Originally Posted by
namelessone
So, after reading countless threads about lack of alliance faction pride, blizzard favoring horde, all stories made about horde, I thought about why this is REALLY happening and what can be done about it.
I was always a horde player, but I'm not hating alliance, and I agree that wow storytelling as it is has a problem. The problem, however, isn't something petty like "oh, Metzen just likes horde better".
First, the problem is that alliance is not conceptually interesting. It's place in the story of Warcraft, since Orcs and Humans pretty much, was to be foil to the horde. Alliance started to counteract the horde invasion, and ever since it's role was purely reactionary. Think about it. Most interesting alliance characters in the lore were always the few rare individuals who actually took action and stepped "outside" the Alliance.
Second, it's filled with too many fantasy cliches, it's too "safe" and familiar. While Horde can play with cool ideas and styles, alliance always had a theme of "generic knights in shining armor". Built of fantasy cliches. The worst part is that instead of bringing cool ideas with different races added to the alliance later, writers instead basically imposed Alliance on those races. Night Elves were awesome and original in WC3, but as soon as they started developing them as part of the alliance, Night Elves lost backbone and became bland tree-hugging pacifists. I mean, even Night Elf zones start out cool, but get blander and blander the closer it gets to alliance overall story arch.
Third, too much focus on Humans. Horde can get away with focusing on Orcs, because it is basically orcs from draenor leading smaller-numbered races of Azeroth. Alliance needs to differentiate from that. It should be emphasized that it's a union of different races, none of the "high king" BS. It would also not hurt to develop the other races of the alliance a bit. Humans are bland and generic, but let's say we need at least one such option in fantasy. Humans are okay. What about other races? Gnomes are supposed to be engineers, tinkers and inventors - but that's not emphasized in any way! Any character can be engineer, even a troll. Dwarves are almost as bland as humans, and they don't have half as much development. Night Elves have something going for them, but Blizzard seems to insist on reducing them to pacifist hippies. Draenei and Worgen could be cool, but they had pretty much ZERO development past the starting zones.
So here's my take on what has to be done to make Alliance more interesting:
- Develop alliance story OUTSIDE of Alliance vs Horde conflict. Make them achieve something important and cool that doesn't involve horde in any way whatsoever.
- Quit making "alliance" settlements. Make dwarf settlements, night elf settlements, even worgen camps. Quests have to reflect diversity of alliance races. Horde actually has that already. Remember in Northrend? Borean tundra had distinctly orc-themed base, howling fjord had distinctly forsaken-themed villages. On alliance though, both places had generic fortresses.
- Stop trying to create "alliance style". It always ends up feeling "human" and generic.
That would be a good start.
No TL/DR, because I have no idea what I just wrote.