While I’m all in for giving the underrepresented faction a motivation to turn war mode on, I think this should happen in the early stage of the expansion. We are now nearing the final patch (no 8.3.5) so if more Alliance would want to keep WM on, they would have done so.
Rustbolt is almost unplayable for Horde characters even on non call to arms week. Horde are usually outnumbered 1 to 3 in “balanced” shards, 1 to 10 if you are unlucky (had to swap 4 shards today to find one that I could kill the 3 rares without getting ganged by 15 ppl.)
Its beyond me how a faction can so vastly outnumber their enemy and yet still get the bonus.
War mode extra bonus should either be removed or become dynamic based on shard population.
It’s kinda working all wrong however since most parts of the world (BfA) have low to zero alliance presence while for some reason, Rustbolt is swarming with alliance in most shards. Both situations are bad imo.
Without extra bonus, Alliance would mass wm off again, very bad for shard balancing. If extra bonus was based on shard pop, that would not help increase outnumbered in region, which is what matters for balancing shards.
Then maybe removal of WM bonus overall? I mean… I was alliance for 10 years before I switch to Horde (at 8.2) cause of raiding. I got the Horde Slayer title while there was no extra bonus and I never switched WM off except while I was doing the Hivemind mount quest and all that because I genuinely enjoyed to fight people that were trying to kill me.
War mode should be for the fun and the 10% just a bonus for your hassle. Not a one sided, raid infested lag fest that gets you either to corpse camp or camped depending the area amd the shard.
Why remove it and reduce wm participation overall? That will have the opposite effect you want, making shards harder to balance.
Fact is, due to player distribution in a zone, 50/50 balance in any particular part of a zone is impossible. The shard manager tech actually does a good job considering all the variables.
If any changes made, better to add reasons for conflict to happen. For example, the Horde quests in Redridge.
Usually yes, all pre-Nazjatar areas are and used to be relatively balanced. Nazjatar and Rustbolt seem to have the biggest balancing issues? Maybe due to forcing all population in a small area rather than six big ones. Or maybe most horde don’t bother with Rustbolt anymore (I know I don’t go there a lot).
There can be some luck of the draw with the shard you get assigned to. Sometimes you might enter a zone where the shard manager is in progress adding your faction to it for balancing. Or an enemy lfg group is unbalancing a subzone by typically concentrating in a single area. Or player distribution. And players joining/leaving the shard. Or on a single faction overflow shard… complimicated
