It’s vitally important that the PvP rulesets in WoW: Forever have balanced factions where both factions vie for supremacy, creating memories of epic victories and stunning defeats that we all remember for years to come. While even the most extreme case in a region is currently at roughly a 55/45 split, that is not as close as we want it to be.
To better set the stage for the neck-and-neck conflicts we all want, we’ve adjusted the character creation system to better recognize the overall state of faction balance in each region’s PvP rulesets, rather than what may feel like snapshots of points in time. Our goal is to bring things as close to a 50/50 faction balance as possible.
In the short term, that means that it will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region – currently Horde on North American PvP rulesets or Alliance in EU Roleplay-PvP. As everyone settles and shifts, these may flip to the other side. We recognize that while restrictions are in place, it can be frustrating to not be able to start playing a specific faction in that moment, but this is a necessary trade-off for the long-term health of the ruleset, especially early on when guilds are being established and rivalries developed.
World of Warcraft: Forever’s PvP is at its best when the Alliance and Horde are on equal footing, and we are dedicated to helping maintain that balance so that we can all witness battles at the epic scale that has made WoW Forever PvP so memorable thus far.
Glad to see steps are being taken to improve faction balance, but what about layering? Even with a 55/45 overall split, individual layers can still be heavily one-sided. Balancing the total population means little if players are constantly outnumbered in contested zones. Are there any plans to address faction balance per layer as well?
Your post names NA PvP and EU RP-PvP but never EU PvP, and the EU PvP thread here has 200 replies with no answer from Blizzard.
I’m a Night Elf priest, 25. I started a couple of days late and levelled to 22 in about a day and a half, and it was great. Then Ashenvale and Stonetalon happened, 20 or 30 Horde for every Alliance on most layers, and it turned into pure misery. I took a full day off because I just didn’t want to log in. Pilav’s stream was literally titled “farming mobs like in South Park to level up because doing quests as Alliance is impossible”, and that’s exactly how it feels.
And STV is next, the zone almost everyone levels through. Players here already report around 60 Horde to 10 Alliance in parts of STV, and 100 to 5 in Booty Bay. Horde has Grom’gol with its own flight path in the northern half of the zone, while our only flight path is in Booty Bay at the very bottom, and that’s shared with them.
To the Horde players saying “just let me roll Horde”: this hurts you too. When Alliance quits you get no one to fight, hour long BG queues, and a PvP ruleset that’s PvE with extra steps.
Please balance factions per layer and put the extra Horde on their own layers, and look into people getting around the lock with trial accounts or by deleting Alliance characters.
This. Reducing layer sizes (which seems to be much much more crowded than before) and forcing a fair balance of Alliance and Horde to even out the faction balance is primordial before even working on the 10% gap between factions. Some layers are literally dominated 10 to 1.
you’re never gonna get a 50/50 balance horde is the most popular PVP faction
and preventing me for making a horde character is just making me want to walk away from the game I am kind of glad I only paid for one month just to see what it was like why am I paying for this to maybe make a character this year
Faction imbalance is not something that can be fixed, and not for lack of competence or effort from the developers. It should have been two types of servers: Regular and Roleplay; both with warmode toggle and cross faction groupping.
Retail isn’t perfect but it took you years to figure out how to avoid having 99% servers with one sided economies and frustrated players who were stuck on the wrong side by refusing to pay extortion prices for faction change.
The game cannot fully be enjoyed without open PVP, the world simply feels empty without it, but the imbalance of even a few percentage makes it unplayable and if you’ve ever been in a battleground you can confirm your faction quits the moment they start losing.
Another problem of PVP realms is single faction restriction, which ultimately ends up being identical to “Normal” servers because other faction has abandoned the game or refuses to participate completely because of unfair conditions.
It’s an unfixable problem and if they manage to correct it now it won’t be the same again in 2 months when all the tourists decide to leave.
Forever has this new phasing tech where you can force a layer swap with a click; so instead of putting you in an empty PVP phase where someone could for example take advantage of all the uncontested gathering nodes because there are no more Alliance players to stand in your way, it can simply tell you “sorry not able to accommodate more players for warmode at this time, please wait”.
The only solution is to open faction changes. My friend tried today to create a character and join us on Horde, but can’t. If they open faction changes to the lower faction, we would be willing to shift to Alliance, as many (including myself), prefer Alliance anyways.
Concrete action is required immediately. Now even if you say there’s no evidence of an imbalance greater than 22% (55-45) more Horde, that’s definitely not what people are experiencing and it’s starting to snowball, Vis, that number looks better than what it could be tomorrow.
Not just players but entire guilds are rerolling, leaving behind days of progress, exp, gold etc. The word starts to spread that progress for Alliance is effectively tapered at 30 then others decide to cut their losses and reroll PvE or Horde too. It’s a decision few want, but many now see as inevitable.
This needs a multi-faceted response. And it needs it sooner rather than later.
undead racial is one of the main reasons you see this. look at the race demographics and you will see a ton of undead rogues, mages, and priests. undead players pick undead because the fear counter is so strong.
They already did that, what they failed to mention is that shards are now balanced for 50, 50 percent since the emergency update. I can 100% confirm that because Shimmering Flats can actually be played as Alliance now with a close to fair balance (same as STV) where as yesterday I was in Shimmering Flats with a ratio of 1:50 and I’m not exaggerating.
The way it is right now is fine as long Blizzard don’t freaking fold the moment the Horde cries that they didn’t sign up for PvP Servers where they never see Alliance.
Edit: However, I agree that they’re lying through their teeth with the A to H ratio on EU PVP that is not even REMOTELY close to 50, 50 or 45, 55
And they should give Horde Players free transfers to Alliance if they wish so.
I wonder is there reason why there is this restriction, I love horde but I would also like to play with some of my friends that went alliance and now I just cant. Im not going to buy another account just to make alliance on pvp either or make my characters alliance when my main will always be horde in faction wars since vanil.
After reaching level 30, leveling as a whole just came to a screeching halt. You can’t quest anywhere without having at least seven Horde players breathing down your neck, even in zones that should, by all accounts, be Alliance-sided contested territory.
You visit a quest hub, pick up all the quests, only to have a squad of shamans one-tap everyone right outside for hours on end. You can’t even get from point A to point B without running into actual waves and armies of Horde players. Generally speaking, the experience of doing anything outside a guarded POI involves dying 5–8 times just to get it done.
Not to mention that there seem to be atleast 10-20 horde players in front of every dungeon entrance except for Stormwind Stockades.
Having this be the experience across the entire game is what ultimately made me and my duo reroll Horde on PvE.
“If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.” But more relaxed this time, I guess.
It’s sad to see Blizzard being so wishy-washy about acknowledging the reality of the situation. Half of my guild has essentially stopped leveling altogether until this gets addressed.
In a very literal sense, Alliance players are being held hostage around level 30, with very few having the layer luck necessary to get past some of the Horde armies.
I got to lvl 26 on EU Alliance and things now have become insufferable. I spent 3 straight hours today simply being dead - running from graveyard, ressing, running a small distance and then being ganked over and over and over again.
I’m completely deflated about returning to WoW after so much time and I really regret not rolling PvE. I don’t know who needs to hear this or what needs to change, but faction imbalance is turning something that should be a fun game into a miserable experience.
I just Stopped my subscription. Stopping me from making a horde character is not going to make me magically go roll Alliance I get there trying to keep the balance but at the end of the day I am paying to play this game I’m not paying to sit on a character creation screen trying to create a character for 4 5 hours and from what i am seeing this is not going to get any better Alliance are quitting in mass because they are getting overrun this needs to be fixed in the layering keep it balance where you can but you just gonna have to take the bigger fraction and then put them into a shard with no opposition doing that this way will stop the alliance from getting over a run and for new horde players to still be able to make characters at the end of the day try as hard as they like but one side is going to dominate the other