favourably for blizzard, if they make a number smart decisions. You know the RTS game worked well for the human v orc set up, every player had to play both sides because campaigns switched you between both factions. In the MMORPG, you instead got to choose, and immediately it became clear the horde had a problem. Almost everyone wanted to play alliance. Why? Because we're humans, the fantasy story tells of how the human race once again triumphs over impossible odds, because we the audience and target demographic are humans. If you've ever hung around RPGs, that allow you to play different monsters and creatures, you find out humans have been by far the most popular.
This is fine for a single player game or even a multiplayer, however when you have two factions that you can choose, the faction with humans is always going to have a numbers advantage, creating balance issues. This is exactly what WoW has faced and it has spent the last 8 years trying to make the horde more attractive to even it out. Blizzard has been putting in a lot of effort to boost the horde
1. More attractive racials
2. Cooler animations/models
3. Better storylines and plots
4. More lore, more horde centric novels over the last 8 years
5. Blood elves going horde to boost attractiveness
6. Hard nerf of alliance races. biggest casualties = night elves
7. More horde victories and cooler quests
It's really quite evident, no wonder the top pve and pvp player guilds are horde dominated almost 10:1 and despite all that, the alliance STILL outnumbers the horde (currently 60/40%). It hasn't been enough, nor will it be..because most people identitify with humans. Most new players pick humans, monsters are all very well and all, but it's far easier to relate to a human than a half bull, or a troll. Blood elves helped a lot, finally giving the hore a human like race players could identify with, blood elf numbers are nearly twice that of the next most played horde race. Co-incidence? NO! And still human numbers a greater than Belves, despit all the less attractive things about the alliance. THe only way to fix is if both factions get humans or neither. I would opt for both
Until humans become available on both factions, tthere wil be balance issues, all the other mo's that have a 2 faction system with humans on both sides have no such faction balance issues. Blizzard need to make living humans available on the horde. The game is paying a high price for no doing so, because developement will continue to be lopsided, alliance storyilnes possibly even the new models would be made to look less than they can be in an effort to keep horde more attractive. The solution is to have living humans playable.
Humans Are Already On The Horde.
Don't seem so shocked. Humans are already on the horde, they're Forsaken, and they are all undead currently, being able to play living humans on the horde will work through the forsaken and it will not destroy the human v orc core of wow-
1. The forsaken (humans) joining the horde did not destroy this warcraft core rivarly of Orc v Human when it was introduced in WoW. (
2. Living humans have been part of the horde before, Alterac nation teamed up with the hordei Warcraft 2, it did not destroy the orc v human
The Best Way to introduce Playable living humans on Horde
Is via the forsaken, not inventing a story of a breakaway group of humans, or some brainwashed cult of the damned humans or some mysterious island that suddenly appears with humans that make friends with the orcs or trolls. A human storyline is already on the horde through the forsaken, no need to coin a new one when you can use that one. they are the pre-made group of humans, you don't need to build an entrance story or build the small group up, they're already badass, already have a prominent enough roll in the horde, all you need to do is make SOME of the forsaken becoming living humans again (many ways you can write how this happens), and voila you are there. This leaves you with a Forsaken Group consisting of 3 main groups.
1. Undead humans (largest group)
2. Restored to living Humans (previously undead 2nd largest)
3. Undead Elves (darkfallen)
Over now to Mace and how this could tie into the new expansion