While making Battlegrounds faction agnostic will fix queue times for the Horde, it doesn't address why so few players are choosing to play Alliance. This Reddit thread in particular sums up the problems with Blizzard's solution. A lot of players are worried this will further decimate the already small Alliance population on PvP servers. Of the top 25 posts on the WoW Classic subreddit last week, 13 are threads complaining about faction imbalances. Though the test is now over and Blizzard hasn't said whether or not the feature will be added permanently for all servers, a lot of players aren't happy with the idea of Mercenary Mode coming to Classic because it does nothing to fix the underlying issue. This weekend, Blizzard tested a similar system for Burning Crusade Classic wherein Horde players could queue up in Battlegrounds and, if no matches were found, would then be placed into match against another Horde group-only this time they'd be wearing cardboard masks with Alliance races painted on them instead of being magically transformed into another race. When Mercenary Mode was activated, your avatar would be swapped out for one belonging to the opposing faction, so your opponents never even knew they were really fighting players from their own side.Īs more Alliance players are inevitably drawn to the Horde (or more balanced servers), it'll create an even worse experience for the ones who remain. But that faction imbalance steadily grew in severity until 2015 when Blizzard rolled out Mercenary Mode, a new feature that let players temporarily swap sides in Battlegrounds matches. When this happened back during Burning Crusade's official launch, the issue probably wasn't nearly as pronounced since min-maxing and theorycrafting weren't nearly as prevalent in the gaming community as they are today. Faced with such unfair odds, a lot of those players will either quit or reroll on a PvP server that favors the Alliance or switch to Classic's PvE servers where open-world PvP is opt-in. Alliance players trying to level up to 70 on Horde-dominated PvP servers are repeatedly being ganked by the overwhelming number of bored Horde players. So while waiting in a queue, Horde players often go prowling through different zones in Outland looking for Alliance players to gank.Īs players have noted, this creates a vicious cycle in which no one wins. But Battlegrounds aren't the only way to earn the Honor Points necessary to unlock the cool new PvP armor. Because most players are enlisting with the Horde, there's simply not enough Alliance PvP groups to fight against, with some servers allegedly suffering hours-long waits to find a match. Since Burning Crusade Classic's launch, the subreddit has been dominated by complaints of long queue times for PvP. (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment) Cycle of war You'd think winning the faction war would be the ultimate victory, but it's actually a nightmare for both sides. Though a few do have a majority of Alliance players, most PvP servers skew toward the Horde with some, like Kirtonos and Skeram, supposedly being 100% Horde.
![wow auto queue wow auto queue](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uau10fOhWlw/maxresdefault.jpg)
Looking at individual servers, though, that ratio can get really gruesome.
![wow auto queue wow auto queue](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UEi03W3ADW4/maxresdefault.jpg)
With Burning Crusade Classic's launch, Horde populations spiked to an average of 61 percent of all players across NA PvP servers, according to estimates by IronForge.Pro. It's not surprising that history would repeat itself. Naturally, competitive players would want every advantage they could get and, largely due to racial abilities, Horde became the de facto choice for PvP in World of Warcraft. Very suddenly, WoW's PvP shifted from massive outdoor wars to intense, intimate duels. One of the biggest features of this expansion is PvP Arenas, where teams of two or three players duke it out in small-scale brawls where minor differences in skill and abilities can make a huge difference. But Burning Crusade's flavor of PvP is very different.