Man, we have been working together in WC3, and then we have been working together for the majority of literally every expansion.People who go "But muh faction conflict" have not been playing the same game as everyone else has.Faction conflict is Integral?If it had been oh so integral, we'd all be dust and burning emerald cinders since WC3, while Archimonde dances in the ruined cities, and the Burning Crusade opens up their version of Starbucks on Azeroth.
The fact that Ion is dancing over the faction imbalance as if it wasn't that important of an issue, is why I believe he shouldn't be the Game Director. I am starting to think more and more that he only focuses on things he thinks are better for the game instead of actually doing what IS better for the game. Game is in a seriously bad state due to faction imbalance (besides many other issues) and the fact that they don't want to fix that is we have such imbalance problems. Maybe if he moved his lazy ass and instead of packing tens of systems into the game, he would actually start working on improving the game itself.
they probably only would need to remove the racial block on what side what race can be on, and then for 2 weeks or so give people the option to transfer for free.
There is hope for cross-faction playing, then!Like, maybe faction conflict was integral to Warcraft 15 years ago, or 10 years ago, but now, in 2020? It's just a bother.Can't play with my WoW friends, and can't get new ones to join cause if they choose a cool Horde race, I have to tell them that the game will not allow us to play together.
Please Blizzard, don't make horde and alliance friendly because at this point you would literally diging your own grave.You keep trying to modernize the game and it's getting more boring every time. Yes horde racial are better than alliance for PvE but only the top player will need this difference the random player that cannot dodge an 5 sec cast aoe will never see any difference...Like everything now as soon as their is some people doing a change for a small benefit the whole world is following.
I switched to Alliance mid Bfa after being a Horde main forever, and I have to say I don't get all the teeth gnashing. There may be more Horde, but it's not difficult to find a group for whatever you might want to do. When I started WoW, Horde was the underdog. Just because Alliance is now, doesn't mean it'll stay that way. If by chance the pendulum never swings back, that's OK too. Always rooting for the underdog.
Let's make things simple for people who clearly have no idea what they are talking about, and cry about things they don't understand:- Racial WERE the initial reason we saw faction imbalance and the growth of the horde side. Until it wasn't the reason anymore, and what made people faction change or go horde was just to be with friends, find a guild more easily, or simply be or try recruiting where the players are.- Alliance racials have been better than horde ones for the entirety of BFA for the most part, as numbers show. For ret paladin for example, its a 1% to 0.5% difference (draenei and Dark Iron dwarf pulling ahead even of BElf), and yes these things could potentially matter, not only for the "1% raiders" as you love to call them, but for a random guild struggling to down a boss when they are close to it and would have closed the gap with that extra 1% dps.- BUT Top-end raiding guilds do not faction-change for racials, not because they don't matter enough (they would take in a heartbeat a 1% extra chance or the dwarf ignore bleed if it was the only thing that matters), but because this gain is largely offset by a large number of other variables. The main variable? Player availability. It is INCREDIBLY hard to recruit decent players on Alliance side, let alone top-notch world-first raiders. The player pool is so massively imbalanced that horde players have years of training with the best, making the gap in player level even wider as time goes (and I play on Ally, i can tell you, finding good m+ groups or pug raids is HARD). For heroic splits, help, and economy, it makes also a lot more sense to stay horde. When you need to fill up your raid with 20+ valuable players, all external/randoms and willing (and able, ilvl-wise) to trade items and funnel you gear during Heroic splits on week 2 of the WF race, trust me, being in the right faction where all the players are for proper preparation matters more than getting 1% dps down the road. Finding BoEs easily without having to pay several faction changes matters just as much (they do it regardless though). If the racial changes made sense (being, say, a 10% difference in dps or something crazy like that), top end guilds would still hesitate, but they could/would eventually come back to Alliance.- Racials tuning is most definitely not enough anymore to change the tide. For die-hard Alliance fans like me, swapping 20 characters for 300$++ is obviously out of the question to go to Horde. I imagine any horde player would feel the same. Make faction transfers free for a month? Eh... I could consider it. But why would Blizzard shoot itself in the foot when they already cut their bottomline with the barber changes at this point.- Lore? Please... Alliance and Horde, as it was very accurately mentioned in other comments, have been working hand-in-hand on literally every major threat since BC. Their leaders joining forces, even to the point of having close to cross-race romances (Jaina you naughty girl...). Heck, in BATTLE for Azeroth, a literal horde vs alliance expac, we end up all fighting against the common enemy and former horde leader. A crude and simple faction opposition as it stands now makes absolutely no sense, ESPECIALLY lore-wise.- Now at the same time, it is completely obvious that the legendary Horde VS Alliance split should NEVER be removed. It is the core of the game, and the reason a lot of players still play. World pvp, ganking and all of this still have some appeal, and I believe it is, in some ways, healthy for the game and what makes WoW what it is as opposed to other MMOs. There are however a ton of different ways you can work around this dichotomy.- Cross-faction m+, raiding and queues (in my opinion even guilds) should have been a thing a long, long time ago. Arguably so the second Mythic plus was ever created. We fight in every cinematic together, but can't actually kill bosses together for some reason? Absolute nonsense gameplay-wise, and something that goes straight against the lore that Blizzard has put forward itself. This would legit fix 80% of the faction imbalance, just by being able to pug m+ and raids with any faction lads willing to fight. - As mentioned by others, the most ridiculous point: the only part where faction matters, PVP, is the ONLY place in the game where cross-faction gameplay is actually possible. Yes, you heard it, you can be a mercenary and queue battlegrounds to fight alongside the opposing faction. Do you even realize how ridiculous and contradictory that sounds? Places where LORE dictates we actually fight together, we can't, but when we take part in the one aspect of the game where we shouldn't, you allow us to fight side by side. Blizzard, come on... This is a situation you created, and you can easily fix. 1) Cross-faction queuing for LFR/heroic and normal dungeon queues2) Cross-faction tab or button-switch for raiding and group finder searches (so people who are fundamentally against cross-faction gameplay can opt out of it and stay with their own side if they wish so, I don't want to hurt anyone)3) WM option to "Fight for the Horde/Alliance" on war mode, along with a mercenary option for BGs to opt-in (so people can still remain on their own faction if they want, again)4) If you are feeling generous: Guild recruitment open to cross-faction (still realm specific) drafting where we can be mercenary or belong to an opposite-faction guild. Fix recruitment for both sides, and stop forcing players to choose one when you clearly don't choose one in your own storyline.Any other fiar move would be to offer a cross-faction change on EACH character ONCE for free at least. That is the only other fair way in my opinion. You rendered the game close to unplayable at high level for your playerbase by letting this go way too far in inaction, and some are stuck suffering from it. DO SOMETHING!
They'll never let us have mixed faction groups or go through a quest chain to switch factions because ultimately it comes down to World of Warcraft's faction war exists as two conflicting lifestyle brands in all the licensed Warcraft merchandise and the shareholders demand infinite growth. It's as simple as that.