1st - it wasn’t “roughly fairly balanced” or even close to it. There was a LOT more horde in War Mode, on every Azerite WQ, on hot spot FPs. Alliance gathered Raids only as a response to horde camping WQ or FP, and sometimes to raid Dazar’Alor, that’s it. 9/10 hunting parties were Horde.
2nd - There was a lot of threads about the other way around from Alliance, including RP servers, before 8.1
3rd - It is roughly balanced now. Every Assault there is a Horde raid with 2-3 bounties in it, up until they get wiped by Alliance raid, then by Horde again, then by Alliance…
Since 8.1 launch I was on most of the Assaults and spend a lot of time at them (I love it), and all except 3 was constantly switching masses from Horde to Alliance and back. 2 on Zandalar was completely dominated by Horde and almost no Alliance. 1 in Stormsong was dominated by Alliance and I couldn’t find any horde to kill.
Just because you die more and meet more Alliance than you used to - doesn’t mean it’s not balanced now. With previous Horde outnumbering WM was easier for you, not much resistance. Now there is, and some Horde, similar to Alliance previously, cry on forums about how bad it is. It isn’t really.
Most of Alliance activity in WM is on Wednesday, then it goes down. But even with this, yesterday Assault in Stormsong was completely dominated by Horde, with multiple bounties, while Alliance couldn’t get a counter 40 man raid for hours and we were able to beat Horde only after Assault ended. It’s NOT one in 10 times, it happens regularly.
Plus, just like OP
A LOT of Alliance players turn WM off as soon as they finished weekly quests. I know it not only because of players I talk to, but also by amount of requests for Stormwind portal I get with ppl telling “I’m done, time to turn it off”.
And here is the thing - even if there is a balance or outnumbering (huge doubts) by Alliance on Wednesday, there is 6 more days of the week when it’s not the case very often.
On top of that - if you’re using LFG to get more players of your faction to join you, on Horde side you will always get it filled up much faster than on Alliance, since whole region has a lot more horde than Alliance, and we are not limited in LFG by our server. Rotation (players coming and going) also happens without waiting on Horde side, and with waiting on Alliance.
And that is why, even when there is a balance on any shard - it can be easily disrupted by LFG influx. Again, Alliance learned how to use it in 8.0 since the was no other way in many situations, because even on RP we were heavily outnumbered. Now it’s time for horde to learn.
I don’t think bonus is going to go, in any way.
Better solution would be to make it:
- Calculate bonus each reset on each day of the week, daily instead of weekly
- Give weekly quest to a faction which got more underrepresented days in the previous week.
I think this is the best that could be done with PvE % bonuses.