Hello everyone,

As you can see from the title, my suggestion would be to make mercenary mode active for both factions. Right now, there is absolutely no logical reason mercenary mode is only usable on alliance. When you actually think about it, it's very odd only the other faction can use this system.

The original argument of making mercenary mode was to shorten the BG queues for alliance players, which has been achieved to some extend. In my experience horde still has a tiny bit shorter queues but the situation is not even nearly as bad as it used to be; easily 15 minute queues for alliance. By activating mercenary mode for horde players aswell, the queue times for both factions would get even shorter, because solo and small pm horde players would fill in all the open spots holding back a BG from starting.

Alliance PVP guilds fight against each other with the help of mercenary mode. They often make a 30/20 man group, divide it and fight each other inside BGs by using the system. They often make mixed groups aswell, getting people from all other guilds to join in the fun. Denying such an opportunity from horde is not acceptable. You could argue horde can do it in Dire Maul or some other place but it's not even nearly the same thing. You can't really ress, takes forever to get everyone ready for each fight after deaths and a constant worry of multiboxers or alliance raids crashing such events is a reality. There's no other choice for horde but to organize fights like that against alliance guilds and players, who don't even need horde to play BGs since they can just do mixed fights among themselves. If alliance PVP guilds wanted, they could never organize a single fight against horde ever again and just play with each other with mercenary, and horde would be left with no "end game" BG content at all. And horde already barely gets any. Situation will get worse when time goes forward. This will eventually affect the balance between factions and WPvP, more of that later.

There is a rather new Warmane PVP discord server and there has been a discussion of a PVP tournament, possibly even with the help of GMs. Maybe some of you GMs have heard of it, not sure. However, even if there was no GMs included in hosting such a tournament, the only way for every horde guild to be part of it too is with mercenary mode. Quite impossible without it, horde can't fight each other inside BGs and Dire Maul will not be a good solution for the entire tournament, for aforesaid obvious reasons. Horde guilds and players could use the system for their own creative ways to make events and such, much like alliance is doing now, to revive the PVP community on horde a bit.

There is also a rather big disbalance in WPvP between the factions. There are far more lone wolves roaming the zones on the alliance side and since most of the PVP players are alliance, the faction can form a defensive group against big horde raids much faster. Also in my experience, alliance city raids are far more common and horde barely has the people to make a group against them, eventually making the alliance leave by mere boredom rather than getting wiped. By allowing mercenary mode for horde players, there might be a small amount of PVP players willing to switch to the horde side, as I know a few players that are on alliance just because of mercenary mode, even some guilds are alliance partly due to mercenary mode. This could make the WPvP scene a bit more balanced. This is of course my opinion only, as I enjoy WPvP alot and the current situation doesn't really encourage it, since there is absolutely 0 upsides of being a horde PVPer but 1 upside of being an alliance PVPer. Talking about mercenary mode obviously. I also know that many people couldn't care less about WPvP so this argument doesn't appeal those people.

The only question that I really have is; why? Why is it that only the other faction has this mechanic but the other does not? Because I see no reasoning behind this anymore after the BG queues have been somewhat fixed. Even Blackrock used to have this system in place, where both factions could play on either side of the BG. I see zero negative features arising by implementing this system. Right now the other faction seems a bit more privileged purely because of why the system was implemented in the first place. I know nothing of programming or anything related to that but I don't think it would be too big of a job since the system is already in place and has been for both factions in the past on Blackrock.

I hope I will cause some discussion around this topic.