Does anyone else struggle to understand why people like the opposite faction?

Community General Discussion
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I have spent 17 years being baffled over why people like the Alliance.

When I ask, most people say they chose their faction because their friends were there or because they liked one particular race, and I get that, but sometimes I see someone posting and they genuinely dislike the Horde and genuinely like the Alliance, and I just can’t wrap my head around that.

Does anyone else have trouble comprehending how anyone could love the opposite faction? What makes it so hard for you to understand? Why are you surprised that they hate your faction and love their own?

For me, I don’t understand how anyone would want to be part of a society that values law & order and simps for paladins. Humans are so boring and they allow one to call himself their “King.” Really?

I like gnomes, dwarves, and Worgen. Night Elves are even okay, but it’s hard for me to understand how joining the Alliance benefitted any of them. The Dwarves could have stood on their own. They have their own King, after all. And they could’ve taken the gnomes in with or without Alliance support. The Night Elves hated the Alliance in the third war, and the reasons for that hatred haven’t changed, they just seem to ignore them now. The Worgen could have teamed up with the Night Elves without any involvement from the Alliance.

The Alliance strikes me as supremely arrogant, disgustingly respectful of so-called “authority,” racist against orcs, trolls, and forsaken, willing to do whatever it takes to please and pacify “the Light,” and dismissive of more ancient or darker magics that could easily provide them with greater power. Some of the moves the Alliance has made over the past few expansions have seemed grossly out-of-character, like accepting the Worgen and the Void Elves despite their unpredictable and potentially dangerous natures, and I can’t help but feel like Blizzard just decided the Alliance was far too lame to exist and needed to be more like the Horde, so they brute-forced some Horde mojo into the Alliance and it didn’t really fit, but it accomplished the goal just the same.

I hated Wrynn and I view Anduin as a weakling. Jaina is annoying and should have been crushed into paste beneath Garrosh’s boot. I also feel like the Alliance is primarily motivated by fear and that their hatred for the Horde just comes back to them being terrified.

When someone says that they hate the Horde and love the Alliance, my head spins and I find myself at a loss for words. How is that even possible?

What say you? Do you play both factions like normal players, or do you have a strong bias like me?

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Because Paladins are a class worth simping over. We’re pretty glamorous, after all.

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You’re only glamorous because you’re a blood elf. The Paladin part of you is weaksauce.

death knights you

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Horde has a higher concentration of people who care about endgame content.

Alliance has more people who just want to do their own thing.

The above occurring as a result of racial abilities being better at one point, a lot of the high end going Horde, it tricking down, racial perks being brought more in line, but people not really having any reason to be on the faction with fewer people (interested in endgame), as it limits their options.

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I’ve noticed the “I play Alliance because my friends already played it” thing for a long time. I used to wonder if would be possible to track down that ONE guy who was the first to play Alliance, whom everybody else apparently followed.

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But anyway, I’ve always played Horde because it’s different. I’d been role-playing generic humans/dwarves/gnomes since the 1970’s, the opportunity to do something else was too good to pass up.

Even in the RTS games, I remember when they came out in the 90’s and people were like, “Wait… we can play the orcs and trolls?” Because that was pretty novel, at the time.

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My relatives and I have leveled each race at least once on both sides.
I can tell you that playing Alliance is great. Because we are not bound on randomness and do our dungeons alone, we have no problem doing dungeons. Raiding is a different topic but nobody cares for it anymore because how annoying it got over the years.

The holy fighter trope is an extremely popular and classic one which is why so many people are drawn to. I have seen a rise on old paladin characters on Argent Dawn to sell the “badass character you should not question if he has survived this long” on Argent Dawn-EU, it’s one of the more popular ones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/j4ga15/old_paladin_by_caiomonteiroart/

Lore-wise they have been friendly and helped them every time. It’s a classic trope which is popular to this day. And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with it.

This was for gameplay-reasons to have another playable race in the game.

The Worgen are still humans and only this generation will last.

You shouldn’t forget that the initial Orc invasion rampaged the Eastern Kingdoms and ended with a loss for them. They were invaders who kill anyone on sight. After the second war they held them in camps where the old Alliance split a bit up due the immense costs it caused (Greymane).

This is because you have not put any time into the story. You need to play both sides to understand the characters. Especially Anduin and Jaina are well-written characters on the Alliance-side and the books make it clear that even they can be corrupted. Jaina almost flooded Orgrimmar and Anduin starts to tap into his Shadow Priest nature.

It’s likely because of people, like you, who yell out how awful the Alliance is without having invested time in both sides. With the 9.2.5 changes we will see people going back to the Alliance because they were pressured into playing Horde, which should never have happened, especially in the raiding scene. You play what you want to play but if you cannot bring up the respect to the player’s chosen side and care enough about understanding what makes the Alliance or Horde so compelling, then there is not much to discuss about it? Every race brings some kind of gimmick with themselves.

The Horde dominates the game only because the developers neglected the Alliance too long which forced them now to open up cross-play. We all can discuss how awful this is or not, but as a matter of fact this also means that the game is dying because of the neglection which should have never happened - but it did. The endresults is no mare faction war according the last interview.

Both sides needs a delicate balance and giving the Alliance the needed spotlight will make things better. Giving them compromise races or nerfing racials just before raids open will not win the favor or the players. Both sides are enjoyable and I do hope many people will swap over or back to the Alliance so they can play the race in the endgame they truly want to.

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Congratulations, Blastkrizzle. I didn’t think I could dislike the Alliance any more than I already do, but you proved me wrong. I was at a 10 and now I’m at 11.

Truly remarkable. I’ll throw you a like just for showing me new depths of disdain.

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I pick alliance over horde anyway. I don’t hate the horde, as I have some horde characters. I can’t stand the horde cities, and what they look like. The cities and buildings look ominous and cold. I think there have been some really arrogant horde during my wow journey.
I’ve tried but when I’m leveling a horde character their stories don’t get me emotionally like the alliance stories do/did.
I’m sick of Tauren who use that buff that makes them and their mounts huge, so they stand over vendors constantly.
I’ll take my gnomes, void elves, night elves, and draenei over horde.
Personally, I’m tired of just the two factions in the game. There needs to be a third in the new expansion. I don’t see any “racism” in the game, and I don’t believe in the term “racism.” Everyone has their own “ethnicity.” There is only one “race” the human race.
I highly value law and order in human society, and I see nothing wrong with it in Alliance society.
IMHO Jaina and Silvanas are boring, and I wish both would get kidnapped or something.
In real life I am a polytheist heathen and I believe in dark and light. The Gods I believe in are both dark and light.
I like the light concept in the alliance, but I would like to see something lighter with the horde so that they are not always portrayed as evil, or stupid, like the peons.
I think in the next expansion we need a new horde race, and a new alliance race, some fresh meat.
And I would like to see alliance and horde come together finally and stay that way for a while.
Blizzard needs to add that third faction, and races to not make the game always about horde and alliance bickering and having wars.
Yes Wrynn and Anduin are total pussies, and I wish they would grow a set and take care of their kingdom. Alliance needs a queen on the throne also.
The Alliance does suck a lot at PVP, except alterac valley which for me is a blast and we usually win.
I have a bit of a bias towards the horde but not as strong as your bias towards the Alliance.

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It doesn’t matter, to be honest. Maturity is reflected on accepting both sides as equal in the game. Read the books, watch lore videos and so on. Or just play both sides, as the majority of players do.

It’s not only Tauren. You have this problem with the Worgen and Kul Tiran as well.

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I can actually absolutely see why people love the Alliance. Especially people that played back in the golden days of Iron Forge.

To this day, despite the numbers, Alliance still has a vastly superior dueling and AFK hang out area. That alone is a strong selling point.

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I played both Alliance and Horde so I could experience the whole game.

In Vanilla, I preferred the Alliance questlines. In BC, the differences were minimal. Fast forward to WoD, I preferred my Alliance garrison but thought Frostfire Ridge a better designed zone (with a more compelling story.)

For BfA, I vastly preferred Zandalar over Kul Tiras except for Boralus, which is a visual marvel. (And Stormsong Valley was fun.)

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As an alliance player, I’m here for the elves, man. Have you seen them? We have AVATAR ELVES, 8 foot tall, blue and with a mouthful of fangs! We have SPACE ELVES, who have the best accent and who can cut glass with their horns (allegedly)! I’m sure we have some other races but who cares about them.

What have the horde got, furries and butch green humans?? The trolls are your only interesting race and 60% of you play stick insect elf instead. :cry:

Also we have like. Actual buildings, not holding receptacles for spikes.

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Iron Forge was an excellent capital city. Yeah, Stormwind was more visually appealing to me but IF was so convenient. (On the Horde side, I still prefer Thunder Bluff over Orgrimmar, but reality forces Org.)

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Ironforge is a ghost of a city nowadays populated only by the bank alts of the old guard who remember Before.

Agree with you on Thunder Bluff. I actually used to bank in Darnassus for the same reason - you could do the AH/mailbox shuffle on a mount. Why is the WoW population sleeping on this???

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I have several Alliance characters at max level, and I’ve done pretty much all the quests Alliance-side throughout the various expansions, but I can’t get into playing the characters, I can’t stand to role-play them for long, I hate most of the cities and settlements (Ironforge is good, though), and I feel dirty when I run into a quest that opposes the Horde.

I have a lot of Alliance garrisons, and they’re definitely prettier than the Horde ones, but something about the Alliance garrison seems less grand to me. They almost feel… quaint. Like a little “kingdom” inside Disney World.

It’s not actually a lack of exposure that drives my dislike for Alliance. In fact, the more exposed I am to the Alliance, the more distasteful I find it. Like, it actually made me angry when Anduin and Greymane approached Sylvanas without being summoned. I kept thinking to myself, “Who in the hell do they think that they are?”

Obviously, their people consider them Kings, but I innately feel as though they should automatically defer to the Horde in all things. How dare they not?

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TBH, that’s all I need to be happy.

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On the note of the Alliance and their hatred and bigotry against the horde it is fear thats the root of most bigotry, discrimination, hatred etc. all throughout history like Paranorman is an amazing film that is based on this whole premise like here’s a small clip from the film warning for spoilers though https://youtu.be/4Sq12wl37WQ

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And you didn’t cringe when Nathanos and Sylvanas took over the Horde?

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