Day 73
September 2, 2009 Blizzard announced Faction changes would be allowed for a nice round sum of money. Only about half of $100. And so the wheels began to turn.
Faction changes continue to ravage my poor server Andorhal. Eleventh Hour made the jump and headed over to the horde side to find the greener pastures. More people to recruit from. Richer pvp benefits. Wintergrasp is now called Hordeygrasp. Well not really. Alliance still wins at 5 am. Maybe they win at 8 pm.
Screenshot above was taken at 5am. By the end of the game we had 12 people and 9 stacks of tenacity. Most games the Alliance almost has 30-40 people. However, 8-9 stacks of tenacity during the first 20 min of the game is normal. Which makes the assumption of 70-75 horde players, maybe more. This is my speculation from only my experiences in games the last two weeks. But regardless, this was one of the last of the BC guilds of the Alliance to have seen all content. I wish them well but I morn for yet another guild gone.
Now IOD (Instruments of Destruction) will be transferring. Supposedly about 15 have agreed in their guild to go so far. All day their officers could be seen putting things up on the AH. After all, you cannot take a guild’s inventory from the bank with you.
I mourn their passing as they were one of the strongest guilds currently working on progression for the alliance side of the server. I wonder where their other members will go who don’t transfer. Will they somehow find another guild? Unknown is suffering from raiders leaving. Maybe they’ll go there. Or maybe they’ll try their hand with us as we rebuild.
Another sign of the decline of the alliance was about 20ish horde taking over Stormwind for about 2 hours this evening. For an hour they stayed comfortably holed up in the trade district. Then they killed the King and returned only to swing over to IF and kill the king and camp a bit there as well. All the while mocking from level ones. But the alliance was never able to gather more that 15 to the area.
Unless it is around 7pm server time, the alliance has been basically dead. I’ve done my best to learn what guilds are out there, and there are some guilds working in Ulduar now! There is hope that these courageous guilds and people of the alliance will meet ICC head on and become names for our side of the faction! As for FB... Like I told an inquirer tonight: "FB was started on Andorhal and on Andorhal it will die."
As a side note, has this hurt the horde at all? Actually yes. If anything, the queues for BGs are longer. Thus less honor per hour for the horde. So perhaps in this case, the grass was truely only appearing greener..... but hey, they still have wintergrasp.
So what is my beef right now? Why am I writing this?
Well in part I’m whining about the whiners. I’m sick of hearing from the complainers of how bad we are. I’m tired of their putting down of their own faction. Granted when we’re roflstomped in Wintergrasp, I facepalm and look to the heavens and cry out to the devgods to make alliance good somehow. But even before the constant losses, alliance still struggled with not going straight up the center, not taking down turrets, not defending towers and just plain not playing the event properly.
After tonight’s take over of SW I was privileged in my raid free Friday to listen to trade as they raged for an hour about the state of the alliance. The best suggestion: leave the server. The best argument: I’m not paying for that. The best counter: then you aren’t that unhappy yet. And the circle continues.
I agree the best solution is to get out if you’re so unhappy. Though I wish less would leave. The trickle in the dam has sprung into a flood and while my guild still has maintained a majority of its raiders, the rest of the alliance on the server has not been so lucky.
Is it a mindset that is required? Is it just key people who keep the masses in? Who was it in each group to spawn the thought that they should move to horde or find another server? Why did all those people follow? Who was the first friend to lead the others away? Is it true that the friendship and camaraderie can be so tight as to get people to put down so much money for such endeavors as faction transfers?
Looking at Valiant, Eleventh Hour, IOD, Real Men of Genius, and Ninja Pirates from Space (who in fact have done it once before but came back!) it seems that it might very well be this way.
Cross-Realm Looking For Group
With the huge imbalances to servers, the smaller faction is likely seeing trouble in getting groups together for pugs. My guild members have complained about this actually. “I can’t believe I’m having trouble getting dps…”It is my belief the cross realm LFG was created to try to solve some of the issue of people being unable to get groups. Not just because of gear or experience, but because there simply isn’t anyone there.
I recently copied my character to the test realms for the CS-LFG and I can see how it will work well. It throws you in, looks for those about your gear level, registers what you are claiming to be, and tosses you into a group. A couple times I experienced people leaving quickly but it was very simple to queue back up and get replacements. No bothersome shouting in trade, just a reflagging and bam, there is a new person.
Granted you run that risk that the person is a total idiot. But I think when you escape pre-made characters that are in the same gear as you who don’t know how to play – the system will work fine. Also, the loot is interesting as well with the DE option given. I never tested it but it seems a good way to avoid ninjas. Especially since ML cannot be activated (supposedly. I’ve not tested it).
The group buff was very very nice as well though in one group the tank wasn’t very good and the shadow priest would grab hate and be pwned pretty fast. Often before I could get a HoP off or before its CD was up.
To keep people from jumping group to group to quickly, a deserter like buff is placed on people and they cannot re-queue for 15 min. Also a likely good feature to keep people from abusing the system too much. Overall I see this system is fairly positive and interesting and will make my life easier with my alts. No awkward /2 shoutings and computer assisted groupings.
Will this keep some Alliance on Andorhal? Maybe. If people aren’t getting groups and getting stuff done, they’ll leave. But if the option is there and they can still do stuff, they’re more likely to stick around. Note though, this only works with the heroics. No raids. You’re still going to have to deal with gear checking idiots and armory pages if you’re pugging. And this could just be a hopeless cause as well. They can still use this on any new realm they go to. And if they think Horde has all the toys and that all the pugs will have toys, this may only continue to push them to the opposite side here on Andorhal.
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