#1 - June 26, 2015, 12:46 p.m.
First, we've reduced the maximum number of players per side to 40. We've also increased the number of available Ashran instances, to compensate for having fewer spaces in each Ashran. Since Ashran was changed in Patch 6.2 to automatically place players in a raid group upon entering, we feel that having 40 players on each side makes more sense, instead of splitting players into two separate raid groups. This hotfix went live on Wednesday.
The second hotfix is intended to limit situations where one faction is unable to win events for extended periods of time, by increasing their damage and healing. Once this hotfix is in effect, a bonus will be granted to the faction that has been losing the most events in a particular Ashran instance. For example, when the Alliance are winning more events, the Horde will have the bonus, and vice versa. The bonus is decreased or increased in increments of 5% for every event that faction wins or loses, up to a possible maximum of 50% increased damage and healing in extreme cases.
In other words, every time your faction loses an event, it will be 5% easier for you to win the next one. If your faction currently has the damage and healing buff, it will go up by another 5%. If the opposing faction has the buff, then it will go down by 5%.
Please note that, due to the nature of this hotfix, there is no visible buff on the player that shows you what benefit you're currently receiving. We may be able to add a visible buff in the future, but that would require a patch, and we didn't want to delay getting this hotfix out. It will go live the next time realms are restarted.