Are you playing the "wrong" faction for your attitudes about the game?

[prwraith]

I like slaughtering every enemy. But I play horde :/ it's unfortunate because the alliance is clearly the bad guys in the story under the good guy with a gun facade.

[Kyphael]

They had to kill every character Metzen voiced except Green Jesus, because Metzen wanted to retire.

Night Elves lost their edge the moment they were added to the alliance.

I wish they had just gotten a new voice actor who could channel Metzen instead.

Night elves weren't part of the alliance in WC3? Like officially? Huh.

[Imperium Romanum]

Having played Alliance since Warcraft 2, I feel that the faction matches my attitude, at least in several eras. The Warcraft 2 / MoP story displays the Alliance on the way I wish to view it. Strong and adamant defenders of their world who may even go as far as bringing the fight to the enemy and make them suffer.

Sure, Patch 5.3 was very poor from the Alliance pov but it is really interesting to see how the Divide and Conquer tactic worked at that point; something that should be the same theme for BfA as well.

Other than that, all art styles of the races are mostly orderly and represent a well functioning society, which is indeed my preference through and through.

[sighy]

Before WC3 nobody knew they existed, after mt. Hyjal they had friendly relations, with Orgrimmar and Theramore, in tft they went to eastern kingdoms, where they worked with Blood Elves(admittedly before Garithos dicked them out of the Alliance), stopped ilidan and went home.Some time between tehn and vanilla they joined the alliance(because tehy needed a 4th race for the alliance i guess) and lost all their character other than "i like tree"

bit of a rant i admit

[Cosmic Janitor]

Since I'm not a braindead fist-pumping fascist, and I'm usually not in the mood to roleplay one for extended periods of time either, probably. Whenever I saw horde players do that "For the Horde!" shit in public I cringed myself into an outer-body experience.

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I wish they had just gotten a new voice actor who could channel Metzen instead.

Night elves weren't part of the alliance in WC3? Like officially? Huh.

They could just stop cheaping out on voice actors and use professional ones that you can contract whenever you want.

[onesBronson]

I main horde, but pvp as Alliance out of boredom. Faction differences aside, I just wanna kill whoever the game wants me to kill, even if its my own team in FFAs or contract queues. If I'm raiding, kill raid boss. If I'm pvping, kill enemy player. If I'm doing world content, kill things that provoke me. (players and mobs)

[Aoyi]

I’m part of the camp that’s tired of the Alliance vs. Horde wars at this point. The idea of “we saved the universe together, but I don’t want you to exist” thing just feels old at this point. For the RTS and even early WoW, it totally made sense. After 14 or so years of, okay we’re working together again, it just feels forced now. I’m sure that the expansion after BFA and possibly even the end if BFA will find us working together again, so why do they keep trying to push AvsH? I even preferred some of the inner faction conflict of MoP where the Horde was fighting itself to a degree. At least that was a direction they hadn’t explored before.

That said, I’ll still be playing BFA. I just hope that BFA wraps up the Horde vs Alliance thing for a couple expansions.

[Powerogue]

Both factions have quite diverse people and views. I sympathize with the horde a lot, and they have some really great storylines. The alliance can come off as hypocrites in how they tend to prop themselves up as the "good" faction but have at least nearly as bad of a track record for villainy as the horde.

I think it's more that I like certain characters within both factions, and dislike others. You know you've done this, plenty of horde loved Varian.

[Enkrypt]

Absolutely not.

Lok'tar ogar!

[ls-]

Night elves weren't part of the alliance in WC3? Like officially? Huh.

They weren't. And back in the day people were surprised that they actually joined the Alliance, reasons why they did so were never explained in the game, books, or by devs.

[Eazy]

I'm playing a rogue... I have no attachments to anyone.

[Dellis0991]

Naw I value the order that comes with the alliance, but I like wildcard style of the horde. Its funny how the actions of the horde are more human than the humans of the alliance.

[darklogrus]

I play both Factions so I can see the story unfold for both sides...

[Unlimited Power]

I see myself predominantly as a horde player, which is somewhat ironic because my main since early TBC started as a Draenei shaman on a horde dominated PvP realm.

Only in Cataclysm did I faction change and move my character to a PvE server and I never regretted it.

That said, I play horde exclusively on 1 server while I have 3 other servers half-filled with alliance characters at or above level 100.
If I leveled all of them to 110 (which is very easy with Broken Isles invasions) I would have more alliance characters at max level than I currently do horde.

I've never cared for the faction war though. I see it as more of an obstacle to playing with the people I want to play with than an interesting story element.

In fact this faction war theme is the primary reason I'm not looking forward to BFA as much as prior expansions.

[Rampant Rabbit]

Stepping out of my "Please end/stifle the faction war" space for a moment (it's a comfortable space, a warm space, a fluffy space), I want to get all meta and existential with you all.

Is the faction war, in essence, the battle of war vs peace? Blizzard are swearing up and down that the faction war is important, it's the beating heart of WoW (Also bear in mind, they've called PVE the backbone of the game... right, I promised to stay out of the anti faction war space for this post), and seemingly they have the stats and demographics to back this up...

And perhaps to see that, all we have to do is look at the *real* two sides to the battle: the people saying "let me play with my friends regardless of race" and the people saying "LOL burn the tree! for the horde," "my king Anduin's a wimp", "the game's called WARcraft," etc, etc.

Interestingly enough, the faction divide, more to the point its leaders, align with this second, meta divide: The Ruthless Warchief Vs the Peaceful high king. Do you think, perhaps, that this "faction identity" expansion BFA, which is giving players character slots to match new races on the other side, is shouting "Declare your allegiance" on these lines as well? Is the alliance intended for the flower kissing hippies among us? Is the horde meant for the folks that want to escape into a world at bloody, cruel war? Is this the expansion where we're given the intentional tools and story to choose our side in *that* unfortunately eternal debate at the same time?

Are some of us playing the "wrong" faction?

(For the record... I play mostly alliance. Very anti faction war. So is my whole guild)

I believe that The Horde and Alliance have always been profiled in this manner.

[Kyphael]

They weren't. And back in the day people were surprised that they actually joined the Alliance, reasons why they did so were never explained in the game, books, or by devs.

Wow, night elves in alliance never made sense to me either. They'd feel way more at home with the orcs and especially the tauren. To think we could have blood elves in the alliance right now and night elves on the horde and there wouldn't be this whole crap fest arguing on both sides! Way to go Blizzard.

[ls-]

Wow, night elves in alliance never made sense to me either. They'd feel way more at home with the orcs and especially the tauren. To think we could have blood elves in the alliance right now and night elves on the horde and there wouldn't be this whole crap fest arguing on both sides! Way to go Blizzard.

Well, Blizz kinda expected the game to flop, they also didn't really care that much about the lore at the very beginning, so the amount of asspulls and weird design decisions was quite significant.

I think that if they're developing WoW for the first time today, we'd see different faction rosters.

[Bigby]

I was Horde until around Cataclysm when they took a nosedive into out-right villain territory. I think 'uncomfortable' is the wrong word to use, but I don't feel like my character is very heroic and world saving after coming back from killing farmers in Hillsbrad or slaughtering Alliance soldiers defending their homes from the invading Horde. It's that weird cognitive dissonance that Blizzard seems to be actively cultivating with the factions.

They tell us that 'neither the Alliance and Horde are evil, they're both shades of grey' but for several expansions now (even WoD with Ashran) this has been anything but the case. If they just threw their hands up and admitted the Horde is as villainous as it's been showing itself to be post-WotLK I could roll with it. That's what I always liked about the Empire on SWTOR, the game making it clear that, yes, you are on the villainous side but there's also a lot of grey mixed in to prevent your side being pitched black. That's what the Horde actually is, but Blizzard insist it isn't.

I also think there's some cognitive dissonance with certain Horde fans. They certainly like to defend Sylvanas and Garrosh as 'pragmatic' and handwave things like civilian executions and chemical weapons as 'necessary, win at any cost'... however as soon as Jaina or Genn does something remotely aggressive, they're unjustified, monsterous evil-doers and probably also dreadlords. I don't really like that, it makes the Horde feel like the faction who wants to put out, but can't take it back on a meta level.

[Melius]

even though i have horde chars i mostly play, 90% of the time, alliance. used to enjoy playing horde too untill Thrall "cleared his office in Orggri". the horde got to cruel and honorless for me to continue. it doesnt seem to be any better with the upcoming expac. it is the evil faction now and i cant really say that i am very pleased with that but it is what it is. im not interested in debating this last argument with hardcore horde fans because from my experience they are the worst type of players in this game and it would be rather childish considering how pumped up you would get for some pixels. sure its called world of WARcraft, i get that but the faction war gets boring after a while, well atleast for me it did so im sad to say im not looking forward to BfA, im more looking forward to what comes after that. they even destroy one beautiful city and a slum like undercity, which is the most player friendly city on the horde side tbh. shame.

[Deleted]

It'll be interesting to see what happens in BFA and how they will develop these stories.

And how they will keep all the loose threads from entangling into a huge mess, with all that lore.