Mercenary Mode on Icecrown, Lordaeron and Blackrock
Greetings Warmane players,
With the notion of cross-realm being active, the issue of faction imbalance is brought again on the table. Whilst, it is not significantly present in other areas of the game, such as in PvE, it is, unfortunately, most noticeable in PvP. As players, ourselves, we noticed longer queues on Alliance and lack of players on Horde. Cross-realm brought more activity and with it, more population for all three of our Wrath of the Lich King realms but we are aware that it can be even better. Queues can be instant and PvP even more alive without having an affect on our already built-up PvE culture.
The idea of this has come from the community itself, by repeatedly suggesting it every time we had an in-game discussion. The idea itself is to make Alliance players, the faction itself, when the need arises, also consider as Horde. This does not mean it's mixing players from both factions, and you won't find you and your friends (whether in a party of 5 or a custom premade of more) on opposing sides. While playing as a Horde player, Alliance players will take form of their Horde counter-parts.
To clarify further, this means only Alliance players will show up as Horde players, in order to introduce more players in the pool on both sides but there will be no mixing of factions. This means you won't have to shake hands with your foes. This process would be automatic and you would be assigned as such when the system needs to balance the pool.
This would have no effect on Horde players and their queue wait times.
We will not be mixing Horde or Alliance together, there is no mixing of factions.
If the community agrees for this change to be implemented, we will post a table on which race turns into which. We have decided that in such a system, we would not change the racials. Making spells available and unavailable based on the map where the player is, leaves a lot of space for disasters.
We call this same-faction mercenary mode!
Such a change, while it can be considered blizzlike as it was implemented there also, is still something that changes the way PvP is enacted on all of our WoTLK realms. Therefore, we leave this decision in the hands of the community. The poll will last for 7 days and it will be broadcasted everywhere, you will be able to cast your votes and we will take action accordingly.
Kind regards,
Warmane