At BlizzConline, WoW's developers fielded some more and some less tricky questions from the community during the Q&A panel. One question, or rather answer, from Game Director Ion Hazzikostas particularly sparked activity in our editorial chat: "What does Blizzard want to do about the faction imbalance?"

"This is something we talk about a tremendous amount. We know there's a very real problem, particularly at the high end of the raiding and Mythic+ scene. [...] We don't have anything super short term that we can do about this, but it is a top priority for us."

The answer to the question is simply: there is no solution. At least players can rest assured that the developers are concerned about the faction imbalance. Hazzikostas revealed that the Horde/Alliance ratio is actually very balanced, but the faction imbalance is still a social problem

. Too many players are forced to side with the Horde because that's where their friends are raiding. This is not helped by the Alliance's now slightly stronger race abilities, which are always cited as a reason for the faction imbalance.Recommended EditorialContentThisiswhere you will find external content from [PLATTFORM]. To protect your personal data, external content will only be displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content":Load all external contentIagree to external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. More about this in our privacy policy. External Content Read more in ourprivacy policy.

After a follow-up question from moderator Scott Johnson about realm extinction and server linkages, Hazzikostas had to comment again on the faction imbalance.

When asked if the

Horde and Alliance could ever raid and visit Mythic-Plus dungeons together, the answer

was,

"I honestly would say 'never say never.'"

In his lengthy, Hazzikostas-like response, the game director made it clear that faction conflict is a fundamental part of WoW (buy now €14.99)

, but gameplay is paramount.

If a player absolutely wants to identify with the Alliance, but still wants to play with their friends on the Horde side, you might have to find a way for both factions to be able to raid and dungeon at some point for that to happen.

Already since the introduction of Arena, Horde vs Horde and Alliance vs Alliance fight and can switch sides for battlegrounds. If these adjustments didn't exist for PvP, the queues for Horde players would be unbearably long. That's why they made these adjustments, which we might expect to see in PvE at some point.

Even though the game director says the ratio of Horde to Alliance is close to 50:50, the discrepancy in high-end PvE is still huge. A look at the wowprogress.com website or Mythic Castle Nathria's Hall of Fame progress shows that Alliance guilds are lagging significantly - and not just since WoW Shadowlands.

While the Horde has had the Hall of Fame full for three weeks now, Alliance guilds are still in the process of filling the Hall of Fame after several nerfs, where over 50 of the total 100 slots are still empty as of this typing. Only when both factions have filled the Hall of Fame will the developers enable the ability to raid Castle Nathria across servers in mythic mode. At the latest, if the faction imbalance leads to the Alliance Hall of Fame not filling up in time for the next content update, the developers will have to act and either change the Hall of Fame or something about the factions.

What do you guys think, how can the faction imbalance still be saved? Is cross faction raiding the only solution? Write us in the comments.

Support buffed - it only takes a minute. Thank you!

All readers get free daily news, articles, guides, videos, and podcasts on World of Warcraft, Pokémon Go, and other favorite games from us. Up until now, we've funded this site through advertising and kept it as free of paid articles as possible, but since COVID-19, that's become increasingly difficult. Many companies are cutting or eliminating their advertising budgets for 2020. Budgets that we unfortunately have to rely on if we want to continue offering buffed for free in the future in the form we are used to.

For this reason, we are now turning to you. You can support us as buffed supporters so that we can continue to offer our content for free in the usual form without introducing a paywall or publishing misleading news. Every contribution, big or small, is valuable. Support buffed - it only takes a minute.

Support now

We thank you in advance

. Read also these interesting stories 0

WoW: Deep Wind Shot - PvP Brawl Starting August 18

WoW PvP Brawl: Starting August 18, we'll be heading into a special variant of the Deepwind Gulch battleground. Here is the news! 0

WoW TBC Classic: SSC and/or TK? Warcraftlogs Poll on Phase 2 Raids

On Warcraftlogs, you can currently have your say on exactly how the World First race will be rated in TBC Classic Phase 2. 3

WoW: No content drought after all? Hints for Patch 9.1.5 discovered

Is WoW facing a content drought in the coming months? Find from some dataminers raises hopes for patch 9.1.5. 01:48WoW
: Burning Crusade Classic: The Official Goosebumps Trailer World of Warcraft from€14.99 From Sebastian Glanzer
Editor
Absolute Blizzard Fanboy. Haters gonna hate Anything missing from the article? to the home page The links marked with * are affiliate links. Affiliate links are not ads, as we are independent in our research and selection of featured products. For product sales we receive a small commission, with which we partially finance the free content of the website. 18