Faction balance discussion

[kelno]

Here is our first draft: Website article link

We're open to changes and opinions. You can use this thread to tell us what you think, what you would want do see added/removed, or what could be improved!

[AWIDIUS]

Give a alliance shaman a 100% chance to dispel a poison via Poison Cleansing Totem. Make a script that would add a Draenei shaman melee hit rating in addition to spell hit rating and make that 3-5%, not 1%. That would make Orcs roll alliance for sure, me include. Or give draenei shams an option to chose between draenei racial (healing one) and orc racial (spell dmg/AP one) Make Orc's racial stacking with any other healing reducing effects resulting in 75% of healing reduction. Make S0 gear available for reputation for all alliance players right when server releases.

[Oliaxz]

Very cool changes, I like the direction. But I'm not sure it's gonna be enough. The seal of blood/vengeance was smart. But that's a change that only affect ret paladin. The leveling/rep perks are nice, but not relevant in the long run. I think the issue is mainly the undead racial will of the forsaken. It's the best racial by far for rogue/mage/priest and 2nd best for lock after orc (also horde). The lesser evil is probably to nerf it the way they did in wotlk, shared cooldown with PvP trinket. But 45s is excessive. 20s would be acceptable imo cause that's just a bit over DR timer. But its a nerf so a "negative" change and not "blizzlike", so you'd probably want to make a poll for it. If you want to do it only with "positive" change then it's gonna be difficult.

[Oliaxz]

To follow up on previous post, another idea could be to mix/match tbc/wotlk racial.

Arcane torrent : remove gcd Berserking : 20% haste always WotF : 20s shared cd with PvP trinket, maybe also remove the 5s immunity Hardiness : unchanged or -15% stun duration instead of resist chance. And I guess same change to all other stun resist source (priest/warrior talent/meta gem). Escape artist : instant cast/can't be resisted Stoneform : unchanged or maybe down to 2 mins cd Perception : unchanged or replaced by wotf for mage/priest/rogue, and by hardiness for war/lock. Giving wotf/hardiness to human effectively mean the choice is now between berserking/arcane torrent/war stomp vs stoneform/shadowmeld/escape artist which is much more subjective. Shadowmeld : unchanged or vanish like ability 2mins cd Gift of the naru : instant cast and scale with spell/attack power War stomp : unchanged

[Klimpb]

The racials are indeed the main problem but I don't think it's good to change any of those. Better to adjust honor and arena point gains for alliance as a form of compensation for being the underdogs.

say a 40% additional honor gain and 20% arena point gain wouldn't make much difference in the long run(when horde gets their 5th arena item alliance would get their 6th, that's ofc if they're at the same rating)... In practice this wouldn't give alliance much advantage at all, it definitely doesn't make up for the lack of useful racials, but the perceived advantage would be greater which would result in hopefully a more balanced faction ratio.

[NeonicSupersonic]

Apart of SoB and SoV change and escape artist buff i dont think it would convince anyone to play alliance.

All in all its just few nice things in attempt to bribe people to pass on a lategame powerhouse of horde racials. And lets be honest horde racials are absurd in tbc. Orc stun resist AND blood fury AND pet damage alone is completely insane. But theres more ofc. Wotf and berserking. Which makes horde clearly better in both pve and pvp.

Thus I dont think half measures would help. You should either give insane bonuses to alliance like +50% more rep/+50% more honor, additional marks and badges for daily quests (which is hard cos daily quests werent in the game prior to 2.1) and some cosmetics like old non armed mounts/zg tiger/scarabs lord bug for badges/gold/honor. Or straight up use wotlk racials for everyone. Or add faction que.

Theres clear downsides for every solution, but, again, I played some servers and never seen any half-measures to solve anything.

[maingaming]

Appreciated that you're trying to solve the expected faction imbalance but I doubt that these changes are going to help with that as most of them fail to address the core issue: Horde racials (+ SoB) combined are too strong for both PvE and PvP in most situations when they actually matter.

As Neonic put it: bribing players with some minor PvE perks won't concinve the dedicated min-maxing community (which should be most pserver players) to roll the weaker faction, especially when having competitive Arena and buffed Raid content in mind. Even if the changes were to bring some numerical balance the most dedicated players will stay Horde because they simply don't need or care for some easier questing, an already cheap by default 60% mount or 10% more rep, especially not on a 5x server. All it would achieve is putting the pure PvE players vs. the pure PvP and hardcore PvE players.

If you really want to address the issue you either have to A) drastically change and balance all racials or B) remove the faction barrier.

A) Basically going the WotLK route. Problem with that: "But it isn't TBC then!"

B) Let players group cross-faction for PvE (Quests, Dungeons, Raids) & PvP (Arena), enable mixed-faction BGs and make World PvP free-for-all allowing that everyone can kill everyone excluding players that you are in party/raid/guild with. Problem with that: "It's not Warcraft without Alliance vs Horde!"

One way or the other some people will cry but half-assed changes won't fix the issue either.

[yolohse]

I think it is a good idea to try and balance the factions by positive reinforcement aimed towards the alliance players. I think you guys are right in giving alliance player small quality of life improvements to talk them into playing ally. I do however think that you need to add some incentives in the late game. Only the reputation buff will be relevant in the late game. I don't think this buff does enough for players. In the following I will present some ideas for quality of life improvements you could give alliance players that will have less impact balance wise than the rep buff (should help hardcore ally players get rep rewards before hordes).

1) Give Ally level 70'ies an item that teleports them to Shattrath, with 30-60 min CD. I think many players have experienced being stuck in their capital city because their HS was on cooldown. In this way you can either have two means of getting back to Shattrath or have your regular HS set somewhere else, for easier traveling. This has very little effect on the relationship between factions. This could also be done before level 70 by giving players two HS for a stronger incentive, almost guaranteeing that alliance will ding 70 first. 2) Reduce cool down on Hearthstone. This will help while leveling and in the end game. This is a light version of the first proposal at least in terms of end game. 3) Give Alliance players cheaper bags i.e. "Gigantique" Bag from Harris Pilton. It is always annoying to run out of bag space, and many players use a fair bit of cash getting bags when they hit 70 and will still experience full bags. You could allow alliance players to buy the "Gigantique" Bag for let's say 5 gold each and then make them BoP to avoid them being sold cross faction. This could also be done for bank slots and guild bank tabs. This has even smaller effect on the relationship between factions. It does however nerf the tailoring profession for ally players as they will not be able to make gold from selling bags at level 70. Tailoring is however still a strong profession with many essential recipes for casters and healers and Fel-/Moon-/Spellcloth cooldowns. 4) Give alliance players free profession training. This is only a minor thing and won't do much in the end game. What I am thinking is that like with spell training, training of profession and recipes taught by trainers could be free for ally players. This will help players save money for when they hit 70 since they can essentially level for free. The same could be done for flight, this is very minor, but could help the image of "free leveling" if you pick alliance. The only expense would be repairs and consumes. 5) Boost profession skill up rates for alliance players. You could make it so, that orange skills have a 30% chance to give 2 skills. Yellow gives a skill up each time, and greens give a skill up 50% of the time. These percentages could of course be tweaked. This will help players while leveling and help them keep up with their level with 5x experience boost. To keep First Aid relevant while leveling, you should probably get several skill points for both orange and yellow skills. This will also help players who want to respec late, to get Drums for raids for instance. I don't think this has an effect across factions either. It will improve quality of life but won't break any mechanics.

I am not saying that all these suggestions should be implemented, that would probably be overkill, but they are some ideas of buffs to alliance which I think would compel more people to choose team blue.

[ghost]

changes to escape artist and pala seals are nice. gift of the naaru scaling is also a good idea. i would add shadowmeld not breaking on dot damage (same for cannibalize), and a new nelf racial called ultravision ( inspired by the wc3 elf upgrade ) which passively increases stealth detection (maybe by 2 levels, so +10, roughly) and the 'on use' component allowing for detection of invisible units (invisible=/=stealhed) for a few seconds. in regard to hardiness, either change all such rng talents/gems or none, cherrypicking is bad.

troll regen could use a buff. berserking is fine as long as #1524 gets fixed

[Mastercry]

You should give human weapons racial in return to blood elves to be balanced. And this can be very good idea. But if you dont, humans will have BIG advantage and no reason to roll Blood Elf ret.

[kelno]

A few notes already:

• Adding completely new spell is impossible without a client patch, which we decided not to do.
• A custom item is going to appear as a question mark in game, again unless we use a client patch. That's also a no go.

[yolohse]

A few notes already:

• Adding completely new spell is impossible without a client patch, which we decided not to do.
• A custom item is going to appear as a question mark in game, again unless we use a client patch. That's also a no go.

The problem with the item functioning as a HS could be manipulated like you have done on the PTR. Place an NPC in all major alliance cities who can port you to Shattrath.

[Pizzle93]

I agree with Neonic that it will have to be something more significant that affects the biggest grinds in TBC (honour and rep). Something like 50% rep and honour would probably sway more orcs.

[AWIDIUS]

Problem is not with that grind, problem is with racials, you have to do something about what's permanent, if you give aliance more honors, alliance will gear up faster, resulting horde to probably lose more BG's, but once alliance complete their gear, they will start to create other characters to gear them up, having geared horde in BG vs green alliance resulting in horde smacking aliance so bad and this will repeat ... Even when everyone has their gear, honor perks are for nothing basically, they need to implement something that's permanent

[ghost]

if you decide to further buff alliance racials, it's probably a good idea to make them affect pve as much as pvp. (some of these suggestions, including mine, affect pvp only)

[Pizzle93]

I just semi-ironically mentioned combining alliance racials on general chat on discord, but what do you guys think? Maybe not all of them, but you could add lets say escape artist, intelligence, spirit, rep bonus, expertise etc, or any combo devs determined to be appropriate.

Benefits:

• Spells already in game
• Has a long term incentive (unlike rep/honour/cheap mount benefits)
• Impacts both pve and pvp

Issues:

• Finding the right combination of racials to avoid being too overpowered

[NeonicSupersonic]

Make dranei hit aura stack inside group, instantlly fixes alliance in pve

[knasen88]

the racials aren't THAT huge, it's mostly people obsessing over orc racial. The SoB is a nice change because some guilds solely go horde so they can utilize a ret.

Escape artist especially with this change is the most broken racial in the game

[DaedalusMachina007]

These changes are by far the single dumbest way to ensure 'faction balance' is not an issue in the game. Absolutely flipping wowza. What a shame.

You want more people to roll Alliance? Get rid of gnomes as a playable race by having them only be in the game as NPCs. They have little to no lore/reason to remain in the game and even Alliance players despise them for the most part as they are the least-popular race in the game. (This was a facetious joke so calm down gnome nerds and keep your midget fetish to yourselves plz)

The changes to seals are interesting but fly straight into the face of WoW's Lore unless you follow the WotLK example. Seal of Vengeance for Alliance and call it Seal of Corruption for Horde like what happened in WotLK. Similarly, Seal of the Martyr for Alliance and Seal of Blood for Horde. Allow both factions to use both seals if you REALLY want to influence Paladin PvP.

TBC is by far one of the worst expansions (outside of Vanilla itself) when it comes to class PvP balance. It wasn't until the resource revamp in late WotLK that they had PvP working well.

Will of the Forsaken is powerful but it is crucial for it to remain exclusive to the Undead for lore reasons. This is their will that they used to break free of the Lich King's control. It is tied into the very core of several major WoW Forsaken lore and story moments and is the crux of the final story arc to WotLK.

If you want to 'balance' it and make a ton of Alliance humans you can add in 'Every Man for Himself' which was effectively what Blizzard (officially) did in WotLK.

But do you see what I mean? A TBC 'PvP' server is going to have a ton of custom stuff either imported from WotLK or altered severely. Is it even TBC at that point or just a custom server?

If you all want to make a custom server then just call a spade a spade and not call it TBC or Blizzlike as it will be neither of those things.

TLDR: Leave things as they are and offer other incentives (lower PvP gear costs, etc) to make it more worthwhile to roll Alliance.

[yolohse]

@DaedalusMachina007. It would be nice if you could be more constructive, than just saying "the changes proposed are the "dumbest thing ever".

You clearly care very, very much about lore, but do you really think some players choose not to play humans because they will be in the same faction as gnomes? The only effect I see when removing gnomes are removing the only good pvp race from alliance, and furthering the faction imbalance.

Concerning Will of the Forsaken, I don't think many pvp players care more about lore than more balanced gameplay. Same goes for the seals.

Every TBC server who has not done something to battle faction imbalance has died a premature death so of course Endless has to alter the game if they want their server to be a success. It seems that you understand that, but then it would be nice to see some actual proposals from you other than "lower PvP gear costs, etc."

[NeonicSupersonic]

Its trolling, should be removed. Imagine proposing to remove gnomes in serious discussion.

[kelno]

Let's keep it for posterity, we can't just bury such a glorious post

[Aeded]

1): SoB for alliance paladins is a great change. 2): Escape Artist buff is good change aswell.

But the rest of the initiatives listed to roll Alliance become irrelevant 3 weeks after launch. If you want to trully make more players roll Alliance, you would need something that will be still worth while 6 months, a year after launch.

10% more rep, means that you will have to do about 1 normal dungeon run less. To reach revered for HC key is 21k reputation, this buff saves you 2.1k rep. That does literaly do nothing, through all the rep grind this will save you about what... 5 hours at best?

Free 60% mount training, which costs 40g normaly? Not to mention spells are free for everyone, so there wont be a problem to get that training anyway.

You need something that will draw players to alliance beyond first 3 weeks.

Great change would be to increase honor gained for alliance by 50% from kills and 25% from other sources (quests etc). Or even better Increase honor gains for both factions, but double the values for alliance. Because lets be honest noone is interested in grinding for gear after doing it X amount of times on previous servers.

There could be an increased XP rates for alliance, warmane had 7,5x for alliance since launch. They also gave alliance free 100% mount training (and 60% fly training free).

In my opinion, boosting the honor gains for alliance would be a long lasting perk that would be relevant with each season. As far as Arena points go, I wouldnt change anything there. Most annoyance comes from grinding the offset each season.

[DaedalusMachina007]

You want a solution? Leave the racials alone. That is how Blizzard designed it and that's how they should remain. You want better racials then just make a WotLK server or call this a TBC Custom server and import the WotLK stuff.

The devs here can do whatever they want but if they implement these proposed changes they are not permitted to truthfully call themselves 'TBC Blizzlike' anymore. The changes go beyond mere QoL improvements and actively hinder an entire faction of players who play that faction for lore or just because they hate gnomes lol.

I wouldn't mind having some reasonable faction-specific changes done in such a way as to not disrupt the server from being a 'TBC Blizzzlike non-custom server':

-Have spells cost money but lower/halve the costs for alliance for spells prior to 60 -Have XP rates increased for 1-60 for alliance -Have mounts and training be cheaper for non-epic riding/flying -Instead of giving every Alliance race a reputation increase, just buff the human reputation racial and that's it -Offer PvP items and mounts for half-off the normal prices to encourage Alliance PvP

Maybe that all wouldn't be enough but it isn't the job of the devs to twist/distort Blizzard's vision of what TBC was. If you all are going to do that then call it a TBC custom server and be upfront about it.

[reinart1]

some of the things are just unfair for horde players, like now all of the alliance players get 10% extra rep, are u kidding me?? its only meant for humans alone and training cost of the 60% mount is deleted for alliance players? really?

also ive seen a lot of stupid suggestions by many ppl here aboutall sorts of game breaking stuff meant for custom servers only, stop it right there, unless u wanna kill the server even before it launches, its far from blizzlike even the changes they are introducing now

i can live off with the pala change, okai, lets change the skills, cus horde gets something out of it as well, but giving all that questing / rep / free flying shit is just stupid - allys should get perhaps cheaper pvp gear and cheaper gear fix, but not game breaking / lore breaking stuff...

[Pizzle93]

Training costs, rep and mount costs are not game breaking stuff....

It’s like you don’t even know what the faction balance issue is Reinart. Most servers have done more than already suggested and still died because it wasn’t enough.

[reinart1]

Training costs, rep and mount costs are not game breaking stuff....

It’s like you don’t even know what the faction balance issue is Reinart. Most servers have done more than already suggested and still died because it wasn’t enough.

they died because they didnt keep the promise of blizzlike, for instance excaliburTBC existed well over10+ years, only the last 1-2 years pop was under 1k, but before that the pop was well over 1k even 2k, usually every night

and yes i know what they are changing are not game breaking, but it feels unfair for horde even if the ratio is usually somehwere around 40-45 / 55-60

in the end i just hope blizz launches their TBC servers asap, but that probably wont happen anytime in the next 3 years

[Pizzle93]

Unfair for horde 😂, then roll alliance and the issue is resolved! That is the whole point. No servers are blizzlile, and Excalibur has 2x money rates and xp despite claiming to be blizzlike. Blizzlike isn’t even what people want. That would require 2.0 itemisation and 2.0 patch, yet they all run off 2.4.3 because it is simply better. People need to stop crying about blizzlike and come up with constructive ideas like increased honour, xp, cheaper mounts or something.

[reinart1]

Unfair for horde 😂, then roll alliance and the issue is resolved! That is the whole point. No servers are blizzlile, and Excalibur has 2x money rates and xp despite claiming to be blizzlike. Blizzlike isn’t even what people want. That would require 2.0 itemisation and 2.0 patch, yet they all run off 2.4.3 because it is simply better. People need to stop crying about blizzlike and come up with constructive ideas like increased honour, xp, cheaper mounts or something.

im horde by heart so rolling alliance would be out of the question, if the "balances" intervene too much id just quit the server

also blizzlike in terms of actually changing gamebreaking mechanics, yes i contradict myself about the reputation/cheaper mount claim now, cus i hate to see horde get unfair disadvantage at the start of the server, but mechanichs like to give alliance undead racial, or faster xp rates so they could farm me while im lvling, hell no, or even that 3-5% draenei buff thatd be the most stupid thing

[DaedalusMachina007]

Unfair for horde , then roll alliance and the issue is resolved! That is the whole point. No servers are blizzlile, and Excalibur has 2x money rates and xp despite claiming to be blizzlike. Blizzlike isn’t even what people want. That would require 2.0 itemisation and 2.0 patch, yet they all run off 2.4.3 because it is simply better. People need to stop crying about blizzlike and come up with constructive ideas like increased honour, xp, cheaper mounts or something.

What you are basically suggesting is 'play this game in a custom way the way we demand or go somewhere else'. Guess what people will choose, lol.

I'm on Netherwing and the server has been active over ~2 years. Good faction balance and none of these absurd custom changes like the ones being proposed in this joke of a thread. Just TBC Blizzlike. The 2.4.3 patch itemization and skillsets are the same method that Blizzard is officially doing for Vanilla (latest patch and just progress content).

That said, there's a clear notice of what a multi-billion dollar merged company can do (Activision-Blizzard) when it jumps in bed with Tecent/China, actively defends them to the point of massive public ridicule, and yet still gets away with charging a monthly fee for their 'service' which is more and more disgraceful by the day (mail delays for over a week with nothing done to mitigate/fix it). Private servers are not Blizzard (arguably they are better when managed properly).

Netherwing server shows that not only can a TBC Blizzlike server (with 1x rates no less) survive AND thrive but that is what people want/prefer from TBC rather than some custom stuff. If people want custom stuff then that is fine within certain limits.

QoL stuff that almost nobody would dislike being backported to TBC:

• training dummies in all major cities
• dual-spec or even tri-spec for hybrid classes and to encourage having a 'pvp spec' to encourage more pvp without needing a separate dedicated alt for it (I know the trailer showed dual-spec but it is unknown whether that will make it to live or just be a dropped feature)
• updated graphical support such as for DirectX 11
• 100% quest item droprate & shared quest item party looting for EVERYONE
• remove XP penalty for partying (full XP gained regardless of whether solo or party) in both the world and in all instances/dungeons/raids

Some of these changes may not be feasible without lots of custom work on a later client (like the WotLK client) but with TBC content/skills instead.

Due to how close the 'release' date has been stated, it may be better to hold off on major faction-related changes until people get a feel for how the balance is after a good ~3 months from server launch.

This server has significant potential and hype to be better than Netherwing by offering a few minor QoL changes that would NOT detrimentally affect one faction over another but would help just about everyone. Increasing XP rates significantly only provides a band-aid solution to patch over all the broken and incompletely-scripted quests for most servers. How about actually fixing them and scripting them so they work as intended?

What keeps many people in TBC WoW is more than just nostalgia; it is IMMERSION and that doesn't happen just by rushing to 70 and mindlessly grinding the same content from over a decade ago. It happens through the social connections and the community built on this server. The people who just want to rush to max level and then spam chat with 'next patch when' are not the kind of people that the devs should pay attention to. These aren't the types that will stick around for long.

What people do NOT understand about deliberately favoring one faction over another is that there is very little way to course-correct if things get too lop-sided and skew things too far in the other direction. For all the faults of Blizzard if emulation of TBC is going to happen then every single change should have full implications analyzed as far as impact on the players, the community, and the economy.

More than enough people are tired of Netherwing and wouldn't mind a fresh start with devs who are more amenable to listening to the community. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case here so far. :(

[Pizzle93]

With faction balance you need to address it before at launch or piss people off one way or another (imagine faction queue after your whole guild decided to roll horde) or imagine implementing more rep for alliance after you already spent the time grinding rep, or free epic flying after you already bought it. It needs to be thought out in detail and implemented on launch.

Netherwing launched in much different circumstances. Most people are tired of levelling on classic so I don’t think x1 xp would be well received now. Also it really still isn’t blizzlike with 2.4.3 talents and 2.0 itemisation. If anything end of expansion patch and itemisation is more blizzlike because at least they existed together at some point in time. Netherwing were also forced to implement a faction queue which is one of way of bringing balance but can do more harm than good depending on populations.

[yolohse]

Okay so thread has evolved into a good old fashioned trench war it seems. I have already posted some ideas, so I won't post more, but allow me to do a quick unscientific analysis: I think a quick look at the Guild Recruitment channel on the Endless discord is a strong indicator of the faction imbalance we have right now. Only 2-3 Alliance guild as far as I can see and no EU alliance guilds. Closer to launch there will of course be some EU Alliance guilds recruiting but this is also true for Horde guilds, which is why I think the fraction right now is not completely off.

People have seen the changes already announced, and we still see a 80/20 majority of horde guilds in the channel (roughly). I don't think the average Alliance player has a problem with being the minority. I believe the problem is the absolute number of alliance players. If the server has 3.000 players online, with the current 80% horde, that means 600 alliance players are online. Let's say half of those do PvP, then we have 300 PvE players online. It will be very hard for players to find tanks or even just dps for dungeons with only 300 PvE players on Alliance, who are also raiding, farming, chatting or whatever. I think this will make it both hard and frustrating for the alliance players to run dungeons, which is such a big part of the game through the entire expansion due to Badges being introduced later on, when the gear is less needed. I see another consequence of the low absolute number of Alliance players, which is regarding the Auction House. Without a healthy amount of Alliance raiders, the Auction House on Alliance side will struggle and it will be hard to get an economy going. It will be very tough to sell mats or services since there are so few potential buyers. We are then left with a faction of PvE players who can't run dungeons and can't farm mats to make gold. The only thing they can do is raid with their guild, resulting in a large part of the Alliance faction becoming raid loggers. This further reduces the faction's problems and worsens the consequences.

Should the devs chose not to take further actions in regards to faction balance, I think it is necessary with both cross faction groups, including cross faction world chat, and a complete transformation to cross faction Auction Houses, with normal cuts instead of 15%. I personally don't particularly dislike the idea of the cross faction Auction House, to make sure both factions have a healthy economy. What I am not fond of though, is the idea of cross faction groups and chat channels. I do however think it could be a necessary evil if the population ends up like the discord points towards right now. Lastly, just to clarify, I see this as a last resort, I would much rather prefer more actions to be taken to try and increase the number of alliance players.

[reinart1]

Cross faction AH and groups isnt a bad idea, we had it in the excalibur for the past 4 or so years, it helped the server a lot, because in the last 2 years during evenings the pop was still well over 1k even if the server has been around for well over 10 years. Only in the past year the server has finally died out due to laziness of server owner and admins.

[NeonicSupersonic]

Exessive horde crying in this very place shows that incentives work, so theres that.

[Mastercry]

my opinion. too much custom things already. I dont like the cliche blizzlike but. When u want to please some ppl there will be double more who would be disappointed(including me, cos ally paladins get SoB+their awesome wep racial). Once u start asking community u will get billions ridiculous ideas. And when u start doing such changes there is no end. It will turn into fun server.

Server's name is already somehow hurt imo. Maybe instead doing ridiculous changes just add cross faction from day1. Server wont keep enough pop with the time there is so many examples for this and it just needs to be able to party with other faction and to have one AH for both. Maybe x2 gold and other small changes which makes sense in 2020 (same as x5 exp rate)

Yea fuck 2.0 itemization. I refused to start NW cos this shit. Its CUSTOM cos u have 2.4.3 client and talents. I dont like how blizzlike turned into cliche(people have different interpretations) but you must keep the server max blizzlike.

Cross faction solves a part of your problems from PVE pov. Cos now if you have 2,3 ally guilds and 15-20 horde if you have cross faction wont matter. Ppl will keep rolling human war, rogues, draneir for hit etc. There is no problem to have one guild actually that will help alliances cos now many ppl are forced to roll horde cos they want to be same faction to be in same guild....

[NeonicSupersonic]

You do realise that xfaction is ABSOLUTELY the most unblizzlike change to make ever?

[Pizzle93]

Would hate cross faction personally. Wouldn’t feel right at all.

[yolohse]

"I want a blizz-like server that doesn't fuck up the lore. Also please give me cross faction groups please"

I have not played on a server with cross faction groups, but as I see it, it is the closest thing you get to a Fun-server. I think it will discourage almost all players except for players from Excalibur. I feel like cross faction groups is equivalent of giving chemotherapy to a stage 4 cancer patient. You know they will die, but you can keep them alive for just a bit longer. If there is not done more to balance the factions before launch, I feel like the server is born with cancer, growing for each day, until they have to do cross faction to keep it alive for an extra 6 months. I think we should treat this much earlier, not when it is already too late.

[reinart1]

Well the question is whether you want the server to die quick or slow, with crossfaction the server will remain up for years to come, without it will die much faster due to lack of players on alliance side. Again on excalibur, it was introduced and thousands of ppl still played there, even if all the content was cleared for thousanth of time, until recently ofcourse, now its finally dead after 13 or so years.

[yolohse]

But Reinart, wouldn't you like it more, if there weren't a lack of alliance players? That is the point of giving alliance perks. As long as horde players only complain about the perks, but don't actually reroll alliance the perks are not powerfull enough in my oppinion.

[Mastercry]

@NeonicSupersonic you are wrong imo. btw cross faction wont hurt pvp. You still have world PVP + separate BGs and arena. You get only good things of cross faction. The wow how its made in that part is most stupid thing ever from pve pov. Cos you simply have 2 separate servers with same name. If you have 2k pop this is 1k real for you if you are PVE player. AH is different as result if we take NW for example AH was fuckin empty on 2.8k total server pop. When u talk with your friends about starting fresh server, what is the 1st thing u ask? Which faction u going. 60% of ppl will say horde, so even if you want to be ally u are forced cos u want to be in same guild and level with your friends. with xfaction this problem is eliminated. You still can have small changes to encourage more ppl to roll ally but there is big chance to be enough. And u dont need to fuckin do ridiculous changes like racials or SoB which fucks lore. Anyway obviously the success of one server depends of the owner decisions. So he need to think alot before is too late. I think it must keep max blizzlike possible. You dont want to play with racials or any spells.

groups are only for PVE you understand that? yolohse. You cant group for BGs or arenas so pvp is untouched. And yea lets argue which is more unblizzlike, having many ridiculous changes like racials and givin seal of blood to ally or just one big change - xfaction and keep everything else untouched (or only very small changes)

[yolohse]

I really have to emphasize again, that you simply cannot say one single word about lore if you want cross faction groups! If you don’t see this self-contradiction, I think the devs will have a tough time taking anything you say seriously Mastercry.

[reinart1]

Im a horde by heart, I wouldnt roll an alliance even if they were given even better racials than the horde gets, what u dont seem to understand is that there are many ppl out there like me, if the "balances" intervene too much, id better quit the server than roll an ally toon, i would go back to atlantiss or sunwelltbc, no matter cus those servers are pretty much blizzlike and still healthy in population. And yes there is no crossfaction in those servers as well, im just trying to say that a new server should try out the possibility of crossfaction at the start of the launch, to see it flourish in the end when atlantiss and sunwelltbc are dead like many before without crossfaction. Im telling you, the only reason why excalibur has finally died out was due to the laziness of owner and admins, they failed to deliver crucial updates and the server had lack of marketing, thats all there is to it.

[Enory]

Hi guys, For me u should have buffed the ret seal instead of giving them the horde seal (increased procrate for exemple). And u should have opened 3 separated threads pve / pvp / miscellaneous. I don't think we can get a lot of very good ideas from there. But still hoping i'll go wrong on that point.

Edit ; actually i have 0 thing to make me switch from orc hunter to nightelf for pve, or undead priest to nightelf priest for pvp, etc...

[Griffithfalcon]

NICE. So in wotlk servers 90% o population is broken humans in pvp and one for all not sharing with others races, but in one and only expansion humans are worse and... they get literally one thing that makes blood elf better in 1 class... OK, no problem, but why dont buff rets, like 2\3\6% of maximum mana and 100% mana from used seal in sanctified judgement? Or why don't give blood elfs weapon mastery from humans? Why dont makes torrent stacks drain mana instead of just burn it? or maybe everyone gets wotf? Or maybe nerf frost mages for balance, cause in tbc u have 2 warriors with loloherald\more top weapon, 2 holy pallas who babysit em and 6 frost mages in wining side (cause another will be loosing)? Or maybe nerf sl-sl warlocks who press 2 buttons in arena and 1v1 and instawins every nonheal comp\champ? Or maybe buff retri palas who are pure shit both in pvp and pve (even with seal twisting every proc)? FFS, blizzard human\alience loving spreads even on privet servers...

[yolohse]

Understanding that rant is pretty hard, but how is changes to classes going to change which faction people play?

[Griffithfalcon]

Want be palas in alience? make high elfs (belfs with blue eyes) for alience and some useless shit race for horde and thats will fix faction balance. For yolo - if u make custom faction balance, why not make class balance changes? It can be blizzlike or not blizzlike, pick one.

[Griffithfalcon]

And yes, want to make some good custom thing - make soloq 3v3 heal+2dd (5v5 no one play anyways).

[Pizzle93]

@Griffithfalcon that is a pretty ridiculous thing to say, along the lines of "if you make 1 change, why not a million"....there is not such thing as Blizzlike and anyone who thinks there is has no clue, honestly, it is the biggest meme. You either have the wrong patch or the wrong itemisation, and they make a bigger difference on difficulty etc than some small faction balancing ideas. And the devs are buffing content to account for the better talents and itemisation in 2.4.3. Faction balance is NEEDED for the long term survival of the server, plain and simple. #makealliancegreatagain #freeflyingmountsand50%offepicflying

[reinart1]

Faction balance is not needed, whats needed is crossfaction realm and thats it. "#makealliancegreatagain #freeflyingmountsand50%offepicflying" all of this is bullshit cus it wont help the server in the long term and yet u speak of long term survival, if you take an example of all the servers that has existed all of them have one thing in common and that is there is no crossfaction pve stuff made available in those servers. Excalibur on the other hand had existed well over 10 years, even with all its flaws ppl still played there, due to the fact that making grps was way easier than it would have been without crossfaction. In the end if the "balances" intervene too much most of the horde players would just quit and here we go, another server dead. Ppl have been picking sides almost 2 decades now, what makes u think that some stupid little changes would turn their hearth against horde? i dont think so haha

[DaedalusMachina007]

I do not feel this thread is really contributing well to the discussion anymore. Most who have commented have already said their piece (since the Discord server seems far too hostile). Those who have not commented here or Discord just want to play a game without fuss.

At this point even I have no idea whether people want a TBC-blizzlike style server or a TBC custom/funserver. The funservers don't last too long.

When in doubt, why not both? Have the custom server for those who want to do that and a blizzlike server for those who want that option.

Regarding Atlantiss/Netherwing stuff:

-There is no queue now because population is nowhere near the 10k+ peaks they used to have closer to launch. Even when they had queues (launch of Zul Aman patch 2.3 was a big queue day) for the Horde it was only about ~10 minutes maximum queue for me at peak times. Nothing insane.

-Having 2.4.3 client with 2.3 content patch is a bit weird, but Blizzard is doing a similar method with WoW Classic (arguably moreso) by emulating it within the Legion client (with all the modern benefits therein) with the client being a fixed 'patch' (1.13.x) while content is slowly rolled out over time in a progression manner. The Netherwing server chose to (significantly) buff certain content to counter the 2.4.3 skills/talents/etc and itemization changes. It isn't 100% blizzlike but it is close enough for people to not bicker over the details.

-The server mods/admins are heavily biased for/against certain classes/races/faction depending on who is doing the patches. Only one dev is actually making core fixes so if they go or something happens to them the server is effectively poofed at that point.

-Excalibur is closing because Blizz may announce a TBC at any point in time and the staff are sick of running a TBC server and might want to do something else now. Most are volunteers so I wouldn't blame em since they aren't getting anything other than 'the experience'.

I do not feel that cross-faction is in the spirit of WoW whatsoever. If people want to cooperate across factions then that is what Discord is for. If people want to play together then they can roll the same faction. The number of people advocating for cross-faction here perturbs me with the sheer narrative dissonance that would happen as a result of such a change.