When WoW first launched, population was heavily skewed to alliance over horde. At the time, horde was filled with "ugly" races with undeniably bad posture (orc, troll, forsaken, and tauren) so it was no surprise that many chose to be the "pretty" night elves or humans of the alliance.

What this meant for PvP was super-short queue times for horde and super-long queue times for alliance (since alliance had many more players filling their queues).

As a result, the average horde player played more PvP matches per hour than an alliance player, allowing them more opportunities to hone their skill. In addition, many alliance players who wanted to play PvP more switched sides simply to have a shorter queue.

This led to the era of horde PvP domination. Eventually cross-server matching solved this problem, but, for a good time, it was very noticeable.

I think SWTOR is in the middle of the same situation right now. When I started, republic was terrible at PvP. My team (solo queue) probably won ~25% of matches. My thought, at the time, that this was due to republic attracting a younger, more naive, playerbase while the empire attracted all the elite cool doodz (who, annoying as they are, are pretty damn good at competitive multiplayer). But I still played republic when I wanted to PvP since their queues are practically instant whereas my empire characters had to twiddle their thumbs for 5-10 minutes to get into a match.

But things seemed to have changed. Republic seems to be winning ~50-60% of matches I play now. There's more communication and more people playing combat healers and tanks. Have empire PvPers started coming Republic side for shorter queues? Are republic players getting better from having more practice?

Probably both, I guess.

It's pure practice. I bet Empire is pretty good at Huttball though.

Also those kids who don't like the 'ugly' races are the same demographic as kids just as likely to join the 'evil' side so they can shout nigger in general chat.

All the PvP statics I've heard are far too anecdotal to draw anything from.

That said, the fact that you can play most races on both factions, and even turn off sith corruption, really avoids the WoW "Ugly races" problem.

@Brodehouse said:

It's pure practice. I bet Empire is pretty good at Huttball though. Also those kids who don't like the 'ugly' races are the same demographic as kids just as likely to join the 'evil' side so they can shout nigger in general chat.

This, as an Empire player I can confirm players are just as immature over there.

Edit: Also, boom. 2000 posts.

With the exception of a couple amazing republic players (with full battlemaster gear), empire usually win.

At least whenever I am playing.

Huttball is so random at times, luckily, the friendly charge tactic has led to many victories.

@Nocall said:

At the time, horde was filled with "ugly" races with undeniably bad posture (orc, troll, forsaken, and tauren) so it was no surprise that many chose to be the "pretty" night elves or humans of the alliance.

What are your thoughts on the most important race in all of sci-fi or fantasy: the dwarves?

I quit for a week or two hoping they'd fix the warzone FPS bug (they haven't), and have gone from winning 95% of all Empire V Republic matches, to losing them all, embarrassingly.

Good lord it's bad.

@Galiant said:

@Nocall Show me some numbers from a reliable source. I don't believe anything you say is the norm, since you are one person talking about the state of two different MMO's. Who's to say someone didn't have the exact opposite experience from yours, or the exact same experience from the other faction?

Nothing is. And I don't have numbers "from a reliable source" because no one does (save bioware). But you already knew that, didn't you?

This is simply my own musing conjecture. I'm not requiring you to believe me, I'm simply stating the experiences I've had (and, in swtor's case, continue to have) in both games. More and more often I am seeing Republic wins. And, from comments I've seen in and out of game, I believe many are experiencing the same situation.

Lighten up. Troll less.

@bemusedchunk

I friggin' love dwarves. In every game that allows dwarves, that it is the first character I always role (DDO, Lotro, WoW, Dragon Age, Baulder's Gate, etc etc etc). I didn't mention them as "pretty" because they defy the boundaries of superficial beauty standards.

Is it just me, or does it seem like you (OP) are drawing conclusions from information that isn't there? I mean, WoW was a choice between (essentially) ugly avatars and attractive avatars, while in SWTOR it's a choice between the light and dark side in a fully fleshed-out universe that everyone is familiar with. Early WoW players chose a side based only on looks (presumably) while most SWTOR players know exactly what they're getting into fiction and character-wise.

@Nocall said:

This is simply my own musing conjecture.

@Nocall said:

When WoW first launched, population was heavily skewed to alliance over horde.

@Nocall said:

the average horde player played more PvP matches per hour than an alliance player

You're drawing an awful lot of "conclusions" from these "facts" that you then compare to the current state of the Old Republic. I'd still like to see some numbers. Your own experience, from the perspective of one person, says nothing about the state of any of these games on your server - even less across all servers - considering how many people play and how player matching works.

@Nocall said:

Lighten up. Troll less.

You call this trolling? I guess you've never seen a troll. Challenging your "facts" is not trolling.

This topic is a waste of time without facts. The grass is always greener...