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PvP realms: it's getting harder to roll on the bigger faction

The Alliance crest: a painting from the WoW Forever client's credits

· ForeverDB

Blizzard has changed character creation on WoW Forever's PvP rulesets so it gets harder to make a character on whichever faction is ahead, aiming for a 50/50 split. Right now that's Horde on North American PvP realms and Alliance on EU Roleplay-PvP. Kaivax later clarified that the 55/45 figure counts active logged-in players across all levels, and that trial characters had no effect.

What's changing

On November 10 Kaivax posted PvP Faction Balance Updates on the forums. Character creation now looks at the overall faction balance in each region's PvP rulesets, instead of the balance at a single moment. When one faction is ahead, it becomes harder to create a character on that side. Blizzard's aim is to get each region as close to a 50/50 split as possible.

The gap isn't huge yet. Blizzard says the worst case in any region is about 55/45, and they want it tighter than that.

While even the most extreme case in a region is currently at roughly a 55/45 split, that is not as close as we want it to be. Kaivax, Community Manager

What the 55/45 count includes

Update, November 10. Players in the thread wondered whether free trial characters were padding the numbers, since anyone can roll a low-level trial character and skew a snapshot. Later the same day Kaivax replied further down the thread to clear it up. They looked into it, found trial characters made no difference, and said the 55/45 figure is the active logged-in population across every level over a set period, not a one-off headcount.

We did significant investigation into that, and there is no evidence that trial characters had any impact at all. When we say 55/45, we’re looking at the active logged-in population across all levels over a specific period of time. Kaivax, Community Manager

Which faction is affected right now

At the moment the bigger faction is Horde on North American PvP realms and Alliance on EU Roleplay-PvP realms. Those are the sides it's now harder to roll. Blizzard says this can flip to the other faction as players settle and numbers shift.

In the short term, that means that it will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region – currently Horde on North American PvP rulesets or Alliance in EU Roleplay-PvP. Kaivax, Community Manager

So if you've been planning a character on the ahead faction on one of those realms, you may be blocked from making it for now. Blizzard admits that's frustrating, and says it's a trade-off for the long-term health of the ruleset, especially early on while guilds and rivalries are still forming.

World of Warcraft: Forever’s PvP is at its best when the Alliance and Horde are on equal footing, and we are dedicated to helping maintain that balance so that we can all witness battles at the epic scale that has made WoW Forever PvP so memorable thus far. Kaivax, Community Manager

This applies to PvP and Roleplay-PvP rulesets. Blizzard's post doesn't mention Normal or Roleplay realms. Which factions you can create is decided on Blizzard's servers, so it isn't something the game files show.

Wowhead also reported the change.

Sources

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