Crap, I forgot to be specific, I’m interested in the rep racial not just being a human. I’ll edit 
I would roll a female human if they ever release the human heritage armor! I’m a **** for transmog and I have a feeling the human heritage set will look really cool.
Female BE mages are the best, but female human mages are a close second.
I’d already be Alliance if I wasn’t basically shackled to Horde by my guild, friends, and RL sister who doesn’t wanna give up her blood elf. I like the Alliance aesthetics a lot more and im a big fan of Void Elves.
Speaking from a historical perspective: Having good friends who play Alliance was what got me to roll and roll with Alliance.
Horde is the faction I love more based on lore, but if my friends are playing Alliance I’ll stick with them for social playtime.
I’m invested in Alliance, so that’s why I’m here.
Horde have the better line up of races. Truly, you’ll find something interesting to play as with the Horde.
Alliance is a collection of humans with varying defects, disorders, and teen angst. Dwarfism. Super Dwarfism. Hippy. Furry. Albinism. Gluttony. Goth. Body mods. Super f$#%able goats, and bad fanfic of super f$#%able goats. Arguably the Draenei and the Worgen are the most interesting members of the alliance, since they’re not just basically humans with adjusted sliders.
But they have lore that doesn’t boil down to “and then we got %$#&ed up and needed rescuing…” Also, while Stormwind is generic fantasy town, it feels like a town. Orgrimmar doesn’t even feel like a place any respectable Orc would call home, let alone the other races. “Let’s park right here in the middle of a barren wasteland. What could go wrong?”
Basically, Alliance has a better atmosphere and is easier to rule 34, but Horde have the more interesting selection of races even if their homes are primarily some form of circular tarp (often built so tall like they’re compensating for something) with some kind of firepit in the middle. Though I imagine Alliance numbers are still as high as they are because a lot of people aren’t primarily motivated to raid or PvP, where as many of those jumping ship to Horde probably are.
People claim it’s the racials, etc… that make more go to one side rather than the other.
I don’t think that’s entirely it. I think it’s a kind of herd mentality and also, horde has that more appealing theme to it these days, so I don’t think there’s much that can be done to make alliance appealing.
There is one thing though. Make alliance interesting by being bad. Make them the enemies for once, instead of always running after horde like a drunken babysitter chasing a pyromaniacal toddler.
If Blizzard made alliance more interesting in that way, gave alliance more depth, I think that would do it.
It’s the only thing that will, imo.
I was once Horde. I was cringey about it. I always wore Horde merch and would sort of be toxic to my friends, in good fun though, who were Alliance. This was back in Classic-Wrath days. Then I quit WoW because of life. I came back in Legion and started playing Horde again. After reading the lore from Cata to WoD then the lore in Legion I for some reason didn’t feel the pride I once did in the Horde. I wasn’t there to see Thrall give up Warchief to Garrosh. I wasn’t there to see what happened to Thrall over time or any of the other peoples of the Horde.
I was proud of the moral highground of the Horde. We lost it with Theramore. We lost it with Sylvanas. We lost it with Cataclysm. We lost that position with the defense of Garrosh’s actions, rather than the defense of him not being responsible. People took “Garrosh did nothing wrong” the wrong way. Garrosh was corrupted so he wasn’t accountable for his evil actions. Other people didn’t see it that way, they’re saying he was accountable and those actions are fine. When you say “Garrosh did nothing wrong” we don’t mean all his actions are ok. We mean that he didn’t willingly make any choice that is wrong. He was corrupted. Now I main Alliance.
The Horde is the most divided faction. You have Sylvanas loyalists who don’t even care about the Horde at all. They just like the races on the faction.
Then you have the “i’m ok with being evil” Horde types.
Then you have the apologists.
Then there are the noble Horde members that are left. The ones who blame Blizzard for bad Horde writing. That is the group I’m in.
1 Like
Well said.
Orgrimmar feels like a military outpost with a few specialist zones.
Thunder Bluff feels more like a city-in-the-making than an actual capital city for a whole race. I’d like to see TB grow up to be the social hub of the Horde while Org stays the military hub, honestly.
Silvermoon is gated behind portals and zoning, but is the best City the Horde really has – a shame half of it is a starting quest zone.
Undercity was and still is the most confusing city layout in the whole game. Even if you consider it to really just be the dungeons of the Lordaeron Palace (a better description than the sewers, IMO), it’s cramped and samey wherever you go.
Compare that to the Alliance:
Stormwind really does feel like a city condensed into the highlights an adventurer cares about. The architecture is solid, the layouts can be annoying, but make sense, and it’s gotten so much love over the years that it feels like a city that is and has been lived in by the Alliance.
Ironforge feels like a military stronghold – not an outpost that grew up, but a real stronghold that has been developed over countless years into efficiency. It’s a circle, but each district has a little bit more of a distinct feel than Undercity, and it feels wide and spacious like a city ought to. Ironforge is established and designed as an actual city.
Darnassus is crazily well built for how young it is (less than 4 years old at the start of Vanilla), and shows that Orgrimmar could have conceivably been made into more of a city if the Orcs (or Blizzard) had wanted it to feel like more of a city. Lore-wise, the Orcs could have established a more cultural city than a military outpost, but they didn’t.
Aside: The Echo Islands even hint at this – in the three years from Vanilla to Cataclysm, the Trolls are working on starting a city at the other end of Durotar that is a little more home-y and comfortable than Orgrimmar (and only partially because Garrosh didn’t want Trolls in his city). I’d love to see what the Echo Isles could become given more time, and what Orgrimmar could become under a non-war leader and time to develop.
Back to the Alliance, the Exodar is the worst city the Alliance has, IMO. I understand that, like Undercity, it wasn’t designed in lore to be a city, but a spaceship, and it captures that feeling well, but that feeling isn’t something i consider to be a great structure for a city. That said, there were some good scenarios that showed us how it works as a dungeon.
Alliance is already well into that morally gray area.
- They recruited 3 allied races that are aligned with beings that want to remove us all from this planet.
- Void Elves: Yeah, we’ll see how well they really manage to resist the void they’re playing with.*
- Kul’Tirans: They got their vaunted seafaring abilities by worshipping N’Zoth.
- Lightforged Draenei: The Naaru don’t seem to think we’re pure enough for them.
- Mechagnomes manage to avoid being number four in this list by killing off that faction of their race**.
- The Alliance was the aggressor in the Battle of Dazar’alor. Though you can easily argue that the Siege of Lordaeron was a response to the burning of Darnassus.
- The Humans abandoned their elven friends (again), leaving the Night Elves to try to protect their lands alone.
- Which caused Tyrande to go Old Testament on everyone in Darkshore.
- Alleria just comes across as mean and vicious.
I don’t really think many people came out of this xpac looking nice or good unless they managed to avoid getting too much screen time.
* Or not, if the writers are just lazy.
** Unless the writers are really desperate.
1 Like
If only we got more focus on that and less, “the REAL horde needs our help!” Boohoo mess we got.
1 Like
At worst the Alliance look misguided or vengeful. And the battle of Dazar’alor was to end the war the Horde started. Crippling their navy was a victory in itself. Don’t start what you can’t finish.
At worst the Horde are evil or stupid. They not only fell in line while their warchief burned innocents alive and poured necrotic gas over their own soldiers to get at the alliance soldiers, they started what they couldn’t finish.
There’s a reason Saurfang had to shut Anduin up when he started bleating out about how bad the Alliance were - the atrocities committed by either faction weren’t even close to comparable.
Back in the day it used to be racials, then it became followers doing what the best players were doing and after enough players/guilds came to Horde it’s become the more attractive faction because of potential recruits. And every time a guild comes to Horde to have more players to recruit it makes it harder for the other guilds on alliance to recruit so then they transfer to Horde and the cycle continues. Eventually if nothing is done the Alliance will just be the die hard Alliance players.
I mean, racials are probably STILL a part of the equation, but yeah, at this point, raid chasers are migrating Horde. That’s the primary motivation.
Coincidentally, between double EXP and BFA being a lame duck, now’s the best time to jump ship for free (or, you know, the monthly sub + leveling time commitment.) Won’t be long before any raid loot you might pick up would be rendered obsolete anyway.
Alliance was popular when humans had EMFH, when it was nerfed. Everyone went back to Horde.
I like to call these players meta sheeple.
…But I do have a bunch of Alliance characters? I’ll just never main one, because this is my hunter from vanilla and I can’t ditch her.
“Vengeful” certainly sounds morally suspect to me.
(Almost) nobody’s tried to claim that the Horde was doing good this xpac. But, the Alliance has done enough to make it clear that they’re not squeaky clean either. Even if the scales aren’t balanced.
This also sounds like the kind of thing people like to say to excuse their own war atrocities. 
being able to roll Kul Tiran without the grind nonsense.
Look, if your only case is to look at the stain on the floor and call us equally messy when your house is a complete wreck, I think it’s safe to say you’re grasping for straws.
Dark iron dwarves were really cool and I’ve always liked Worgen. However I don’t think anything ever really would.