So what has the alliance done thats so bad blizzard?

[Dreknar20]

He uses the word chaos when referring to the blowing up of transports, the chaos of people not being able to escape a besieged city. Ofc they are blowing up the ships and killing the flight master to prevent escape, why else?
No side is evil or good, but Blizzard are doing a fine job of make the Alliance out as explicitly good.

I didn't think I'd say this, but I'm beginning to get that feeling the Alliance questing experience is sub par, again.

He never said civilian transports, he just used the term ships

Burning ships so they cant use them to strike back?
Butchering their flight-master so they cant attack the gunship when it arrives?
Sabatoging war machines so they again cant counter-attack?
He specifically says "Throw them into chaos so we can re-group"
He didnt say "Throw them into chaos to ensure women and children cannot escape"

[Scummer]

He never said civilian transports, he just used the term ships

Burning ships so they cant use them to strike back?
Butchering their flight-master so they cant attack the gunship when it arrives?
Sabatoging war machines so they again cant counter-attack?
He specifically says "Throw them into chaos so we can re-group"
He didnt say "Throw them into chaos to ensure women and children cannot escape"

Nor did he say military ships.
My money's on it being another one of Garrosh's sadistic tactics to prevent the civilian population from leaving so he can bomb them to oblivion.

[Lycanroc]

But the alliance? They only have Taurajo as an example of there warcrimes, and even that was whitewashed by the way the quest of presented, with hawkwind being all 'oh I feel such shame for this!' attitude.

I'd like to also point out another thing that peeves me off about this:
If you do the Alliance quests the guy who commanded the attack is like - "We set the camp on fire, but oh we let the children and women go and only killed those who tried to fight back. Please kill the looters! Looting the poor, destroyed camp is wrong!"
He's not ashamed, just 'oh I'm a good person at heart'.
And then he's brutally slaughtered by the Horde character.
The Alliance is supposed to be just as "bad" as the Horde, but I feel the same way. They're playing Ally up as the 'good' guys and Horde as the 'bad' guys.

[Totle]

As it's been noted in a blue post, there isn't much in terms of the Alliance/Horde war in game right now. As they explained, at launch, the idea is "we're in a new land, let's get our bearings and establish ourselves".

Future patches will be, "now that we're established, let's go back to killing each other" and we'll (hopefully) see a faction war patch (if that isn't already planned for the last patch).

Hopefully, we'll have the Alliance do something interesting like slaughter a bunch of outposts or unveil a nuke that will force both factions to realize that the war is escalating. When they meet for a war summit, the general consensus will be that Garrosh has got to go or the Alliance will drop the proverbial "bomb".

[Primaliron]

Nor did he say military ships.
My money's on it being another one of Garrosh's sadistic tactics to prevent the civilian population from leaving so he can bomb them to oblivion.

My bet would be he doesn't even think about it. If you learn one thing from every quest involved with him it's that he's an idiot. Org is under siege so he's sending troops to Vashj'ir and Gilneas... yeah that's smart. Secure your damn supplies lines in Ashenvale and Stonetalon. Secure the ground between Org and TB, onliterate Theramore (okay that's coming at least) and Northwatch so that you only have to defend from the North against the Alliance. A good offense is only a good defense when you aren't wasting troops on heavily fortified positions. And when the Twilight's Hammer knows you're sending an air fleet into the Highlands, maybe you should ignore the Alliance and keep your close air support when your enemy has dragons. Sylvanas was going to kill herself (or try) in Icecrown until she had a vision of his incompetence.

---------- Post added 2012-07-07 at 08:44 PM ----------

Hopefully, we'll have the Alliance do something interesting like slaughter a bunch of outposts or unveil a nuke that will force both factions to realize that the war is escalating. When they meet for a war summit, the general consensus will be that Garrosh has got to go or the Alliance will drop the proverbial "bomb".

The Alliance unveils the ultimate horror, holographic projecter bombs that show giant Gnome males dancing. The testing of this device causes mass suicide that wipes out all life on Azeroth. The Old Gods are so horrified that they can never accomplish such an evil feat and die from shock. The Burning Legion is so disgusted they don't want to even touch Azeroth any more. The Titans, reviled by what happened to their creations, deploy warning systems to Azeroth in the hopes that nobody will ever go there again. They admit to Sargeras that their creations were flawed, they hug and make up, peace is restored to the universe.

[AbalDarkwind]

Not to take away from the Horde's aggression, but two prominent Alliance leaders, Archdruid Fandral Staghelm and Archbishop Jarl Benedictus, turned traitor and joined Ragnaros and Deathwing, respectively, in their quest to destroy the world.

[Matt0193]

I am genuinely finding it hard to think of a single incident that was started by the Alliance. I could say Benedictus, but he was corrupted my the Twilights Hammer or w/e.

And in which case, that would be the Orcs again considering that the Twilight's Hammer was originally an Orc Clan, which came to great power during the reign of Cho'gall.

http://www.wowpedia.org/Twilight's_Hammer_clan:

"The history of the Twilight's Hammer begins with Cho'gall, the first ogre mage. Cho'gall was made the leader of an orc clan after its previous chieftain was executed for disobeying the Shadow Council. The clan's name was then changed to Twilight's Hammer; its original name and that of its former chieftain was stricken from all records. Under Cho'gall's leadership, the clan became increasingly nihilistic and eventually sought the destruction of all creation"

And while needing further evidence to back this up, on the same page just after:

"This was true of their clan even before the orcs joined the pact with Mannoroth.[4]".

That was a different horde. Fel-Crazy orcs are not the Horde.

Firing on a goblin ship simply because they saw something that they shouldn't have, there's one.

Point, but considering that the goblins have closer ties to toe Horde, rather than the neutrality they claim to have, it's not too far-fetched to imagine why they fired on it.

Humans raised and trained the Lich King

They raised Arthas, not the Lich King. They weren't one in the same until he actually put the helm on

guiding him through his teen years to adulthood as a spoiled power hungry brat. After refusing to stop his genocidal actions at Stratholme and instead looking the other way, the human leaders lent thier vessels and army to him to travel to his seat of power in Northrend.

Another point, but when you consider that the Human nations were a soverignity, not a democacry, this again isn't out of place. To disobey your liege is to disobey your kingdom, branding you a traitor... and so on. It's also a point to note that the Lich King is actually Ner'zhul, Elder Shaman of the (Old)Horde.

Also trained by the fallen Titan Sargeras' avatar in Medivh,

Can't really argue that, an archaic human organisation caused Aegwynn to rebel (Another "Alliance" figure, in the form of a Night Elf) and choose her own successor, Medivh. This, accompanied by her arrogance and ego, led to her finding the Avatar of Sargeras and becoming possessed by a portion of Sargeras.

Khadgar led the humans in thier invasion of Outland, determined to wipe out the orcish race in revenge after Medivh himself invited them to Azeroth via the Dark Portal (his creation).

This was the end of the second second war, where the Orcs had escaped the Camps (Which were suggest by our very own Varian, and voted against by Danasterian Sunstrider and Genn Greymane) and started once again to attack human settlements; some were warranted, such as Durnholde (though how many innocents did Thrall kill then in his pursuit of vengance against Blackmoore? Not everyone within the keep had a part in his captivity and treatment.) while others were not. This leads to the start of the second war, where the Alliance of Lordereon fights back and pushed to the Old Horde (Note, not Thrall's Horde) to Blackrock Mountain and, after breaking them there, through the Dark Portal. In an attempt to stop them rallying behind the portal and attacking again, Turalyon and the remainder of the Sons of Lothar pushed through the portal.

Night elves were a magic crazed race, drunk on the Well of Eternity's power. After openly inviting the fallen Titan Sargeras to Azeroth (thwarted by the heroic Orc Broxigar), they split into the demonic Satyrs and oceanic Naga. A group of elves that disagreed with the demonic taint of the night elves split off to Quel'thalas to study the pure magic of the Sunwell. A small remainder of elves turned thier back on arcane and demonic magic and instead worshipped trees and stuff.

A portion were crazed about the Well of Eternity, they were the Highborne. Those who were not were called the Kal'dorei. Satyrs were created by Sargeras (A being Corrupted by Eredar, the original species of Draenei(After retcons), an example you forgot to mention I guess ;p), not a split faction of the Highborne, and those that were turned into Naga were corrupted by an Old God (Not that it redeems them at all). The Blood Elves are a remnant of the Highborne that survived the Sundering, so the Horde are harbouring those who destroyed Azeroth (Small world, Orcs destroyed Draenor too) as it once was. High Elves are another faction (More commonly associated with the Alliance than the Horde (If they ever were?)) and the Elves that "worshiped trees" and stuff were the ones who tried to fight to save Azeroth, but were ultimately too late.

You're right, perceptions do change the way a situation is portrayed.

[Deleted]

Why not? I don't understand.

[Korgoth]

I'm jealous the Horde gets to have its leader killed, I hate this douchebag king! When are we going to get a Caesar!

[Deleted]

Theramore is more like Dunkirk than Pearl Harbour.

[Tyrathius]

As it's been noted in a blue post, there isn't much in terms of the Alliance/Horde war in game right now. As they explained, at launch, the idea is "we're in a new land, let's get our bearings and establish ourselves".

Future patches will be, "now that we're established, let's go back to killing each other" and we'll (hopefully) see a faction war patch (if that isn't already planned for the last patch).

Hopefully, we'll have the Alliance do something interesting like slaughter a bunch of outposts or unveil a nuke that will force both factions to realize that the war is escalating. When they meet for a war summit, the general consensus will be that Garrosh has got to go or the Alliance will drop the proverbial "bomb".

We can hope. But we'll be disappointed.

People have been raising these issues about the Alliance since Cata was first announced. They assured us we didn't know everything and it would be okay. Then Beta came out and it turned out we were right. They ignored us. When the expansion launched the complaints about Alliance neglect grew louder and louder until Blizz finally couldn't ignore it and admitted that maybe they dropped the ball, but it would be better in MoP. Then they announced Theramore was being destroyed, in a complete continuation of the issues that plagued Cata's story, in order to give the Alliance reason to fight back (because we totally didn't have that already). Now MoP Beta is out and we still aren't doing anything.

I think it's safe to say that if changes aren't coming by now they aren't coming period.

[Kiingy]

Satyrs were created by Sargeras (A being Corrupted by Eredar, the original species of Draenei(After retcons), an example you forgot to mention I guess ;p), not a split faction of the Highborne, and those that were turned into Naga were corrupted by an Old God (Not that it redeems them at all).

This part here is wrong, Sargeras was not corrupt by the Eredar.
Sargeras is a titan, he was the champion who was meant to defend the worlds they had created, which he did for a long time.
Long story short, he eventually got corrupt by the demons (the nathrezim, Mo'arg, and Infernals) and turned evil.

He was the one who corrupt the Eredar, he found them on their planet Argus and offered them power, two of their three leaders accepted (Kil'Jaeden and Archimonde) while Velen saw what would become of his people (being a prophet and all) and fled with his followers to Draenor, which is now known as Outland and ofc renamed themself the Draenei, which is Eredun for exiled ones.

[Scummer]

My bet would be he doesn't even think about it. If you learn one thing from every quest involved with him it's that he's an idiot. Org is under siege so he's sending troops to Vashj'ir and Gilneas... yeah that's smart. Secure your damn supplies lines in Ashenvale and Stonetalon. Secure the ground between Org and TB, onliterate Theramore (okay that's coming at least) and Northwatch so that you only have to defend from the North against the Alliance. A good offense is only a good defense when you aren't wasting troops on heavily fortified positions. And when the Twilight's Hammer knows you're sending an air fleet into the Highlands, maybe you should ignore the Alliance and keep your close air support when your enemy has dragons. Sylvanas was going to kill herself (or try) in Icecrown until she had a vision of his incompetence.

The quests give the opposite opinion though of Garrosh as a military leader. He's a sound military leader but he's not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to anything else.
Org under siege atm? You mean those two Northwatch forces that you're sent to deal with and do.
He already has supply lines into Ashenvale, Stonetalon is a different matter.

Militarily speaking he does know what he's doing. that's part of the the reason the Orcs loved him in Wrath as they saw him as an old school Orc who kept leading them to victory.

[Argent Champion]

The Horde are generally the badguys. And why shouldn't they be? Look who they are. Orcs, Minotaurs, Ghouls, Trolls and arrogant, cruel elves. All the classically evil races. Admittedly nobody's perfect but the Alliance have all the typical heroic races. Not only that but I see the story as similar to Native Americans and their struggles.

The alliance races were living happily on their own land and suddenly another force invades their home, kills their people and tries to take it over. Except it differs in that the Alliance won eventually. They spared the invaders and eventually let them go. Really what makes the horde races good?

Orcs aren't truly evil. However, they are a warrior culture that favors courage over other traits. Orchish "honor" is basically described as "Don't be a coward". They are driven to seek battle and prove themselves. That puts them on the dark side of the morality spectrum because they require violence to be respected.

Trolls were cannibals. They used to eat other humanoids. Pretty nasty. Many of their spiritual practices are rooted in shadow magic. Hexes and whatnot.

Forsaken are corpses animated by dark magic. And cannibals, don't forget. Generally whatever they were in life is twisted by the darkness that keeps them moving. Their only redeeming quality was that their desire for revenge was justified by who their revenge was directed at. They were out to kill a villain. He's dead now though. And their focus is gone. Now they are just existing. However their continued existence requires that they keep their numbers up. And so they revert back to their nature. They reproduce through murder and slavery. They are without a doubt the most evil playable race on Azeroth.

Tauren are cool. They are connected only to the Horde through personal debt. If the Alliance had happened by when the Tauren needed saving, they could conceivably have joined the Alliance instead. They were already on friendly terms with the night elves after all.

Blood elves represent many of the negative traits of civilized humanity. They are arrogant, largely detached from nature, nationalistic, condescending and obsess on power. Really if Blizz wanted to vilify the Alliance, they should have added Blood Elves back into the Alliance rather than the horde. They'd go far to add a Lawful evil bent to the faction. Instead the Alliance got Draenei. The most virtuous race of all.

Goblins are greedy, short-sighted and materialistic.

Now obviously the Horde has it's own virtues and justifications because Blizz wants both factions to cater to all fans. Some people like to play the badguys and some like to be good. However, overall the Alliance ARE the classic heros. If you had no knowledge of the world of Warcraft and just jumped in and wanted to play the badguys, who would you pick?

People who like heros will naturally gravitate to the Alliance.
People who like Villains will naturally look first to the horde.
Why disappoint them?

What's the point of making such a sinister looking group and such a noble looking one if the sinister ones are heros and the noble ones are villains? Some boring "don't judge a book by it's cover" Lesson? That'll get old fast.

If you'd wanted to be heroic, you'd not have rolled horde. Since you have, you need to just accept that you picked the "less justifiable" faction.

And yes, I know popular culture these days is so very focused on "No black and white! All must be grey!" sorts of stories but there needs to be somebody people can look up to. Something to make this more than just a story about two people with different flags who kill eachother.

[Eliot123]

The Horde are generally the badguys. And why shouldn't they be? Look who they are. Orcs, Minotaurs, Ghouls, Trolls and arrogant, cruel elves. All the classically evil races. Admittedly nobody's perfect but the Alliance have all the typical heroic races. Not only that but I see the story as similar to Native Americans and their struggles.

>snip<

And yes, I know popular culture these days is so very focused on "No black and white! All must be grey!" sorts of stories but there needs to be somebody people can look up to. Something to make this more than just a story about two people with different flags who kill eachother.

Actually, I think this has quite a bit of truth to it.

[Trassk]

Argent champions post

Your entire post pretty much comes across with pure alliance one side bias opinion. Obviously as alliance you would only want to see the bad elements in the horde and ignore anything else. The horde were once the bad guys in the past, but overcame it. Now atm ones like the orcs are misguided by a bad leader, who they will kill or take care of come the end of mists, showing Garrosh's way for the horde is not the hordes future.

I know you think using other mmo examples like warhammer online give you reason to think the horde is bad, but that itself is wrong in its extension, as anyone who can play both sides of either horde or alliance could tell you, The alliance wants to wipe out the horde, not just the bad elements of the horde but all of it, the good along with the bad. So trying to claim the alliance are the good guys, even come mists they are as much responsible for the crisis on pandaria as the horde, its about time you buck up and stop using rose tinted glasses.

[Scummer]

Your entire post pretty much comes across with pure alliance one side bias opinion. Obviously as alliance you would only want to see the bad elements in the horde and ignore anything else. The horde were once the bad guys in the past, but overcame it. Now atm ones like the orcs are misguided by a bad leader, who they will kill or take care of come the end of mists, showing Garrosh's way for the horde is not the hordes future.

I know you think using other mmo examples like warhammer online give you reason to think the horde is bad, but that itself is wrong in its extension, as anyone who can play both sides of either horde or alliance could tell you, The alliance wants to wipe out the horde, not just the bad elements of the horde but all of it, the good along with the bad. So trying to claim the alliance are the good guys, even come mists they are as much responsible for the crisis on pandaria as the horde, its about time you buck up and stop using rose tinted glasses.

Excluding the line "And why shouldn't they be? Look who they are. Orcs, Minotaurs, Ghouls, Trolls and arrogant, cruel elves." He does have a point though in what he's saying. The Horde are certainly the darker shade of grey, which is what he's getting at.

I know you'd like to believe the majority of Orcs are like Thrall, but that's just not the case.

[Trassk]

Excluding the line "And why shouldn't they be? Look who they are. Orcs, Minotaurs, Ghouls, Trolls and arrogant, cruel elves." He does have a point though in what he's saying. The Horde are certainly the darker shade of grey, which is what he's getting at.

I know you'd like to believe the majority of Orcs are like Thrall, but that's just not the case.

excuse me unless you've just been intentionally ignoring what I've said thus far then you don't really know anything about my current take on the orcs.

As I say, the orcs are misguided by a douchebag leader that pushed there culture deeper into a state of war. The problem with orcs is unless they have someone tell them how to act they just follow whatever there current leader tells them... actually that's pretty much what humans do as well, or did you forget the culling of stratholme?

[Scummer]

excuse me unless you've just been intentionally ignoring what I've said thus far then you don't really know anything about my current take on the orcs.

As I say, the orcs are misguided by a douchebag leader that pushed there culture deeper into a state of war. The problem with orcs is unless they have someone tell them how to act they just follow whatever there current leader tells them... actually that's pretty much what humans do as well, or did you forget the culling of stratholme?

It's hard to tell what your position is on Orcs. You do have a habit of making topics about how you dislike the turn the Orcs have taken and that it's against their own noble savage esque ways.

[Eliot123]

I think Argent Champion was more like, aiming for the bigger picture, in relation to WoW but also outside of it - if you get when I mean. Like, if you look at the races that make the Horde and their fantasy history before Warcraft (yes yes irrelevant, whatever), pretty much all of them were made to represent man's fears and evils in one way or another (undead? orcs? goblins? trolls?) and I do agree with him that a person who doesn't know much about WoW's lore beforehand and is into ''noble and heroic'' is more likely to roll Alliance than Horde (I'll start from myself - I had no idea what WoW was before I bought WoW while on vacation back in 2005 and because I didn't have net connection there, I had to wait until I got home to play, but in the meantime I read the original WoW manual cover to cover. Just reading about the Alliance and Horde races, what they are, what they do, etc, made me decide that I wanted to play the Alliance, especially under influences such as LotR*). If Blizz writers are doing what they are doing now on purpose I do not know but there might be some truth to what he says about them wanting to represent sides as good and evil for a specific purpose (such as simplifying the story to attract more customers?).

I do, somewhat, like the idea of not representing the Horde as the typical, classic ''bad guys'', nor the Alliance of typical ''good and noble'' side (hell, I would've been the first to side with Leyara and incinerate Malfurion to a crisp back on Molten Front if we had that option) but as of lately, sides have been getting really polarized, which I guess is the main problem here.

However, all that said, what did you expect. WoW writing is about as shallow as it gets. If anything, I'd want WoW story to be more engaging/deeper/with more immersion, especially as the current bland ol' Alliance but eh, nothing is perfect, and World of Warcraft is a video game after all, not a serious piece of literature.

*After all this time though, I still am sticking with the same decision, while I see the fun elements in playing an Orc, a Blood Elf, or a Tauren, I'd never want to play as a faction who sides with the Forsaken - video game or not, I still have some moral principles of my own irl that I like to always respect. If my guild were to change to Horde, for one reason or another, I think I'd most likely roll a Blood Elf.

The whole seperation in good vs bad isn't neccessarily bad in it self, the problem is the way blizzard handels it. If the Horde were in fact just a bunch of savage murderers (like the villains in DCUO or the sith in SWTOR) people could just adapt to it and commit to their role (I wouldn't be playing horde then, though). The thing in wow is that you constantly oscillate between good and bad, just depending on which zone you happen to play in at the moment. One moment you try to save every living beeing in azeroth from annihilation, the next time your are tasked to murder a few innocent. Sometimes, even within a certain plotline, you go from "lets work together" to "darn, you are in my way, die already". There is simply no consistency in our actions.

In some way, even though it was still poorly done overall, the war in cataclysm made more sense. The ashenvale massacre was, while it was staged by the twilight hammer, still a certain point in the plot that made both parties fight one another w/o making one party purely bad, because both parties felt justified in their actions. What I've seen in MoP so far does not make sense and just boils down to the horde beeing bad, and every orc beeing a moron that follows derprosh blindly. And once again you switch between noble hero and savage beast in a matter of seconds w/o ryhme nor reason. The only thing that could possibly fix any of this would be the new version of the jade forest (might be the only good that comes out of it), but I get the feeling blizzar (or more the point metzen) doesn't even realize that. Anyway, maybe the first content patch brings in a plot that evens things out, the alliance needs to do some serious shit though to catch up to the horde ...

I also agree with this, especially the first paragraph.

Anyhow, coffee time!

Edit:

I'd expect an alliance fan to only see orcs in the worst possible way and forget how there culture came from a noble yet savage tribesman based people, some tribes having more rough traditions then other tribes, but they did come from groups that respected things such as the elements, the ancestors and the hunt.

While I try not to be a huge Alliance fan, I know that deep inside I am and honestly, I'd be all up for peace with the Horde but currently, I don't see that happening anytime soon.