The state of Horde/Alliance on Lordaeron

I was just curious as I'm starting up again, and I'm unsure of my choice of character, simply because of previous experience here a long time ago.
What kind of balance is there between Horde and Alliance when it comes to raiding and PvP? As in will every battleground entered be dominated by one specific side 90%+ of the time, and will finding dungeon/raid progression groups be more difficult on one side more so than the other? Don't get me wrong, I know the whole "Pick the side you enjoy the most" stuff, but from what I remember once upon a time when entering a battleground on old Horde characters, we got completely facerolled in 8/10 games, and it turned into a rather big let down.

Populations are almost perfectly even most of the time.

Alliance tends to win Wintergrasp (when graveyards aren't bugged), Alterac Valley, and Strand of the Ancients most of the time. This is just from my personal experience, which is subject to bias as I am not a big PvPer. Horde usually wins the other battlegrounds. World PvP is pretty nonexistent as both sides tend to leave each other alone unless they are competing for a quest or farming spot.

PvE wise, both sides are even. Horde got most of the realm firsts because of Clarity, which have disbanded. The hardest encounter in the game at the moment is Sartharion 3 Drake, which only 10 guilds have done in 25 man, and only one guild has done in 10 man. The content is extremely buffed, with 10 man bosses sporting 25 man retail health and even great damage. Sartharion himself not only has far greater health and damage, but the Lava Walls have a much smaller safe spot than retail and are an almost guaranteed death for players who get hit by it and lack defensive cooldowns or massive heals.

There is a census in the Lordaeron section that breaks down the population by classes and races, but it is far outdated. If you can play a tank or healer, you'll have no problem finding a guild.

I'm actually quite happy about all of that then. I'm also no major PvPer but it's always nice every once in a while instead of the usual grind. I'm a little surprised about the difference in health of bosses, I'm guessing the reason behind them changing that would be because the mechanics aren't completed or something of the kind, so they have to make up for it with that. Does that make it more difficult for entry-level raiding?

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Originally Posted by Alkamo

I'm actually quite happy about all of that then. I'm also no major PvPer but it's always nice every once in a while instead of the usual grind. I'm a little surprised about the difference in health of bosses, I'm guessing the reason behind them changing that would be because the mechanics aren't completed or something of the kind, so they have to make up for it with that. Does that make it more difficult for entry-level raiding?

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The bosses are more or less bug free. The reason for this change is because they wanted to make Lordaeron a "hardcore" realm. The retail release of Naxxramas as well as the other raids at the launch of Wrath of the Lich King were a massive disappointment in difficulty when compared to previous expansions. Warmane (and many players who play on Lordaeron) wanted the content to be harder and more akin to Vanilla and The Burning Crusade boss difficulty. They will tune the bosses down when Ulduar comes out or where appropriate.

Well damn, I'm looking forward to this a whole lot more then. Raiding and PvE content in general is what I've done since day one, so by the time I hit cap I should be more than accustomed to what's going on. I don't think it's ever possible to lose your touch on a game like this, even after a long break. Cheers for the info Bio, might see you wandering around in-game sometime.

Back when I was 3.1k, I tried joining a trash-farming raid group for Naxx who doesn't care about gs.

We half-wiped on our first gargoyle encounter :D

Ahahaha, I've seen too many trash-wipes in my time.

"Yeah hold on guys I'm on my way now!"
/shows up with half the dungeon in tow