Do Blizzard really have a Horde bias or is it just player's imagination and assumptio

[Darkeon]

Maybe during Metzen's era. Writers nowadays definitely favor Alliance characters and values.

[Jackstraw]

The Alliance, ofcourse, get a good storylines, but the Alliance isn't at the center of the WoW story like the Horde are. The Alliance spend 90% of the story reacting to what the Horde characters are doing. The one and only time in World of Warcraft when the Alliance were the main driver of the plot for a bit was when they raided Zandalar.

Dwarves pillaged the ancestral grounds of Tauren tribes, eradicating a couple of them.
The entirety of the hostilities in Cataclysm bred out of Varian's declaration of war to the Horde after the events of the battle for Undercity.
Ashenvale becoming a warfront (not one of the Warfronts but you get my point) was due to politics and the Alliance being unwilling to cooperate with the requests of the Horde, and a warmonger being appointed as Warchief by Thrall.
Jaina got to lodge troops all throughout the Barrens via Theramore, with the Mana Bomb being the consequence.
In Legion the Alliance attacks the Warchief fleet, at the time the only sizable force deployed on the homefront, via an air strike.
Vulperas got Alliance eradication squads sent after them as retortion for joining the Horde.

And want to know what all of these Alliance initiatives have in common?
They got justified, mellowed out, softened, because the loud complaints coming from the Alliance was that they did not want to be the bad guys, so the onus of being the aggressor got increasingly put on the Horde up until the current paradox where in order not to have another Warchief going mad and becoming a raid boss it's better if the Horde has none.

And I'm super sure the overall sentiment about Anduin is indignation because how dare the writers turn Anduin. But I admit I'd be supremely surprised if there's anyone left with a speck of passion for the current plot and overarching lore.

Does it count as Horde bias if the current Lich King and former Stormwind regent gets his character slaughtered by her own daughter?

[rayvio]

some devs are biased towards the Horde. some are biased to the Alliance. most try not to let their preferences get in the way of their job and the variety in the team should, in theory, keep any bias from slipping in too much
in communication though some allow their preference to show and/or enjoy trying to stir a 'faction patriotism' amongst the playerbase which is often misinterpreted as being the one true opinion of the whole company

there have been times when certain things have been skewered (eg: Onyxia attunement in classic was a much bigger chore for Alliance than Horde, but this was to do with lack of communication between the different quest teams working on each factions version rather than a deliberate effect. the idea of having pally and shammy exclusivity was also impossible to balance) but I think it's less of a gameplay issue these days

storyline can sometimes seem biased but a part of that is the difficulty in including popular characters from both factions at the same time. BFA had a major Jaina arc while the Horde attention was mostly on the newly introduced Zandalari royal family so obviously that felt like the Alliance were getting a much bigger focus

[Daymanmb]

Racials say it all.

[munkeyinorbit]

DPS and utility wise Alliance has the better racials, just so you know
or why do you think almost all classes in mdi were alliance

And horde have dominated raiding almost forever. Traditionally horde have the better racials.

[SirBeef]

In dalaran Horde have 2 mailboxes by their steps to the alliance single mailbox. It's the only physical bias I've seen... besides dumb AV bridge.

So then it evens out and there is no bias.

[SugarPunch]

And horde have dominated raiding almost forever. Traditionally horde have the better racials.

No, Alliance has the best racial and utility for almost all classes in mechagnome.
Horde only dominates raiding because in the past more hardcore raiding guilds were majorly horde and people migrated to find better guilds and competition
This has absolutely nothing to do with racials, which you would know, if you would have done some research

[Awelon]

I don't think it that way, it's just that the bunch of Horde players are the loud ones either yelling that "For the Horde!" warcry or just bashing Alliance players. I never kinda understood the whole bias thingie, there are morons on both sides. It's just way back in 2005, it was considered "cool" to play as a Horde. Nowadays no one cares.

[Thundering]

The 3 base BG maps are now all horde biased. AV has been so modified and is so biased now, It's not even funny. They literally made a new road for horde players not to get lost. WSG downhill+dark area vs uphill and bright area. Trifecta of high ground and easy acess in AB with farm/BS flags being close and LM filling the high ground for easy high ground defense. You can lol see alliance coming to BS all the way from Stables. Surprise attacks are impossible.

They listened to horde requests for allied race with the vulpera when it was clear that the plan was the nazjatar goblins and alliance requests got ignored.

Horde racials were OP for many years resulting in the current end-game population unbalance. Alliance ones not allowed to be that OP.

So, is there a bias? Yes.
Is it the end of the world? No. But, it can be annoying at times.

This much of the original bias story and lore bias is also a big factor.

Its like in classic wow even it was 55% Alliance and 45% Horde before, most likly created due to the bias Alliance for pve and Horde for pvp.
Now i heard it is 25% Alliance and 75% horde since people are preparing for TBC and Alliance got no advantage for pve or pvp in TBC.

Blizzard has stated they will keep a close look on Faction balance if this is true or not i have my doubts seeing how Alliance is pretty much dead in retail.

[Derpules]

Horde bias confirmed. Thats absolutely unacceptable.

When I noticed the Dalaran mailbox disparity it felt like dunking on alliance. "What's that? ONLY one mail box by your bank? AHAHAHAHAHAHAA!" -My blood elf, probably.

So then it evens out and there is no bias.

Thanos and Symmetra appreciate the balance

[Malania]

In dalaran Horde have 2 mailboxes by their steps to the alliance single mailbox. It's the only physical bias I've seen... besides dumb AV bridge.

All glory to the AV bridge. It's been the site of many an glorious hold when all seemed lost and victory for the Alliance.

[Martymark]

Blizzard generally has the Horde be evil stupid winners.
And the Alliance be moral good stupid losers.
Depends on what kind of stupid you want to be.

[Chaelexi]

People were just transformed into races from the other faction. That's some proper tinfoil hat to search for biases here.

Really that is why multiple guilds switched to all trolls and built comps around everyone being a troll except one DH to reduce the dot tick time significantly on Jaina. If that is not a blatant advantage being handed to the horde through stronger racials and game design than I must say you are either blind or ignorant.

[WowIsDead64]

So I've been Alliance all my time on WoW and even that kinda just happened by chance. It was cause I couldn't afford the WoW Battlechest back in the day and you had to have TBC to play as the Blood Elves. So I had to settle for the Night Elves cause I really wanted to play as an Elf. However, I've only really seen the game from The Alliance point of view. That was until the allied races and I created a Horde Demon Hunter to level up and unlock the allied races.

Now a lot of folks often spoke about them preferring the Horde story lines but BFA was just so much better on the Alliance. Drustvar was an amazing questing experience. I loved the zone and Boralus was a beautiful city compared to the Pyramid thing the Horde got. I did some of the old zones like Dragonblight on the Horde and The Alliance was just so much better. The Wrathgate story line for example on the Alliance is definitely a lot better than the Horde side.

Am just wondering what parts or story lines or quests were better on the Horde compared to the Alliance? And does Blizzard really have a Horde bias?

I'm not sure, if it was accidental or intentional, but there were several occasions, when there was some Horde bias, as if Blizzard fell into "We have X% more Horde - let's cater to them, instead of trying to fix balance and drive this players away instead". For example Horde chopper is obviously better, than Alliance one. Same with BFA allied races.

[Aggressive]

Blizzard has been Horde Bias since vanilla WoW. Just look at the racials for horde and the truth will be staring at you back in the face. But as soon as Alliance got 1 powerful racial (Every man for Himself) Bitches whined and cried so loud that Blizzard changed it. But yet all the powerful racials for horde have remained. So, yes, Blizzard is bias as fuck.

[Myradin]

I just want to say the horde having a council now makes absolute sense given events. The horde has effectively been an alliance since WC3, and recent events have shown the dangers of giving supreme authority to a single person that people are supposed to swear blood oaths to.

[NordWitcher]

I'm not sure, if it was accidental or intentional, but there were several occasions, when there was some Horde bias, as if Blizzard fell into "We have X% more Horde - let's cater to them, instead of trying to fix balance and drive this players away instead". For example Horde chopper is obviously better, than Alliance one. Same with BFA allied races.

Regarding the Chopper, I Actually disagree. The Alliance one personally is a lot better.

[Zequill]

DPS and utility wise Alliance has the better racials, just so you know
or why do you think almost all classes in mdi were alliance

MDI were alliance for the NE skip ability, and MDI as nothing to do with how M+ how run in the game so who care.

[NordWitcher]

There is Horde Bias within the company. Go back and watch some of the old Blizzcon's. I recall one where every single employee was rocking a Horde shirt. The forums, including this one, went berserk. The next day they sent one guy out in an Alliance shirt who made a lame joke about their blatant bias. (If I could remember the year I'd post it... pretty sure it was during Cata though.)

Further, what does Blizzard choose to represent itself as to every single person who walks through their front door?

An Orc. -> https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/bliz...the-orc-statue

The same Orc they sent out to everyone who was subbed for 10 years straight. Sorry Alliance, have your fucking Orc statue and stfu.

They could have chosen any of their iconic characters to represent themselves - The Lich King, Illidan, Kil'jaeden or even Deathwing. But they chose an Orc. They could have had a statue depicting a human fighting an orc - you know Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans - ffs.... No, just an Orc. How about mural type statue with multiple characters showing the diversity of the world they created. But nope.

The believe an Orc best represents Blizzard.

But.... I don't really see the bias reflected in the game. I believe Blizz does their very damnedest to be fair.

I can understand this. I think Orcs best represent Blizzard cause WoW Orcs are pretty unique. I mean in almost every other fantasy world, Orcs are always the "bad ones". Even in Warcraft Orcs are often depicted as the bad ones but they have a lot more depth compared to every other fantasy work. The lore is also a lot deeper and they've got great characters almost incomparable to any other fantasy. Putting a Human there would just be generic and "boring". It doesn't really stand out.

- - - Updated - - -

Dwarves pillaged the ancestral grounds of Tauren tribes, eradicating a couple of them.
The entirety of the hostilities in Cataclysm bred out of Varian's declaration of war to the Horde after the events of the battle for Undercity.
Ashenvale becoming a warfront (not one of the Warfronts but you get my point) was due to politics and the Alliance being unwilling to cooperate with the requests of the Horde, and a warmonger being appointed as Warchief by Thrall.
Jaina got to lodge troops all throughout the Barrens via Theramore, with the Mana Bomb being the consequence.
In Legion the Alliance attacks the Warchief fleet, at the time the only sizable force deployed on the homefront, via an air strike.
Vulperas got Alliance eradication squads sent after them as retortion for joining the Horde.

And want to know what all of these Alliance initiatives have in common?
They got justified, mellowed out, softened, because the loud complaints coming from the Alliance was that they did not want to be the bad guys, so the onus of being the aggressor got increasingly put on the Horde up until the current paradox where in order not to have another Warchief going mad and becoming a raid boss it's better if the Horde has none.

And I'm super sure the overall sentiment about Anduin is indignation because how dare the writers turn Anduin. But I admit I'd be supremely surprised if there's anyone left with a speck of passion for the current plot and overarching lore.

Does it count as Horde bias if the current Lich King and former Stormwind regent gets his character slaughtered by her own daughter?

Its no coincidence that the worst WoW expansions have been expansions that have focused on the Alliance v Horde war and characters. The best expansions were expansions that focused on a primary enemy. For some reason Blizzard keeps pushing the faction war for the sake of it even though it's not really held true since the RTS games.

- - - Updated - - -

Generally speaking the Alliance gets less screentime, and thats the core reason the Alliance doesnt feel like its a balanced game, Horde Bias is not soley because Horde shit gets destroyed/conflicts/development but because 65% of the games story revolves mainly around the Horde or Horde characters, in positive or negative ways.

Example:

Alliance looses several key landmark towns/cities over the last several expansions in Cata, MoP and WoD and gets a capital city sacked for several expansions while the Horde gets a built up capital and several new territories and expansions.


Horde gets significantly more character development as the Alliance main cast is basically Jaina/Anduin/Varian and Tyrande with occasional bits of Genn. Their involvement is largely spontanious and sporadic, for example, we saw literally a few occasions Tyrande has done something significant (once in BFA) and thats it, the same with Varian, his most significant trait at this point is dying.

While you almost never go an expansion without one time Lor'themar is in it, or Sylvanas, or Thrall.

Granted, you get chars like Vol'jin that literally existed as leader for one expansion only to be killed the next, but even Garrosh got more development in TBC to MoP than most of the Alliance chars combined.

This is the fundamental reason Horde bias *does* exist, blizzard seems to find more interesting stories out of the savage beast/warlike races turning them into bad guys 90% of the time or just giving them internal conflicts to overcome their own personal problems.

The Alliance for example direly needs a "dark alliance" story to balance this, something where actual char development/changes happen to the Alliance but we never get one, becuase all the stories are fundamentally about horde chars.

Even this one, Anduin gets brainwashed for Sylvanas sake, Bolvar an ex Alliance char, gets his ass kicked stupidly easy in the worst cinematic ever made.

And Saurfang got an *entire* storyline specifically devoted to him, please dont tell me that isnt biased.

The closest thing Alliance has ever got on that front was Jaina's now completed story arc in BFA, the only good thing that came out of it early on with Jaina finally finding some way forward, redeemed from the person she was, but hardened because of it.

Tyrande has largely been a background char, that even Nathanos got more love over, and Saurfang was literally the central focus to the point the Horde got a CHOICE a *CHOICE* on who to side with.

So yes, there is a bias.

I just don't think Alliance have the characters to pull it off. Horde definitely have the characters, history and the depth to pull off future story lines at least in the direction Blizzard seems to be pulling them.

Personally we've had an overkill of the faction war where its been used so many times, it just feels stale. Not sure what the answer is but it feels like Blizzard is honestly running out of bad guys and characters to centre expansions around.

[Incitatus]

I played a lot of both in BFA and I have to say the Horde were shafted with that navigational monstrosity of the Dazar'alor pyramid, just atrocious. Blizz design team should be embarrassed. I get it's an impressive thing to see at first view but it was garbage from a useful perspective. Compared to Alliance and everything within seconds. The storylines were great in different ways on both sides. I still preferred Alliance though.