(WoW) Why the Alliance Hate and Why is the Horde so Popular?

[TheGlyphstone]

On the 'players kill people for shinies' - well, as you noted, that's Gameplay/Story segregation. Talking about what players do as reflections of their races in the lore leads to madness, because MMO players are all sociopathic kleptos at heart anyways.

Lore-wise, though - you can't make a parallel between the Forsaken Plague and mustard gas, even if they're both gas-based weapons. It (the Plague) was used in a war, yes, but its purpose was more akin to a hypothetical viral biological weapon that blended the worst traits of AIDS, Ebola, smallpox, and the common cold, but with a built-in immunity factor for members of a specific country/government. If some real-world nation was found to be developing such a weapon, I would absolutely call them evil. Sylvanas was upset with Putricide not because he perfected the plague, but because he stole the first completed batch and used it all up at the Wrathgate, instead of keeping it secret until they had enough to exterminate the humans, orcs, elves, trolls, gnomes, dwarves, and Scourge all in one fell swoop. It's the motives more than the actions that matter here, and even Sylvanas's aid against Arthas was firmly in the "kill him first, then I'll get around to the rest of you" attitude.

[Flower]

Hmm, I started off as Alliance because my boyfriend was there and I wanted someone to play with. That actually did not work out because all he did was torture me until I was a high enough level to defeat him in a duel! I drifted over to the horde when my younger brother started to play. :)


But I find that I enjoy playing both factions. Sometimes I lean a bit more for my Night Elf characters while other times I enjoy playing my Undead priest. I go through phases. I think that there can be a level of immaturity on both sides. You can find the most annoying whiners in battlegrounds. All my characters have been female for the simple fact that I always hated being forced to play a male, growing up playing on controller games.

[Anjasa]

It's been a long time since I did Wrathgate, so I don't remember all the details, truthfully.

But mostly I'm just playing devil's advocate a bit. I do believe forsaken are much more evil inclined than other races.

[Braioch]

As a note, it is stated that the Horde knows that the Forsaken aren't to be trusted, they suspect they have ulterior motives. Probably preparing for the inevitable breaking of that err...alliance...>.>...and deal with them as well later on if they prove to be a problem.

...plot bunny...

[TheGlyphstone]

Not that it'll ever happen during the life of the game itself...

[Braioch]

Still gives me a plot bunny :P

[CmdrRenegade]

I stopped WoW about 6 months before BC and only picked it up briefly in 2008.  Now I'm thinking I want to come back. 

[Callie Del Noire]

[Braioch]

First off, I totally could see myself doing at as an Undead leader ::)

Second off, you sir are awful for your signature, gave me a start -.-

[Callie Del Noire]

First off, I totally could see myself doing at as an Undead leader ::)

Second off, you sir are awful for your signature, gave me a start -.-

Who me? Blinks innocent....

Hehh.. I get one or two comments a week on it. :D

And yet no one comments on my blog. ;(

[Braioch]

Perhaps they're feeling rebellious and say "Screw that sig and it's evil, imma be cool an not look at that blog, for the Alliance!"

;D

[Callie Del Noire]

Perhaps they're feeling rebellious and say "Screw that sig and it's evil, imma be cool an not look at that blog, for the Alliance!"

;D

Yet, I find the links that tie to my blog to go back to my posts, private messages and profile here on this site. :D

[meikle]

I play on a pvp server and cross-faction enmity seems borderline nonexistent.  I only get that from the Horde perspective, though, because that's what I play.

My time playing Alliance on an RP server shows much more ferocious faction-hate (but again, it's a different ruleset and a different faction.)

Totally anecdotal, but hey.

[Callie Del Noire]

What drives me nuts is the griefing. For example, last night six horde rogues snuck in and killed all the bankers/auctioneers for a couple hours straight.

[Shjade]

What drives me nuts is the griefing. For example, last night six horde rogues snuck in and killed all the bankers/auctioneers for a couple hours straight.

Not a one-sided thing. I'd wager any Horde player that even attempted questing in The Barrens would tell you they got held up at some point because some Alliance jerks decided it'd be fun to completely wipe out Crossroads, the main quest hub for the entire zone. Repeatedly. As far as I know that happened all the time across all servers - it's just one of those things that's true about WoW: spacegoats are for lulz, undead are Always Evil, and the Crossroads is under attack.

[Callie Del Noire]

Not a one-sided thing. I'd wager any Horde player that even attempted questing in The Barrens would tell you they got held up at some point because some Alliance jerks decided it'd be fun to completely wipe out Crossroads, the main quest hub for the entire zone. Repeatedly. As far as I know that happened all the time across all servers - it's just one of those things that's true about WoW: spacegoats are for lulz, undead are Always Evil, and the Crossroads is under attack.

I never understood that. Why kill the quest givers/flight masters/bankers? You don't get anything from them.

[TheGlyphstone]

You'll never find people willing to talk about suffering from Crossroads raids, because there are only two kinds of people who quested through Barrens: The ones who bitterly crushed it into a corner of their mind and refuse to ever speak of it again, and the ones locked up in the padded white rooms with straightjackets muttering about Manrik's Wife and Chuck Norris.

[Chris Brady]

"Save your breath. I never trusted you vainglorious elves. It was a mistake to accept you into the Alliance in the first place. Now, at long last, you'll be dealt with appropriately. Take them away!"

Tagging either the Alliance or the Horde as 'good guys' is silly.  They both have their good elements and their bad elements.  You can highlight the elves and the Forsaken as evil, and that's fine -- you know why they're bad guys, why they're hanging out with the Horde?  Because in their moments of need, the Alliance kicked them out.  Humans died and become undead -- gross and icky, can't hang with the Alliance.  Elves were driven from their homeland -- hooray Garithos, send them away!

I play Horde because my friends play Horde.

This is actually PROMOTED by Blizzard.  See the current bosses of WoW are huge Horde fans, even going so far as much preferring Orcs above all else.  The entire history of the game has plenty of evidence of this.  Things like Blightcaller, the only human elven Ranger, corrupted.  Arthas who started the entire Lich King horror, humans being so oblivious as to allow Deathwing's progeny to rule them for almost FOUR years, then there's Samuelson, yet ANOTHER Twilight cultist.  And then there's the Blood Elf debacle. All right Blizz, who thought it was smart to have the Elves suddenly hate the Allaince more than their millennia long, almost racial hatred of Trolls by having them join the Horde???  The Gnomes are an incompetent race of inventors, who not only irradiated their home, still didn't even manage to oust a single invader, and created their own blighted folks.  The Dwarves, actually had the best history out of the alliance, but now they're being idiots by allowing a Twilight cultist in their RULING body!  That's right, Bronzebeard's daughter is a cultist.  Simply because she fell in love with a Ragnaros worshipper, and now has his kid.  Oh yeah, the Alliance is filled with winners.  Let's not start on the Dranae, the original minions of the Burning Legion, and can't pilot their own ship right.  Or the Worgen, which are now a race of monsters that dislike themselves.

The Horde on the other hand are so enlightened that they rescued the Tauren from extinction, remembered their shamanistic heritage, allowed the Darkspear to live with them.  Welcomed the Blood Elves with open arms and made friends with the shipwrecked Goblins.  The only real dark spot is their acceptance of the Foresaken.  But then again, they were originally HUman, so it's expected for them to be idiots.  Hell, they're pretty much Scourge.  After all, the Scourge want to eliminate all life, preferably by a plague.  And what are the Foresaken's big plan?  To eliminate all other races by...  You guessed it!  A PLAGUE!  Even King Whiny, Garrosh Hellscream isn't as bad as the Alliances stupidity, and he murdered Cairn.  Besides we all know that he's warming Thrall's seat.

No, Blizzard has decided that the Horde ARE the 'good guys', because all of the baddies are Alliance based.  The Lich King, Illidan Stormrage, technically even the Burning Legion can be laid at their feet due to Medivh's meddling.  The Horde was never really at fault for their attack and corruption.

Sadly, those of us who like Alliance will never really get a break.  Because the Horde are in the right, and always shall be.

[NotoriusBEN]

I can even put in that most of this animosity stems from pre-BC as well. I quit playing around 6months post-BC so this is all dated knowledge.

Paladins and Shamen. Endgame Content.

Back in vanilla wow, these two classes were lice/horde specific. I never got indepth with these classes as my main was an orc warrior (ill get into that later). What I do remember about these classes at the time was their way of buffing the raid. Sure both sides had relatively even stat giving powers for Tier 1 but this was horrendous at Tier 3 and 4.

Shaman had the lovely Windfury buff. The alliance was absolutely "SALIVATING" for this ability. But really, the only way shaman buffed was their totems. A non movable buff with a range of about 30meters give or take. Also this buff had hard numbers applied to it. (Im just throwing out numbers here) a Rank 4 stamina buff would only ever give 94 stamina. Plus, this bonus only applied to the party that shaman was slotted with. back in the 40-man raids, you only ever had 5 of each class because this was the balanced approach to take on all challenges that you came across. So only 5 shamans means 5 parties are buffed for about 25 people. But some buffs are more appropriate for some classes than others, and the totems could only do one effect or another. Thus, horde players were receiving the best buff applicable to their group make up. (This lead to some interesting raid parties in my guild. A shaman would be tied to a group of 4melee dps and another shaman to the magic dps. Anything that could help the shaman buff better)

The Shaman totem is a *static* ground buff. Not a problem in Molten Core, Black Wing Lair or Zul'garub but then you get to AQ20. The final boss forced you to move between shards to keep a debuff on him or he would kill the group. Shaman would be forced to drop totems at every shard and waste valuable mana for healing or shooting off a nature attack when warrented for the boss. This also shut down the MP regen that was depended on by horde groups with the water totem.

The Windfury buff allowed a sizable chance to double hit in melee. It used to work with yellow damage (ability damage). And was quite fun to Shield Slam for 1k damage, then have Windfury proc another 1k Shield Slam. This wasnt reliable, but if it happened, it was a *HUGE agro boost*. Since around 1.10, I think, windfury had its percentage to trigger tweaked and it would only work with white damage (auto-attack).

That sums up some cursory superficial knowledge of shamen. Now, the Paladins.

If one ability could sum up that Alliance endgame was "easy mode" it was Blessing of Kings. This buff gave a 10% increase to all stats. Thats huge. Thats a *multiplier*. That means that as alliance warriors got more stamina, the buff would *increase* in potency. The other thing about paladins was that their Blessings affected all those of a class. All warriors got a buff from a paladin, all rogues got a buff, all mages got a buff, etc. If 5 paladins are in a raid that still means 25 players get a buff. But those players get a buff that is directly relavent to who and what they are. These Blessings were also ''man-portable''. Player recieves buff, they can walk everywhere with it and it only goes away on player-death or time-out. Very useful in mobile fights that Blizzard was apt to make in Tier 3 and 4.

Then there is the paladin "bubble". that shield that grants immunity to *ALL DAMAGE*. This was friggin annoying, especially in PVP. Back in 1.5 and prior, no one recieved a weakened soul debuff save from the priest's bubble (even then, priests ABSORBED damage compared to flat out Immunity). This means that palladins could double and triple bubble if they worked in teams. As the players are forced to change focus since that particular target will be immune for 10+ seconds, the paladin could heal up quickly and begin the whole process again ad nauseum. It didnt matter how many horde fought this kind of a team, because all damage was mitigated by the bubble.

I have seen 3-man paladin parties hang up 15 horde players at objectives in Alterac valley and Arathi Basin, or guarding the flag in Warsaw Gulch. These 3-man pally parties could hold until help arrived minutes later, or basically hold that horde team in place while the stronger alliance mob crushed whatever main objective resistance they had. The bubble wasnt as effective in endgame because it broke if you attacked, but still, it was there for others to get a safe few seconds from an aoe or some such.

In 1.6 The paladin bubble recieved the weakened soul debuff which meant that they could no longer consecutively bubble. This destroyed the Alliance's primary defense. Since Horde had to fight harder and learn to play harder than Alliance players to achieve success, this shift basically allowed horde to rick-roll alliance for quite some time in battlegrounds.

To further alter my perception at least. Since 1.5 to about 1.11, orcs and warriors kept receiving debuffs and tweaks to their abilities and prowess. When I joined in 1.3, Orcs were 50% resistant to stuns, and snares and were 100% knockback immune. Plus the orc racial was 10seconds of 175% attack power boost, followed by 20 seconds of 75% debuff to attack power. Warriors could Intimidating shout ALL creatures in a 20 meter radius (basically fear them for 6 seconds.) Defense was king, and the Arcanite Reaper was the end-all weapon.

I could go on for pages about it but needless to say, it was hard being an orc warrior with debuffs and tweaks every version while humans seemed to get more and more things. I remember a stint where my racial ability gave me attack power but I recieved a MORTAL STRIKE debuff. Mortal strike is a debuff that reduces all healing you receive by 50% Really fucking awesome during Hakkar in Zul'garub. Hakkar would mind control between the Main tank and Off tank and hakkar could proc any of your abilities too, even racials. Hakkar could also mortal strike. See the picture?  This meant that I would recieve 2 mortal strikes and thus receive 25% healing, not a good thing as a lynch-pin player in a raid guild. Literally before every mind control boss fight, I had to proc my racial to give us a 2minute window of ''good-times''


Wow this is long, but there it is. This is the "mechanical" reasons both sides hated each other, or that Horde thought they were better for it. (For the record, when paladins and shaman were allowed to the other side, I laughed so hard at the cosmic joke that was played on the alliance. Horde got the best out of that deal)

[CmdrRenegade]

You'll never find people willing to talk about suffering from Crossroads raids, because there are only two kinds of people who quested through Barrens: The ones who bitterly crushed it into a corner of their mind and refuse to ever speak of it again, and the ones locked up in the padded white rooms with straightjackets muttering about Manrik's Wife and Chuck Norris.

You can turn off Barrens chat.  Leave /1 (or whatever number general was).  Why do people refuse to do that? Yeah, the Barrens were really big, but I actually kind of liked it overall.  It just made the world feel BIG...like a world...and less like a themepark partition like so many other parts of the world. 

[Chris Brady]

I can even put in that most of this animosity stems from pre-BC as well. I quit playing around 6months post-BC so this is all dated knowledge.

Paladins and Shamen. Endgame Content.

That sums up some cursory superficial knowledge of shamen. Now, the Paladins.

To further alter my perception at least. Since 1.5 to about 1.11, orcs and warriors kept receiving debuffs and tweaks to their abilities and prowess. When I joined in 1.3, Orcs were 50% resistant to stuns, and snares and were 100% knockback immune. Plus the orc racial was 10seconds of 175% attack power boost, followed by 20 seconds of 75% debuff to attack power. Warriors could Intimidating shout ALL creatures in a 20 meter radius (basically fear them for 6 seconds.) Defense was king, and the Arcanite Reaper was the end-all weapon.

I could go on for pages about it but needless to say, it was hard being an orc warrior with debuffs and tweaks every version while humans seemed to get more and more things. I remember a stint where my racial ability gave me attack power but I recieved a MORTAL STRIKE debuff. Mortal strike is a debuff that reduces all healing you receive by 50% Really fucking awesome during Hakkar in Zul'garub. Hakkar would mind control between the Main tank and Off tank and hakkar could proc any of your abilities too, even racials. Hakkar could also mortal strike. See the picture?  This meant that I would recieve 2 mortal strikes and thus receive 25% healing, not a good thing as a lynch-pin player in a raid guild. Literally before every mind control boss fight, I had to proc my racial to give us a 2minute window of ''good-times''


Wow this is long, but there it is. This is the "mechanical" reasons both sides hated each other, or that Horde thought they were better for it. (For the record, when paladins and shaman were allowed to the other side, I laughed so hard at the cosmic joke that was played on the alliance. Horde got the best out of that deal)

Sadly, Ben, warriors are STILL getting screwed.

Here's a fun fact.  Through out 1.x to 2.x Shaman never got any patch love?  Why?  Because really, how do you improve perfection?  (OK, that's a joke)  Ahem, actually, they never needed any nerfing nor buffing because outside of small situations (Like AQ 40) they were perfect in their roles.  In fact, in PvP they were a hard kill, because they could heal themselves.

The issue with early Paladins was that their powers were effectively a lottery.  You turned on the spells and waited, hoping a chant would proc.  That was it.  Unless you were Holy, then you threw a few heals.  And while they were indestructible in PvP they really didn't do much damage, so if you could burn down their mana (A really long proposition) they were often a dead class.  Of course, that Warriors could still die to a Paladin was kinda sad back then.

[Shjade]

Yeah, the Barrens were really big, but I actually kind of liked it overall.  It just made the world feel BIG...like a world...and less like a themepark partition like so many other parts of the world.

The desert did that for me. Both deserts, actually: Silithus and...the desert on the southeast corner of that continent. The name escapes me. Tanaris, that's the one. Yes. Sometimes I'd just go out there and ride around the dunes of Tanaris and be mellow.

And then murder some gnomes.

Honestly I'd have wanted to murder gnomes even if I were playing Alliance-side.

[NotoriusBEN]

Sadly, Ben, warriors are STILL getting screwed.

Here's a fun fact.  Through out 1.x to 2.x Shaman never got any patch love?  Why?  Because really, how do you improve perfection?  (OK, that's a joke)  Ahem, actually, they never needed any nerfing nor buffing because outside of small situations (Like AQ 40) they were perfect in their roles.  In fact, in PvP they were a hard kill, because they could heal themselves.

The issue with early Paladins was that their powers were effectively a lottery.  You turned on the spells and waited, hoping a chant would proc.  That was it.  Unless you were Holy, then you threw a few heals.  And while they were indestructible in PvP they really didn't do much damage, so if you could burn down their mana (A really long proposition) they were often a dead class.  Of course, that Warriors could still die to a Paladin was kinda sad back then.

Which is why I envisioned my warrior dying at the fight with C'thun. Bravely sticking his Crul'shuruk Axe into that bastard eye and saving the Guild :P

[LunarSage]

I have an idea that would be full of all kinds of awesome in my opinion. As we all know, Sylvanus has officially gone off the deep end and it's only a matter of time until she blatantly betrays the Horde or does something to get branded as a traitor. What if in a future expansion Sylvanus does get ousted from the Horde and the Forsaken that go with her become a new NPC villain group (Sylvanus as a raid boss? Would be quite cool) and the Forsaken that decide they're more loyal to the Horde would be the PCs. At that point those undead who chose the Horde over the Banshee Queen would have proven their loyalty to the Horde once and for all and aside from some residual tensions the Horde would be stronger for it and wouldn't have the "evil elephant" in the room anymore.

What do you guys (Horde and Alliance players alike) think?

[Callie Del Noire]

I always thought that the Worgen/Goblins should have been part of a 'neutral' group that would include the Panderens or perhaps another group.

Sylvannus is (and to me) always a dangerous person waiting for the right fuse to be lit go off. I can see her quite easily wiping out a Tauren/Troll local to 'recruit' reserves.