned towards Horde because Alliance still had AOO and increased rewards.
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Well, when you take the war out of warcraft, its pretty much like singing kumbayah, and wearing crystals standing around holding hands channeling drones.