Improving the Alliance - the Best Alliance

Community General Discussion
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 what used to work back then near 20 years ago is sadly no longer valid in 2021, otherwise agility would not be a thing and we would have sticked with waterfall.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.

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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

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Alliance already has the better racials.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Abolish factions.

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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

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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.

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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.

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

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i agree with sentiment. the only way to speak is with wallet. unsubb xD

i also unsub just using free months from RAF XD

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newflash team ally isnt ally but 50% horde mercenaries

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34

“Holy F man my friend Fido says we’ve never seen something like this in his lifetime, man”
- A shaman on spiced incense in Ghost Wolf form, probably

I gave a list of things. Some force faction balance, some force realm population.

I think these barriers are actually essential. World of Warcraft had something called the town effect - a community large enough that you can’t know everybody but small enough that you can get local fame rather easily - a reputation if you will. This is an extremely strong and central aspect of WoW and migrating everybody into a huge city destroys it - and it has been destroyed. On Classic, too. This time it was done using layers. Blizzard just can’t help themselves - they think it’s a technical limitation and they try to solve it as if it is - but it isn’t.

Yes, the amount of servers is built for 12 million players. We are more than likely less than 2.

Yes, it would have to go - and the Goblin ones would re-open.

The problem is that merging realms so they’re 50/50 only works for a limited amount of time as it is still advantageous to be on an imbalanced realm. Thus when you merge them you kill one of the factions off. In the case of Frostmane/Grim’batol it is the Alliance that is dying, unsurprisingly, and the Horde side is mostly in Portuguese seeing as both of those realms are merged with Aggra. It’s an absolute mess and it’ll get worse still.

Barriers do enhance the game. Game rules often define not just what you can do, but also what you cannot do.

The agile manifesto was written in 2001.

And waterfall is still a viable strategy. I’ve used it several times. It depends on how the team prefers to work.

Blizzard is definitely using waterfall.

Given the current godawful design, yes. So let’s change it - that’s what the discussion is about.

This is true and indeed an issue in terms of storytelling and world building for sure, but it’s not what’s keeping people away from Alliance, I assure you. In the original game it was the other way around, with the Horde being the scrappy survivors and the Alliance being the established giant in the actual game world, but in the latest expansion there are no Alliance or Horde at all in the game world and in BfA we definitely got equal treatment - in fact the Horde got the worse deal. It’s just that Kalimndor and EK are outdated, all of it.

And while the Horde was underrepresented, it wasn’t anywhere near bad enough to actually cause issues.

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Indeed it’s improvement, BFA, 18 years after launch, is the first time the alliance ever looked better than the horde in a direct conflict. both Dazar’alor and Darkshore… they’d never done that before. But they’re going to need to do a lot more than that to convince people they are serious about the alliance, and the alliance can be attractive enough to switch over.

The night elf and void elf treatment is a classic example. The horde’s night elves, the nightborne, and their high elves, the blood elves are and have so much better - they’ve got cities, lands, great lore development of both the Thalassian people and the kaldorei people, shown as formidable and powerful, excellent and successful too. But their alliance counterparts, don’t. [Can you imagine that races core to the alliance are better on the horde - and you wonder why the alliance is empty…]

It’s like blizzard going, oh, we’ll give the Horde Pandaren the cool Shrine of the two moons and Seven stars, and have the alliance Pandaren camping out in the field - ofc it’s not fair and ofc people are going to be more attracted to the horde, then you have the horde pandaren doing all the cool stuff, and coming off strong, while you have the alliance ones pathetic and desperate - I mean who are players going to be more interested? It’s worse with the elves, especially when you remember that the elven races are alliance themed and are first on them, and the core of those races are there. Which effectively means you are doing “the alliance” better on the horde - off course it’s going to generate a net flow horde, especially of alliance minded players.

The unequal treatment, having more attractive things on the horde and the perception, the perception of this has to change with an emphatic statement of great: The alliance is also cool

Alliance night elves are incredible… look - “shows astonishingly beautiful new city”, “shows them doing cool stuff with priestesses, Highborne, druids, demon hunters, sentinels and wardens” - no longer weak, actually look and feel very dangerous, titanic!!

Look the void elves and high elves are also cool - look - "shows cool city, shows cool developments depth, void elves interacting with night elven Highborne, priestesses and druids, high elves and humans and dwarves really coming together - it’s cool, it looks amazing it’s dynamic, check it out. Let those elf magic lovers on the horde have serious temptation to to go alliance and experience a depth and level of fullness of both night and Thalassian peoples that is tempting enough to re-roll or faction change.

Maybe if I love the night elf fantasy, I will want to pick alliance because it has much more of it than I get via the Nightborne, because it’s got both the civilization, the priesthood and the wilds of nature side + demon hunter, whiles on the horde, I also get a cool city, but it’s mainly just the one thing.

This is acceptable, because you want to entice them over to the alliance to play it more, so you have a fuller picture.

With the void elves it’s slightly different because the blood elves are the bulk of the Thalassian race, but this is where you invest time in building up the void elves and doing something new (they are still the only allied race with minimal screen time, introduction and exploration compared to say the 2 long campaigns of the Nightborne -

Do things like develop the racial ren’dorei with the night elven Black Moon sect and night warrior void stuff - Tyrande’s control of her powers would be of great interest and help to them, maybe some void elves coming to the order of Elune, Highborne night elves and void elves also working together because of their heritage connection, arcane love and remember Shen’dralar did study the void too (Wrathion tried to locate their records - shame he didn’t ask them directly, but then he didn’t know who was an agent for N’zoth and his mission was top secret). Even druids could enlist the help of void elves who know how to use the void to help with the nightmare, and Illidari hunters would find total acceptance for a change wholeheartedly amongst the void elves as a group that understands making sacrifices to deal with dangerous powers in order to defender their people and worlds, even when ostracized by them…

You develop it, there is so much you can do, and this is not even tapping into the original alliance fantasy of humans, high elves (a part of the ren’dorei faction now) and dwarves working together, because you know, alliance loves that stuff, so you should definitely show some high elves working with the ren’dorei faction really engage with humans, while racial ren’dorei engage more with night elves and draenei.

Show it off, make it spectacular, making those on the horde want to try the alliance to experience the full scope of the kaldorei of which they only have a part off, if that’s the fantasy they like, give them something really different and interesting via the void elves mixed with the old traditional high elf that we never saw much of in game… can you imagine if void elves needed to bond with high elves to actually wield more of the void and the light… how interesting would that be.

Sure the horde has blood elves and nightborne and what the game gave to them, but time to facelift and promote what the high elves and night elves are fully capable of when and show off the complete and full picture of their fantasy…

It is also okay for the alliance to look cooler for a while, and look /be cooler when it comes to elven things that are really alliance based. You really shouldn’t have the horde actually do alliance themes like cities and arcane magic better on that faction. I’m not saying nerf the horde, I’m saying now go ahead and show the full breadth and wonder of the night elves and what the best version of them can look like on the alliance, show and build up the void elves to be really something attractive too,not just models but depth and story. This is the core of the alliance, let those themes of magic, elves, cities, love of nature etc let it be more developed there.

Then there is dwarves and Draenei too that need to be interesting, worgen too and that wild savagery, reclaiming Gilneas etc. all these things help.

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Where is it stated that the arcane is an “alliance” thing?

I mean, aren’t Ogres some of the most powerful Arcanists across all of Draenor? It’s possible why Ogres still hold Dire Maul.

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I don’t trust Blizzard in implementing those in a good way.

I’d keep them if they were not harming the game in the way they are now. You have basically no interest to play in low pop realms nor in the Alliance at large.

And that’s why we have tools to check if someone has “good reputation” like if he’s a guild jumper, if he left his guild because he sucked, so on and forth.

The sad truth is that there are no incentives to play in smaller communities. I’m playing on vol’jin and the only thing I can say is that it’s harming our progress, because not only we’re playing alliance, so we’re only getting 20% of the playerbase, we’re playing on a dead realm, so we’re even getting a lesser percentage of that already shrinked share. The guild is open aboot both moving realms and faction.

Then the goblin AH should not be re introduced at all, because that would imply that cross faction AH are still a thing.

I’d advocate to merge both Alliance French strong hold together but the French community disagreed, telling me that realms should go for a 50-50 split rather than reinforcing the Alliance community into 1 single big alliance hub. So I can assume that many players are thinking (And I think I’ve read that on many sources, both from NA and EU) the same so it’s more than likely that Blizzard will not try to merge realms in order to fortify the remaining Alliance playerbase. It’s a dead end and whatever Blizzard does, it will backfire.

They’re not because I moved Horde the first time because the faction I want to play does not have enough players interested in doing what I want to do. Now, I can tell that further more of my friends moved to the red factions and they’re not even doing Mythic raiding at all. If HC raiding becomes that bad on Alliance side then what would be left for the blue faction ? LFR ? RP ?

Wow sadly does not function as a 2 factions game because playing Alliance or Horde is like playing a different game.

The game is telling me to f off if I want to play with my friends. How does that feel good ? Should I reroll ? But Blizzard killed alts so I basically can’t.

I’ve tried twice, failled magistraly. I ain’t doing that.

IMHO, they should not, because it’s slowing furthermore slow processes.

I do think the complete removal is the only solution. It’s sad, I know, but at the end of the day, trying to salvage a doomed system looks like a waste of HR, time and money.

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Humans need long beards. Thanks.

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‘top players’ go where they get the smallest advantage and for a long time that’s been Horde. Sheep follow the top players, even if they don’t know why. There’s a lot of sheep. The faction becomes the de facto raid faction.

Dont change/buff/nerf racials, just disable them in very high end play, including pvp.

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Would that include the passive racials, such as the extra 1% crit/haste/dodge that races can also get