I think the Horde feel was intentional. The Horde is a single nation, each new race zone is just territory. A belf can comfortably yell “FOR THE HORDE!” as any Orc or Tauren.
The Alliance on the other hand is just that. It’s an Alliance. They work together, but they have their own rules and laws. It’s awkward having a Nelf yell “FOR THE ALLIANCE!”
This post summarized it. The Horde built Warcraft.
They need character power ups though. Any comic book battle thread between Alliance/Horde is a spite thread because the Horde cast of characters can’t compete with the Alliance.
Frankly, Cataclysm is in a lot of ways the original sin that spawned most of the story problems since. Blizzard has poorer and hamfistedly attempted to fix the damage done to the Alliance player experience and succeeded only in destroying the Horde player experience.
They push the Horde more in advertising, Blizzcon, and other media. By this I mean Blizz directly. Back when they did the celebrity commercials the vast majority of them were Horde. I think the only one that was Alliance was the actor that played Mini-Me from Austin Powers. There might have been another one, but Ozzy Osbourne, William Shattner, and Audrey Plaza were all horde commercials. And those are just the ones I remember.
All the faction change ads I can remember have always been Alliance to Horde.
The Alliance has more out of Blizz’s hands publicity. Lord of the Rings Movies, Game of Thrones TV, and most of the novels published are along the lines of the Alliance in theme and nature.
You also never have the Horde be the butt of jokes like the Alliance was with the Corpsegrinder stunt at Blizzcon.
Basically Blizz works to promote the Horde, they mooch off of other IP for the Alliance.
I remember Mr. T’s commercial the most because one of my very first memories of the game was my friend using one of those Mohawk Bombs on me in Elwynn that turned your head into Mr. T’s toon from the ad.
Still Julia’s right that Horde does get more push in advertising. And there’s that earlier post about the Horde basically defining the series too.
Having strong characters means nothing when their power is never allowed to shine where it counts to the point that power ups they received not by five minutes prior to their next big fight means absolutely nothing towards tipping the scales in their favor.
As far as Faction Feel goes the Alliance is the Human Kingdom of Stormwind and it’s vassal states of other races. Bend the knee to King Anduin Boy of Peace or be labeled a problem to be dealt with.
Even now i don’t really feel “proud” to be alliance.
Because blizzard didn’t really defined what we are.
I don’t want to defend this faction as a whole anymore when we can’t even protect our allies and then make peace with the literal genocidal monters because we are the ones who should stop the fight or the world is doomed, again. is honestly pretty frustrating.
but i do however feel more attached to certain characters because i actually liked their story and most of their development, in fact probably the only reason why i would play shadowlands is because of that. because i want to see how their story goes.
in cata the horde had a story,the alliance only got memes and pop culture references in our side. and many things that were important to the develop of the faction was simply ignored in favor of the horde civil war.
no wonder the faction as a whole became a meme.
Basically this, the horde is flawed outcasts, who have made some mistakes something many many more people can identify with.
The alliance on the other hand seem like the perfect straight arrow who never does any wrong.
Thats my take on it at least, maybe not the most correct, but I at least think that a component of it.
Also this,
One thing I dont think a lot of alliance players realize is that bfa really did absolutely wreck the horde’s, story, theme, and character development. Sure the NEs got rekt, but other than that seems like the alliance is mostly intact from a story/character development standpoint, but the horde is in shambles in these categorys.
I actually have no reasons to look forward to the horde’s story anymore.
i disagree with your take because the alliance also has some “mistakes” the only difference is that is easy to ignore it them when none of what the alliance did ended up with thousands of people dying in some atrocity, at least not during the wow era.
Sure, I dont disagree with you (fully at least), but generally speaking besides an exception or two, the alliance has not made any of these mistakes in a very very long time, and alliance mistakes are generally whitewashed while the horde gets ENTIRE EXPANSIONS emphasizing their mistakes.
Seriously, of two the last four expansion (counting bfa) the horde has needed to ‘find its self’ after a massive warcrime has been committed. Like seriously blizzard, cmon man…
It really does erode theme/character development a lot more than people realize.
Also, none of the Alliance’s mistakes are really played up as legitimate reasons for the anyone to oppose them. Even if they do result in offense or death, it’s not treated as that bad in the narrative.
So anybody who opposes them more or less has to come up with some unreasonable or insincere justification for doing so. Or just be painted as not knowing any better.
And even when there are seemingly sincere justifications, information tends to appear after the fact showing that the Alliance was actually right all along. If they do anything shady in order to head off a hypothetical threat, it’s always revealed that the threat wasn’t just hypothetical and that their mistake was that they weren’t extreme enough.
Nope, the alliance is rekt here too, everyone is bending over to recieve anduin’s wrynnsplaining, you see… both factions have this problem where the plot has twisted around 1 character… so everyone looks like its acting OOC so the story moves forward.
i too have no hope for the story of my faction anymore, instead i hope everyone dies while we are away on shadowlands.
Allied races like the Vulpera have gone a long way in bolstering the Hordes ranks, whereas in comparison the Alliance have mostly gotten re-skins and unappealing fat Kul Tirans.
BFAs story is just a degusting mess. Trying to figure out why the Horde hasn’t risen up as one and thrown out their leaders or why more voices of discontent hasn’t seen Anduin usurped yet as a naïve fool of a king speaks of ignorance and stupidity on the creators/writters part that can summed up as “Will do whatever we want and make it stick whether it makes sense or not”
The Alliance has always had a “feel”/mantra to it. It is the faction that just want peace but will fight the Horde(and anyone else) who threatens that peace.
From the darkmoon faire description of cata:
Humans, night elves, dwarves, gnomes, draenei, and the savage worgen make up the illustrious Alliance. Proud and noble, courageous and wise, these races work together to preserve order in Azeroth. The Alliance is driven by honor and tradition. Its rulers are champions of justice, hope, knowledge, and faith.
In a time when chaos and uncertainty reign, the Alliance remains steadfast in its determination to bring light to the darkest corners of the world.
Well I’d say it was probably time it got wreck. In the sense that the Horde can’t keep playing the underdog and"woe is me we are being oppressed" while themselves being the reason for oppression. Sooner or later there was gonna be a reckoning with Sylvanas, I’d prefer sooner rather than later.
I recall in Warcrimes how the Horde and Alliance in the court were being described. The Horde side was described as boisterous, chaotic and noisy. They were quite casual. The Alliance on the other hand were describe unmoving and almost statue like. Stoicism being the best way to describe it. You can even see it in the level 3 garrison:
You can see the Alliance one has soldiers perfectly lined up and in salute, the Horde one has people clapping and with little organization.
Ultimately you realize an Old God was lose and had both side continued their war would end up having their respective factions just crushed by N’zoth. If anything most in the Alliance are war weary and prefer to go home then continue to fight.