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

[Raisei]

How tf can anyone think Blizzard has a Horde bias when they've had 2 civil wars in 2 faction war expansions?

Because that is 2 more times your faction was the center of the story then the Alliance.

Just think about it. Ever since Cata the story is entirely driven by the Horde's terrible choice in leaders. Garrosh has kept us busy for 3 expansions. MoP, WoD and Legion are all results of his decisions and his decisions alone, now we have Sylvanas and she has already been the center of the story in BFA, now continuing in SLs. Probably whatever she is doing will effect the next expansion too.

Being the Alliance many times feels like being ineffective extras in a series about the Horde.

[iosdeveloper]

imo horde bias originates from "orcs are honest and care for each other, humans are liars scheming against each other" thing
in warcraft universe humans are real monsters not the orcs

[Mehrunes]

This thread provides even more examples of how amazingly consistent the idea of MUH HORDE BIAS is. Cataclysm? We followed neutral Thrall, so obviously it favored the Horde. The same applies to BfA, where we followed Saurfang, who not only betrayed and abandoned the Horde (making him, you know, not Horde), but flat out teamed with the High King of the Alliance against the Horde and even had to be motivated by him to act. WoD, where the Orcs were not even neutral, not to mention that they weren't even the playable Horde's Orcs because they were from an alternate universe? Totally Horde bias. Meanwhile the expansions where we follow neutral characters that were formerly Alliance are also Horde bias, because... Alliance characters went neutral.

[un_known]

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?

The way I’ve seen it:
Horde have a better character arc and they become something to remember regardless of their actions.

Horde gain ground on former Alliance ground and as far as I can remember they’ve never lost any land to alliance.

Voljin’s death was at the hand of a fel infused Glaive/spear to which if memory serves correct, fel magic destroys the soul yet his soul remained intact. Meanwhile Varian was also destroyed by fel magic yet his souls hasn’t had any appearance since.

Horde has had the best boss battles in the history of wow.

[Kalisandra]

I mean, just look at the difference between Mechagnomes (which can't transmog a lot of armor slots) and the Vulpera.

The Mechagnomes are wearing nappies, for f**k's sake! (Diapers for you USAians)

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Also, there's patch 7.2. I.e. the only patch in the game's history that added faction-specific content BUT only to one faction. That faction being the Alliance. Because MUH HORDE BIAS, apparently.

Remind me of this faction-specific content, because it's so major that I can't recall it at all.

It must be very significant to count when getting a robocat vs an actual questline doesn't.

[Gaidax]

Horde story has a lot more twists and turns for sure, with their consistent shit leadership that tosses them from one trainwreck to another.

So at that point some may feel that Horde gets more story attention and development, while Alliance feels like it is mostly just sitting there until it's time to raid another Horde capital to stop the inevitable burst of madness of the current Warchief or rogue element.

But I think Blizz is working on evening this out, in between Mawduin, Tyrande going REEEEE, TuralyonXAlleria and "old reliables" like Genn - it's only a matter of time we will get that Stormwind raid or some such.

[Wangming]

A lot more things happen on the Horde side, but most of those things translate to them being fucked. So it is a 50-50.

[Mehrunes]

Remind me of this faction-specific content, because it's so major that I can't recall it at all.

It must be very significant to count when getting a robocat vs an actual questline doesn't.

The Anduin questline about reclaiming Varian's sword. Which, for the record (since you decided to shoot yourself in the foot by bringing up 5.3 for no reason) was not only longer than the Horde 5.3 questline, but also had a cinematic at the end. Meanwhile the Alliance-salt-inducing questline about a cat was just one quest shorter than the Horde's Razor Hill battle and the only "argument" "in favor" of it being MUH HORDE BIAS was, as always, "waaaaah, I personally don't like it".

[meowfurion]

Blizzard absolutely has a Horde bias. I've been inside Blizzard HQ on tours and met employees. I personally know one of the art leads. There isn't just a Horde bias. It's a massive one.

[VinceVega]

A lot more things happen on the Horde side, but most of those things translate to them being fucked. So it is a 50-50.

Well... maybe the alliance wants to get fucked too?

Sorry... i see myself out...

[Kalisandra]

The Anduin questline about reclaiming Varian's sword.

Thanks. I'd forgotten about that.

[lockybalboa]

Of course they love the Hordies. Horde always get away with their war atrocities and Alliance always play the role of passive suckers, and in game they had the best raiding and pve racials that led to the imbalanced faction population that is still a problem today. And they have cool new races like Nightborne and Vulpera while Alliance get joke "new" races like Mechagnomes that are nothing new but Gnomes with new armor and Kul Tiran who are just overweight humans. Fuck Blizzard and Ion with their Horde Bias

[Yarathir]

It's really not all that subtle, but people feel personally attacked when somebody calls Blizzard, a company with a majority of devs that have frequently stated to be Horde leaning or Horde exclusive players themselves to potentially have some sort of a bias.

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The Anduin questline about reclaiming Varian's sword. Which, for the record (since you decided to shoot yourself in the foot by bringing up 5.3 for no reason) was not only longer than the Horde 5.3 questline, but also had a cinematic at the end. Meanwhile the Alliance-salt-inducing questline about a cat was just one quest shorter than the Horde's Razor Hill battle and the only "argument" "in favor" of it being MUH HORDE BIAS was, as always, "waaaaah, I personally don't like it".

I wonder if that cinematic might have been a thing because Alliance got one less cinematic with Legion's intro than Horde in the first place. Hmh...

[Nathreim]

If blizz had a Horde bias they would know how to write them properly and not kill off our leadership leaving us with the dregs.

[Yarathir]

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.

True.

Blizzard also puts a lot of spotlight on the Horde engaging in internal wars.
And the Alliance playing extras/falling victim to the origin of that internal war narrative.

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If blizz had a Horde bias they would know how to write them properly and not kill off our leadership leaving us with the dregs.

Having a bias doesn't mean you're a good writer, though.

[Beuargh]

I'm a horde player and until the horde enter stormwind (instanced tier raid, like "siege of orgrimmar") and defeat whoever sit on the throne, horde and alliance will never be even. also, turning major horde characters into major evil is not exactly what I call horde bias. it already happened with garrosh. so even if sylvanas end up with a redemption, damage are already done.

horde had the "racist leader" etiquette with garrosh and the "genocidal leader" etiquette with sylvanas. also thrall cheating in a duel and quiting on the horde like a weakling... don't tell me about horde bias or maybe you wish something like this for the alliance??.... please. maybe alliance is lame and boring but a leader like vrynn never lost his balls and he died like a badass

[Thage]

It's less "Horde bias," and more "the writers continually default to the Horde being proactive and the Alliance reactive, and tend to focus more on the Horde side of the story for better and worse alike, because that's the faction they find more interesting to write for (which turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy)." A lot of BFA's story was about the Horde and the war's impact on the Horde, with the Alliance mostly there as a foil to drive forward storylines in the Horde, because very little of note changed within the Alliance after the Burning of Teldrassil. The Horde underwent a civil war and the second major reckoning as to what the Horde really wants to stand for as a global superpower, up to and including a total overhaul of its governing structure at the top level, whereas the Alliance... remained static. The night elves were still homeless refugees huddled in the Cathedral and around fires in the canals, most of the named Gilnean NPCs from Darnassus are nowhere to be found, and the Alliance winning Darkshore and Arathi has yet to be reflected ingame in any meaningful way. The most development Alliance-side between 8.0 and 9.1 has been Jaina reclaiming her Warcraft III characterization and taking up leading Kul'Tiras, Anduin being kidnapped and later brainwashed to move a prominent former-Horde character's storyline forward, and Tyrande getting a lip-service powerup that still hasn't meaningfully paid off.

[loras]

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?

Honestly i agree in that sense; they're just better at creating alliance-perspective content, and frankly they've always been.

Thing that spawned the horde-bias is, i think, that most victories of the alliance are only told of, not really shown, whereas in the case of the horde it is the opposite.

Horde-vs.-alliance: Destruction of Theramore? In-game. Destruction of Southshore? In-game. Destruction of Gilneas? In-game. Conquest of Andorhal? In-game. Invasion of Ashenvale? In-game.
Alliance-vs.-Horde: Destruction of Undercity? In-game.
Neutral: Destruction of Gnomeregan? In-game. Invasion of the Sunwell (TBC).
Improvement and expansion of settlements of the Horde? In-game (compare classic-cataclysm).

Now there are of course various non permanent things that are shown in game as well:
Alliance-vs.-Horde: Raid on Zul'dazar, raid on the Undercity (post-Wrathgate in WotLK)
Neutral: Raid on Orgrimmar (Pandaria, both factions)

But the thing about these is that their consequences are absent or nearly absent, "they did not happen" so to speak, for most players.

So yeah, there's your answer.
A game is all about "show, don't tell" after all, the alliance can be a superpower winning all its battles, but if none or too little of that is shown then it is inconsequent to the experience of the players.

[starstationprofm]

Because that is 2 more times your faction was the center of the story then the Alliance.

Just think about it. Ever since Cata the story is entirely driven by the Horde's terrible choice in leaders. Garrosh has kept us busy for 3 expansions. MoP, WoD and Legion are all results of his decisions and his decisions alone, now we have Sylvanas and she has already been the center of the story in BFA, now continuing in SLs. Probably whatever she is doing will effect the next expansion too.

Being the Alliance many times feels like being ineffective extras in a series about the Horde.

The Horde starting the story doesn't mean the story is Horde-sided. Especially since it's made clear the Horde is wrong.

[Wowplayer2021]

The Anduin questline about reclaiming Varian's sword. Which, for the record (since you decided to shoot yourself in the foot by bringing up 5.3 for no reason) was not only longer than the Horde 5.3 questline, but also had a cinematic at the end. Meanwhile the Alliance-salt-inducing questline about a cat was just one quest shorter than the Horde's Razor Hill battle and the only "argument" "in favor" of it being MUH HORDE BIAS was, as always, "waaaaah, I personally don't like it".

New rule. If all you can do it completely strawman the other side with your arguments and even then not really come out on top then you can't do that anymore. Trying to then do the "I'MMA TEAR THEM DOWN BY SAYING THEY WHINE THING" is not a good look for you as it just makes your points look even worse and to be honest makes you look like a hypocrite.

As has already been pointed out, that Anduin cinematic is response to the Horde already getting more cinematics at Legion launch than Alliance. This was Blizzard responding to outcry over Horde bias and trying to throw Alliance a bone. The Horde 5.3 questline most people have issues with is quality where the Horde get much less focus and the Alliance make a cameo. Quantity of quests isn't a good indicator here when the quality the Horde gets matters much more both in the quests and the updates they get in their city to make it feel more alive.

Also, absolute LOL at saying in Cata Thrall was completely neutral. Yes, he worked with Alliance but he is still at heart a Horde character as we've seen with his story. He still acted against the Alliance at times and we even have cases like end of SoO that he refused to talk with Alliance characters. Then bringing up Saurfang as if he isn't still a Horde character even though a big plotline involves the splintering of the Horde and a large portion of it following Saurfang with his side having to allow the Sylvanas loyalists back in to the actual Horde. Let's not forget that when it came down to it, all but 4 Horde races followed Saurfang. Of the 4 that didn't, one was forsaken so they followed their leader, another was Goblins who followed money, Mag'har actually followed out of loyalty and then Zandalari didn't follow anyone and stayed neutral. Saurfangs side was just as much if not more Horde than Sylvanas' side. Hence why Horde characters got probably the most intricate questline yet introduced in to the game where there are actually options on how to complete the quests that will impact events through the rest of the story as well as 4 full CGI cinematics dedicated to that story. It actually makes you, "ALLIANCE GOT AN ANDUIN CINEMATIC" whine laughable when Horde got four full CGI quality Saurfang cinematics. Now yes, there are times we follow originally Alliance characters like Khad'gar in expansions. The main difference, those characters stay neutral. Khad'gar to this day is neutral and still refuses to engage in this war. Thrall is back to the Horde again and Saurfang was always Horde at heart.

Let's see. One of the biggest pieces of "evidence" "supporting" "MUH HORDE BIAS" is Alliance losing zones in Cataclysm. Which was caused by the fact that between Vanilla and WotLK Alliance simply had more zones, giving them a much smoother leveling experience. Which Blizzard wanted to rectify in Cata. I.e. one of the main arguments in favor of MUH HORDE BIAS is Blizzard rectifying a previous case of actual Alliance bias (as in, one of the few cases where any bias could be objectively quantified in some manner). Also, there's patch 7.2. I.e. the only patch in the game's history that added faction-specific content BUT only to one faction. That faction being the Alliance. Because MUH HORDE BIAS, apparently.

And for all the Alliance whining about racials they somehow keep silent how in the same period where Horde racials were slightly stronger in PvE (which by the way was also in response to Alliance racials being the better option in Vanilla), the Alliance racials were so broken in PvP that there were entire expansions where humans alone outnumbered all other races combined in top arena teams.

Or take the smaller things Alliance players are harping on, because they still always leave out situations where they got the upper hand, even in similar areas. Park district? Sure, it was a ruin for long, but on the other hand in WotLK Stormwind magically removed a mountain range and got a giant harbor while Horde got copy-paste zeppelin towers. Twilight Highlands intro? It's almost as if Cataclysm was a rushed mess, where primarily Horde Arathi was largely not updated aside from one new quest hub that's just one tent with two NPCs and where Alterac wasn't even updated, it was flat out made completely devoid of content.

Just quoting the above part but in this same post was also pointed out Horde questing in Cataclysm was done because of Alliance unbalance from Vanilla. You then try to whitewash it later by claiming it was rushed and there wasn't enough time while ignoring that was the same case in Vanilla which was interesting choice on your part.....

Now yes, Horde had ground to make up in making number of zones equal. That doesn't mean the story needs to completely favor them and they win almost ever excursion against the Alliance. Especially ones like Andorhal where the Alliance is doing really good, then gets updated with a quest saying, "Yeah actually no we lost and you lose your flight point here too now." They could have kept it in a stalemate or just had alternate outcomes like they've done a lot of other times. It seems more though that you are either purposefully or accidentally ignoring people's actual gripes here and trying to quantify instead of qualify it. The problem is the value of the storytelling. Even in Cata a lot of Alliance zones that were redone heavily became pop culture parodies while Horde ones work hard at fleshing out the Horde and actually telling a story, even with miscommunications like the Stonetalon ending.

Now on to what I actually quoted, you realize the Harbor was added to try to give some parity with the Horde traveling right? The Horde already had better traveling options and due to the Alliance using boats they wanted to give their members at least one option of traveling to Northrend from a populated city. Horde could travel there from Orgrimmar or Undercity as both had Zepplin ports as well as Zepplins to eachother. Alliance had to fly all the way to Menethil Harbor way out of the way of a capital city to get there. As such, they also gave the second option and built the Harbor for Alliance just so they'd have a travel option that is almost as convenient as what the Horde had. Of course, this doesn't even get in to the Cata revamp where Orgrimmar had much more work put in to it completely redesigning the city whereas Stormwind didn't change nearly as much and was just made in actual 3D. On to this, Orgrimmar then preceeded to be updated regularly changing it in to its now iconic look. Stormwind received much fewer updates in this same period with the only real notable ones being removing the claws from the towers, the park after a lot of complaints, and plopping down the embassy.

I'm not sure why you are bringing up Arathi either. It isn't like Alliance got some big update either. It was just a very little updated zone from Vanilla that was actually pretty well split on both sides (Horde were also the one with an actual town here whereas Alliance had tents in vanilla by the way). I also don't know why you bring up Alterac as that was a human kingdom and was more for the Alliance quests in vanilla. Them basically taking Alterac out of the game was a hit on Alliance. Hell, I also don't know how you thought these two points would at all counteract the Horde bias in the Twighlight Highlands intro.

I hope all this cleared a lot up for you as there was just so much wrong in those posts.