Hey!
First of all i think we can all agree that the “hotfix” for the battleground’s queues, by giving Horde players the ability to queue against other Horde players, was a success if you consider that the number of games played during this weekend was increased by quite a bit.
Still, i dont believe it’s the best overall solution or fix for the game.
While the main issue was addressed (horde players not being able to participate in pvp in order to gear for arena) it will create problems overtime and neglects the alliance problems that come from population imbalance in pvp servers.
Yes, because if not being able to partake in battlegrounds in order to do arenas ain’t fun, not being able to farm gold in the outworld or find groups for pve content or even not being able to get a 3s/5s arena team ain’t fun either.
The problem, contrary to what most alliance players think, are not the racials. A good example of this was the amount of time that people took back in original wotlk, cata and even mop to swap from Horde to Alliance. Every Man for Himself was probably the most broken (and probably the only racial that was really broken) the game has ever seen in pvp and still back in the day people took years to transition from horde to alliance and they only really did it when leveling was fast and still kept horde characters.
The true problem are the aesthetics of the races themselves which, for some reason, makes pvp players gravitate towards playing Horde therefor creating an cascading effect where their friends will follow (in order to play together).
Lets be true here, most alliance players actively avoid any type of pvp and that is the main issue. If you look at most statistics available (which ain’t 100% correct but can give you a notion) you will see the population imbalances are not as big as people make it seem on the forums, the disparity only really begins when you take pvp into consideration and there i would say the numbers should resemble around 80% horde and 20% alliance.
Yes, alliance players have options while horde players cant really get faster queues regardless of what server they pick.
Yes, battleground queues create imbalances in arena and make people actively avoid arenas .
Yes, people should be able to get in a battleground in a timely manner
No, faster bg queues shouldn’t be an alliance “perk”
No, horde racials are not better than alliance ones in arena. All of them are situational which makes them better in certain situations. Usually (in a rogue heavy meta) alliance racials are actually better.
No, horde vs horde shouldnt be THE fix. It was a good hotfix but we need to think about a better fix that doesn’t undermine alliance population and creates a bigger disparity.
So no, don’t expect people to relevel or reroll with a boost after putting hours into their characters, that is not realistic and it never happened back in the day either.
So after a wall of text i think blizzard has only one real option that dont directly affect the game or how it was played and would keep the “classic” feeling.
Horde to Alliance faction change
A simple fix. You would remove the current fix but open horde to alliance transfers. This would give an infusion of pvp players to alliance, would balance the factions from a pvp pov and wouldnt change the game in a way racial balance would.
Now this brings some problems to horde players like leaving guilds and potentially even leaving friends that focus on pve and don’t really pvp but i truly believe horde players can’t just ask, they need to give and in someway sacrifice.
Not gonna lie, i think me and most of my friends would insta swap because honor gear is relevant in the whole expac.
All of that said, i also hope honor gains get increased. I might be remembering it wrong but even with faster queues as a horde player something feels off. I do remember being able to fully gear in 2 weeks and at the pace im going (even with faster queues) something feels really off.
TLDR
H vs H is a great band aid but can’t be THE fix.
Faction change is a superior way to fix the current problem and will mitigate another issue (faction population).
What i do hope is people to chill and come with interesting ideias, maybe even better ones that the one i gave, and guys… it’s all about everyone having fun, regardless of faction so chill.