Lore: Is Alliance or Horde more powerful?

[Nathreim]

After MoP the Alliance was more powerful. But the Legion evened things out. Now they are out of soldiers and are calling up farmers to fight the war. The Navy is still stronger thanks to Kul Tiras but thats the only advantage they hold.

[Destinas]

As far as races/tribes (both playable and not):

The Horde has Orcs, Tauren, Darkspear, Forsaken Humans, Blood Elves, Bilgewater Goblins, Huojin Pandaren, Highmountain Tauren, Nightborne, AU Mag'har, Zandalari, Ogres, Hobgoblins, (some of the) Steamwheedle Goblins, Forsaken Blood/High Elves, Forsaken Night Elves, (very few) Leper Gnomes, Taunka, Hozen, Val'kyr, Outland Mag'har, Grimtotem Tauren, Ogron, Gronn/Gronnlings, Revantusk, Shatterspear, Mok'nathal, Vulpera, Magnataur, Ettins, Kobolds, Spirits/Banshees, as well as other villages and subsections of many of these races. Of course, some of these are indentured servants or slaves (like Magnataur, Ettins, Gronn, Kobolds, some Ogres, among others).

The Alliance has Humans, Night Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, Draenei, Gilnean Worgen, Tushui Pandaren, Lightforged Draenei, Void Elves, Dark Iron Dwarves, Kul Tiran Humans, Twilight Highlands Wildhammer Clans, Hinterlands Wildhammers, Frostborn Dwarves, High Elves, Dryads/Keepers, Treants, Ancients, Furbolgs, Shen'dralar Highborne Night Elves, Broken, Bloodfang Pack Worgen, Jinyu, Stromgarde Humans, Vigilants, Wisps, as well as many subsections of those races, including villages, clans, and militant groups.

With each of these races there are tons of racial classes/class types (depending on the faction), like Wardens, Tidesages, Farseers, Sunwalkers, Prelates, Artificers, Sentinels, Phoenix Mages, Chronomancers, Mountaineers, Necromancers, Void Mages, Blood Knights, Spellbreakers, Beastmasters, Dinomancers, Raptari, Soulcallers, Mountain Kings, Sorcerers, Shadow Hunters, Engineers, etc. And, of course, playable classes.

While each one of these races/classes has merit, there are two very important pieces to the Alliance and Horde that say their power: the Horde can raise the dead (either as Forsaken, or as mindless skeletons), and the Alliance has the Vindicaar (which fought against the Legion on their homeworld without a scratch). Any number of Alliance or Horde heroes could die, and they could be plagued or raised by the Forsaken/Val'kyr. However, not much can last against a spaceship with a holy laser beam that took down an infinite army of demons. There's also the matter of Elune on the side of the Night Elves.

If the writers were to write the actual potential that the Alliance had with the Vindicaar, Elune, Wild Gods, and other powers, the Alliance would be stronger. As far as gameplay, they have to be depicted on equal ground.

[Lothaeryn]

Horde Leaders :
- Banshee with superpowers (unsure about how powerful she is thought, that's fluctuating)
- Random guy with the power of love for the above-mentioned Banshee
- Random Goblin
- Powerful Orc, if we still consider him as a Horde leader (but in the range of Genn so who cares)
- Random Ranger
- Edit: forgot the totally random Cow as he's 100% transparent even nowadays
- A bunch of random NPC with no specific feat

To be fair, Thalyssra did overthrow an entire government without any resources and a simple hand from a stranger, I'd give her that at least. And she is an accomplished mage, though how powerful compared to Jaina is yet unknown.

[Airwaves]

The lightforge ship is useless without argunite which you can't get anymore. Stop bringing it up.

[Whitedragon]

Being these are the 2 seats of power for the respective factions is why I chose them. The thing that would be interesting though is to see of these numbers how many people are fit for combat. I'm willing to bet that the Horde has more warriors but as I said from a pure numbers standpoint the Alliance is bigger therefore probably has the bigger potential army. Not to even mention when you add in the technology edge from the Dwarves and Gnomes.

Something that has always bugged me aswell, is while yes more of the population horde side is probably better candidates to become warriors they still do need supplies. Sure you can draft another 5000 orcs (lets be generous with population numbers and say that's only half of their race.) but who is back home growing food for them (in what was already one of the hardest lands to farm), mineing the ore for weapons of war, whos defending the home front from minor attacks. by all prospects they should be haveing troubles just serviving at this point in time....

I found it funny during the "lost Honer" cinematic when gen says "that's the last of the solders", I was thinking "Most of the horde races must have had this happen ages ago... Past that they have lost a good chunk of their leadership base, most of their infrastructure has been destroyed within the last 10 years, and have seemingly had the same level of losses from the lost few major events in WoW that the Alliance had. yet here we are today where they still somehow seem to have limitless numbers, unending resources, their only real trick is the blight which is something the Alliance has known about since WotLK yet it still somehow hasn't been planed for, The enemy faction seems to have a monopoly on super powerful figures yet none of them turn the tide, and by all rights most of the natural factions of the world should be siding with the other faction given the Warchiefs Actions and stance of life, yet they don't....

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The lightforge ship is useless without argunite which you can't get anymore. Stop bringing it up.

Amazing how it's useless without that, when we didn't have it to start with and it worked just fine

[Peebuddy]

Well the Horde does the Sunwell going for them, a faunt of extreme power. Would give any alliance power a run for their money if used against them.

But Blizzard has this nasty narrative bullshit where a small group of people either sabotage or steal something, and if all it takes is one lonely void elf to get within a 100ft of the damn thing before it goes boom boom I think it would be more of a liability than an asset.

Same goes for that great big cannon in Azshara, I can just imagine Gallywix powering that thing on and OOOOPS SI:7 snuck in and put glue in it! HAR HAR HAR

That's blizzard storytelling basically this entire expansion

[cparle87]

To be fair, Thalyssra did overthrow an entire government without any resources and a simple hand from a stranger, I'd give her that at least. And she is an accomplished mage, though how powerful compared to Jaina is yet unknown.

That was part of what I liked so much about the story, it felt complete. You receive a desperate call for help, go to check it up, save her life when she's under attack and running on fumes, lead her to safety, and basically rebuild an entire city from scratch. Infrastruction, power and food supply, people. You literally make an entire city up from one person.

[Tyrathius]

To be fair, Thalyssra did overthrow an entire government without any resources and a simple hand from a stranger, I'd give her that at least. And she is an accomplished mage, though how powerful compared to Jaina is yet unknown.

She's not remotely in the same ballpark as Jaina, given that she had to run from her in the Stormwind scenario despite having Rokhan, Talanji, Zul, and Nathanos backing her up.

I'd put her as the Mage equivalent of Saurfang or Genn. Probably pretty powerful by normal standards, but not going to singlehandedly win a battle on her own.

[Airwaves]

Something that has always bugged me aswell, is while yes more of the population horde side is probably better candidates to become warriors they still do need supplies. Sure you can draft another 5000 orcs (lets be generous with population numbers and say that's only half of their race.) but who is back home growing food for them (in what was already one of the hardest lands to farm), mineing the ore for weapons of war, whos defending the home front from minor attacks. by all prospects they should be haveing troubles just serviving at this point in time....

I found it funny during the "lost Honer" cinematic when gen says "that's the last of the solders", I was thinking "Most of the horde races must have had this happen ages ago... Past that they have lost a good chunk of their leadership base, most of their infrastructure has been destroyed within the last 10 years, and have seemingly had the same level of losses from the lost few major events in WoW that the Alliance had. yet here we are today where they still somehow seem to have limitless numbers, unending resources, their only real trick is the blight which is something the Alliance has known about since WotLK yet it still somehow hasn't been planed for, The enemy faction seems to have a monopoly on super powerful figures yet none of them turn the tide, and by all rights most of the natural factions of the world should be siding with the other faction given the Warchiefs Actions and stance of life, yet they don't....

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Amazing how it's useless without that, when we didn't have it to start with and it worked just fine

They used what was left from the exodar. They clearly state that in the Argus intro quest.

[FuxieDK]

I remember during the end of SoO, Varian says "We will End you," with Jaina pleading for Varian to slaughter them all; however, the Horde races/factions were split during this time period. Yet, that being said, Varian said it in a very confident manner, as if the Alliance "ending" the horde would be a relatively easy feat, even after the Horde was to regroup under a new leader (Voljin).

Thus, the impression that Blizzard has given, over the past few expansions, is that the strength of the Alliance is at least one order of magnitude greater than the horde's (if some numerical metric were to be assigned to either faction's strength).

Alliance is clearly more powerful, because the have a permanent buff called "Favor of the Almighty Blizzard"....

[Airlick]

It is ridiculous nothing has been done with the Vindicaar. Even Velen saying something like the additions we made to it's systems have overloaded it's core and rendered it inoperable, but it fulfilled it's mission would have been enough.

Or have the Lightforged Draenei scenario include a Horde infiltration team trying to blow up the ship, but failing to do so and only managing to sabotage the weapon systems. Alternatively, a disguised Eredar (which wouldn't be a first) going on vendetta aboard Vindicaar after Legion got smacked.

On topic, Alliance always was and should be the far stronger faction. There are ways to write a good story explaining how the underdogs can manage to stay afloat against impossible odds, but it takes good writers, which Blizzard just doesn't have. Horde has many things going for it, like having a pretty much fully militarized society, meaning they could always mobilize and move their armies faster than the Alliance, effectively being able to avoid any open confrontation with main Alliance forces. A good writer would take the strengths and weaknesses of each faction into consideration, not conveniently forget that one side has a spaceship and demigods on its side in order to make the war even.

One of the main flaws, I think, is that it should be the ALLIANCE that is not the coherent faction. It's comprised of several fully developed, independent states, so it is the Alliance that should be having internal power struggles and each race trying to further their own agenda. None of them (nelves now, but I'm talking post-WC3 here) were in any danger of being wiped out, they were strong and populous on their own, enough that they could probably hold off the whole Horde with their own forces. But then, because each of them has their own internal issues and large territories to keep under control, they can't devote many soldiers to fight the Horde on unified fronts. The Horde should have none of these problems - they banded together simply to survive, and they, as opposed to the Alliance races (mainly humans, dwarves and nelves, obviously), can't afford the luxury of chasing their own agenda. This way the faction war should be evened out - Horde is fighting as a mostly unified force, while the Alliance, due to internal issues, is stuck using only detachments of forces from each race, which they were willing/able to send to a given front.
Say, in Ashenvale the nelves would deploy most of their army but only receive token support from other races. And now they are stuck fighting against the combined forces of orcs, trolls and tauren. Could they hold? Probably not. But then nelves have other allies, that is the wild gods, treants, giants, whom they could call for aid. This way you don't have to conveniently forget that races have strong characters/tools at their disposal simply to make things even, because in this specific battle, the forces are even, if not still in favour of the Horde.

[Whitedragon]

Not really. If we're talking about the original tech, like Tempest Keep and the Exodar, that was invented by the naaru. The draenei stole the Exodar, crashed it, and spent years in lore salvaging from it to build the Vindicaar.

In lore the Exodar is fixed and travel worthy, they also didn't steal it to begin with, they where given it...

[Felixon]

I remember during the end of SoO, Varian says "We will End you," with Jaina pleading for Varian to slaughter them all; however, the Horde races/factions were split during this time period. Yet, that being said, Varian said it in a very confident manner, as if the Alliance "ending" the horde would be a relatively easy feat, even after the Horde was to regroup under a new leader (Voljin).

Thus, the impression that Blizzard has given, over the past few expansions, is that the strength of the Alliance is at least one order of magnitude greater than the horde's (if some numerical metric were to be assigned to either faction's strength).

Lorewise, Alliance is stronger. In game - both factions will always be portrayed equal an none of them will ever win.

[Whitedragon]

They used what was left from the exodar. They clearly state that in the Argus intro quest.

They also said the Exodar was completely repaired and flight worthy in a short story back sometime between Cata-WoD

Blizzard has a way of forgetting these little details though...

[cparle87]

In lore the Exodar is fixed and travel worthy, they also didn't steal it to begin with, they where given it...

If you're referring to the Cata-era story about Velen and Anduin, it was later retconned. They weren't spending all that time repairing the ship, it's still totally broken. They were spending that time salvaging from it to build the Vindicaar. And Kael's blood elves invaded Tempest Keep and occupied it. Velen's people later snuck it and stole one of its satellites, the Exodar, and fled with it to meet with the light-wielding Alliance they'd heard talk of.

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They also said the Exodar was completely repaired and flight worthy in a short story back sometime between Cata-WoD

Blizzard has a way of forgetting these little details though...

It was retconned. They said they were repairing it, when they were secretly building the Vindicaar from its parts.

[MikeBogina]

Blizzard has a way of forgetting these little details though...

Same with how the Forsaken recruited a necromancer in Vanilla and in Varian's comics it's stated that there's Necromancers in Org, but then they were forgotten :/

[Biotec]

The Alliance has more powerful leaders and more raw resources to draw from. They also have much greater population sizes than the Horde races. The Horde makes up for it though as the average Orc is worth at least 2-3 humans. The Zandalari and Tauren are likely worth at least 5-6 in raw strength alone.

Still I would say the Alliance has the distinct advantage due to the raw power of Jaina, Malf and Tyrande. The Horde's strongest leaders are likely Sylvanas, Thalyssra and Talanji. Sylvanas has kind of plot armor going on right now but she hasn't been terribly great in combat against Alliance heroes. Malfurion almost killed her in the Darkshore attack, and Tyrande is likely on a level equal to him. As for Thalyssra, she has some powerful magic but pales in comparison to Jaina with her Titan powerup staff even with her entourage at the time. If they fought one on one, I believe Jaina would prevail. As for Talanji, we've seen her do some powerful stuff both through her loa and without them, but nothing that really puts her at the level of say Malfurion. Even then she would have to contend with people like Velen, Turalyon, Alleria, and so on. The rest of the Horde leaders are basically nothing in comparison to these folk. Saurfang is strong, but also very old, Lor'themar is a good ranger but that's really it. Baine is basically just an average Tauren with no special powers as is Mayla, Gereyah is just an Orc, and Gallywix is just a fat goblin.

[Reinhart11]

When one factions characters are outright destroyed and killed off, while characters of the other factions are built up and receive buffs left and right, turning them into demi gods or make them demi gods from the start, the answer is pretty clear. Meanwhile the important characters on the Horde side who are still alive neither get good built up nore any buffs.

Same goes for neutered races on the Horde side. Orcs and Blood Elves were neutered and depowered, Forsaken will be neutered and massively depowered next expansion, Goblins potentially in the future, when Gallywix becomes the next evil warchief. Darkspear and Bloodhoof Tauren were always weak and Zandalari are in the same boat as them, if they keep portraying the latter in the future like they have in BfA.

Bad isn't even the fitting word for this writing.

Edit: The Draenei Ships are completely overrated. The Horde knows them as well and i don't think it would be beyond a very strong Teleportation / Portal mage like Occuleth to get a horde of goblin suicide bombing squads on the ship and blow thing to ribbins from the inside. On the other hand, the Horde is probably too stupid for something like that now.

[Airwaves]

If you're referring to the Cata-era story about Velen and Anduin, it was later retconned. They weren't spending all that time repairing the ship, it's still totally broken. They were spending that time salvaging from it to build the Vindicaar. And Kael's blood elves invaded Tempest Keep and occupied it. Velen's people later snuck it and stole one of its satellites, the Exodar, and fled with it to meet with the light-wielding Alliance they'd heard talk of.

I was talking about the new ship. It used up what was left. We resupplied it on Argus but now all that is gone.

[Megitsune]

Alliance has much better tech, a literal superweapon, and their leadership is ridiculously OP compared to the Horde's leadership right now. Do you see how broken Jaina is right now? Her, Tyrande, and Malfurion could basically win a war by themselves. It's basically no contest.

Basically the only reason why the Alliance doesn't roll over the Horde is gameplay. Blizzard can't just have one faction get destroyed and alienate a huge part of their fanbase. Not good for business.