The faction imbalance is a gigantic threat to World of Warcraft and its community. Let's have a chat about the best way to solve it: cross-faction grouping.

So, 8.3 is out, the Race to World First is underway (and quite exciting!), and we’re settling into the game that we’re going to have for many months before Shadowlands.Whatever you feel about Battle for Azeroth, bad or (less likely) good, it’s finally coming to a close. With the future of World of Warcraft on the horizon, I think now is a good time to really have a conversation with each other and Blizzard about the biggest challenge and danger that World of Warcraft, the game that we, the fans, players, and obsessives love so much, faces today: the faction imbalance. Whether you play as the Horde, united in honor against the forces that would seek their doom, or as the Alliance, the classically idealistic coalition of justice, you are probably aware of the utter inequality of the Horde and Alliance playerbases, and it has only grown to an extreme degree in the past 13 years since TBC’s release, when the differential in power was most prominent.Before we talk about the state of the community imbalance currently, let’s talk a little bit about why this even happened, for those who haven’t read or watched the numerous articles or videos about it.In Vanilla, the Horde and Alliance were each homes to unique classes: the Shaman was exclusive to the Horde and the Paladin to the Alliance, as most of us know. At this point (and still today in Classic), the advantages/disadvantages to each faction during WoW’s infancy was hotly debated; while Shamans had Windfury and all the strength that came with it, the Paladin brings a powerful arsenal of utility buffs, both extremely useful in all sorts of ways. In fact, if you look at the raid history of Vanilla WoW, most of the W1 kills were by Alliance guilds; no doubt Paladin utility was very strong when gear was sparse.But with the advent of The Burning Crusade, Blizzard gave each faction access to the Shaman and Paladin, along with the two new races, the Blood Elves of the Horde and the Draenei of the Alliance. Blood Elves would quickly become one of the most popular races for two reasons: they are extremely aesthetically pleasing compared to other Horde races and their unique racial active ability Arcane Torrent, an AoE interrupt and silence that also restored mana. Needless to say, this was incredibly powerful, and remained so for years.It’s generally accepted that this was the beginning of the top raiding scene’s shift to Horde; if you examine the raid history of TBC, you’ll note that considerably more Horde guilds claimed W1 kills, and this trend continues through Cataclysm. After Dragon Soul, there was not a single Alliance W1 kill until Highmaul, and that was 1 of only 4 total W1 kills in WoD, closely repeated in Legion. Finally, in BfA, not a single W1 kill was done by an Alliance guild.To Blizzard’s credit, they did try to introduce a new system to encourage guilds to switch back to Alliance for prestige, the Hall of Fame. However, as this post from BlizzardWatch details, it failed to have even the slightest impact on the Alliance to Horde discrepancy and total kill counts per faction; Alliance guilds took 6 weeks longer than the Horde to accumulate 100 Famed title recipients, 2 weeks longer than Antorus would have been. Looking at the history on WoWProgress.com tells the same story but visually; a couple blue names in a sea of red for several expansions now.Racials changed as well, but at this point, it was way too little, way too late; the impact of the community disparity has been compounding for years, and has little to do with overpowered racial abilities now.The post linked above touches on a few points I’d like to expand on: the impact of the mounting Horde to Alliance ratio and what we can do to fix it.The problem of the community disparity affects both factions negatively. Obviously, for Alliance guilds/players, finding a new raid team or raider gets progressively harder as more players move to the Horde for better prospects (not unlike businesses or workers in rural areas with prospects moving to urban areas, to use an analogy), while for Horde guilds, recruiting Alliance players becomes an expensive proposition, and one that likely generates a lot of cash income for Blizzard.As has been said before, this issue impacts far more than the mythic raiding scene; it filters down to Heroic, Normal, and PUG groups alike. An Alliance who might be looking to move up to a Heroic guild from a Normal-only guild is faced with the fact that there are MANY more Horde guilds in this category, and as players retire from Mythic teams, sometimes forming their own Heroic guilds and such, they’ll likely just stay Horde (remember, the overwhelming majority of mythic guilds are Horde). And so the problem continues to filter down, as more and more players migrate to Horde, and guilds themselves move to keep up.The other main aspect is more meta. An MMO is a social experience, and it’s one that a community of millions share, in the case of World of Warcraft. I personally have several friends who I’d love to play with who are Horde players, and I know this is a common sentiment. I do have a couple 120 alts on Horde I could play as, but maintaining them is a big timesink when I have several Alliance alts I need to maintain for raiding and mythic+. In the past, it may have been easier for much of the playerbase to devote that time and attention, but WoW’s playerbase is much more mature nowadays, and many who could no longer can, an issue compounded by the current “anti-alt” attitude of the game.So what then CAN Blizzard do to help the symptoms and root cause therein?It’s been said many times already, but I’ll say it again: we need access to cross-faction grouping, guilds, and play. I believe this is the ONLY way we fully tackle the issues of faction disparity and the strain it has caused on the community as a whole. I’m sure it won’t be an easy process but it is one that I feel is 110% vital to the long-term health of the game we love so much. There are very few legitimate reasons why we shouldn't consider this the solution, especially considering the numerous ways Blizzard has already tried that didn't help in the slightest.The time has come to acknowledge that cross-faction grouping IS the answer.There are a few tricky bits here; obviously open-world PvP is a core part of the game for many players.War mode totally changed the way this is approached by having it be opt-in everywhere rather than. However (and this might be pretty controversial but it’s just my opinion), I think both of these systems are largely failures. War mode introduced rewards to encourage players to play with PvP on. Later, a scaling mechanic was enabled that would give Alliance players even more rewards for playing with WM on, but that has not come below 25% since release. If 50% of each faction were to play with WM on, Horde STILL has many more players with it enabled at any given time, but, sadly, many Alliance players feel discouraged because of the perception that many more Horde players are out there to stomp them (whether or not sharding actually works like that is irrelevant, it’s player perception that’s limiting involvement in this instance).Let’s consider that battlegrounds and arenas are already cross-faction in some way or another; Horde players can opt into mercenary mode to play with the Alliance for much shorter queues. Arenas queue you into the fastest match of any faction. One way we can solve the open world PvP issue is to have a faction (maybe a new pair, or still “Horde” and “Alliance”) that you “enlist” with when engaging in WM, where the reward levels are stated so you can choose which one to play with dynamically, keeping the PvP balance even. I’m just spitballing with my own ideas, but yeah.The other big question is one of leveling, but the simplest solution here is likely the best: a Horde race character would level along the traditional path of leveling, and the same for Alliance, but maybe party-sync could allow both to level together and playing each other's zones and storylines, based on who is party lead.Anyways guys, I’ll give a brief TL;DR since I wrote way too much:The Horde-Alliance imbalance is incredibly unhealthy for the game, both mechanically and socially.It started with OP racials in TBC but has scaled way out of control in the past several years as more guilds and players switched to Horde.It makes recruiting and playing as Alliance far more difficultIt impacts the social atmosphere for people who WANT to play as Alliance quite negatively.The best approach to this is cross-faction grouping, allowing guilds to recruit and players to play with anyone they could want to recruit and play with.There are a few issues like open-world PvP and leveling stories, but I think with the existing platform of merc mode and party sync this is workable.Anyways guys, please let me know what you think, maybe I'm dead wrong, maybe not. I really want to know what you think and what we can do together to help make this dream a reality. Have a good day!Edit: I was thinking about this before going to bed last night and just remembered something. We are a community that turned Blizzard from "you think you do, but you don't" pertaining to WoW Classic to having one of the most successful MMO launches of all time. To everyone saying "it won't happen because Blizzard is dumb": you're missing the point. IF we are vocal enough, IF we come out in support of this like we did for Classic, we have a very real chance of making this happen. So get out there. Make your petitions, make your forum posts, and BE HEARD. Show blizzard that YOU CARE.DON'T GIVE IN TO YOUR OWN CYNICISM.