The raid “Mausoleum of the First” from WoW: Shadowlands was defeated on Mythic difficulty already at the end of March after a long struggle. More than 100 guilds have completed the raid successfully since then. However, this only applies to the Horde – the Alliance is falling behind and this blocks an important change.
What is the problem? Mythic raids are the hardest PvE content in the endgame of World of Warcraft and the race for “World First” is followed by many players with excitement.
However, the raid parties are almost purely Horde events. The Alliance faction is hardly keeping up. This is particularly evident in the latest raid “Mausoleum of the First”, with the Jailer as the final boss.
Because the 100 fastest progression guilds of each faction end up in the Hall of Fame – a total of 200 guilds. At the time of this article, 109 guilds were noted: 100 for the Horde, 9 for the Alliance.
A clear imbalance, then, and a significant problem of faction balance. And this affects the normal course of a WoW expansion.
Progress raids are more or less the opposite of casual raids. It’s not (just) about playing comfortably with friends in the evening, but rather making an effort to complete the hardest content as quickly as possible. There is a certain competitive thought behind it.
Why does this block content? Only when all 200 spots in the Hall of Fame are filled, does the raid on Mythic difficulty open for cross-server raids. Currently, only players on the same server can raid mythic together.
This greatly expands the player pool for the hard raids. Many players thereby first receive the chance to complete the raid with strong players or to be part of a progress raid group.
Why is there this imbalance of factions? The short answer: Habit. By now it makes little difference in terms of strength in PvE whether you belong to the Horde or Alliance.
However, this was different in the past. To get the most out of your character, you almost had to play Horde. Since the progression players are always the pioneers, many followed along and stayed.
The reason for this is the various bonuses and abilities of the races. These were simply stronger for PvE in the Horde. The Alliance was traditionally better in PvP, at least for some time. It took many years of balancing before both factions were roughly equally strong.
Particularly the active bonuses of trolls and orcs were responsible for that. They provided a small “battle frenzy” every few minutes. In the Alliance, humans had the upper hand in PvP because they could free themselves from almost every control ability (via WoW Forum).
By the way: Back in Classic, the Alliance was still the preferred raid faction. Special abilities of dwarf priests and the blessings of the then Alliance-exclusive paladins ensured that.
After that, the Horde players took over, and the progress community has had a “historical” focus on the Horde ever since, which now causes the Alliance to fall far behind when it comes to raiding. It remains to be seen whether the problem will be solved, when cross-faction play works.
In the last raids “Sanctum of Domination” and “Castle Nathria”, the Alliance needed nearly a month longer to fill all 100 spots.
Feel free to leave your opinion on this topic. Should the developers address this in any way, or do you think the problem is hardly worth mentioning? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
If you would like to read more about the World First race, check here: WoW: Jailer down! Echo gets the World First Kill for Europe
