What do you think of the Alliance Power Structure?

Wyrmrest Accord
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The early fantasy of the Alliance had always been a literal Alliance between a bunch of independent nations. But as WoW has progressed, we’ve seen it morph more and more into a single governmental regime – with the High King sitting firmly in control of the entire military power structure.

The High King title also seems to be hereditary, which is arguably a problem. The Alliance has very old and experienced leaders like Tyrande and Velen, even Genn Greymane, but they still choose to put full military control into the hands of Anduin Wrynn, a highly inexperienced young man.

Even titles in the broader Alliance seem to matter little, as Shandris Feathermoon, General of the Sentinels, very much defers to Halford Wyrmbane of the 7th Legion. She’s still important of course, but the more I’m seeing of the Alliance at large – it feels more and more like the Kingdom of Stormwind being in full control of the other nations, setting them up as vassal states in direct service of Stormwind.

I’m aware that I’m putting far more thought into this than Blizzard has – the Alliance as one cohesive entity is purely existing in this way to make writing them easier. But… it’s fun to think about! Do you feel the current model is an efficient way to run the Alliance, or would it be better to establish a different system? How should the Alliance be organised ideally? Should it be a cohesive and united single entity with Anduin at its head? Should it be a united entity but with an elected leader? Should it be several civilly distinct nations but with a united military and a Supreme Commander, like it was in the Second War with Anduin Lothar and (briefly) Turalyon? Or should it be a bunch of totally separate nations with entirely separate administrative and military structures?

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It honestly makes zero sense to me.

The Alliance should be run more like…well, an alliance. The races can band together and work toward common goals, but they still remain distinct individuals. Any member should be able to vote for or against a subject instead of letting Anduin decide everything and then falling in line.

The Horde is already the dictatorial subsuming power in the world. It doesn’t make sense for the Alliance to be the Good, Blue Horde.

We’re getting some of that with Tyrande standing up to Anduin, but it doesn’t go far enough and Blizzard won’t pursue it because it’s too much work.

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I thought I read on the forums somewhere that high king wasn’t a title at the beginning of the game?

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“High King” was enacted as part of a “Trials of the High King” questline that Blizzard was going to implement in MoP as a response to the fact that the Horde controlled most of the narrative and they wanted to give the Alliance something to do. The scenario “A Little Patience” was a part of this questline.

And, in the end, it wound up being the only part. The questline was scrapped to make room for the “Escalation” patch.

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No it wasn’t. The Alliance of the Second War had a Supreme military commander. But what was committed to that united army was up to each nation individually, who still had full control of their own territory. This was deliberate, so no king would be above any other king. Genn Greymane in particular was worried that Terenas of Lordaeron would proclaim himself higher than everyone else. So no ruler was above another, they simply combined power.

High King didn’t officially show up until MoP

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My honest, unironic opinion?

Give the Wrynn dynasty a shave with the National Razor. Liberty, equality, fraternity!

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I can barely even manage to see this as an in-universe issue, because it strikes me so hard as just Blizzard being unimaginative and the opposite of bold.

It appears to me that the reason why Stormwind is at the head of everything is not because the rest of the Alliance nations would logically choose, allow, or be coerced into supporting Stormwind becoming the de facto rulers of what is, in that case, basically an empire. Rather, it’s because Blizzard feels like Stormwind is Cool and Relatable, and involving the other sovereign Alliance leaders as equal participants in military and political decision-making would be Too Complicated.

Similarly, the position of High King as leader of the Alliance is hereditary because the position of King as leader of Stormwind is hereditary. To separate the two, or shake up the idea of hereditary kingship, would be Too Complicated, and probably not Cool or Relatable. I guess.

I know you (OP) acknowledged that the structure of the Alliance is due to Blizzard’s writing style, but what I’m trying to say is that it’s so illogical in an in-universe context that evaluating it in-universe is hard and requires ignoring the question of how it got to be this way in the first place.

But, if I do look at it in-universe, it doesn’t look like an Alliance at all. What it really looks like is Stormwind creating an empire for itself.

Which would be great for Stormwind, I guess. Efficient in a sense, because there won’t (in theory) be debate time getting in the way of whatever military action Stormwind wants to pursue.

As for how it should be organized:

If it’s supposed to be an Alliance, then it should be a cohesive entity with an elected leader, or distinct nations who collectively contribute to a united military. It’s hard for me to say which would be more “efficient,” but I think the efficiency of either structure would probably depend on a multitude of other factors, and either structure could be fine if administrated properly.

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I would like the Alliance structure of power a lot more if the Horde got to be a democracy like they deserve. Then we could have a neat Law vs. Chaos thing instead of “absolute monarch chosen hereditarialy” vs. “absolute monarch chosen arbitrarily.”

It also suffers from sort of an identity crisis. Half the time it feels like the rest of the Alliance owes fealty to Stormwind, and half the time it just feels like the Super Best Friends Gang where everyone cooperates because of what good pals they are. Which is fine - Warcraft’s writing desperately needs less cynicism anyway - but I wish they would pick one. The sort of addressed this with Tyrande and Darkshore, but it’s not clear to me if this isn’t just a flash in the conflict pan.

Honestly? I wish they would lean into the parallelism more. The Horde and Alliance have basically switched roles because of the events of BfA and Legion to a lesser extent; now the Alliance is a group of displaced peoples brought together to survive in a world hostile to their existence, and the Horde is…well, the status quo that makes the world hostile for them.

It would also go a long way toward making WoW’s story connected across the life of the game, which is why they’re never going to do it.

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I get that at its core, Warcraft is a humans vs orc story so there will be human bias. Which isn’t something unique to WoW and it’s a problem in most other modern fantasy and scifi series. So knowing that, I think the game started out feeling like an Alliance of different independent nations but when Blizz made the mistake to start writing about their characters around Wrath it put too much focus on the Kingdom of Stormwind and specifically the Wrynns.

Horde as well used to feel like a ragtag group of downtrodden outcasts banding together for mutual survival. Yet with the focus on orc problems it gradually shifted from we’re all in this together orc pal and skeleton friends to serve the warchief or die or die again idk.

There’s a lot of fun ways you can headcanon and come up with why a stupidily long lived race like the Kaldorei, Draenei or even cranky Grandpa Glenn would so easily let Anduin be in charge of all their stuff. Yet after awhile it gets tiresome having to headcanon my way threw all these plot holes and nonsense :sleeping:

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I was really pleased to see groups like the 7th Legion and SI:7 portrayed as multiracial. I guess it’s the weird perk of having the faction (and thus the star orgs) Stormwind-centric rather than lots of different race-specific groups.

It’s also gradually starting to make more sense ICly post-Teldrassil. Stormwind, the kingdom of people who were refugees just a few decades ago, is one of the last cities standing and easily reached.

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As annoying as the whole “High King” title is, in practice, it seems like the alliance does function as a loose alliance rather than a unified kingdom with the Wrynn dynasty at its head. Tyrande and some Gilneans openly disregard Anduin’s wishes to go fight at Darkshore, and that isn’t treated like an act of treason… just an awkward choice between allies.

It’d be very stupid if we say Anduin directly overruling Velen or Tyrande’s orders to their own people, but really we never see the Wrynns exercise that sort of direct authority over the other factions within the Alliance. Contrast with the Warchief position where directly meddling in the affairs of all Horde members is pretty much normal for the leader at the top.

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I can’t say I cared for the High King title. Supreme Allied Commander was fine. Also, while I was never fond of Humans being in charge when we had races with literally thousands of years of military experience under their belts, I was able to accept it under the pretense that many of those individuals were not well versed in modern military tactics, and that in the case of Varian, the human leading the Alliance’s military had been trained in military tactics by other races.

I feel like the decision to make Anduin into the High King would’ve been much less about him as a military leader, and more about him as a diplomatic leader. Anduin makes for a good diplomat, so seeing him in charge of welcoming new races to the Alliance makes sense. Him fulfilling a role in a Wartime Setting is much more jarring.

The best that can be said of this specific situation is that he has advisors with greater experience that he is deferring to.

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ironforge and shadowforge should share their secrets of democracy with the rest of the world, stop hiding your senators within the mountains

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I’ve more or less stopped caring about the thought of humanity leading the Alliance. It’s a power structure created by the same idea that always gives humanity the same advantage - we’re better than everyone else because we’re a young lived race that adapts quickly and is intelligent enough to overcome any opposition.

It’s how they justify humanity being relevant their way instead of making them flawed and a realistic part of a world bigger than just them. Lazy generic writing for the win, yo.

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Honestly, even the dynamics of having a Supreme Allied Commander vs. a Kingly Boi would be immense. You’d have instant sources of conflict between them and the former could be occupied by various characters.

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I’d like to see a bit more input from people that involved uhhhhhhhhhh actually being characters. I’d love to see Anduin convinced of a poopy idea by Genn, whose warhawk revenge schemes tm are actually hyper-focused and potentially harmful, even if his reasoning for them makes sense.

And from there I’d like to see Tyrande more aloof and irritated that Genn has more input than her. I’d like the dwarves to have any input at all beyond Azeroth’s woonds. I hope Velen dies soon. idk.

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Since when was the Alliance no longer a Alliance? Just because Anduin is the head of power in Stormwind, does not mean he controls any other nations. We see this when Tyrande and him disagree over Darkshore, the Night Elves and Worgen are still free to do as they please even if the high king thinks its a bad idea.

As for why Aunduin is the main leader, Stormwind is a Monarchy, they work by bloodline being leaders, there is no chose in who is elected.

As for what I think of it, its worked out pretty well going on a long time now. Also…Aunduin is really not as young or inexperienced as a lot of people think. I mean heck he’s kinda been though a lot.

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I think the issue is, until Blizzard clarifies it further, that the positions of, ‘High King of the Alliance,’ and, ‘King of Stormwind,’ are two separate positions.

While the King of Stormwind is a hereditary position and always has been, the, ‘High King of the Alliance,’ position was never inferred to be hereditary, and yet it seems like that is the only legitimate reason for Anduin to take up that role.

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TBH I never thought they had to. I thought everyone knew the alliance was a coalition of mutual interests while The Horde was a crazed dictatorship.

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Indeed, but the issue is the lack of details on how Anduin became High King makes it appear that it was an entirely hereditary transition, and therefor the two positions (King of Stormwind and High King of the Alliance) are in fact one position.

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