THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · DISPATCH · RESEARCH CHECKED NOVEMBER 10, 2026
Short answer: Blizzard broke its silence on PvP faction balance late on November 9 Pacific time (02:05 UTC on November 10). Community manager Kaivax said the most lopsided PvP ruleset in any region sits at "roughly a 55/45 split", that the character creation lock now reads the overall balance of each ruleset, and that making a character on the bigger faction will get harder. That currently means Horde on North American PvP and Alliance on EU RP-PvP. In follow-up replies he said Blizzard found no evidence that trial accounts skewed the count, and that crowded zones now hold fewer players, with a larger cut on PvP. The US thread passed 300 replies in five hours, and most of them say 55/45 doesn't match what Alliance players see in Ashenvale.
What Blizzard changed
The post is called "PvP Faction Balance Updates - November 10" and went up on the US and EU forums a minute apart. Three things in it are new.
First, a number. Blizzard had never published a faction split for Forever. Kaivax wrote that "even the most extreme case in a region is currently at roughly a 55/45 split," and added that this "is not as close as we want it to be."
Second, the lock works differently. Blizzard has "adjusted the character creation system to better recognize the overall state of faction balance in each region's PvP rulesets, rather than what may feel like snapshots of points in time." Since launch the lock had been opening and closing at odd hours, which we tracked in our week one faction imbalance report. The new version is meant to judge the ruleset as a whole, and the stated goal is "as close to a 50/50 faction balance as possible."
Third, a warning for anyone still planning to roll the popular side. Blizzard says it "will become increasingly difficult to create characters on the more populous faction in each region." It names Horde on North American PvP rulesets and Alliance on EU Roleplay-PvP as the current cases, says these "may flip to the other side" as people settle, and calls the frustration of being locked out "a necessary trade-off for the long-term health of the ruleset."
The post doesn't mention EU PvP by name. EU players noticed straight away, since Horde creation has been locked there too and the main EU complaint thread has more than 220 replies.
The trial account answer
The loudest accusation of the weekend was that Horde groups were using Invite-a-Friend trial accounts to park Alliance characters and trick the lock into opening. The second reply in the new thread repeated it and guessed the real split was closer to 60/40.
Kaivax answered about an hour in:
"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."
That settles the part Blizzard can measure. Whether or not anyone tried the trick, Blizzard says it did not move the balance check, and the 55/45 figure counts players who are logged in, so abandoned level 1 characters wouldn't pad it. We had flagged the claim as unconfirmed on Monday and have updated that article.
Crowded zones were thinned out the same day
Kaivax's other reply tied the faction post to a hotfix that had gone live earlier in the day: "Lowered the population of players in various zones where there was significant congestion." The developers' note says Blizzard "made this an even bigger change on the PvP ruleset, following feedback from players that they felt overcrowded in several places."
This is the first official response to the overcrowded layers that took over the forums at the weekend. It matters for PvP because fewer players per layer means smaller gank squads, though Blizzard did not say it balances factions within a layer. One EU Alliance player wrote that Shimmering Flats felt close to even after the change, having been badly outnumbered there the day before. That is one report, and nothing from Blizzard backs up the idea that layers are now faction balanced.
The same hotfix batch nerfed the Drowned City and fixed a long list of class bugs. Our November 9 hotfix rundown covers the rest.
Why players don't believe 55/45
The replies are mostly from Alliance players on PvP, and they are angry. The second post, with 94 likes, says "every single contested leveling zone is just getting 10v1'd by Horde." Another calls the figure "factually a straight up lie" and puts contested zones at 20 to 1.
Both things can be true at once, and the reasons are worth spelling out.
| Source | What it counts | US PvP | EU PvP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blizzard | Active logged-in players, all levels, over a period of time | 55/45 at worst in any region | Not broken out |
| aotc.gg | Characters level 10 and up found in armory data | 57.9% Horde of about 477,000 | 56.3% Horde of about 575,000 |
We checked aotc.gg at about 07:45 UTC on November 10. Its count is a little more Horde-heavy than Blizzard's, but it measures characters, which is a different thing from players online, and the site says its numbers "are not the live in-game population." The two are within a few points of each other.
Neither number describes a zone. A ruleset can be 55/45 overall while the level 25 to 35 bracket in Ashenvale or Stonetalon is far worse, because the split in one level bracket or on one layer can differ a lot from the ruleset average, and outnumbered players tend to log off or head into dungeons, which makes the next hour worse again. Several replies ask Blizzard to publish the split for level 30 and up for that reason.
What players are asking for
The most repeated request is faction balance per layer. "Create faction balance at the LAYER level!" one reply reads, arguing that the megaserver tech should be able to put equal numbers of each faction in a copy of a zone and send the overflow elsewhere. Others want free transfers off PvP for Alliance, free faction changes to Alliance for Horde players (one level 38 Horde player on the EU forums said their group would take it), queues for the bigger faction, or the lock to count only characters above level 10.
Horde players locked out of the ruleset are no happier. A handful said they have cancelled because they pay a subscription and cannot make the character they want with their friends.
Blizzard hasn't responded to any of these ideas. The post commits only to the tighter lock and to watching how zones feel.
What to do now
If you want Horde on NA PvP, expect the lock to be shut more often than it was last week, including at off-peak hours. Your options are Alliance on PvP, where creation is always open, or Horde on PvE. Our realms and rulesets explainer covers how the rulesets differ, and the best race guide can help if you end up on a faction you hadn't planned for.
If you are Alliance on PvP and stuck in the 20s and 30s, try a session now that the zone caps are lower before you reroll. Group up for contested zones, and use dungeons between quest hubs. Kill XP in dungeons went up 50% on November 8, which helps.
Sources: Kaivax, PvP Faction Balance Updates - November 10 (US forums, November 10, 2026, 02:05 UTC; replies #158 at 03:04 UTC and #174 at 03:11 UTC; 303 replies when checked at 07:30 UTC) and the EU copy, PvP Faction Balance Updates - 11 November (November 10, 2026, including the player replies quoted); Kaivax, WoW: Forever Hotfixes - November 9, 2026 (updated November 10, 2026, 04:23 UTC); EU player thread, Concerns About PvP Faction Balance on "EU PVP" Rule Set (225 replies when checked November 10, 2026); aotc.gg, US PvP population and EU PvP population (checked November 10, 2026, 07:45 UTC); Icy Veins, PvP Faction Balance Changes Coming, Including Restrictions (November 10, 2026); MMO-Champion, WoW: Forever PvP Faction Balance Updates - November 10 (November 10, 2026).