Ofc if the majority faction is benefting from the change it is the unproofable truth that the majority wants that change. However, that doesn’t mean it is the right change for the health of the game.
During that test, we saw the benefits of drastically lowered queue times and less unavoidable ganking in the outdoor world. However, there were a significant number of concerns registered on other related topics.
Ofc queue times were lowered when the majority faction can queue against each other. It’s much easier for the system to shuffle teams. It is kind of ridiculous that this is stated since the ONLY reason HvH BGs are introduced is BECAUSE of the queue times on horde side. I mean what did you expect? That the queue times increased?
We noticed that players were dismayed when the system occasionally launched an Alliance vs. Alliance Battleground. We reduced the likelihood of that a couple of hours into the test, and we think we can do a little more there.
This was a perfect showcase of how flawed your implementation was - The ONLY time I got matched against alliance was when I was in a Pug and I had to play against an alliance premade. I could literally tell from the start on horde side that I have to play against that.
The quick queues revealed that a noticeable number of players were doing BGs in organized raids.
Yeah your system was also structured that even less and less alliance wanted to queue due to the sheer number of horde premades just running over pugs. Not everybody plays on Gehennas or Firemaw. Especially on lower popped server it becomes increasingly difficult to even find a premade on alliance side. On my server Patchwerk (rated as “high” by Blizzard) only 1 occiasional AB/EOTS premade exists at prime time on alliance side. Alot of us are forced to pug or play with 2 or 3 friends max.
Globally, the faction imbalance is small, but the trend over the last few months has been towards a lower BG participation rate among Alliance players.
I disagree. Unless you provide statistical data I trust what my eyes can see and these are 2 things: A) People leave the server to find better shelter elsewhere (might it be a PVE server or one of the bigger ones) B) From week to week more and more horde players are tracked by ironforge pro and since classic the faction increased by more than 10% globally. On my server when I ran through shattrath I actually have to search for alliance players between horde ones. Karazhan is camped by horde raids and from week 1 I died every time I tried to get in because horde was outnumbering alliance at the entrance by a large margin. SO release the data or I call your “minor faction balance” argument a hoax.
And to the people drawing the “Well its only your server card” - UNLESS we have megaservers - faction imbalance is a server problem and not a global one. I don’t care about the faction balance of Gehennas or Earthsaker and they dont care about the one on my server. Blizzard should strive to make incentives that the faction balance stays as close to 50/50 as possible. May those incentives be for alliance or for horde.
Still, we’d like to see what happens when we place a reward for the minority faction into the game.
If you think the faction imbalance isn’t as bad as players make out it to be why do you bend your knee here? It’s stuff like that that smells fishy. Either admit “Holy crap balance became worse and worse and we need to do something about it” OR release the data and say “Hey look its not as bad and all your fears are baseless”. I think you are well aware of the faction imbalance and the trend since launch both for server and horde migration.
And it still boggles my mind that you don’t even consider free faction changes on heavily unbalanced servers BEFORE introducing such a drastic change. It feels like the decision was made by an Activision accountant that valued the revenue of paid server transfers higher than the players enjoyment of the game. It is the same like combining servers isn’t as profitable as paid server transfers.
