Alliance or Horde

[Deleted]

Two months later i'm still here trying to decide ahahahah. At least i know my class

[Deleted]

This is pretty much it but I think in the end Salv was the biggest buff. The extra threat reduction allowed for easier tank swaps, especially on bosses that could not be taunted. There was also thing like BoP for tank swaps, BoP Taunt for bosses with mechanics that you needed to dodge, LoH to save a tank. Overall for raiding Alliance had a full tool box and horde got the fisher price version. Also NE's warrior had the lower chance to be hit.

as being horde and having been in a server 4th c'thun guild and the other 3 being alliance guilds and we wasnt even super hardcore, i dont think side matters super much, pretty much the only dps that gain the extra dmg from salvations threath reduction is classes without a threatdump meaning only warlocks and warriors, this gets more of a problem in naxx tho as you want to stack more warriors.

so basicly the only real advantage alliance get is when you want to stack more warriors and locks aka naxx, the more warriors you have the better alliance gets in all raids i guess, but who the f*** want to stack all warriors in a game where loot is scarce.

[Anguirel]

To the OP: if you care about the questing text, Alliance definitely had the best quest chains, and especially had a more polished early experience. The Defias arc effectively goes across your entire questing experience, showing up in bits and pieces from 1 to 60. For a single chain, I remember "The Legend of Stalvan" was pretty amazing.

For PVE purposes, Human Diplomacy cutting rep grind times down by 10% is nice (though an advantage that obviously caps out if you were going to need to keep grinding on past Exalted anyway).

For the "better at raiding" conversation -- assuming the patches go in order, Salvation + Kings makes the early raid experience significantly easier. Both sides can complete the raids, but Alliance effectively has a much larger buffer for poor players to not cause problems (which vastly expands the possible raider pool). Having 30% less worry about accidental Threat-pulls, 10% more health to soak standing in fire, 10% more mana to heal mistakes (and many of those early fights were about the slow attrition of healer mana, not one-shot deaths)... In the same vein of allowing for expanding the possible raider pool by increasing the buffer for poor play not causing wipes, the reduced threat meant a few really good players could carry much more effectively (4 solid Alliance DPS running up against their threat cap would be the approximate equal of 6 Horde DPS doing the same). Fearward, similarly, doesn't really help the best tanks, but it drops the skill floor way down to enable raids with poorer tanks to still get kills, and allows the best tanks to do that little-bit-extra to keep threat higher or reduce damage slightly.

All of that combines... At the top-end, it allows kills earlier, as Salvation raises the skill ceiling for DPS, since it takes some effort to fill that extra threat space with useful damage that couldn't have been done otherwise. Being able to DPS over the gear-level of your tank is huge for handling gearing disparities (which are really big factors in early Classic -- 2 drops per boss could easily mean your MT takes a long time to get decent upgrades). At the bottom-end, it allows more people to get a foot in the door and allows for larger rosters of part-time raiders who can still usefully contribute. Those larger rosters also gives a larger recruiting pool for top guilds.

However... it also means those people who appear good early will end up not being able to handle the high-end mechanics as well. The extra buffer is far less helpful when a single mistake causes a wipe in AQ or Naxx. By the time Tranquil Air comes up, Warriors have geared up, and they scale better with gear than most classes, so threat is less of an issue. I wouldn't be surprised to find the late raids are easier for Horde, or at least closer to tied (so Horde would have an edge in that their players would need to have been better all along, as they had to handle mechanics properly more often).

That all said, we will also have a pile of add-ons ready to go, and know what add-ons are worth having (e.g. raid frames for healers, a Threat Meter of some sort, boss timers). That alone will probably reduce the advantage from the Alliance's buffs considerably, since it mostly just made it harder to screw up on mechanics that weren't well exposed to the players at the time.

Back on the main question for the OP... if you had to choose one, I'd say Alliance is probably going to be the better choice for a variety of things PVE. I switched form Alliance to Horde in Vanilla, and have remained Horde since, and I really enjoy the Horde vibe in general, but I can't deny that Alliance had the better overall initial experience.

[Deleted]

The raiding differences between the factions in vanilla only become issues at the highest level of play. If you have the most optimal raid composition (to the point of having several, or all, warriors with High Warlord/Grand Marshal for example), Alliance has the edge due to the Paladin blessings and mainly Salvation. WF is nice and all, but it's RNG and RNG makes my skin crawl in the context of such discussions. Nobody ever plays absolutely perfectly, of course, and even with all the preparations in the world you can't foresee what a specific raid is going to be like just because of the human element. What I am saying is that in a perfect universe in which everyone plays at the highest skill and efficiency level, Alliance has the edge in the PvE department. And that only matters when going for world/server firsts. Raids in vanilla are pretty easy outside of that competition, especially compared to recent offerings, so this is a pretty superfluous and moot point. I.e. don't sweat it.

Regarding leveling, Alliance has it better. The reason that is is mainly due to the inability to skip the Barrens, regardless of which race you pick. It's a pretty terrible zone, not gonna lie, and you are there for a loooooooong, looooooooooooooooooooooooong time. The Horde quest structure in general is overly grindy, even for vanilla, it feels rushed in a lot of places and it's janky and uneven. The atmosphere is samey and most of the quests are uninteresting in terms of writing. The undead zones are better, but are so inefficient and even incomplete (Silverpine literally doesn't have enough quests to get you anywhere) that you are going to either skip them or do a tiny fraction of them. The Alliance, on the other hand, has fairy-tale-like quests (which can be a con or a pro), very detached from the overall story and they feel local and inconsequential (Duskwood, Westfall, Loch Modan, majority of Darkshore, majority of Redridge), but are better individually and the experience isn't as fragmented and forced. Both have their pros and cons, but I think the Alliance has the better leveling. If you haven't played through the Horde one multiple times, you really won't notice that it's a bit worse overall, so I wouldn't base my choice on that either.

PvP is a joke in vanilla, no need to take that in consideration, unless you plan to *exclusively* PvP. If you do that, it depends on what class you are going to pick and what spec. For example, undead Shadow Priests are better than any other ones due to Devouring Plague + Touch of Weakness (which helps with racking up Shadow Weaving quicker on melee attackers). Orc Warriors have the most potential for burst due to Blood Fury, the haste from the troll racial is nice in a variety of PvP situations and War Stomp is better than Shadowmeld if playing Druid. Not that it matters much, you can afk farm the ranks, but you get what I mean.

Realistically, it basically boils down to aesthetic preferences and prior experiences.

[Anguirel]

The raiding differences between the factions in vanilla only become issues at the highest level of play.

Disagree -- Alliance's raiding edge is also seen at the lowest levels of raiding, where sub-optimal player mistakes (tanks not generating as much threat as possible, healers a little slower on landing heals properly, damage dealers that don't moderate their DPS well, or fail to slow after a big crit, or players that skimp on proper use of their threat drops, etc...) can be substantially mitigated by Salvation and Blessing of Kings. I actually think it becomes more pronounced at lower skill levels, because it allows the raid to carry those lower skill players more easily, and to cover for shortcomings (e.g. a tank that can't stance-dance well never needs to worry about fear with enough Fear Wards available). On Horde, you'd have to drop some of those players, or suffer through many more wipes per kill, or need significantly more gear to compensate.

I mean, a good Shaman can possibly help cover that some, I suppose, but that's part of the point. On Alliance, the things that help don't require the class bringing it to be the good player -- those good players can be spread out through the entire raid. That is -- you don't need a good Paladin to apply Blessings. You just need a Paladin. You don't need a good Warrior to handle fear, you just need a Dwarf Priest. And so on.

[Deleted]

Yeah, that's why I said *issues* and not factors. Yes, generally Alliance can carry lower skilled players due to Salvation, Kings and Fear Ward, but I think that's at the extreme low of player skill and it won't be that noticeable for the average guild. I might be wrong, though, and it might be easier to raid as Alliance in general, but I wasn't comparing difficulty per se, more mechanical differences that become balance issues at peak player skill and Alliance has the pronounced edge there. What I forgot to mention was Chain Heal, which makes AoE healing easier on Horde, but my experience tells me that usually healing is not the problem in vanilla raids if the healers are somewhat competent. If they are going for 1.12 patch, though, since it made Chain Heal a smart heal. Judgement of Light is surprisingly efficient and strong as well, depending on how many melee you have. The logs on the servers-which-shall-not-be-named show that Paladins usually outheal Shamans, so there's that. Mana is also extremely rarely a problem for competent healer teams.

Either way, Alliance has it better in the PvE department.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I was an Alliance paladin with a druid alt for vanilla. This time I think I will go Horde shaman with a druid alt classic.

[SpellCleave]

Yeah m8, in that case they could go full D3 mode and institute a RMAH. After all, ppl had been already trading stuff for real money before And tokens *do* affect gameplay in Vanilla, where gold was super sparse.

Completely agree. Sure , gold sellers need to be stopped. But tokens are not the answer. They would be very detrimental to the feel of the economy in Vanilla.


Yeah, yeah. Gold was hard to come by, getting money for my mount was rough as hell. I liked it that way.

I was an Alliance paladin with a druid alt for vanilla. This time I think I will go Horde shaman with a druid alt classic.

Haha NICE! I was a Shaman with a Rogue alt. I'm going Paladin with... well probably a Rogue alt lol I WILL SEE YOU ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE!

[Pivotal]

I'm going Alliance, for the sole reason that I've never leveled an Ally character prior to Cata, so it will be a first timer for me! Thinking Human Rogue for dat 1h Sword skill bonus.

[zoddzero]

I have always played Horde, but I'm thinking of rolling Alliance for Classic since they will likely have faster queues times for BG's. Although that might be related to them losing more? I don't wanna be on the losing side of BG's...