The Price of Better Faction Balance in Season of Discovery
Blizzard's decision to hide realm information and disallow name reservations until the launch of WoW Classic Season of Discovery has been a controversial one, but did it work? The developers believe so, reporting an average 3.7% delta between Alliance and Horde players, though it may have come at a cost.
Senior Game Producers Tom Ellis and Josh Greenfield have been very active on Twitter, providing commentary and answering questions about this unique approach to Season of Discovery. The decision to hide server names and information was previously discussed in detail, outlining the issues with allowing players to «overplan» to the point of unofficially designated «good» and «bad» servers.
Interestingly, this obfuscation seemed almost needless, as only launching with a handful of servers heavily restricted that possibility anyway.
Featuring only one normal realm and one RP-PvP realm (at first), as opposed to the dozens of servers at the launch of Classic WoW, meant you simply might not have as many alternative choices for your chosen community ruleset. Likewise, those in a position to be at home on a Thursday afternoon during Season of Discovery's launch time, such as the many streamers and hardcore players coordinating their designated servers, would be able to quickly plan and adapt to the emerging information regardless of Blizzard's intent.
Truly the most inconvenienced players would be those who couldn't log in until later that evening — by that time facing enormous queues and server congestion, alongside general confusion upon finding themselves cut off from friends who had managed to make characters earlier in the day, as realms would by then restrict creating new characters of overpopulated factions or be locked
