What are the best ways to make the Alliance more popular and interesting?

[VladlTutushkin]

Just based off the question in the title? The Alliance, and most specifically the Stormwind Humans, would need to be re-examined from a Non-American lens. Stormwind's Humans are incredibly American in their inspiration and are generally looked at through the same lens the country's capite censi had in the recently Post-911 world the game came out in. Very little was ever done to look at differently even before the Danuser era, despite Fantasy Americans actually having a huge amount of potential to be interesting, then with Danuser in charge if it doesn't involve a Windrunner sister he's not been interested in exploring its ramifications since he can't make more self insert characters to date them.

The BIGGEST change they could have made that would have been really interesting would have been doing something sane for the War of the Thorns. Acknowledging that the Alliance objectively did strike first by attacking civilian miners and having the Alliance pre-emptively attack the Undercity. Maybe even having a push from Turalyon unseat Anduin as the High King of the Alliance (still leaving him as King of Stormwind) would have sown real internal divides. The Alliance as is most often the world police but without the questions that should come with that.

And goblins attacked Explorers League who are part of the Alliance before SI7 went there. Which again makes Horde the instigator of the conflict in the first place even if Anduin and Shaw overreacted later and sent too many spies to Orgrimmar.

Also Undercity was attacked AFTER Teldrassil , not before.

What Alliance really need is to stop acting like Horde is its “old pal” and actually get victories and genocide horde races for the sake of pure survival.

[Faerillis]

And goblins attacked Explorers League who are part of the Alliance before SI7 went there. Which again makes Horde the instigator of the conflict in the first place even if Anduin and Shaw overreacted later and sent too many spies to Orgrimmar.

Also Undercity was attacked AFTER Teldrassil , not before.

What Alliance really need is to stop acting like Horde is its “old pal” and actually get victories and genocide horde races for the sake of pure survival.

By every account I have seen, in Silithus the Alliance was the agitator.

Do you see that part of the post that asks who the Alliance more popular and interesting? That's what I'm saying in this post. The Alliance should have been the ones to strike first, to take an aggressive reclamationist stance.

Also dude, don't ever try to 'justify' reasons for a genocide. In what fucking world would it be the reasonable or intended take that one side of a conflict should be genocided in a game? And I want you to do some deep digging and work on yourself if your immediate response is "We should genocide because ____". Don't.

[VladlTutushkin]

By every account I have seen, in Silithus the Alliance was the agitator.

Do you see that part of the post that asks who the Alliance more popular and interesting? That's what I'm saying in this post. The Alliance should have been the ones to strike first, to take an aggressive reclamationist stance.

Also dude, don't ever try to 'justify' reasons for a genocide. In what fucking world would it be the reasonable or intended take that one side of a conflict should be genocided in a game? And I want you to do some deep digging and work on yourself if your immediate response is "We should genocide because ____". Don't.

In the book Before the Storm when Gallywixe’s goblins kidnap that gnome alchemist from Silithus they also attack and kill an Explorers League expedition and Explorers League is Alliance’s archaeology branch.

Also, you may be surprised but i have seen hundreds and thousands of people calling for genocide or at least near-genocide of russians lately, while the ukro-russian war is not even on the Iraq’s scale yet. And yet people bay for blood from countries entirely unrelated to the conflict.

And in WoW Alliance has all the right to go apeshit on the Horde because of how much damage they caused. Legion, Scourge and Old Gods didnt destroyed or defiled as much Alliance land as Horde did. However Blizz would rather crush their own balls than make Horde suffer even for an expansions let alone two or three as Alliance did.

[Reinhart11]

The best way to make the Alliance more interesting is to free the Alliance from its current, restraining corset.

This way the different races could have and follow their own interest. A smaller version of the Alliance with Stormwind, Gilneas, Dwarves and Gnomes could still exist. The interests of the Stormwind humans and Night Elves for example, when it comes to geopolitics, aren't and shouldn't be the same. It shouldn't also be so easy for any factions to project massive Military power over wast distances.

Of course this split and removal should happen in regards to both mega factions. Combine that with race campaign to build up their story and old and New characters and it would work way better than the current system. You could even see conflicts like in the Alliance of Lordaeron of old.

The main problem for the story, apart from at best mediocre lead authors, are the two current mega factions.

[sighy]

In the book Before the Storm when Gallywixe’s goblins kidnap that gnome alchemist from Silithus they also attack and kill an Explorers League expedition and Explorers League is Alliance’s archaeology branch.

Also, you may be surprised but i have seen hundreds and thousands of people calling for genocide or at least near-genocide of russians lately, while the ukro-russian war is not even on the Iraq’s scale yet. And yet people bay for blood from countries entirely unrelated to the conflict.

And in WoW Alliance has all the right to go apeshit on the Horde because of how much damage they caused. Legion, Scourge and Old Gods didnt destroyed or defiled as much Alliance land as Horde did. However Blizz would rather crush their own balls then make Horde suffer even for an expansions let alone two or three as Alliance did.

The actual sequennce of events in Silithus is a bit murky outside of Gallywix getting there first. Afther that you could make the argument either way depending on the version and how youw ant to interpret it. They had several instances of things that could have motivated the conflict so they discarded all of that and went with heil satan, because no character could earnestly oppose the aliance, for honest down to earth reasons, which then comes around to the Aliance that seems to only ever react to external things, with all the things diverging from that being promptly ignored by all sides.


You're just witnessing the magic of wartime propaganda whipping people into a frenzy. Not much else to it really.

[Pheraz]

I hope this reply still fits because it's not lore related but comes from a real situation I've just experienced:

My daughter started playing and looked up all races carefully in the character creation screen. Liked night elves but got totally excited about blood elves. I told her void elves can look the same but then realized you can not play them when you are new to WoW.
So she started a night elf DH because she liked the class and I could carry her. Now she was trying to unlock void elves but you still need

- friendly with all zones in legion
- broken shore scenario
- Argus full story line
- void elf unlock quest

Imo even the feature was cool in BFA, they should just stop this locked allied races. There are so much cool races looked behind those quests. Both DI dwarfs and VEs could alone attach many players to the alliance.

I hope this wasn't off-topic

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

I think the Horde was actually stronger than the Alliance in terms of brute force and strength in the three wars, or at least they seemed to vastly outnumber them, the Alliance only won through strategy and the Horde destroying itself from within.

That would be forgetting that the Alliance itself had its own internal issues with Alterac and Gilneas keeping most of their forces for themselves, the human kingdoms not being able of fully mobilizing their forces before the invasion (which was on purpose as Doomhammer didn't want to give them the chance to fully mobilise and attack the Horde once it was done), and Anasterian Sunstrider's BS and the fact that the Horde was unknowingly helped by Deathwing and the Old Gods (especially with Deathwing allowing them to get the Démon Soul and to enslave the Red Dragonflight which was a huge boost), and that the reason why the Horde reached Capital City and had a shot at winning was because of Alterac's betrayal.

[OwenBurton]

The population numbers don’t matter at blizzard. Look at the blood elfs, they doing fine. They almost wiped out in W3 after that in tbc we have playable blood elfs, scryer blood elfs, illidari blood elfs in shadowmoon, Kael’Thas blood elfs in netherstorm, after that we have a sunwell blood elfs. Thats like the orcs we killed so many and they just dropped out from the sky.

I wonder if there is any chance for the night elves to replenish their numbers somehow in the future. But unless Nozdormu and Elune do a temporal reset, I don't think those night elves are easily coming back.

[Mehrunes]

And goblins attacked Explorers League who are part of the Alliance before SI7 went there. Which again makes Horde the instigator of the conflict in the first place even if Anduin and Shaw overreacted later and sent too many spies to Orgrimmar.

Also Undercity was attacked AFTER Teldrassil , not before.

What Alliance really need is to stop acting like Horde is its “old pal” and actually get victories and genocide horde races for the sake of pure survival.

Yeah, no, this is false. SI:7 reinforcements are sent to Silithus right at the very start of BtS. And since Shaw obtained his original sample before the book even began, the original force was there even earlier. Explorer's League on the other hand is sent halfway through the book, because Anduin got the idea to send them as well only after his chat with Magni. So sorry to burst your bubble, but the Alliance was the instigator in Silithus, just as @Faerillis said.

[OokOok]

Alliance is riddled with real world politics. Because they have "Humans" Blizzard likes to force their political beliefs onto this race in the game.

White stormwind civilians suddenly poc and done behind the scenes without any reason why or notice they were doing it which is really sus when you consider how many times they've tried to change shit without letting players know and the only reason we found out is cause some nerd was datamining.
Another example of this is a the paintings with fruit.

Is it a big deal Stormwind has POC? no of course not, the issue is Blizzard changed already existing NPCs instead of just adding new ones and that's fucking weird as hell. They proved they'll change whatever they want in order to incorporate their real life beliefs instead of keeping WoW a video game and world of it's own. Many players get pushed away by shit like this because when it comes to the Alliance Blizzard loves to do shit without keeping the lore in mind to what's actually logical.

Not that there's anything wrong with it... of course, but In a couple years I wouldn't be surprised if Anduin came out as gay and married a black trans woman.

[Aresk]

I hope this reply still fits because it's not lore related but comes from a real situation I've just experienced:

My daughter started playing and looked up all races carefully in the character creation screen. Liked night elves but got totally excited about blood elves. I told her void elves can look the same but then realized you can not play them when you are new to WoW.
So she started a night elf DH because she liked the class and I could carry her. Now she was trying to unlock void elves but you still need

- friendly with all zones in legion
- broken shore scenario
- Argus full story line
- void elf unlock quest

Imo even the feature was cool in BFA, they should just stop this locked allied races. There are so much cool races looked behind those quests. Both DI dwarfs and VEs could alone attach many players to the alliance.

I hope this wasn't off-topic

It can seem like a lot to a new player, though I don't feel those restrictions are overly stringent. In particular, friendly rep is easy to do during any Legion timewalking event, since you can buy the rep tokens pretty cheaply, even if you don't want to do the story. Honestly the exalted requirement was the most time consuming for the void elf unlock, and they removed that IIRC.

[OwenBurton]

That would be forgetting that the Alliance itself had its own internal issues with Alterac and Gilneas keeping most of their forces for themselves, the human kingdoms not being able of fully mobilizing their forces before the invasion (which was on purpose as Doomhammer didn't want to give them the chance to fully mobilise and attack the Horde once it was done), and Anasterian Sunstrider's BS and the fact that the Horde was unknowingly helped by Deathwing and the Old Gods and that the reason why the Horde reached Capital City and had a shot at winning was because of Alterac's betrayal.

Perhaps, but even if Alterac and Gilneas had helped, I still had the impression the Horde would still have had the upper hand in terms of brute force, the way they easily conquered so much of the Eastern Kingdoms, such as the dwarven and gnome territories, seemed to demonstrate that they were extremely powerful. Alterac was the weakest of the human kingdoms anyway, so I doubt they would have contributed very much.

On another note, I think a decent idea would be for the Alliance to try for an "Alliance Council" of some kind, perhaps led by a representative from each race, which meets every week somewhere to discuss matters of mutual interest, not unlike the real-life United Nations.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Perhaps, but even if Alterac and Gilneas had helped, I still had the impression the Horde would still have had the upper hand in terms of brute force, the way they easily conquered so much of the Eastern Kingdoms, such as the dwarven and gnome territories, seemed to demonstrate that they were extremely powerful. Alterac was the weakest of the human kingdoms anyway, so I doubt they would have contributed very much.

On another note, I think a decent idea would be for the Alliance to try for an "Alliance Council" of some kind, perhaps led by a representative from each race, which meets every week somewhere to discuss matters of mutual interest, not unlike the real-life United Nations.

The Horde was still unable of really conquering any territory in Lordaeron, plus they failed at cracking Ironforge and Gnomeregan, and they hadn't managed to get a decisive advantage over the Alliance on the battlefield with Anduin Lothar and Turalyon managing to fight them even with the huge attack power boost that were the red dragons. The one moment where the Horde really had the Alliance in the ropes during all of the Second War was during the Siege of Capital City and it was only because of Alterac's betrayal that it happened.

Besides Alterac was the smallest and weakest of the human kingdoms but its mountains did give it a certain defensive advantage, something Chronicles pointed out and could have been used against the Horde if Aiden Perenolde hadn't been such a dirty and self-centered craven, and its army leader, General Hath, seemed to have been a good military leader if he was able of getting Thoras Trollbane's respect.

[angrywithmygod]

Get rid of the High king nonsense

Let the Alliance actually be proactive in defending it self against the Horde.

make each race unique in what it brings to the alliance.

Profit.

[Aeula]

I don't think it's possible to make the Horde or Alliance interesting at this stage. They're both essentially the same faction. Imo they should just merge them and bite the loss of potential merchendise bullet for the health of the game and lore.

[VladlTutushkin]

Yeah, no, this is false. SI:7 reinforcements are sent to Silithus right at the very start of BtS. And since Shaw obtained his original sample before the book even began, the original force was there even earlier. Explorer's League on the other hand is sent halfway through the book, because Anduin got the idea to send them as well only after his chat with Magni. So sorry to burst your bubble, but the Alliance was the instigator in Silithus, just as @Faerillis said.

«Instigator»? Being first somewhere does not equate instigation. Even stealing from goblins does not equate war, because if it does then Horde declared war on Alliance in WoD. Especially in neutral ground like Silithus. Also after recent political events i cant see this as anything but farce. By all measures horde fucked up and started the “hot” war while Alliance was sticking to cold war tactics, even if heavy handed.

Not to mention how your own faction admitted to it. I mean, you not being punished but the fact stays the fact. And not to even mention a genocide.

[Feanoro]

Being first somewhere does not equate instigation.

"You stand where orc want stand? ORC KILL YOU!"

Especially in neutral ground like Silithus.

"Noo... trawl? Bah, words for wimps! ALL LAND ORC LAND!"

This has been your guide to Horde geopolitics.

[VladlTutushkin]

"You stand where orc want stand? ORC KILL YOU!"

"Noo... trawl? Bah, words for wimps! ALL LAND ORC LAND!"

This has been your guide to Horde geopolitics.

Also still waiting for them to explain how full on warfare on Ashran which Horde started over Alliance digging up Ogre relics was not an act of full on war, but stealing azerite from goblins in Silithus was an act of war despite goblins actively attacking any Alliance forces in the area and kidnapping Alliance citizens.

[Ardenaso]

Alliance is riddled with real world politics. Because they have "Humans" Blizzard likes to force their political beliefs onto this race in the game.

which real world politics? like civil unrests, border conflicts, geopolitics, rebellions, insurrections, invasions, and genocides?

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Alliance is riddled with real world politics. Because they have "Humans" Blizzard likes to force their political beliefs onto this race in the game.

White stormwind civilians suddenly poc and done behind the scenes without any reason why or notice they were doing it which is really sus when you consider how many times they've tried to change shit without letting players know and the only reason we found out is cause some nerd was datamining.
Another example of this is a the paintings with fruit.

Is it a big deal Stormwind has POC? no of course not, the issue is Blizzard changed already existing NPCs instead of just adding new ones and that's fucking weird as hell. They proved they'll change whatever they want in order to incorporate their real life beliefs instead of keeping WoW a video game and world of it's own. Many players get pushed away by shit like this because when it comes to the Alliance Blizzard loves to do shit without keeping the lore in mind to what's actually logical.

Not that there's anything wrong with it... of course, but In a couple years I wouldn't be surprised if Anduin came out as gay and married a black trans woman.

It actually isn't, Varian and Anduin didn't have any problem with the house of Nobles or political opposition from inside Stormwind aside from Onyxia, they never faced true tensions or divergences from the rest of the Alliance, the dwarven and gnomish politics are cruelly underdevellopped, same for the Draenei and the Night Elves never had any political tensions without the opposition to Malfurion and Tyrande turning outright crazy and evil as seen with Fanfral and Maiev.