I agree, and that’s why I am so vocal about this. The sooner a decision comes, the better. I’ve seen so many rash decisions people make to quit over this or reroll, and it’s only getting worse by the day. It has to be addressed so people can plan accordingly. And I mentioned pservers because they faced the same issues, but the changes made were welcome. Sure, it’s not the same audience and the population is different, but it can serve as a reference point.
Secondly, the handful of Alliance feeling it’s unfair I don’t quite understand. Currently, the queues are imbalanced so if anything, Alliance has all the advantage of gearing up fast and at their leisure instead of having to plan everything around a 1hr BG queue. If Horde gets the same treatment, it is equal, and not unfair. There are still certain OTHER aspects to PvP that are unfair (such as overall racial abilities balance) but those have to be looked at independently. Besides, I argue changing those is a bigger change than giving Horde vs Horde BGs, although I wouldn’t mind certain rebalancing tweaks here and there, I have an open mind.
Then the choice was clearly not that difficult for you. There are many out there that feel connected to their faction, and their character and changing that as the wind goes is breaking the immersion. WoW is still an MMORPG in that sense, especially Classic since it has a lot more RP value and sense of connection and investment in your “main” character. I argue that a game that forces you to either suffer greatly compared to the other faction, or join the other faction is not balanced at all, hence my arguments for change. I assume this is the aspect many disagree with me on, and is also a reason why we can’t find common ground in more detailed arguments.
Some perhaps, others are probably too invested. Either way, a response at the very least would be warranted, to at least be able to make a decision. I for one would never just reroll in a sense of releveling my character. Faction change? Perhaps, if enough of my community would do it with me. Getting an official answer, even if it’s a big fat “NO”, would at least put my mind at ease and I could plan my next action accordingly. I think I share this frustration with many others on these forums. Meanwhile, I am simply proposing ideas I believe would be a good alternative.
The logic is good, but we don’t know how many people that would be. And that’s the crucial point of your argument of it skewing population dramatically to the Horde, to a point where it’s noticeable.
So far however, we can clearly establish the following:
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More people play Alliance for PvE than for PvP, hence a change like Horde vs Horde bgs wouldn’t be likely to affect this group
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An unknown amount of people have transferred from Horde to Alliance for faster queues. We don’t know how many. So let’s look back a bit; Horde queues were ~20-30min in the latest phases of Classic, implying more Horde PvPed than Alliance. This number inflated, meaning even more joined the Horde to PvP instead of Alliance. Again, we don’t know how many NEW players were among there, but still the trend is there: Horde for PvP.
IF the queues on Horde were to become as short as on Alliance, some will transfer from Alliance to Horde because that was their preferred faction. Now, THIS is the key population we are talking about. First and foremost, it would likely be smaller than the original population that went Horde>Alliance, because the ones that already went there wouldn’t necessarily GAIN anything from going back to Horde once more, after having rerolled once already. So the remaining fraction of the population that WOULD go BACK to Horde is the population you are worried about. It’s a sound concern perhaps, but we do not know its size, and having observed the trends I just described above, I argue that this particular population is not large enough to influence the faction population balance. I could be wrong, but then again there’s history of WoW as well on my side; despite not having or having mercenary mode throughout the years and many other queue-reducing features such as battlegroups and whatnot, Horde always had longer queues than Alliance in my experience (I played both regularly), implying Horde was always the PvP dominant faction. Taking that fact into consideration next to the rest of what I described, no, I am not convinced your proposed issue is a big issue we should worry about, unless we are provided the numbers that prove my theory wrong. Again, it could be the case but observing recent trends, it is highly unlikely