WoW dev addresses faction balancing in Season of Discovery amid claims its “going to crap”

Heading into the release of World of Warcraft: Season of Discovery, the developers behind the game confirmed they would actively balance factions on PvP servers. Now, one of those developers has detailed their successes on some realms.

For those who weren’t around for the launch of the original Classic in 2019, it could charitably be referred to as chaos. Many rushed for their favorite server name or one made famous by streamers, and incredibly long queues followed in short order.

As things settled down, players began moving to servers where their faction was doing well. This eventually caused huge imbalances between the factions on some realms, with the ratio as egregious as 99-1 in some cases.

Blizzard’s promise to directly address this heading into Season of Discovery seems to have come to fruition, as one of the team behind the game shared details of their successes on social media.

Faction balancing in the EU and US is working across the board

In a post on Twitter, Senior Game Producer for World of Warcraft, Tom Ellis, shared some select information on server balancing on three US servers.

Seen some chatter about faction balance going to crap, alas no, your faction likely just sucks at PvP. Harsh I know.

Lone Wolf US – 3.32% – Horde
Living Flame US – 1.29% Alliance
Crusader Strike US – 0.15% Horde

% is max delta, Horde are catching up on most realms! This wasn't…

— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) December 11, 2023

Ellis chose to share information on three realms in the US: Lone Wolf, Living Flame and Crusader Stike. The latter is within 0.15% of being perfectly balanced (as all things should be), while the others are sitting at around 3.32% and 1.29% respectively.

There’s no doubt this is an impressive achievement and, if this is replicated across the board as claimed, it should put Season of Discovery in a uniquely healthy position heading into the later phases.

Many wanted to chime in with their own experiences in the game so far. One said: “I am mostly playing on Living Flame and Alliance. I can confirm that this tweet is 100% accurate lmao.”

Others took the opportunity to have a dig at their rivals in the opposite faction, with one saying: “So Chaos Bolt should be around the 3% margin? Ally was steamrolling for a while, so there was an assumption of faction imbalance, but it’s nice to know Horde just sucks. As is good and proper!”

Though layering issues remain, the community has received the Season of Discovery experience with colossal warmth. Whether Blizzard will be able to keep the balanced momentum of the game into later phases remains to be seen, but the early signs look solid.