Improving the Alliance - the Best Alliance

Community General Discussion
12

It has nothing to do with the feel of the faction. There are many on the horde who miss alliance dearly for its feel and lore.

The reason behind the problems is a social dynamic called urbanisation. People will constantly move to more populated areas unless there is a cost, either through environment or literally cost, that people will not put up with.

For the longest time Blizzard has done everything in their power to reduce the inconveniences associated with urbanising, and the consequences have finally caught up with them.

It starts early with servers where there are two factions but it clearly advantageous to be in the bigger faction in terms of the economy and lack of ganking and is easier to get groups.

There is no disadvantage because the queue size is independent of faction, thus the best possible situation is to be on an as imbalanced server as possible, so that’s what happens.

Some problems did eventually crop up - hard to find BG opponents for instance, but Blizzard made short work of these inconveniences by introducing mercenary mode and they even gave them the faction bonus! This was subsequently changed, but still.

Other disadvantages of being on an overpopulated or imbalanced realm, such as lack of player enemies to complete world PvP quests, were removed through CRZ.

Blizzard seems to actively encourage everyone to hop to the same realm by making sure that there are never queues even under extreme strain due to the release of an expansion pack for instance, by using phasing and truly MASSIVE realm caps.

Traditional disadvantages such as noise levels, light pollution, ooze and other pollution, and so much more simply do not exist. Blizzard are doing nothing to prevent this urbanisation, and they are also doing nothing to close down the tiny abandoned communities that are left behind, but instead simply abandon them and expect them to pay thousands upon thousands of euros to fix it themselves.

It’s dirty, it’s incompetent, and it massively degrades the experience for hundreds of thousands of players and Blizzard simply do not care. Now the problem has gone from merely a realm problem to a faction problem as they don’t do something.

It has nothing to do with the fantasy of alliance. It’s a failure if game design. There are many fixes possible, but at this point they’re going to be a little painful. It’s really bad that this happened.

6 Likes
13

Because you can’t fight against demographics trends. They sure managed to overturn back then but now the context is quite different with a worse imbalance. The current imbalance dwarves the one we had back then.

That will make RP players to move back, but they didn’t moved Horde in the first place. The Alliance has been made the “casual-RP” faction, rather than “raid/M+/PVP” faction. Heck, even running old raids for mogs is now better on Horde side.

Saying is too late is being cold and pragmatic because they definitely had shots to fix that mess, back in Legion then in BFA. I like to compare the ongoing growing faction imbalance to a wound, which could have been healed back then (BFA) but has been left to rot. As a result, it’s too late to cure the wound (SL) so the amputation is the only solution to save that life (WOW).

I don’t understand to which degree removing PVE faction barrier would mean ending wow. There are no links.

The ship sailed a long time ago and there is nothing Blizzard can do now. Look at OCE, they’re facing the same issue except that the Alliance is dominating there. It goes both ways, the faction barrier simply no longer works in 2021.

So they could have nerfed Horde racials but…

And that has been growing eversince mop, with Blizzard not acting, as usual.

People are moving to the Horde because this is the faction in which most players are playing in. Factions are like realms, you have basically no reason whatsoever to play in a low pop realm. As regarding factions, you have no reason to play Alliance since playing Horde comes WITHOUT any price, you only get PROS by going Horde. At this point, Alliance and Horde players are actually not playing the same game, and that’s a major issue, which could kill wow.

They can’t, and it’s obvious why they shouldn’t. Firstly, fixing an imbalance with further imbalance won’t produce a good output, if anything, that would add gaz on fire. Secondly, that would backfire because the Horde community would then complain aboot the Alliance getting an edge. Don’t you remember the WM drama ? Horde players were angry aboot a pathetic 30% AP bonus. Imagine if the Alliance gets 10% extra DPS and HPS ? The forums would be on fire and Blizzard will have to back down, so that would change nothing in the end.

The fix is cross faction PVE. I don’t understand why so many players are against.

I moved Alliance back for this tier, that was a mistake.

No, people should not come back. I made that mistake and I’m open aboot telling people : “Be smart, save your bucks and…Don’t do that. You don’t wanna hinder your game experience”.

It’s too late because Blizzard had litteral years to fix that.

Pragmatic, cold, fast solution. Makes sense.

wow’s identity is not tied to a 2 faction system that actually no longer works as a 2 faction game.

They should have “taxed” people to go Horde. But playing the most populated faction does not come with a price, so there are no incentives for not going there.

Then again the solution is as simple as getting rid of the entire failling system.

2 Likes
14

Faction specific queues, resource gathering rate limited by faction per server in various ways (flowers give less if your overpopulated etc), merging servers (properly, not this confusing connected realm nonsense), removal of mercenary mode, removal of CRZ (shouldn’t be as bad as it sounds after merges), and so much more.

Then again the solution is as simple as getting rid of the entire failling system.

An extremely tragic end and a true, undeniable demonstration of Blizzard’s incompetence at population management.

15

Im agreed with you but the problem is Blizzard and their horde bias.

1 Like
16

Then you’d get prime time raiders flaming Blizzard, so this will likely backfire.

That won’t be enough imho. And that has potential to backfire.

They should not. I mean, merging a Horde heavy realm with an Alliance heavy realm is likely to end up in halving prices for going Horde.

Yes, I agree, that should be out. I don’t care aboot Horde players facing 1H queue timers.

As a software engineer, if I know I can’t properly manage something or if I don’t trust the end user to do so, then I’m removing what could be problematic in the future.

I do think wow can thrive without a faction barrier.

17

Give them sufficient incentive to move to less populated areas and they would. I think if they worked on teh alliance well, people would come back,.they have to be brave and make the alliance attractive enough to attract alliance and horde players alike.

stuff that is cool enough, lore and vibe that is cool enough to make you wanna play an alliance toon. inevitably, some would stay horde, some would have their new mains alliance. You would have faction changes and all that money from that too.

Racials is not enough, but if you combine some really heavy development with some very minor boosts, I think it could work.

Yes, indeed they have, but also heavily promoted the horde, made it much more attractive… all this helped. the horde went tobe known as the cool faction, and not just because of the players that played it, the vibe, the development, the racial advantages.

THink about it, it had everything going for it better than the alliance did, whether racials, lore developments, features, cool stuff. Everythig you loved the allinace for the horde had a better version of and had the advantages.

Focus on the allinace for awhile, ensure it has the advantages, thorw in some cool races like these:

Cool developments like I mentioned above

And:

It all adds up. Give them the incentive.

1 Like
18

Mythic raider servers almost always get overrun with wanna-be’s and this is going to be a problem for them for sure, but if Blizzard gives free migrations to low pop realms they’ll simply get all the stuff they need for their runs then hop over to some insanely low pop realm. The fanbois and various others will of course follow them until, suddenly, the migrations close because it’s full. Now you’ve got two healthy servers.

USE THESE URBANISATION FORCES TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

It does have several problems associated with it and it’s really more of a system to keep things in check once things are better balanced.

They absolutely, absolutely should, and I don’t know why it would halve the prices of anything.

As a software engineer, my customer would flip the F out if I willy-nilly removed features all the time for no reason from their point of view.

Sometimes maintaining a feature is hard. Make sure it’s well tested with automatic tests and you should be OK.

Our program has code from 1996 in it. The code was developed on Windows 3.11 workstations. It still works fine. We do sometimes call it legacy, we do sometimes have problems stemming from it. We fix it. It’s mature, it’s stable, it generally works. People pick our application because of this code in many ways.

Thrive? Sure. Be as good as it was? Absolutely not.

It’s part of the game’s soul. It would be tragic beyond measure to lose it, even if it ends up becoming necessary.

There’s loads of cool stuff about being Alliance. This is not the problem.

Besides, we’re putting an awful lot of faith in the lore and concept art teams here - that’s not going to work out well. :frowning:

Then again I’m putting a lot of faith in the gameplay designers so…

I really don’t agree with this. I know you’re trying to make that point in that huge and very well structured post of yours, but frankly if you want a vibe that’s about the power of the light and if you want the faction that wins in the lore and if you want some of the more tender and caring characters - you want the Alliance.

Also, Alliance now effectively has High Elves. If it was all about the fantasy you’d think that would have helped but it… didn’t.

1 Like
19

Top guilds in the world are horde, people and meta slaves follow that, world first winners? Want to bet they all horde?

1 Like
20

When alliance was top in PvP and dominated every pvp bracket during WOD, Blizzard fast start to nerf alliance racials and buffing the horde ones. They can’t do the same when horde is the overpopulated faction :o

5 Likes
21

I don’t like forcing people into low pop realms. If anything, I do believe mythic ID lock alongside realm restriction is a nonsense in 2021. I do think the game should remove barriers rather than maintainng those. And would that force players to go back Alliance ?

That’s another problem but I do think there are wayyyyyyy to many servers and that number should be scaled down. But then, I don’t understand to which extent that would allow a true faction balance.

I’m not sure it would change many things since AH is being shared anyways. So Blizzard should then remove cross faction AH.

It would have prices because instead of paying for realm and faction changes, guild would only have to pay for faction change, since most of raiding guilds are on Horde side anyways. I do like that example, which is merging Dalaran (Alliance) with Ysondre (Horde). Since Ysondre has many more established guilds than Dalaran, then most of dalaran guilds would actually be incentivized to go Horde.

I would never consider a barrier a “feature”. If anything, a feature should enhance the game whereas a faction barrier does not enhance the game in any shape or form.

Now from a design perspective, I do think splitting the playerbase makes no sense at all. what used to work back then near 20 years ago is sadly no longer valid in 2021, otherwise agility would not be a thing and we would have sticked with waterfall.

I do get that idea but…if they don’t get rid of that then the Alliance will only be some kind of alt/casual faction.

22

yep. cant keep same people and expect different results. either they force faction change to alliance to experience what it’s like or get new devs who are alliance mains

1 Like
23

Alliance already has the better racials.

1 Like
24

Easy.

Just rename the Horde as the Alliance and the Alliance as the Horde.

I’d switch to the Alliance in a heartbeat after that!

1 Like
25

What makes you think they even dare change anything on the alliance side?
Whenever they give us the most tiny advantage, the Horde cries or calls Alliance bias.

“Waa the Horde BG queue is too long!” And they give them merc mode, and speculate in same faction BG’s.

“Waa the human racial is too strong in PvP!” And they nerfed/changed EMFH and removed the main reason for PvP’ers to play ally.

In Legion they gave us templates, and way more alliance went into random PvP.
Horde:" Waa, I can’t go in and one-shot newbs! I worked for this gear!"
They removed templates, and a lot of ally stopped PvP.

In BFA it was all about “Waa! Why do ally get such a fat warmode bonus! It’s unfair!” And they kept on going about it till the alliance bonus was nerfed… even though most alliance didn’t touch WM anyways.

I know this is PvP examples, but it is also a pretty clear indicator that what ever attempt they make, to try an make people want to play alliance, gets shot down by crying Horde, calling for equality - pretty ironic.

5 Likes
26

Actually it is … that stuff isn’t shown off for the players.

Example: Night elves built a city like Suramar, and temple like Cathedral of Eternal night, they can use magic in incredible ways as the Moonguard and Farondis, even the nightborne show - yet, where is the night elf playable faction that restores or builds a city of that calibre? Where do we see their mage units tearing formidable opposition apart like those neutral ones do?

Same with the Draenei - for all the cool of Shattrath and Auchindouin, the hints of Mac’aree etc, yet Draenei are in crappy looking Exodar and huts in Azuremyst - you don’t really see the playable faction group grabbing hold of all the things their race is capable of.

Night elves have shown some Elune stuff for the first time since Wc3 saw priests operate in power, but it was only Tyrande, let’s see the Blackmoon sect wielding night warrior powers, let’s see the Moonguard leaders raise up a formidable battle mage kaldorei army, let’s see the Highborne caste working with ancients to create wonders in a new night elf city, let’s see some demon hunters working with and helping the playable faction to show, hey we may not be part of you but we’re supporting you and helping you survive - we didn’t destroy the legion to save you only to have faction warfare or anything else destroy you.

1 Like
27

Abolish factions.

5 Likes
28

When they did the Sunwell plateau, the alliance was involved, but it was clear the wonders of what you saw where for and belonged to the blood elves.

The difference and problem with both the broken isles and Draenor stuff (also Argus), is that what you see for w night elves and Draenor is not framed as part of the playable faction. Unlike the Sunwell plateau and Magisters terrace on Quel’danis isles.

I wonder if people playing through WoD, feel what they see belongs to the alliance Draenei? I don’t think they would, because it’s an AU Draenor, different group right?

Same with the night elves on the broken isles, whether in Moonguard stronghold, or Suramar City itself or the Cathedral of eternal night, whether Farondis or the Dreamwarden

29

The whole game is based on Horde VS Alliance.
Cross faction will kill and cancel everything. I’m Horde since Vanilla. I have spend my time on 50 minutes que and start bg’s 10 Horde vs full team Alli.
I HATE Alliance! I don’t like them at all. I would never EVER play with them.
Blizzard must find a solution but cross faction IS NOT THE ONE.
Maybe add a new 3rd faction neutral and let people go them and play with whoever they want. But Horde must stay as it is.

3 Likes
30

Uhh, how about no?

Listen, we can’t possibly make such an extensive idea practically chewed down for us … it’s too much work, dude!

But look, the water in Zereth Mortis. It’s ACTUALLY the water we can walk on. It’s water, man.

1 Like
31

Worgen should be able to play as human and as wolf during combat.

2 Likes