The WoW Forever faction imbalance is real, and it leans Horde: one fan tracker had the US PvP ruleset at 58.6% Horde on November 8. I play on Normal, not PvP, and with two characters at level 15 I can safely say Alliance feels emptier than Horde there too.
Key takeaways
- Fan trackers put US PvP at 52% to 59% Horde, but they disagree with each other, and Blizzard hasn’t published any numbers.
- Blizzard’s only tool so far is a temporary lock on new characters for the dominant faction on PvP.
- On Normal, Alliance has felt emptier than Horde to me all the way through, but none of the trackers give Normal figures.
How bad is the WoW Forever faction imbalance?
It depends which tracker you look at. On November 8, aotc.gg had US PvP at 58.6% Horde to 41.4% Alliance, across about 406,000 characters. Three fan trackers measured the same ruleset on the same day, and the other two had it at 54.2% and 52% Horde.
EU PvP is messier still. Aotc.gg had it at 56% Horde, while WoWCensus had it at 62% Alliance, so the trackers don’t even agree on which side is bigger there. They count characters, not accounts.
Blizzard hasn’t published population figures. What it has given is the target. On Episode 6 of the official WoW: Forever podcast, the developers said “each individual rule set, it’s aiming to be 50/50.” A second speaker said that if it tips too far, “the majority faction will just be locked basically all the time.”
Why do PvP players say it will kill the PvP ruleset?
Because an uneven fight stops being much of a fight. An Alliance player on Blizzard’s EU forums wrote on November 9 about “constantly getting outnumbered, graveyard camped, ganked at flight paths, or struggling to even enter a dungeon.” Another player in the same thread worked out that one percentage point there is about 5,300 players, with a gap of around eight points.
I don’t play PvP, so it doesn’t really affect me. But I think they need to have some sort of balance there. Otherwise everyone is only going to be on the Horde side doing PvP, and they’re going to have no one to PvP against, because it’s going to be a woefully uneven fight.
There’s no quick way for players to even it out themselves, either. On the PvP ruleset you can only have characters of one faction, so a Horde player can’t roll an Alliance alt there to help. Your friends need the same ruleset and the same faction to quest, run dungeons or raid with you.
Does the faction imbalance show on Normal?
For me, yes. I’ve got two characters at level 15, and Alliance has felt emptier than Horde in general, all the way through so far. None of the trackers above give figures for Normal, so there’s nothing to check that against yet.
I’ve also seen players with green names around me on Normal. I thought PvP players would be in a completely different world, and I didn’t think I’d even see them. They are in a different world: Blizzard’s ruleset article says each ruleset “remains its own distinct space,” and only battlegrounds mix in players from other rulesets.
A green name is a player on your own faction who’s flagged for PvP. On Normal you only fight other players if you choose to, so the green names are Normal players who’ve turned PvP on, not people from the PvP ruleset.
What can Blizzard do about the faction imbalance?
Its current tool is the lock. If one faction is significantly more dominant on a ruleset, character creation is temporarily restricted for that faction, and Customer Support can’t lift it. That’s the “this faction is currently unavailable” message, which hit Horde on PvP on launch night. Blizzard said before launch that PvP would get systems like the ones in Season of Discovery, where new characters could be temporarily limited for a faction.
How they step in beyond that, I don’t know, because you shouldn’t just be able to block someone for picking the race they want to be. A lock only stops new characters, too. It doesn’t move anyone who’s already levelling.
And I think this comes back to the problem of not having the servers, or realms, whatever they were called before. Those had an easier way to balance than balancing the entire WoW Forever for your region. Forever replaced them with rulesets: you pick Normal, PvP, Roleplay or Roleplay-PvP, and everyone on that ruleset in your region shares it. One player in the EU thread suggested faction queue times at login, but Blizzard hasn’t said it’s looking at any fix beyond the lock.
If you haven’t picked yet, I’ve already made the case for playing on Normal in WoW Forever. You can still have both factions on one account there.
FAQ
Is WoW Forever Horde or Alliance heavy?
Horde, going by most fan trackers on US PvP, at between 52% and 59%. EU PvP is disputed, and Blizzard hasn’t published official numbers.
Can you play both factions in WoW Forever?
Yes, on Normal and Roleplay. On the PvP ruleset an account can only have characters of one faction.
Does the faction lock apply on Normal?
Blizzard has only described it for the PvP rulesets, and the launch-night reports were Horde on PvP and Roleplay-PvP.
