Alliance, the punching bag

[Deleted]

Wait... Really in krasarang we have won?
However, cata was hordecentric with some alliance victories (Stonard) and some Horde defeats (which are not alliance victories, because they were on the defense) like astranaar&silverwing in wolfheart, or gilneas (which is rebuilding in lore but completely abandoned in game). But I fear what will happen during the siege...

Yes you did win. There is no denying it, the Alliance forces are all over the Horde at domination point in Karasang. Take a flight over and look for yourself.

Gnomish flyers over the base, ships bombarding the base offshore, a skyship nearby, paratroops dropping in, beachheads on the very base's doorstep, SI7 Saboteurs on the oil fields.

What has horde got the on the other side of the map? One small frontline just past the goblin observer post very far away from the Alliance base.

Oh and the litle patience scenario is cannon, Horde lost.

[Enosh]

and you guys get almost every hurrah in the novels

lol

I understand Thrall getting the KB on Deathwing many people consider that to be Horde, but let's be real he was representing the Earthen Ring and he is considered nuetral now, just because he was a horde hero,

1. the writers said he was still horde at heart
2. he helped bring the goblins into the horde
3. he is coming back into the horde now

(much like Tirion(sp) was an alliance hero.)

1. never in the history of WoW was Tirion part of the alliance
2. after the war against arthas was over he still remained neutral
3. the forsaken are plague bombing people and raising them as undead with the help of arthas valkyrs right next door to his ass and he does fuck all

I really can't help you if you can't see the difference between those 2

[Deleted]

Development is key for me. I really don't care if the faction is fighting a losing battle or failing in it's objectives, as long as there's detailed story. I guess incidents like hearing Vol'jin dissing the strength of the Alliance when they offer assistance (Kosak later confirmed that more speech had been added so Alliance could call Vol'jin's bluff - but still), people construe that as evidence of an unthinking bias against the Alliance.

[Deleted]

*Dwarfs discovered a huge part of their ancestry
*Saurfang the Younger kill, is considered Alliance Canon
*Your King Returned from years of being missing
*The Hordes of the Scourge are now being kept at bay by one of your greatest heroes because he made the ultimate sacrifice and became the Lich king.. YOU NOW HAVE AN ALLIANCE ALIGNED LICH KING!
*The Origin of Humans were revealed on Azeroth
*Alliance got the Kill on Putriss creator of the Plague (and to be fair I think Varian knows damn well Thrall would have schooled him if he pushed the subject further.)

There are even more I can point out. Sooooo yeah it was a very Alliance centric Xpac in terms of story.

Meanwhile, on the Horde side:
-Garrosh turned from emo to great tactician and got some growth there
-the forsaken finally did what they wanted since they broke free, end the threat of the Lich King
-the origins of tauren were revealed, and, contrary to previous knowledge, tauren are now the first druids according to a tauren druid in Borean Tundra that has been alive for the last 11k years
-the Horde killed Varimathras, the bringer of the Legion for his backstabbery and attempt to break the peace between Horde and Alliance
-the Horde got new shiny buildings they used in next expansions (the Alliance ones were never seen again)
-the forsaken developed a working plague... which they're still using now.
-the forsaken got valk'iries thus giving them a way to get more forsaken.

Yes, the truth is Wrath had a bit more focus on Alliance then Horde. But you can't even compare to how focused on Horde Cataclysm was. And this one is shaping to be a Horde one again, I mean MoP.

Swamp of sorrow alliance quest chain & stonard destruction are canon (horde versione is just there for gameplay reason)
Gilneas alliance version is canon, the forsaken are pushed back and the whole land is an alliance territory.
Ashenvale alliance version is canon, astranar still in alliance hands.

Only stonetalon mountain, theramore and southshore are horde canon.

Did you play swamp of sorrows? I did, you want to know what happens? We go, kill some orcs, then the military commander tells us "I am not going to burn their huts and them and dance in their ashes" and the Horde remains in there happy and nice.
Gilneas, fine it is. So... where's the Alliance in there? I mean, flying there I don't see anything, nobody's there. In places where Horde won I see Horde troops all over, where are all the Alliance troops here?
Yes, and they won so good, it's now overlooked by a Horde camp from the highground. I feel like a true winner!

You forgat that for Ashenvale, Horde won at the other camp, can't remember name, the one east, so we both won in defense, yay for us.
And why is the Stonard version there for gameplay reasons for the Horde? I mean, why doesn't the Horde leader say at the end "well, despite your greatest effort, we lost, because we suck" like our leader tells us in Andorhal when we lose? Or why doesn't the Alliance get its own version of Stonetalon where it saves the druids? I mean Horde got their version of Stonard.

No, there was only one place where Alliance won against the Horde, and that is Taurajo, and we didn't even get to see it.

The Horde doesn't have much story in the Worgen starting zone. As a Worgen player you simply meet a lot of Horde? Why? Because of war, because of a storyline. The Horde you encounter in the Worgen starting zone aren't the players.

He's talking about the part of the worgen story in Silverpine, the part that only Horde can see though it has its worgen wins too. You can't see that part as Alliance. You can only see it as Horde despite it being about both sides.

If only you could convince everyone to feel this way about Thrall.

I didn't know the Argent Crusade returned to the Alliance! Then the comparison makes sense. If they have not, it does not, for Thrall always was known to return to the Horde one day, and he has.

[pnt]

- Dalaran and the Kirin Tor, a long time arm of the Alliance, made neutral.
- The Argent Crusade, formed of members of the Argent Dawn, the Scarlet Crusade and the Order of the Silver Hand (all long time Alliance/leaned towards Alliance) go neutral.
- The Alliance gets a new king that, unless you followed lore outside of the game, you had NO freaking clue who the man was.

I'm a huge lore nerd and what ultimately brought me to unsub was Horde winning at EVERY turn. Call me an Alliance "cry baby" or "fanboy" or whatever you want but the Alliance gets shafted when it comes to the story.

[Deathgoose]

Swamp of sorrow alliance quest chain & stonard destruction are canon (horde versione is just there for gameplay reason)
Gilneas alliance version is canon, the forsaken are pushed back and the whole land is an alliance territory.
Ashenvale alliance version is canon, astranar still in alliance hands.

Only stonetalon mountain, theramore and southshore are horde canon.

- Swamp of Sorrow's Stonard compaign shows Alliance sacking Stonard... until you finish the chain. Then the phasing is completely removed and you would never know you actually did anything in there. If it's a canonical victory, then why does it reset to "you accomplished nothing" in game?
- Gilneas' story, from an Alliance perspective, only takes you up to blowing up the airship, then you depart for Darnassus. The entire rest of the story has to be experienced by rolling Horde and playing through Silverpine on a Forsaken quest chain. Oh, and the insurgents are also routed back to the city when Crowley's daughter is taken hostage or something (I think that's what I've read. Dunno, I don't have any Horde characters so I can't see in game. ). As to Gilneas being Alliance territory, it remains contested, which is why it's a BG.
- Ashenvale, another example of half-assed phasing like Stonard. Canonical win, yet the entire refuge by the one southern lake is still littered with NE corpses and their Horde slayers are still milling about just fine, even after you complete the entire zone. Oh yeah, and Alliance can't even manage to pop a fucking balloon carrying a mini-nuke and just watch it slowly drift off to go bomb the druid school.

The only clear Alliance 'win' where the effects are permanent and can be seen in game is Camp Taco. Of course, the General being assassinated and the Dwarven stronghold getting suicide bombed kind of tempered that 'win', and of course, led up to Theramore.

Horde canon, Stonetalon, there's a big black crater where the Druid school was that doesn't go away when you finish the quest chain. No question what happened there. Theramore, big glowy purple crater in the middle of the zone. (Admittedly, they added the CoT NPC to let you see it before it went boom for the purposes of not entirely fucking up the questing zone that they just spent an expansion redoing, but with an entire set of Scenarios devoted to Theramore plus all of the resulting Dalaran/Kirin Tor/Sunreaver drama, you know the results are real in game). Southshore had the entire town plague bombed into green ooze puddles, so no ambiguity there.

Azshara, which you left out, also went from contested to Horde only, and through the course of the questing, gets terraformed into the Horde symbol, so I think you have to include that in the Horde canon.

However, another you left out of the Horde canon, which was possibly the absolute worst loss in terms of how it was presented, was Andorhal. Alliance was actually winning that one until the Valkyrs were sent out onto the field. And then the Alliance player went out and thinned out their numbers before slaying the lead Valkyr, which the quest text basically told you that doing so would save the day. Then you go to turn in those quests, and you're basically told "LOLZ GG GUIZ BUT WE STILL LOST! TIME TO HEARTH! LOLZ!!!" and every Alliance NPC that was there is phased as dead from that point on. And to top it all off, Sylvanus going all Lich Queen with her Valkyrs went on about 100 feet from the new base of the Argent Crusade to the north

Also of note, compare the Horde Twlight Highland entry quest chain with the Alliance one as another example of the disparity between the two sides.

Again, it's not the wins and losses by themselves. It's the fact that many of the losses leave you feeling like "Da fuq?! How'd we lose that? o.O" and most of the wins are half-assed represented in game to the point you couldn't even tell you did anything.

[Deleted]

They did promise 'fist-pumping moments' for the Alliance in Mists of Pandaria.. Though, I have to admit I'm not sure what they are referring to exactly. Anyone else care to guess?

[GennGreymane]

even though wotlk was alliance centrism

it did not take away from a horde players game play the only time i can think so is the starting hubs in dragonblight. On my horde and my alliance the questing experience did not feel lesser one way or the other.

Cataclysm was horde centered, but the alliance leveling was much lower compared to a hordes, even in the 80+ stuff (mainly twilight highlands)

1-60, the horde had the better experience than alliance.

[Courierrawr]

*sigh* here we go again...

Given the fact that the Alliance had more zones than Horde since vanilla, it made sense that the Horde won a lot of battles since the zones had to be rebalanced. Still, the Alliance got a victory in the Southern Barrens, forgot about that?

What are you smoking? The Alliance got completely kicked out of the barrens, and got pushed back so far they lost Theramore.

[ariakul]

Just because there were humans in WOTLK doesn't mean it was alliance centric. Most of the humans were neutral.

I played both sides in WOTLK. The stories, cut scenes, etc were pretty much 50-50. Wrathgate was 50-50, it felt epic on each side. (should we say its horde centric though because it features the Scourge?)............

But, going from Vanilla through MOP, there is a definite downtrend in Alliance, both in terms of getting their teeth kicked in and other items (quality of quests, story lines, etc)

[bufferunderrun]

- Swamp of Sorrow's Stonard compaign shows Alliance sacking Stonard... until you finish the chain. Then the phasing is completely removed and you would never know you actually did anything in there. If it's a canonical victory, then why does it reset to "you accomplished nothing" in game?
- Gilneas' story, from an Alliance perspective, only takes you up to blowing up the airship, then you depart for Darnassus. The entire rest of the story has to be experienced by rolling Horde and playing through Silverpine on a Forsaken quest chain. Oh, and the insurgents are also routed back to the city when Crowley's daughter is taken hostage or something (I think that's what I've read. Dunno, I don't have any Horde characters so I can't see in game. ). As to Gilneas being Alliance territory, it remains contested, which is why it's a BG.
- Ashenvale, another example of half-assed phasing like Stonard. Canonical win, yet the entire refuge by the one southern lake is still littered with NE corpses and their Horde slayers are still milling about just fine, even after you complete the entire zone. Oh yeah, and Alliance can't even manage to pop a fucking balloon carrying a mini-nuke and just watch it slowly drift off to go bomb the druid school.

The only clear Alliance 'win' where the effects are permanent and can be seen in game is Camp Taco. Of course, the General being assassinated and the Dwarven stronghold getting suicide bombed kind of tempered that 'win', and of course, led up to Theramore.

Horde canon, Stonetalon, there's a big black crater where the Druid school was that doesn't go away when you finish the quest chain. No question what happened there. Theramore, big glowy purple crater in the middle of the zone. (Admittedly, they added the CoT NPC to let you see it before it went boom for the purposes of not entirely fucking up the questing zone that they just spent an expansion redoing, but with an entire set of Scenarios devoted to Theramore plus all of the resulting Dalaran/Kirin Tor/Sunreaver drama, you know the results are real in game). Southshore had the entire town plague bombed into green ooze puddles, so no ambiguity there.

Azshara, which you left out, also went from contested to Horde only, and through the course of the questing, gets terraformed into the Horde symbol, so I think you have to include that in the Horde canon.

However, another you left out of the Horde canon, which was possibly the absolute worst loss in terms of how it was presented, was Andorhal. Alliance was actually winning that one until the Valkyrs were sent out onto the field. And then the Alliance player went out and thinned out their numbers before slaying the lead Valkyr, which the quest text basically told you that doing so would save the day. Then you go to turn in those quests, and you're basically told "LOLZ GG GUIZ BUT WE STILL LOST! TIME TO HEARTH! LOLZ!!!" and every Alliance NPC that was there is phased as dead from that point on. And to top it all off, Sylvanus going all Lich Queen with her Valkyrs went on about 100 feet from the new base of the Argent Crusade to the north

Also of note, compare the Horde Twlight Highland entry quest chain with the Alliance one as another example of the disparity between the two sides.

Again, it's not the wins and losses by themselves. It's the fact that many of the losses leave you feeling like "Da fuq?! How'd we lose that? o.O" and most of the wins are half-assed represented in game to the point you couldn't even tell you did anything.

it's the same for every horde quest you got left with nothing this the sad true of game mechanics they prevent the story to be showed to the fullest, try to roll an orc and you see alliance invaders in durotar even after you burn their tents and kill them, in stonetalon there is the crater but you can see the work unfinished and alliance still around, new kargat with the black dragons, the entire bad lands(???) with the eitrigg chains etc. I think that blizzard leave those thing only for the books.

[Grocalis]

What are you smoking? The Alliance got completely kicked out of the barrens, and got pushed back so far they lost Theramore.

Theramore was attacked by the ocean, and then had a bomb dropped on it. It was not a huge ground campaign. The Alliance still holds Honor Stand and most of the other locations in the Barrens. They even rebuilt Northwatch after it was destroyed before the Theramore invasion, as talked about in the books.

Frankly all this inferiority junk makes me not want to play Alliance. The Alliance had to lose ground in Cataclysm for the sake of gameplay. All the whining about it does is make the Alliance playerbase look like a bunch of weenies more then the actual in-game Alliance.

[TheDangerZone]

As an horde player, I don't think that the problem with the alliance boils down to canonical wins or importance, but more of a lack on the spotlight for the last two expansions. Alliance is doing their thing, yes, but compared to the horde, there's a lack of "show, don't tell. It's easier to show the horde's conflict than the alliance unity (the instances where they tried, like a little patience, are just really subpar)

[Deleted]

- Gilneas' story, from an Alliance perspective, only takes you up to blowing up the airship, then you depart for Darnassus. The entire rest of the story has to be experienced by rolling Horde and playing through Silverpine on a Forsaken quest chain. Oh, and the insurgents are also routed back to the city when Crowley's daughter is taken hostage or something (I think that's what I've read. Dunno, I don't have any Horde characters so I can't see in game. ).

I went and did a forsaken character to see it.

It goes like this:
There's a guy called Bloodfang, leader of the Bloodfang worgen (if you've ever went to SFK as Alliance you've seen him, but you most surely didn't know who he was as you find out his story in Horde quests). He's quite important. He's one of the leaders of the rebellion, fighting the forsaken. At one point he and Crowley managed to push the forsaken quite a bit north. In the Horde chain, you push them back as they're doing guerilla hits behind the line.

So at one point you find out that the worgen are kind of strong, but the daughter of Crowley is in the field, leading some troops. So you capture her then arrange a meeting between Crowley, Sylvannas, Bloodfang and Crowley's Daughter. So Sylvannas makes Crowley promise to leave the rebellion if she gives him his daughter. He agrees, she says something like "predictable" or something, Bloodfang calls Crowley a coward for leaving his people and that's the end. You never see Crowley again... and Bloodfang goes to SFK.

even though wotlk was alliance centrism

it did not take away from a horde players game play the only time i can think so is the starting hubs in dragonblight. On my horde and my alliance the questing experience did not feel lesser one way or the other.

Cataclysm was horde centered, but the alliance leveling was much lower compared to a hordes, even in the 80+ stuff (mainly twilight highlands)

1-60, the horde had the better experience than alliance.

Indeed, this is the true problem. I can agree to the Horde winning some of the Alliance gets something nice too. But in Cataclysm it was just done wrong.

it's the same for every horde quest you got left with nothing this the sad true of game mechanics they prevent the story to be showed to the fullest, try to roll an orc and you see alliance invaders in durotar even after you burn their tents and kill them, in stonetalon there is the crater but you can see the work unfinished and alliance still around, new kargat with the black dragons, the entire bad lands(???) with the eitrigg chains etc. I think that blizzard leave those thing only for the books.

No, in Stonetalon it's a crater and in that crater, before the bomb dropped, there was a big druid camp. If you come from distance you might still see the npcs before they phase out, but once you're there, it's just a crater.

And you do get left with something on Horde side. Is there still Alliance in Andorhal? No.
Is there still Alliance in Southshore? Well no, unless you count the human farm.
Is there still alliance in the Stonetalon crater? No, of course Alliance has another smaller camp on the cliff, but that wasn't part of the problem.
Is the dwarven camp in the Barrens (Bael Modan?) still with Alliance inside after being bombed? No.

On the other hand, try rolling alliance night elf and do the quests up and including Maestra's Post. Is the Horde still there after being defeated? Yes.
That's just an example, but this is the problem we, alliance have, your victories are shown to have an impact on the world... ours not so much.

As I said, the only part where we Alliance truly win against the Horde is camp Taurajo. But we don't participate. We just see the aftermath, like you with Southshore.

No, you know what, seriously now, make an Alliance character and take it through Ashenvale, Stonetalon then move to Barrens after going after the bomb first in Stonetalon and you'll understand what the problem is. Oh, and if you find yourself confused regarding Grimtotem, go to Thousand Needles after to see they've left the pact.

[Talen]

Yes you did win. There is no denying it, the Alliance forces are all over the Horde at domination point in Karasang. Take a flight over and look for yourself.

Possibly. But just like in Stonard, the Alliance can't delivering a killing blow. They can't drive the Horde back into the sea.

And don't...Garrosh is directing events there, remember?

What are you smoking? The Alliance got completely kicked out of the barrens, and got pushed back so far they lost Theramore.

No.

The Alliance came and rolled right back.

The Horde gained little or nothing from that except a few dead troops on both sides.

EJL

[bufferunderrun]

No, in Stonetalon it's a crater and in that crater, before the bomb dropped, there was a big druid camp. If you come from distance you might still see the npcs before they phase out, but once you're there, it's just a crater.

And you do get left with something on Horde side. Is there still Alliance in Andorhal? No.
Is there still Alliance in Southshore? Well no, unless you count the human farm.
Is there still alliance in the Stonetalon crater? No, of course Alliance has another smaller camp on the cliff, but that wasn't part of the problem.
Is the dwarven camp in the Barrens (Bael Modan?) still with Alliance inside after being bombed? No.

On the other hand, try rolling alliance night elf and do the quests up and including Maestra's Post. Is the Horde still there after being defeated? Yes.
That's just an example, but this is the problem we, alliance have, your victories are shown to have an impact on the world... ours not so much.

As I said, the only part where we Alliance truly win against the Horde is camp Taurajo. But we don't participate. We just see the aftermath, like you with Southshore.

No, you know what, seriously now, make an Alliance character and take it through Ashenvale, Stonetalon then move to Barrens after going after the bomb first in Stonetalon and you'll understand what the problem is. Oh, and if you find yourself confused regarding Grimtotem, go to Thousand Needles after to see they've left the pact.

-Yes there is the crater but if you take a fly around you can see the battles ongoing like nothing happen
-Andorhal is the same the quest conclude and the place is not phased at all
-Southshore events are completely done out of screen there is 0 quest to actual bomb that place

point is that is bloody rare to see the world change after a quest, probably because blizzard don't want use too much phasing i don't know.

[Deleted]

Possibly. But just like in Stonard, the Alliance can't delivering a killing blow. They can't drive the Horde back into the sea.

And don't...Garrosh is directing events there, remember?

EJL

That's why these things aren't done as such. You do these things like Auberdine.

What do I mean? Well look at Auberdine, it's gone (not by Horde, but giving it as example) so it means the night elves were pushed into the sea by the elements, right? No, they build a new camp.
This is how Blizzard could have dealt with Stonard as well. So Alliance wins, burns the town. But Horde have a little camp on the seaside where the refugees went. It's a make-up camp with tents and stuff to show it was done in a hurry. It wasn't that hard to do this if they wanted. But they didn't.

-Yes there is the crater but if you take a fly around you can see the battles ongoing like nothing happen
-Andorhal is the same the quest conclude and the place is not phased at all
-Southshore events are completely done out of screen there is 0 quest to actual bomb that place

point is that is bloody rare to see the world change after a quest, probably because blizzard don't want use too much phasing i don't know.

The npcs fighting have no connection with the camp that was destroyed as they're coming from the camp further up the mountain.
Andorhal is phased! There's no more Alliance npcs, while there were before.
True.

[docterfreeze]

Hey, wheres Trassk?

Alliance would probably get more "We win" moments if they didn't always QQ about horde favoritism.

Just a guess.

[MikeBogina]

Ohhh man a biased alliance player making a thread about horde bias...


Wotlk, Alliance. Remember all that rage about Thrall being the main character of Cata? yeah he was neutral but the hypocrisy of the Alliance community was amazing. No one complained about all the Alliance race characters being in the spotlight forever. The alliance race factions being in the spotlight. I have yet to see a faction of undead, orc or Tauren that was leading a patch. Wait, there was the Zandalari, but then again, they're not the same.

alliance has had the spotlight for so long. books, comics, manga and even the game, but now since you were all so used to it, you're complaining about the horde getting the spotlight... >.>

[Deleted]

He's talking about the part of the worgen story in Silverpine, the part that only Horde can see though it has its worgen wins too. You can't see that part as Alliance. You can only see it as Horde despite it being about both sides.

Well, you can't have a neutral zone so close to the enemy's capital city. So game mechanics come before lore or desire of the players.