Faction balance

[Aiovous]

Many people don't care about any of this, and will go horde simply because blood elves and undead are cool, and space goats and gnomes are not.

blood elves and undead are cool

gnomes are not.

Take that back!

Spoiler: Show

Just because of that, I'm going to roll a gnome.

[Toolt]

I think most of us just want the staff to be aware (which they are), and wait and see. They solution is as easy as faction transfers if its as bad as we expect it to be.
Many people don't care about any of this, and will go horde simply because blood elves and undead are cool, and space goats and gnomes are not.

I DO i agree with most you wrote but i wont quote all of it. You have weight in your words yes, but ive been on server where there has been a 75%H 25%A. And Alliance came ganking in 5man groups. Shutting down horde levelers and farmers. Horde Auction House might be cheaper. And farm spots might be horde contested, its pvp server so im ok with that. The big problem i see is Sprit Shards or Halaa. But for Halaa Imbalance is an issue for both factions.

As to grouping or PVE. im not gonna touch that because honestly i dont know if it will turn out to be a problem, with more or less groups searching. When Reputation farming in tbc is so crucial, groups will spam instances more or less. And Humans have the upperhand here.

I can tell you right now we're not going to "bribe" people into going to a faction in any way like that. The most I could see being done is offering free faction transfers to balance things out as we have done in the past. I suppose closing character creation for one side could be considered if the situation was absurdly dire, although it's something we've never done, so even that might not be on the board. But "bribes" are off, rest assured.

This kinda contradicts what you are saying thou.
" Many people don't care about any of this, and will go horde simply because blood elves and undead are cool, and space goats and gnomes are not. "
Then giving Tranfers, won't adress the issue. What about those that play race for visuals or animation ?
But it saddens me, because a bribe is not a bad idea imo. its better than Xfaction or changing mechanics or locking so people cant play what they want.

[Obnoxious]

This kinda contradicts what you are saying thou.
" Many people don't care about any of this, and will go horde simply because blood elves and undead are cool, and space goats and gnomes are not. "
Then giving Tranfers, won't adress the issue. What about those that play race for visuals or animation ?
But it saddens me, because a bribe is not a bad idea imo. its better than Xfaction or changing mechanics or locking so people cant play what they want.

How exactly any of what I said is contradictory? What's the actual number of "many people" who play because of visuals and animations? Do you have any factual data or just vague claims? How many of those would stick to "visuals and animations" to the point they don't care about PvP and how much longer their wait for it will be because of their faction? Should we change to bribing, instead of transfers for those who want them or locks so if people want to stick to something they'll have to wait until there's balance, just for the sake of this over-niche group of people who would ditch every single Alliance races because of looks?

You claim what I said is contradictory; what you're saying is hollow and devoid of validity.

[Toolt]

How exactly any of what I said is contradictory? What's the actual number of "many people" who play because of visuals and animations? Do you have any factual data or just vague claims? How many of those would stick to "visuals and animations" to the point they don't care about PvP and how much longer their wait for it will be because of their faction? Should we change to bribing, instead of transfers for those who want them or locks so if people want to stick to something they'll have to wait until there's balance, just for the sake of this over-niche group of people who would ditch every single Alliance races because of looks?

You claim what I said is contradictory; what you're saying is hollow and devoid of validity.

Well the first thing was Faction tranfers was a solution, then he said people pick what the play based on apperance or animations. That is what is contradicting.
As to locking factions you are the one who brought it up in the quote.
I quoted yours because it was on the subject and you are the ones in charge :)

[Obnoxious]

Well the first thing was Faction tranfers was a solution, then he said people pick what the play based on apperance or animations. That is what is contradicting.
As to locking factions you are the one who brought it up in the quote.
I quoted yours because it was on the subject and you are the ones in charge :)

That addresses the contradiction part, but not the rest. The amount of people who would discard a whole faction simply for aesthetics and no other reason at all whatsoever is so minuscule that they become a non-issue. They aren't the ones that would cause an imbalance, and they aren't enough in numbers by far to sway the decision on how to handle faction balance. Is there some possibility they could get caught in the middle and unable to play the faction that matches their preference for hideous and/or disgusting races if we were to implement some sort of lock? Sure.

[Toolt]

That addresses the contradiction part, but not the rest. The amount of people who would discard a whole faction simply for aesthetics and no other reason at all whatsoever is so minuscule that they become a non-issue. They aren't the ones that would cause an imbalance, and they aren't enough in numbers by far to sway the decision on how to handle faction balance. Is there some possibility they could get caught in the middle and unable to play the faction that matches their preference for hideous and/or disgusting races if we were to implement some sort of lock? Sure.

Yeah i suppose it depends on how its handled. Transfers might not solve the issues at start either if it happen when people get sick of ques or whatever their reason for swapping factions is, it might be graduatly more in time.
As to when the lock happends. Even the lock might not sway the balance. if it happens when imbalance is already in big horde favor. Then the newly created alliance wont balance up the factions. Or just create a stir on forums.

But this is a known issue on TBC private servers people favor the horde because of aesthetics or racials. But i dont think horde got to big of a favor. Alliance Racials are strong. PvP they are good. and PVE with Reputation and +Hit is arguably stronger than a little more dps. Since hit gear is the base of damage and comes in low drop for beeing 25 people in a raid.

And that is why i kinda lean or like a bribe, aslong as the bribe dont have any impact at 70 at all.

[Obnoxious]

And that is why i kinda lean or like a bribe, aslong as the bribe dont have any impact at 70 at all.

Bribes not only contradict the "let people play what they want" argument (if they will only do it if bribed, they didn't want to play it already) and unfairly reward people who were going to play Alliance already anyways (not needing any bribe, just getting some freebie), but also are rendered pointless if we were to ever have transfers from Alliance to Horde, as people getting "bribed" could still desert (making it so we'd have to consider never having transfers that way at all).

[Toolt]

Bribes not only contradict the "let people play what they want" argument (if they will only do it if bribed, they didn't want to play it already) and unfairly reward people who were going to play Alliance already anyways (not needing any bribe, just getting some freebie), but also are rendered pointless if we were to ever have transfers from Alliance to Horde, as people getting "bribed" could still desert (making it so we'd have to consider never having transfers that way at all).

Ow yeah absolutly. That totally evaded my mind. That would indeed be even more unfair than the bribe itself. Its a tough nut to crack.
Faction imbalance is hard to have on a TBC server, since much happens on the same small continent, and it beeing the "BIG" pvp expansion.
But maybe as simple as a note saying "- Consider rolling Alliance" might be a solution aswell. Letting people know they are embraced and are welcomed.
Another Solution would be to divide the que to horde que with horde and ally que with ally, that way alliance will get into server when horde are at an advantage. But then faction lock on server would be required.

[Plush]

Take that back!

Spoiler: Show

Just because of that, I'm going to roll a gnome.

I was just being contrary! I always do my mage, druid, and hunter on alliance, can't wotf those classes heheh.

Well the first thing was Faction tranfers was a solution, then he said people pick what the play based on apperance or animations. That is what is contradicting.

Yea I can see the contradiction. Transfers would be an elegant first step, but maybe that's all they would be. I would honestly be for a queue or lock at 55% population. Horde is full, Play your Alliance.

A recurring comment I dislike is the "just premade as alliance". A population imbalance is felt in the world, not in instances like wsg. Maybe if the mboxers go alliance, they can attract people.

[Toolt]

A recurring comment I dislike is the "just premade as alliance". A population imbalance is felt in the world, not in instances like wsg. Maybe if the mboxers go alliance, they can attract people.

Yeah its still premade vs premade prio i would asume, so it wont do anyone horde any good. But in bg's when Alliance have lower pop it will be those uneven games that people afk to loss or just gets ended because of 4vs10.

Absolutly its in the open world imbalance gets noticed the most, and on high population servers in Outland. There is already a problem with the world beeing small and made for a 2.5k server cap. Where other expansions world is so big that it does not have the same impact.

Imagine 10k players, then think on the Primal farming spots, almost like you need to multibox so you can kill off your own faction to be able to get mobs, or group farm motes.
Or Herbing on 10k+ players. A stack of Terocone going for hundreds of gold. Or mining for that matter aswell.

And when the scales are tipped to a faction in a heavy way. it makes everything even worse.

[NiceGuyLarry]

The problem I've noticed on high xp rate servers is that horde can just level mule alliance chars to pop battlegrounds. Could maybe be avoided by letting people in one by one, though no idea how that would affect premades.

[Ayame]

The problem I've noticed on high xp rate servers is that horde can just level mule alliance chars to pop battlegrounds. Could maybe be avoided by letting people in one by one, though no idea how that would affect premades.

1by1 can't exist in TBC.

TBC is the reign of the 10-15 premade istant join. Remove this feature mean throw in the bin everything about the bg mechanic.

[NiceGuyLarry]

1by1 can't exist in TBC.

TBC is the reign of the 10-15 premade istant join. Remove this feature mean throw in the bin everything about the bg mechanic.

Some way to see who is queuing and not entering would be enough to prevent the potential issue.

[Toolt]

Some way to see who is queuing and not entering would be enough to prevent the potential issue.

Well they could do so ques are not "popping" until the game are full, but that might not adress the quetimes but it will fix the uneven games.
As to premade vs Premade. Yeah they have faster que, but i think this is a good thing. it makes people wanna group and play together.

[Toolt]

No self-respecting player will go back to a server where opposing faction runs in t5, while you have to go through all the t4 **** first....

This is how server first looked in tbc http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Guild_progression_(TBC) You might think horde is the stronger PVE faction but in TBC they where not. Alliance had better racials as a group and for PVE. Where Horde mostly shined on Archimonde in regards to racials.
But in retail what gave Horde the advatage was the number of shamans. not the racials.

i played in a world 45 guild, our problem was we had to force people to reroll shamans, so we could have the magical 1 in each group.
The Horde counterpart on the server did not have this issue. And therefore got a better raidsetup than we had.

In TBC building the Raid groups was a BIG part of the raids. Since buffs was groupbased not raidbased

On Private server we dont have this issue, and i would not be supriced if an Alliance or multiple Alliance guilds are among the top, on this server aswell