Because in vanilla, historically, paladins have had a much bigger impact in both pve and pvp than shamans, in a world with more minmaxing than ever, people still aren’t willing to risk playing the weaker faction even though SoD has made a very good effort at the factions being equally good.
In SoM when pve content got buffed, alliance left the horde side in the dust
the timeline goes like this
classic wow = pve alliance, pvp alliance reason → alliance have paladins
tbc wow = pve horde, pvp alliance → horde get paladins, so their more powerful pve racials make them better than alliance. Alliance have perception and TBC pvp is flooded with rogues and druids
wotlk wow = pve horde same story as TBC, pvp alliance because the new human racial is the best pvp racial in the game
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The Alliance attracts boring people and most people are boring.
racials have nothing to do with it, horde have better racials.
its just the fact Holy paladin is better than resto shaman in raids, salvation is just braindead allows the fury warriors to go ham, Allie has more dps in raids, fastest speed clears.
because in classic there are most casual dads playing than retail sweaty players.
Paladins, in particular the ret tree, draws in a large amount of noobs.
From my understanding in most fantasy games and MMOs, humans and elves are always the most popular races. The only exception to the rule I’ve noticed is FFXIV where everyone makes cat girls. Lol. But the races there are all humans with horns and animal ears.
But I digress, most people in MMOs and RPGs steer towards idealized selves, wish fulfillment, and self inserts. I played Horde from TBC - SL because I’m an edge lord and wanted to be Undead. Lol. Until I tried BE Paladin and that became my main class for life. But most people gravitate towards attractive races or “good guy” races.
Faction restrictions is another reason. If most people are making humans and night elves, then that also effects the faction their friends pick. Blood Elves on the Horde was clearly an attempt to bait some of those people over to the opposite faction. Class restrictions as well.
When I came back in Shadowlands, I swapped to Alliance because all my actively playing friends are Alliance. Then I further entrenched myself by making new friends on the Alliance. They started easing up on cross faction stuff, but I already leveled up and geared a Lightforged pally, so I had little reason to go back to my blood elf.
Most of my retail friends went Alliance since that’s the faction they already play normally. And in the case of SoD, I stuck with it because that’s the only faction with paladins. Faction locked classes isn’t good design for balance. I know I’m having a blast obliterating people as an OP pally right now, but I’m sure it’s making people salty when I just nuke through 3 players bubble + bandage, and keep going. Lol. I’m sure a lot of Horde players are dropping out due to the imbalance.
Also, Horde keeps getting a lot of cursed cringe furry races like Vulpera. Lol. Hard to take the Horse serious anymore when you have those standing with the among the originals.
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I used to say it was because ally was easier to level.
They get easier quests. They get more quests than horde. There is no real struggle on ally to get to 60 quickly. Besides getting to 20 maybe faster than ally. Once you stonetalon on horde it’s a walk fest. And very little quests. Largest being (outside barens and neutral areas) is thousand needles.
But that was then…
Today’s player is more on the cosmetic side. Hence why alot of games including retail wow. Sells a ton of cosmetic features…
On classic/sod. Most ally characters are just as ugly as the horde ones. So I’m going to because it’s easier.
I just really wanted to play paly this time around in classic, never had before in the previous releases.
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yeah alliance races are pretty ugly
The factions are close. Shaman vs pally. Damage vs skill lvl. The player mindset is the difference. Alliance was and has been about order. Horde about chaos. The nostalgic players lean toward order.
The skills back in the day favored horde as pallys did not know their judgements were causing dps loss on bosses.
It’s more fun to play as the protagonists. Huts and brutality lose their appeal when you see the other side living their best life with an undersea tram and a magical treehouse city.
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It has to do with most people being pve carebears who avoid pvp at all costs - I play on a pvp server and the amount of alliance that dont even fight back in duskwood is really sad
the real PvP victory is making gankers sad gg
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To each their own but I’ve never been able to get into horde. I loved Stormwind and Ironforge. Going from that to any horde area is almost laughable
See I prefer Horde, I only went Alliance for the few people who couldn’t be Paladin on Horde, so to make them happy we all decided to go Alliance.
I prefer Shadow Priest (I really lucked out) and Shaman, so I still had a class to play even though Shadow currently is trash if we went Alliance.
I was actually hoping come SoD’s release Horde had one Race to go Paladin so we could of gone Horde and I could of been Shaman but they didn’t, I’m not saying this is the sole reason why Alliance is preferred but I know a lot of players simply choose Alliance for Paladin.
Can’t get that gameplay on Horde.
cause they all are a bunch of alliance pigdogs.
ya i said it.
what you gonna do?
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If people really play like that they are neck beards who drink Mt Dew and have no life
Who cares about a 5% damage boost when all races, classes, specs can complete raids.
Literally just play what you like…
I am trying to play with my guild on a pvp server and they’re all Alliance. But I cant make an alliance character.
I try another pvp server so I can play alone like a loser. Can’t make an alliance Character.
I try a normal server so I can play alone like a loser who also can’t pvp. Can’t make an alliance character.
You have 6 servers and I can’t play alliance anywhere and I can’t play with my guild/friends.
The cap was in place the entire time. Living flame was alliance capped within 2 hours of going live, only to open up the next day then get capped again. Based off that alone your point is moot. Because first day players were forced to roll horde too.
A bunch of my friends and i started horde and quickly realized wed rather not play big uglies so we rerolled to another server that wasnt capped. Many people just dont like horde.