wow The State of Alliance Guilds by Top GMs and Why It's Time for Cross-Faction Grouping

[Starym 3,800]

 

It's no secret the faction balance hasn't been, well, balanced for a long time now. As we seem to be fast approaching a serious conversation about cross-faction content (with even the Game Director recently addressing it), it's very important to keep this - one of the largest issues in WoW currently - in the spotlight for as long as we can.

To that end we have the GM of Consequence talking on behalf of the majority of the top US Alliance guilds, going over the details of the giant divide in Horde vs. Alliance and where it might be leading. From recruitment which is constantly worsening and headed towards a 1-faction situation, to the Alliance incentives put in place so far not working (as we've had around 12 Alliance guilds in the Hall of Fame when Horde hit 100 for several raids now, and HoF slots are even being sold by boosters on the Alliance side) and more, let's take a look at what this experienced GM has to say:

As the faction divide widens ever further in both retail and Classic, players keep asking for some degree of cross-faction grouping, and with the recent improvements Blizzard is bringing to the game in patch 9.1.5, it may not be impossible after all. If we're to assume something along these lines is coming, it's definitely a bigger project than a .5 patch can handle. So then the question becomes whether this might be a new expansion feature, or if there's actually hope to see at least a partial solution in 9.2?

The main thing here is that we want as much communication on the subject as possible, both from players continuing to push the issue and make it very clear that the game cannot remain in this state, and with Blizzard talking to us about what they're considering and whether there is a timeframe for change even in place.

[darkgreenwax 412]

This is a long-term, almost generation-long trend. Including casuals or non-top guilds into the fold, I wonder the split of emphasis on how much of this is from min-maxxers, and how much of it is the presentation of characters, races, and cultures over the years (through writing, or otherwise).

[Kuarinofu 78]

Thanks god I live in a 3rd world country so I have to work 3 gulag-jobs and not worry about wow issues but can still enjoy spectating the fight against emotes and achievement titles.

[Prophet001 598]

Eh...

[Koxsos 38]

Sounds tough. But as long as there money to be made off boosts and faction switches, will they really implement a solution so simple that vanilla private servers done it 10+ tears ago?

[Elfomal 55]

ITS TOO HARD TO MAKE CROSS-FACTION PARTIES!!! ITS SOMETHING SHOULD BE ONLY UP IN A EXPANSION!!!!

 

Meanwhile, some private servers since 2011 allow instanced content with cross factions.

[Dicebar 23]

This, oddly enough, makes me want to reroll Alliance. I've always loved rooting for the underdogs!

[ResoWho 68]

2 hours ago, Elfomal said:

ITS TOO HARD TO MAKE CROSS-FACTION PARTIES!!! ITS SOMETHING SHOULD BE ONLY UP IN A EXPANSION!!!!

 

Meanwhile, some private servers since 2011 allow instanced content with cross factions.

not too hard, they just dont want that. whole game is playing around 2 factions, sometimes more, sometimes less

Edited September 10, 2021 by ResoWho

[Grumar 188]

Because it matters what faction the top .1% of players play on...oh wait no it doesn't. I fact there are more alliance players than horde.

[Calorat 78]

6 hours ago, TyZone said:

This is a long-term, almost generation-long trend. Including casuals or non-top guilds into the fold, I wonder the split of emphasis on how much of this is from min-maxxers, and how much of it is the presentation of characters, races, and cultures over the years (through writing, or otherwise).

Blizz pretty much decided in Vanilla (intentional or not)  that Horde would be the go-to for raiding with Bloodlust being Horde only and it's just never recovered and has just been exacerbated since then. 

[HeidiJames 0]

Come on we know that the game has always centered around the Horde. I have been actively playing since BC and the Horde side gets all the friends with bennies. I play both sides & remember when you couldn't have ally toons on the same server as horde. It was changed awhile ago & since then I have played both sides. Ally main cities are spread out & it is easier to get around in the old world but that is about the only plus on their side. I have also in the past 5 months players actively offering gold to people who make Horde toons so they can make fuller guilds. They then in turn pay those players gold to help raid, do Mythic + and raid. 

[LilMissNorti 0]

I feel that the US WoW community will slowly turn into the current OCE scene where most of their players are on one faction.

You mean...where OCE is almost all Alliance and being Horde is actually a hinderance like you describe. OCE being lumped in with US for things means the numbers *look* even when they are not in both sides...and any boost you make to Alliance (like the extra WM XP) applies to OCE and makes our Horde experience more miserable. 

There needs to be meaningful and balanced discussions on both sides. You cannot treat US Alliance in isolation unless you separate it from OCE...which means splitting of server clusters.

 

[SidonisAntares 290]

6 hours ago, Calorat said:

Blizz pretty much decided in Vanilla (intentional or not)  that Horde would be the go-to for raiding with Bloodlust being Horde only and it's just never recovered and has just been exacerbated since then. 

Both sides have had that since TBC, it was more the reputation that Horde had for PvP, which was exacerbated by PvP servers all ending up faction imbalanced, and the majority of them Horde, especially on servers like Mannoroth where you had rogues camping bottlenecks in places like Ashenvale, Thandol Span, Hinterlands, etc, to the point people rerolled Horde just to be able to level. War Mode in place of PvP servers 14 years into the game was too late to correct that.

Basically at this point without cross-faction dungeons and raids, the only thing they could do to swing the pendulum would be to imbalance the racials to the point it could decide world first races, MDI, and Arena, and they'd have to leave it like that long enough for the populations to even out as people follow the leaders before re-balancing the racials.

Edited September 11, 2021 by SidonisAntares

[Seksi 208]

9 hours ago, Calorat said:

Blizz pretty much decided in Vanilla (intentional or not)  that Horde would be the go-to for raiding with Bloodlust being Horde only and it's just never recovered and has just been exacerbated since then. 

Bloodlust was only introduced in TBC, when both factions got Shamans.

[Arcling 898]

19 hours ago, Grumar said:

Because it matters what faction the top .1% of players play on...oh wait no it doesn't. I fact there are more alliance players than horde.

It's not true. Before realmpop went down, it was already something like 63% vs 37% during BfA for max level, it's only gotten worse since then. There are way less players there. Even for casual content, check LFG, it's not just a top-mythic issue.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Arcling

[Dicebar 23]

15 hours ago, Calorat said:

Blizz pretty much decided in Vanilla (intentional or not)  that Horde would be the go-to for raiding with Bloodlust being Horde only and it's just never recovered and has just been exacerbated since then. 

Bloodlust is TBC...

Alliance had Fear Ward through Dwarf Priests. Shamans provided party-wide buffs while Paladins provided raid-wide buffs, including threat reduction when threat capping was still an issue... Arguably Alliance had quite the edge in vanilla.

[Saberin 0]

It's really about time that Blizzard does someone good with this. Not a half-**ed solution but full inter-faction play. 

[req0 9]

Today's I moved my character 2.4k rio to Ally. 20 and 21 keys = 5. During the same time in horde 15... For m15 it was 15 keys in alliance vs 49 in horde. During evening I checked again with my friend and... 4 keys 20 21. Besides it is hard weak to push i can clearly see the difference. Moreover not the faction itself is a single problem but racials skills all. Take a lok at druid class and troll haste buff for Bala revenous frenzy. It's joke that is so highly profitable. It is no 1%dmg...but much more. 

[Highfather 8]

I think the catalyst for this entire situation was in the first 10 years of WOW blizzard give Horde players extremely better Race Traits compared to alliance. Traits that actually increased survivability and DPS. 10 years (maybe longer) of this created a imbalance that is now "almost" unfixable. Maybe if blizzard did the opposite it would see World First Guilds switching alliance? Maybe? IDK.

[Arcling 898]

11 hours ago, Highfather said:

I think the catalyst for this entire situation was in the first 10 years of WOW blizzard give Horde players extremely better Race Traits compared to alliance. Traits that actually increased survivability and DPS. 10 years (maybe longer) of this created a imbalance that is now "almost" unfixable. Maybe if blizzard did the opposite it would see World First Guilds switching alliance? Maybe? IDK.

That would require some really big and unfair advantage to see a significant movement. But then we would have same problem, just in reverse. People prefer to stay where players are, to have bigger recruitment pool. Even if racials aren't as great as they used to be. 

[Grumar 188]

On 9/11/2021 at 8:36 AM, Arcling said:

It's not true. Before realmpop went down, it was already something like 63% vs 37% during BfA for max level, it's only gotten worse since then. There are way less players there. Even for casual content, check LFG, it's not just a top-mythic issue.

That only accounts for Max level characters, total characters alliance is still ahead slightly, what do you think would happen to that number if alliance is buffed?

[Arcling 898]

50 minutes ago, Grumar said:

That only accounts for Max level characters, total characters alliance is still ahead slightly, what do you think would happen to that number if alliance is buffed?

And this is the important statistic, those below are likely inactive people or just alts, for people who are on both factions. With how fast leveling is now, those people would have to stay below max level on purpose? Doesn't make any sense. If you check LFG there are way less groups for everything, even searching for something as trivial as group for rare mob takes longer. Anyway, there is no evidence to support your claim, both statistical and anecdotal.

Edited September 12, 2021 by Arcling

[Grumar 188]

45 minutes ago, Arcling said:

And this is the important statistic, those below are likely inactive people or just alts, for people who are on both factions. With how fast leveling is now, those people would have to stay below max level on purpose? Doesn't make any sense. If you check LFG there are way less groups for everything, even searching for something as trivial as group for rare mob takes longer. Anyway, there is no evidence to support your claim, both statistical and anecdotal.

so it won't matter if faction balance is 70:30 over all so long as end game is even?

[Arcling 898]

23 minutes ago, Grumar said:

so it won't matter if faction balance is 70:30 over all so long as end game is even?

What? I'm not even sure if you understood what this discussion was about. Horde has way more players now, there is also way more Horde activity across all types of content, not just top end mythic raiding guilds. This is a well known issue, even devs had to recently acknowledge that (another thing if they are going to do something about it).

[Grumar 188]

4 hours ago, Arcling said:

What? I'm not even sure if you understood what this discussion was about. Horde has way more players now, there is also way more Horde activity across all types of content, not just top end mythic raiding guilds. This is a well known issue, even devs had to recently acknowledge that (another thing if they are going to do something about it).

there is no possible way to measure faction activity in RP and the like, horde may have more level capped characters but as of 2020 jan, the total player faction balance is 49.4% horde 50.6% alliance. what you're saying is you want to sacrifice that for end game, making the real balance then just become 60/40 or worse