TLDR; Which one did you like better and why?
I’ve played Horde for years, and only recently played a whole expansion as Alliance and the Alliance story line was substantially different from the Horde story line. I thought this was a good move, but I realized I liked the Alliance story line better than the Horde story line. It seemed to have a much tighter scope than the Horde story line, and a more personal one. I think I liked it better. But I don’t know if this is something that holds true though other expansions or not. It seems the Legion story line is more or less the same.
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The Horde storyline in bfa is all about losing to the Alliance and Baine licking Anduins boots.
I think Alliance came out on top overall.
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Horde intro was amazing. But once you leave Zul’dazar it falls off. Every zone boils down to a big bad threat to the throne.
Alliance had the superior capital city, zones and overall story, especially the jaina and night warrior tyrande bits.
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I’m likely one of the few but I was uncomfortable with the characters they choose for the Honorbound campaign.
Eitrigg, Garona and Rexxar used to hate our conflicts and Voss hunts necromancers.
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From what I saw, the alliance story and war campaign had what felt like a nauseating level of kumbaya unity going on for most of it. I suppose it was needed after the prepatch, but the message felt really overbearing at times. It kinda sorta makes sense if you’re playing a void elf and imagining your character as an unwilling expatriate that didn’t want to leave the horde, I suppose, because then the punch-pulling and reconciliation would actually make some sense. But I imagine it was weird for anyone else.
The horde’s was just another slow-burn story of it falling apart yet again, repeating MoP’s story while Saurfang, the “hero” character for the faction, basically repeated WoD’s moral that just some good old-fashioned word play can swing you into doing horrible things. And of course, you had to “play along” no matter what, so there was no way to distance yourself from any of it unless you just don’t play the game at all.
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Alliance storyline was pretty good (save stormsong) but they couldn’t land it. Jaina once again seemed to become pacifist so whatever.
Horde was like…ok, but why do I care? I barely met these guys. And sylvanas is eye rolling but it did have some more intrigue.
So Alliance overall, even if they didn’t land it.
I have very little reference for the history of characters. I never seemed to get into any story lines past the leveling ones until recently when I got bored with BfA and went back to finish the content in other expansions.
I really liked Lillian Voss though. 
Agreed. They really missed the boat with Talanji. She was the one Horde protagonist that I didn’t have any qualms about following. Strong, but also doing what she did because it was the right thing to do. She had the advantage of not having any history too, which helped I’m sure.
O yea btw BWONSAMDI was amazing and needs to be transcended to a global character available to troll both factions. He could be the next khadgar as far as i’m concerned.
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The tl;dr of the characters is basically:
Rexxar: There for the founding of Orgrimmar but is mostly a loner that avoided faction politics and just liked to hang out with his animal companions instead of being involved with the horde at large.
Garona: A traumatized former mind-control victim that wanted to stay away from the horde due to horrible associations with its previous incarnation. Would probably be an alliance member to this day if she wasn’t manipulated into killing Varian’s father.
Voss: Her entire story before BFA was specifically about how she didn’t want to be undead, didn’t want any part of necromancy and didn’t want to identify with the forsaken. Then suddenly she’s a part of it for reasons.
They were all really weird choices that seem like they’re just there because they’re old names.
It would be better to ask which one was worse, since in both things they were unsatisfactory.
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I can’t really dispute how you feel about the story lines. It’s all about the expectations for the story. I’ve read a bunch of Stephen King, so my standards for prose and the like aren’t that high. I like a fast moving story with some uncomplicated emotional impact. I think the Alliance story line delivered on that.
I think the Horde was going for a more epic story line? Maybe? But I think they missed the mark.
Now, keep in mind that I played through the Horde story line and war campaign as it was released. A slow drip feed of story. I played through the Alliance story campaign all at once. There were no gaps where previous chapters could fade before I finished the next chapter. This likely made a difference. The Horde story line might have been more epic if I had the chance to go through it all at once in a week or two (I don’t progress very quickly).
It was certainly epic to see another city of the alliance being destroyed to the ground, to see the horde deny our retaliation for destroying the city itself so as not to allow us to dominate the region as they were dominating and destroying Darkshore.
It was great to see our army being slaughtered by thousands in epic phyrrhic battles, to see our leaders portrayed as idiots (everyone forgot the blight) so that the horde could be shown as more skilled.
To serve as a jack for sadfang, to help the horde to restructure for the second time and end up giving another free pass to the horde, so that was all we wanted.
It was very gratifying to receive more horses and recolors.
Receive fat humans, tiny humans powered by rope with no relevance to BfA and purple blood elves, pretending to be High Elves, as a placebo for High Elves, the highest point.
Personally, nothing in the history of the alliance, except for the part related to Jaina, until the part before, where she becomes friends with thrall again, was better than a hemodialysis.
I still remember how depressing and unsatisfying the announcement of the end of the war with the Horde at the Embassy in Stormwind was and how the ending at the Horde Embassy was more uplifting and hopeful.
I still recognize that what the horde picked up was not satisfactory, as they must already be aware of always being the group that goes crazy and tries to destroy the world as much as the alliance is tired of being the faction that never wins or has its feats present in the game and serves only as a narrative resource for the horde.
I was really referring more to the story about Jaina. The story of the world events just seems largely irrelevant to whatever character I’m playing, since they are nigh unkillable and nearly all powerful. Even within the context of the game, the characters must realize this. So the story of Talanji, which I think wasn’t nearly developed enough, and the story of Jaina were the major touch points for me.
The other thing that’s starting to be clear to me is that the Horde is largely just a mishmash of “native” cultures that the developers kind of mushed together with little or no understanding of the material they are pulling from. The Alliance, at least the human cultures, are definitely Medieval European, which isn’t better, but it’s definitely more defined. I feel like Blizzard has missed the mark on several things.
But again, stories and what a person gets from them are largely personal. The constant failure of the Alliance to do the smart thing, and their failure to do the obviously right thing is just aggravating. But I got to play through the whole story all in a couple weeks, so I didn’t get a chance to stew on any of it.