It seems the answer to your thread title question may be so that Horde players could take part in the interesting Alliance-focused questing in Ardenweald, too.
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I’d rather other races not be stuck in Stormwind; the city as a whole doesn’t match their thematics even with some token doodads. Its bad enough that I’m forced to use the city as a hub. It just excuses Blizzard laziness.
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Oh no I fully agree 100%, but sadly you are not going to change Blizzard’s minds. They want Stormwind as the Alliance hub because they love them some Stormwind Humans and the Wrynn family with all their Human Potential. We will always be forced into Stormwind as the hub.
Because of this, that is why I want to see districts pop up for the other races that live there so it isn’t just Stormwind Human architecture. That is the most we would likely get because they aren’t giving the Night Elves, Worgen, Gnomes, etc their own capitals ever again.
I haven’t read all the replies here, but for some reason the ones I glanced at made me think how interesting it would be if Anduin turned to Tyrande and asked to learn more about the kaldorei and Elune, similar to how he’s learned from various paladins or Pandaren. Instead of just shoehorning their way past all the nelf lore, and giving us stupid lines about getting Teldrassil back (it’s a smoking husk, Anduin, what are we going to do with Teldrassil if we do get it back?), what if the baby king of Stormwind turned to the ancient High Priestess of the kaldorei to learn from her experience? and what if the writers really went all in on that and re-read their own lore and actually presented Tyrande as someone worth learning from? I mean I know it’s about as likely as Tyrande and Sylvanas having tea and discussing reparations, but man, I’d forgive them a lot of they had something like that.
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Ehhhh I don’t mind SW/Org being the main cities, given how much it’d take to update the others and how seldom they’d be used. I remember barely anyone used Exodar or, outside of RP servers, SMC. People tend to naturally cluster in a single place for trade and grouping and having only two cities to constantly update is easier than having several.
That said, if they’re going to keep using SW and Org, they should definitely update the cities so that there’s more than some doodads from other races. Both should be expanded drastically to allow for areas that feel distinctly dwarven, night elven, draenei, etc, for every major race. They should look more like “faction cities” than “race cities,” with the human and orc features as bones for what’s built atop them.
People cluster there because Blizzard herds them into those cities. Its the same self-perpetuating chicken/egg paradox as Games Workshop’s Space marine favoritism.
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They clustered in Ironforge because it had the AH and was more central on the EK continent. Once the emphasis was removed from flightmasters and auction houses were added to other cities, people naturally clustered in Stormwind instead. It was split a bit evenly but people did seem to prefer SW over time.
No one went to Thunder Bluff, meanwhile, and Exodar and SMC were mostly empty since their creation. Darnassus and Undercity has similarly light populations - usually just undead and night elves moving through, or, earlier on, people who had business on that particular continent.
Once the bulk of players choose a place to congregate, everyone else goes there because they like being surrounded.
Well I agree with Neridon in-so-far as clustering was already a thing before hardcore herding. You see a fair number of people in Ironforge as Stormwind because they’re both really convenient, as far as reaching other places. Ironforge had access to Menethil Harbor or the many raids/dungeons in Blackrock Mountain. Stormwind also had Zul’gurub nearby.
Places like Darnassus were just out of the way in comparison unless you were portaling to reach parts of northern Kalimdor, which was a lesser need. The dungeons were lower level. And it was much further from Onyxia, AQ, or Dire Maul than just going to Theramore or Rachet.
I can’t really comment at all regarding how people group on the Horde side. Eventually they pushed it much harder when they funneled portals more into Stormwind and Orgrimmar. But there was definitely more spread prior to when herding happened. Yet some cities still were desirable to sit in at that point.
Back in the day, there weren’t really any Horde cities in a good position. Until Naxxramas, I guess? Most of the Horde was in Orgrimmar due to the AH or ferrying from there to Undercity on their way to Kargath in the Badlands because Blackrock Spire was where most of the endgame was until AQ. Orgrimmar had the benefit of having a nice coastal yet central position on Kalimdor.
Thunder Bluff, on the other hand, suffered from having no direct connection to Orgrimmar. SW/IF had the Deeprun Tram. Org/TB didn’t even have a zeppelin for a very long time and the zeppelin takes ages, so the only option to get there was a long, automated flight path. It was empty of everyone but Tauren and people headed to the Darkmoon Faire.
People definitely liked Orgrimmar enough to stay as, unlike its counterpart on the Alliance, it was the Horde hangout from the beginning.