Why don't you play alliance?

[ravenmoon]

Because I can go to any other fantasy game in existence and play the standard issue, Tolkien-eqsue 'good races', aka Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits/Gnomes, etc. I can be a human in a medieval inspired, castle-town city, be a dwarf that likes to drink and smith in an underground kingdom, be a nature-loving magical elf in a pretty forest.

But how many games can I play an orc, a troll, a minotaur, a zombie, and an 'evil' elf and not be an irredeemable force of evil in the world that the above mentioned 'good races' must destroy?* Not many. In fact, almost none. I can be the good fantasy stereotype in another game, so why pass up the opportunity to play something different?

* - nb4 alliance fanboys ignoring the whole rebellion thing and claiming otherwise.

that I can agree wtih, it's a minority viewpoint, but one i'm grateful people have.

[StrayFox]

Depends on the server as well PvP players like to play Horde for some odd reason and PvE players like to play alliance.

[Deleted]

Why, your general attitude makes you fit right in with your perceived "Horde" players. You'd fit right in.

First I'd have to complete the initiation ritual: Wiping cheeto crumbs out of my beard onto a Horde t-shirt while lecturing the uncomfortable guy in line behind me at the store on how special and misunderstood the Horde is.

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* - nb4 alliance fanboys ignoring the whole rebellion thing and claiming otherwise.

Yes we drank demon blood and tried to kill everyone in the world, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. That's nothing compared to the Alliance atrocity of locking us up just because we tried to kill everyone in the world.

Yes Sylvanas was plaguing and experimenting horribly on random human beings in Undercity, but you know, maybe they were bad or something. Please ignore.

Yes our Warchief blew up Theramore, but much later we deposed him for unrelated reasons, so let's just call everything even okay?

Yes technically Sylvanas did develop a plague to kill everyone, and did make a demon of the Burning Legion her second in command, but that doesn't mean the Wrathgate was our fault. That demon promised to be nice, who could have expected he might lie or something?

Yes the orcs are invading Ashenvale to steal natural resources, but uh... fuck you, we want them. That's a valid explanation, right?

How many of these patented "Horde Excuses For Why Nothing We Do Is Our Fault" is the Alliance really supposed to be interested in listening to?

[muto]

I play purely Alliance.

Why don't I play Horde?

Orcs - are hunchbacks.
Trolls - toes and tusks
Tauren - no neck
Undead - slouching and exposed armor
Belves - too dainty and scrawny
Goblins - uglier gnomes with obnoxious ears

Humans = blah, boring
Night Elves = the hopping and flipping is so annoying
Draenei = blue goats with rubber tails
Gnomes = awesome
Dwarves = awesome
Worgen = terrible casting animations

[ravenmoon]

Because they don't have Blood Elves.
Fairly simple in my case.

would you play them then if High elves became playable on the alliance ? and if so would you switch factions or just also play a high elf?

also, woudl you play them if blood elves became playable on the allinace? and what would you prefer? playable high elves on the alliance or a group of blood elves available to the alliance? [there is a difference btw]

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I'm playing a fantasy game and don't want my character to be a boring old human, a short human (dwarf), even shorter human (gnome), human with pointy ears (night elf), human werewolf, .... or space alien.

do you play blood elf?

[Mace]

Cause I play on Moonguard, and Alliance RP is absolutely pathetic.

you referring to the Goldshire bunnies? I could never get that, someone please explain that to me.

what is horde RP like? btw, i have nothing against RPers, I think it's a bit hypocritical for people playing a role-playing game to hold RPers in contempt - it's just silly

[ravenmoon]

Because I can go to any other fantasy game in existence and play the standard issue, Tolkien-eqsue 'good races', aka Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits/Gnomes, etc. I can be a human in a medieval inspired, castle-town city, be a dwarf that likes to drink and smith in an underground kingdom, be a nature-loving magical elf in a pretty forest.

But how many games can I play an orc, a troll, a minotaur, a zombie, and an 'evil' elf and not be an irredeemable force of evil in the world that the above mentioned 'good races' must destroy?* Not many. In fact, almost none. I can be the good fantasy stereotype in another game, so why pass up the opportunity to play something different?

* - nb4 alliance fanboys ignoring the whole rebellion thing and claiming otherwise.

now I really get that ... although you have to see this is not the view of the masses, and this is why alliance will always have more numbers if humans are only available on the alliance. We're human, and they tend to view their characters as avatars of themselves, and role the cloest thing to them... which makes me wonder in wow, what black and asian players do - since there aren't any real likeness models to black people or asian people in the human customization, do they then identify more by default to the other races or play white boys? - i know guys play chicks too and where chicks are concerned, normally colour is barely relevant as long as she's hot !!

anyway, point is few can relate to orc/troll/minotaur/zombie/space goat/midget and wolf man - as cool as they can be they even have an issue with point eared humans who in wow have ears so long they really look less human than they're comfortable with, and alliance side having purple skin shades makes it even worse. They'll just stick to humans.

that's wow's most redeeming quality, able to play different races and those races having different zones

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I played horde all through vanilla and TBC. In wotlk I rerolled alliance and played it the entire expansion. In Cata I looked for something new and attempted to reroll horde once more. I couldn't, I was outraged and disgusted at the quests telling you to do outright evil things, particularly undead and belf quests. I think I stopped in Ashenvale when I had to take out a nelf commander fighting to protect the forrest.

No ideea how can the horde be considered as on the side of Good (essentially) while having the undead and the goblins in it.

prob blizz trying to give them a horde feel. And whiles I can understand this being the dominating character of the horde through most of the quest chaining, they do need good guys, it's another factor putting people off the faction, and it really needs to have more than the half bull/man group being the good guys.

it's another reason humans should be playable on the horde, not as alliance human, but as foraken humans (some of the undead that somehow got cured back into living human flesh) and whiles very loyal to the horde and hating the alliance for trying to kill them as undead, they bring a humane side or option to the forsaken that allows some decent questing, you may even have plots where the human forsaken stop some of the evil forsaken plans.. anyway there are tons you could do with this possibility.

[Sevyvia]

I know right? Maybe I should ask the opposite seeing that alliance : horde ratios are like 60:40 . But closer looks do reveal that the majority of the core gaming community is horde, espeially at end game.

What leads you to this conclusion? Because it seems pretty much purely anecdotal.

[Mace]

Doomhammer never drank demon blood and he was the leader of the orcs during the second war
so unless you have some super secret insider knowledge of how doomhammer really was just mind controlled the second war and all it's atrocities were the result of orcs under the leadership by someone in full control of his actions

and I think mist and cata showed quite well that there is no difference between orcs on or off demon blood

you sure bout that? didn't he drink as well but Thrall's parents Durotan didn't? I know a whole book was written on it, but I read it years ago

[ravenmoon]

Started Horde, female tauren, because the Alliance races just looked so normal and boring. I played Horde for some time before moving Alliance due to the server being horrible in terms of faction balance. On Horde we had 2, maybe 3 active raiding guilds and at least one of them had a main roster filled with jerks. SO, Alliance I went. I then changed back Horde for about 7 months when I got a spot in a Horde raiding guild, but it began falling apart right before we hit Lich King and when it finally did I went Alliance again for the benefit of a living economy. Stayed on Alliance through end of WOTLK, all of Cataclysm and a few months of MoP after that since I had friends on Alliance (still do) and also found a home in a Portuguese guild through a friend who hardly plays anymore. We had some good times raiding Dragon Soul and the first tier of MoP but the guild had during this time moved to Aggra, the portuguese PVP server, and things went downhill. Activity went down and with each gank/having to fight off attackers in order to just pick a herb or loot a questmob on Isle of Thunder, I decided it was enough and moved server with my toons. It was obvious that I was going back Horde once and for all on my main toons.

I feel at home again. The races, cities, lore, quests, quality...everything just feels superior on Horde. Nowadays when I go into Stormwind on one of my 3 Alliance alts, I feel crowded and boxed in since those streets aren't made with flying mounts in mind. Orgrimmar never gives me that feeling. Alliance feels like a rerun of the regular fantasy stories apart from the space goats. Horde feels unique in races and cities and zones.

I have 14 level 90 toons, 13 of those are on Draenor Horde and 1 is on Silvermoon Alliance. I will no doubt have more Alliance toons simply because over the years I've grown very fond of the dwarves, BUT if I would be forced to choose one side, it'd be Horde forever.

Today I race changed my DK, who has been a female belf due to a brainfart I had when moving her from Alliance, into a male orc with the white skin available to DK's and I almost had a fangirl moment...My DK looks badass now, something I just for the life of me couldn't achieve on Alliance. Worgen DK? Well, maybe if 2-hand animations on the males didn't involve constant spinning through the air and the females didn't run like their legs are made out of wood.

I often get that Horde only attracts teenage boys wanting to be badass, I also believed that for quite some time but...I feel it too, and I'm a 27-year old female. The darker theme of the Horde appeals to me, and I can't wait for the day when we get new models so I can finally roll a female tauren again!

that's my attraction to the horde, but does the story weigh against your likeability? horde quests don't really paint a fair/decent/noble picture of the group as a whole unless you like making excuses for bad attitude. Saying that, it's not all black and white, Tauren as a whole are portrayed as genuine good guys - but then not many can stomach plain half cow/half man

[fassade]

Horde are better for pve these days. Even Method changed their alignment to horde. KIN Raiders are the first in Asia who killed 25H paragons of Klaxxi. But they lost in the battle against Hellscream. They were Alliance in Oct 1, but they were horde in Oct 6 when they killed Hellscream. Guess they found their DPS is insufficent and had to change their alignment.

Alliance races are better at PvP. But very few WoW players do PvP now. Even if they do, The influence of the oldest PvPers is still there: Vurtne, Drakedog, Zibba, Pat, Laintime. They're all horde players and most of them are Undead. Yeah, undead is coooooooooooool, why should I play those alliance pussy?

By the way, since BE joined horde, alliance even lost their advantage of good looking.

In the end, no one plays Alliance. Regardless of PvP player, PvE player or casual player.

Things are better in US/EU because many players here likes Dungeons & Dragons and may play the alliance "standard fantasy" races for role playing causes. However, as a Chinese, we don't have the similar culture and the h/a ratio in CN and TW server is about 6:4. I guess it is the same in KR server

[De Lupe]

Tauren > Goblins = Pandaren > Worgen = Trolls > Forsaken > Others >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Humans

[Invictus9001]

Alliance doesn't interest me aside from worgen, and that's not enough. Just don't like them.

Worgens were the ONLY reason why I ever rolled an Alliance toon. I have, since, dabbled with making Dwarves and Night Elves as well, even an Alliance Pandaren. Yet, the vast majority of my characters are Horde - and I enjoy those characters moreso than my Alliance toons. Maybe it's just because of the relatively small amount of time I've bothered playing Alliance, as I began Horde very late in TBC.. but still. /shrug

Tauren > Goblins = Pandaren > Worgen = Trolls > Forsaken > Others >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Humans

I definitely agree with the very end of that list. Humans, FTL (for the loss).

[ravenmoon]

What leads you to this conclusion? Because it seems pretty much purely anecdotal.

conclusion that I should ask the opposite or conclusion that core gamers are horde? The latter (since you said anectodal) is pretty much the numbers. 2 wow census sites put a higher majority, and in many pvp realms, significantly higher horde numbers at the max level - and though the inference that the end-game represents the core gaming community is more anecdotal than factual, the inference was made by the rather strong horde support you see at events like Blizzcon and on the forum community. Also looking at the competitive gamers on pvp and pvE, the leading rated groups and world first racers are pre-dominated by the horde.

IT has to do with racials being both superior (if only slightly) and perceived that way too. The perception goes a longer way off course, because a minute difference is perceived to matter immensely, certainly for min-maxers, and then all those who aspire to gaming legendary - which is a huge core of the end game population.

Alliance numbers overwhelm horde in the casual department, the active accounts or the not played, those with characters not maxed (by inference) and overwhelming in the new players numbers, observable in new realms and also making sense.

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surprises me when I see people failing to admit or recognise the horde is the superior faction. It seems pretty evident to me. It's been developed that way intentionally too, and the reason also seems pretty clear to me.

The alliance has higher numbers despite all of this, because people play human. It's familiar, it's who they are, they'll tend to that. Without humans on the horde, the developers have to keep providing incentives to play horde - and maintain that - they've imablanced their story telling, skewed their game stats, it's messed up the game, because alliance is boring, quests and plots have less effort and less attention in them, racials favour horde which has skewed the end-game population - it's hurt the franchise a lot. A situation that can be remedied I feel if humans were playable on the horde, and there are ways to do that that don't undermine the Orc vs human core which it has to be remembered is not a orc vs ALL humans , and ways it doesn't homogenize the factions idnentities but rather significantly boosts their depth (which is why I support the racial-factions/sub races or groups for each race being a playable reality in the game).

[Deleted]

Reverse question: Why don't I play Horde?

I did play Horde initially because all of my friends did when I started playing during TBC. I remember questing and I hated humans back then cause they always ran away like cowards calling their friends and killing me (I was a noob back then, I'm also aware that there's more races doing that).
All of my friends stopped playing, literally, ALL of them. Since I was a noob and had no clue what I was doing it was hard for me to get to know anyone, so I changed server and rerolled Alliance just to see how that was, and made my Night Elf Druid.

Even when questing I met alot of people, made lots of friends, joined a good raiding guild, people bothered to tell me about websites and how to play and I improved. I kind of stuck with Alliance ever since. I'm even still on that server. I feel very attached to it.

The main reason why I don't play Horde:

Trolls: I hate female trolls, how they look like, that they only have 1 (!) bearable face, and the way they walk pisses me off. Most gear looks terrible on them (imo).
Blood Elves: They are nice but a bit too skinny and small and the gear doesn't show well because of it .
Orcs: Female orcs are great animation wise, but it's the 1 bearable face/hair issue again.
Tauren: I LOVE tauren, absolutely LOVE them, but I hate everything about the female model, the casting, the jumping, the walking, everything. The males I find awesome though.
Undead: I hate everything about them.
Goblins: I hate everything about them.

So yes, if Blizzard would update the models in a way that I'd like them, give more choice for faces and hair etc, I'd go back Horde. I tried switching to playing a male but it just feels wrong.

Female Night Elves and female Draenei are my favourite cause nothing annoys me about them. Female humans are ok, as a hunter they look great imo.

[Arcrin]

i want to play horde but guild is faggotry alliance

[TheDangerZone]

For me it's about races and models: I like the races available enough, but besides the draenei model, I just can't play with the others. The animation is clunky and the models are just not interesting to me. Even tho Night Elves and Dwarves are high on my fave list, the models are just disappointing.

So, the only 90 ali that I have is a draenei, and I really don't like having more than 2 high lvl characters from the same gender/race combo. I do like the draenei models,but they clip a lot so I still prefer the blood elves model from the BC era.

So either give me cool new models and/or high elves and I will play alliance, that overall I like more lorewise hands down. I mean, I love the horde themes, which are much more interesting; but dang, I really want some characters that are just good and fighting for what they believe instead of being sexual pawns in Garrosh, Vol'jin and Sylvanas kinky games.

[Steelangel]

Alliance player here. I always had a good feel for the heroes of the Alliance from WC2 (I'd never played WC3). I was a bit bummed when I'd heard that Lordaeron was destroyed, and that almost all the heroes I knew from the game were either missing or dead, but my friends were Alliance, so I stayed.

I could NEVER play Horde. I never really considered faction pride an important point until I went for Loremaster at the end of Wrath. I loved Ashenvale, even though I'd never leveled a nelf. My heart sank when I saw the Horde logging camp. It was all this beauty and magic being torn up for no reason, except maybe to spite the night elves. That was a huge strike. Then Cataclysm happened; and the Horde just became this morass of ethical issues. The goblins took one of the most beautiful areas in the game---Azshara---and basically turned it into a toxic waste dump, the Orcs did more damage to Ashenvale, the Forsaken decided to just plague the hell out of Gilnaeas because Sylvanas is a genocidal maniac, and the Tauren, these supposedly nature-loving beings, did jack all to stop the rampant destruction of the natural world of Azeroth.

Not that the Alliance can be equated with Greenpeace, but the Gnomes are actively trying to clean up their mess, the Dwarves want mostly to drink to excess and dig in the ground, and the Night Elves want mostly to be left alone and not have their sacred lands desecrated. For any faults that they have; the Alliance isn't going around turning what was once green and verdant into trampled brown wasteland. The Vale's destruction isn't one Orc's folly in his search for power, it's what Orcs do.

The best part is that the Horde has "better storylines"---of course they do. They have to rationalize the fact that you're playing on a side which basically represents warmongerers, corporate interests, the scourge-lite, and their enablers and useful idiots.

[Mace]

you know, I've often thought of and wondered what it would be like if you were forced to play both factions like int he RTS.

You couldn't pass a certain zone, until you had gotten to the same area on the other faction, so basically the choice you would have both factions is to do the adventure with your race of choice on each faction.. and it's your pairing that levels up. So whatever level your alliance character is , so will your horde character be.

[Zenny]

Yes we drank demon blood and tried to kill everyone in the world, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. That's nothing compared to the Alliance atrocity of locking us up just because we tried to kill everyone in the world.

Yes Sylvanas was plaguing and experimenting horribly on random human beings in Undercity, but you know, maybe they were bad or something. Please ignore.

Yes our Warchief blew up Theramore, but much later we deposed him for unrelated reasons, so let's just call everything even okay?

Yes technically Sylvanas did develop a plague to kill everyone, and did make a demon of the Burning Legion her second in command, but that doesn't mean the Wrathgate was our fault. That demon promised to be nice, who could have expected he might lie or something?

Yes the orcs are invading Ashenvale to steal natural resources, but uh... fuck you, we want them. That's a valid explanation, right?

How many of these patented "Horde Excuses For Why Nothing We Do Is Our Fault" is the Alliance really supposed to be interested in listening to?

Obvious Horde Bias.