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

[Magnagarde]

I will say this is more a strength than a weakness at least for the time being given the current state of the Horde and the story.

Definitely. The Alliance's aesthetic and the way it is presented is what is keeping what playerbase it has on board with it. It has an aesthetic, ideological and a thematic continuity, something the Horde's lost a long, long time ago. The Horde's been completely butchered through these supposedly "interesting" stories of inner turmoil; I don't know anyone who became more motivated to play Horde because the Horde had to depose their faction's warchief twice now?

What made the Horde so popular were post-TBC gameplay adventages and a couple of races at most that attracted a large number of players. Except for a few continuously well-performing guilds, it is a handicap to play Alliance if one needs to constantly replenish guild members in order to progress. Since mid-BfA it became extremely hard to find viable recruits.

Downgrading internal Alliance cohesion within the lore to the level of the Horde's would just boost the player-drain. Some Horde fans are secretly wishing to see the Alliance recieve the same fate as the faction that they're playing in and are disguising their wishes with ideas of "an interesting Alliance"; I'm not blaming them in a negative way considering the Horde's been dealt the worst cards possible in the lore and the community at large should stick together in preserving at least some semblance of Warcraft.

On a positive note, Blizzard seems to finally be acutely aware of the disbalance and it would explain their latest move towards cross-faction functionality.

[Loreth88]

Definitely. The Alliance's aesthetic and the way it is presented is what is keeping what playerbase it has on board with it. It has an aesthetic, ideological and a thematic continuity, something the Horde's lost a long, long time ago. The Horde's been completely butchered through these supposedly "interesting" stories of inner turmoil; I don't know anyone who became more motivated to play Horde because the Horde had to depose their faction's warchief twice now?

What made the Horde so popular were post-TBC gameplay adventages and a couple of races at most that attracted a large number of players. Except for a few continuously well-performing guilds, it is a handicap to play Alliance if one needs to constantly replenish guild members in order to progress. Since mid-BfA it became extremely hard to find viable recruits.

Downgrading internal Alliance cohesion within the lore to the level of the Horde's would just boost the player-drain. Some Horde fans are secretly wishing to see the Alliance recieve the same fate as the faction that they're playing in and are disguising their wishes with ideas of "an interesting Alliance"; I'm not blaming them in a negative way considering the Horde's been dealt the worst cards possible in the lore and the community at large should stick together in preserving at least some semblance of Warcraft.

On a positive note, Blizzard seems to finally be acutely aware of the disbalance and it would explain their latest move towards cross-faction functionality.

The horde get better racials for pve and slowly the progress guilds transfer to the horde and the playerbase follow them even is the average player don't need that little bonus what they get with those skills.

Second the lore, they use the alliance incompetent punchbags for the horde tooo long. So more ppl leave noone like to be a punchbag, like in high school.

[OwenBurton]

It is over. No one will move back to alliance unless:

1. You make Alliacne racials so OP that being horde is basically nerfing yourself. So basically kill horde.

2. Take down all barriers between the factions. ALL. I would like to play alliance races. But i don't like only raiding heroic or waiting forever to find people for anything above 5+ (exaggeration obviously don't jump me)

I will never pay for anohter faction change unless Blizz forces me by making horde useless

OT: Give Alliance simply more story. Give EVERY Race even hrode more story. Hell every race is basically only their faction leader. Like a hive mind.

If blood elves (being overwhelmingly popular) were a neutral race, then perhaps the Alliance would be more popular, but as it was, such is not possible at this point. Were Horde players in the majority before their introduction, or did this change come about afterwards?

[Soon-TM]

Let the Alliance be a little aggressive and whoop some ass in game for once

This already happened during MoP, with an edgy Alliance that didn't shy away from shooting unarmed enemy soldiers in cold blood, enslaving locals, or going into something disturbingly close to an ethnic cleansing.

Man, you should have seen how #$&%ing epic was the ensuing QQ of Alliance players at the time, when for a moment it seemed as if they might no longer be the aggressively generic, boring asf knights in shining armour who can do no wrong.

And that's without considering that there had been previous dick moves from the Alliance which were promptly swept under the rug (Varian sending a war fleet against the Forsaken early during WotLK, him declaring war during the coup, SI7 sinking ships full of civilians, etc.) but MoP brought it to an entirely new, higher level. BfA cranked it up even further, to an almost parody level.

[angrywithmygod]

Firstly improve alliance racial's to be on par with the Horde. Silly that a bunch even got nerfed back in the days simply because they were good in PVP.

Secondly make have anduin come back to from shadowlands broken. He should be after the ordeal he had gone through, no more have him come out of expacs where all his bones are shattered and he comes out of it being magical bone powers.

Have the alliance be happy with its time being ruled under Turaylon as supreme commander as he didn't involve himself as much in their politics and instead has strengthened the alliance and secured its lands and protected its citzens, all the while still avoiding all out war with the Horde. Turaylon should still offer back rule of stormwind although not all the citizens and nobles are happy about it but he now he has assumed control of lordearon(with most of the people migrating back to the other kingdoms) so Stormwind is no longer seen as the centre of the Alliance.

Anduin should become even more bitter because of this, reaching out with the light to help him he contacts yrel and calls the army of light to Azeroth. Anduin then uses the army of light with yrel to seize control of the Alliance and start calling him self High king again or better yet, Emperor of the army of light. He becomes Lightbound by the Naaru as it is the only way that he can feel whole after his soul had been drained. This causes him to become a thrall to the light and infatuated with Yrel.

The Horde on the other hand have left Kalimdor and the forsaken have left the Eastern kingdoms realising the only way to atone for their crimes is to move away from those they have hurt on kalimdor and eastern kingdoms. They instead move themselves to Icecrown and build new kingdoms there, There they become welcomed by the Local races where the horde help protect them from the wild scourge. The forsaken set themselves up icecrown citadel now the lich king is gone and uses it as a base to capture the Feral scourge and restore their minds. By doing this they have almost an unlimited number of beings to keep up their number but at the same time don't rely on raising new undead. The orcs redeem themselves in the eyes of the Dragon flights by defending the egg chambers in dragon blight from the feral scourge or perhaps a lich.

The blood elves setup in the borean tundra, there they look after the nexus as the blue dragon flight has abandoned it.

the Darkspear setup in troll zone to the north. From there they work with the new Loa Vol'jin to bring back the Loa that were killed.

Tauren could setup anywhere really but I like the idea of also being in the tundra near the taunka.

Goblins setup in storm peaks for obvious reasons- all that titan tech being easily available.

For conflict for the Horde, Maybe Odyn now free from his prison intends on taking back control of the Icecrown and broken Isle and even Zandalar seeing all Titan facilities as rightly His. He intends to take back control of these lands and drive off the mortal races that are not descendants of titan forged. The leads him the keepers and Vyrkul into conflict with the Horde as they fight for their new/old homes.

Eventually the Army of light and odyn will team up to bring order to azeroth and we have to kill Anduin and Odyn.


Oh and have it turn out that there are no first ones. Make it be that the titans had invaded the Shadowlands millions of years ago and ordered it. The eternal ones are nothing but early prototype keepers and the brokers were simply wrong about there being another pantheon as the titans were simply beyond their understanding. Zereth mortis was simply one the original forges the titans created but it took a titan to power hence why Jailer needed Azeroths strength.

[Venziir]

This already happened during MoP, with an edgy Alliance that didn't shy away from shooting unarmed enemy soldiers in cold blood, enslaving locals, or going into something disturbingly close to an ethnic cleansing.

Man, you should have seen how #$&%ing epic was the ensuing QQ of Alliance players at the time, when for a moment it seemed as if they might no longer be the aggressively generic, boring asf knights in shining armour who can do no wrong.

And that's without considering that there had been previous dick moves from the Alliance which were promptly swept under the rug (Varian sending a war fleet against the Forsaken early during WotLK, him declaring war during the coup, SI7 sinking ships full of civilians, etc.) but MoP brought it to an entirely new, higher level. BfA cranked it up even further, to an almost parody level.

The "problem" with this part is, that it's mirrored completely, so if you play Alliance during the Jade Forest, you'll see the Horde do the exact same thing, all because of the Sha manipulation basically.

Also, when did the Alliance sink civilian ships?

[Soon-TM]

Also, when did the Alliance sink civilian ships?

During the Cataclysm, when SI7 was ordered to kill Thrall. SI7 failed, and instead sabotaged Goblin ships full of refugees because they might be inconvenient witnesses later on.

[Venziir]

During the Cataclysm, when SI7 was ordered to kill Thrall. SI7 failed, and instead sabotaged Goblin ships full of refugees because they might be inconvenient witnesses later on.

Oh right right. It's super duper wierd how that was never really explained or commented ever again.

[Gnomette]

I'm relatively new to the forum with an avatar still pending so forgive me!

What drove my interest for the Alliance is what the Alliance used to be, they've become goodie two shoes with no real personality and what's more a blue variant of the Horde that doesn't seem to have much of a soul. A homogenized, grey, blob where the differences in culture, aesthetic and personality of the races has either been ground down or taken in boring directions. First off get rid of the High King rubbish it needs to be an ALLIANCE of Kingdoms that have signed a pact for mutual defense.

A corrupt council of nobles ruling Stormwind is far more interesting than a perfect King. Night elves actually acting like night elves might be a start, characters like Thisalee Crow need to go in the bin and there they need to return to the cultural routes that made them distinct from humans. That means female only sentinels, it means being nature zealouts, intolerate of the arcane or at the very least keeping the Highborne on a very tight leash. More characters like Maiev with out giving them a villain bat, the writers need to seperate fiction from reality to realize that fantasy racism, intolerance or biggotry drives conflict and that is far more interesting than a sterile environment where everyone holds hands.

If the Alliance go back to being a shiny apple with a rotten core, that has more characters like Daelin Proudmoore and less like Anduin it might actually be interesting. A morally grey environment that focuses on telling an interesting story like it's a DnD campaign rather than relentlessly clean, polished, sterile people that have no real substance. Obviously that's all from a lore perspective!

[Kharnath]

For me personally it comes down to 1 thing.
I play to escape reality Soo...
How cool do I think they look because to me...

Red is a better colour than blue.
Wolves are better than horses.
Wyverns are better than Hippogryphs and Griffins.
2HAxes are better than 1H sword and Shield.
Less armour is better than more armour.
Bodybuilder physiques are better than realistic physiques.
Deep voices are better than soft voices.
Barbarians are cooler than civilians.
Fighting is better than talking.
Rusted and Jagged is better than Smooth and Polished.
Disorder and infighting is better than order and uniformity.

This is why I like the Horde.

[Kithelle]

I don't think you can for many reason...for example racially, You have small human, short human, buff human, furry human, and big and tall human make up a majority of the races. So little variety...

Then you got to consider people love the bad guys...Horde are pretty damn close to bad guys, the Sith Empire is the dominant faction in SWTOR and there isn't really any advantaged to one faction or the other there

There are a lot more unique items while Alliance is mostly horse this or hypogryph that

Racials would need to be nerfed and that would cause people to go berserk, or buff the Alliance racials to OP levels

Then people would want to have to race change if not just flat out give up

Just don't see this stuff happening

[verylargeprime]

I dunno. I played Horde for the last 7 years and just jumped back to Alliance. I'm having a better time as Alliance.

It's only anecdotal, but I've found the average Horde player to be more skilled and generally more concerned with performance, but also way (way) shittier socially. On average. This is probably always going to be the case with the more popular faction, given such an imbalance.

You can teach unskilled players how to play, but you can't teach unrepentant pricks how to not be pricks. As I get older I find I prefer the nicer players over the "better" ones.

[Dug]

Alliance would be more popular aesthetically had the racials not been so horde favored. It's no coincidence that Blood Elfs are the most popular horde race. Pretty much all the alliance races look great in their armor besides worgen. I'd have been a dwarf or human long ago if all my friends didn't play Horde. Now if they lift ALL cross faction restrictions I'd probably switch back. I love horde races don't get me wrong but alliance just look better.

[Skytotem]

They need to give the dang alliance races some values and develop their cultures beyond "We are light and smart civilized good guys."

- - - Updated - - -

For me personally it comes down to 1 thing.
I play to escape reality Soo...
How cool do I think they look because to me...

Red is a better colour than blue.
Wolves are better than horses.
Wyverns are better than Hippogryphs and Griffins.
2HAxes are better than 1H sword and Shield.
Less armour is better than more armour.
Bodybuilder physiques are better than realistic physiques.
Deep voices are better than soft voices.
Barbarians are cooler than civilians.
Fighting is better than talking.
Rusted and Jagged is better than Smooth and Polished.
Disorder and infighting is better than order and uniformity.

This is why I like the Horde.

Red is indeed better than blue.

but...

The wyvern model is -bad-.

Arm wings on a body that skinny that fold up awkwardly, and have a scorpion tail just... it's clunky design man.

Also, the Horde could do with a bit less infighting and more bonding moments by this point. I just wanna see Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls get to hang out again...

[Goatfish]

I mean, if you just want more alliance players, giving them better racials is a good start. Granted stoneskin and the dark iron equivalent are pretty good. Shadowmeld is very useful, and I personally think Run Wild is underrated. Granted the only statistics I found on why people create characters showed 60% do it for gameplay reasons (42% for the right class, 18% for the highest stats), 17.4% was "other", 12.6% was for looks, and 10% was just for the name (I guess like making a worgen named boneslobber or something).

As far as lore goes, I've recently given up faith of bliz writing a good story, but I guess there is always hope.

As far as the "people just want to play monstrous races"... I'm not so sure of that. Everquest for instance had a nearly opposite breakdown, with trolls, ogres, and Iksar (lizard people) being some of the least played races. The "Evil" races had a much lower representation in general, mostly brought up by Dark Elves.

Some other interesting stuff from the EQ stats. (I think it would be really cool to see similar stats on WoW):

Players who choose Wood Elves or Barbarians as their favorite race are significantly older than EQ players in general. Players who choose Dark Elves or Iksars as their favorite race are significantly younger than EQ players in general.
Players who choose Druids as their favorite class are significantly older than EQ players in general. Players who choose Rogues or Monks as their favorite class are significantly younger than EQ players in general.

If Norrath were real and EQ players had to live in Norrath in the form of a EQ character, about 75.5% of EQ players would want to be male, while 24.2% would want to be female. 8.9% of male players would want to be female, while 3.2% of female players would want to be male.
Female players are significantly more likely than male players to want to be Wood Elves, whereas male players are significantly more likely to want to be Human.
Female players are significantly more likely than male players to want to be druids and clerics. Male players are significantly more likely to want to be warriors.

[Syegfryed]

The wyvern model is -bad-.

Arm wings on a body that skinny that fold up awkwardly, and have a scorpion tail just... it's clunky design man.

Warcraft "wyverns" are not rly wyverns, they are manticores, i don't know who was the big brain who named then wyverns, wyverns are dragons with 2 legs and 2 wings(different from the common 4 legs 2 wings).

Usually the manticore is not a winged beast and have a human face, but D&D make then winged and with a lion-ish face, Wow prob took from that but change the name for some reason.

[Feanoro]

On a positive note, Blizzard seems to finally be acutely aware of the disbalance and it would explain their latest move towards cross-faction functionality.

They've been aware of it for years now. I'd have to find it, but GC infamously commented that they would only really address the faction imbalance once they were sure the faction transfers had dried up.

Ridiculous you say? Consider the cost of a single character transferring. Add perhaps an alt or two for an account, erring on the side of downplaying it. Assume at minimum twenty accounts per guild, then multiply by the number of entire guilds that swapped. Round up if you like for the people who weren't in a raid guild, but still wanted the superior grouping situation.

Doesn't take too much to see that's a boatload of cash, and Activision isn't exactly known for charity.

[Magnagarde]

They've been aware of it for years now. I'd have to find it, but GC infamously commented that they would only really address the faction imbalance once they were sure the faction transfers had dried up.

Ridiculous you say? Consider the cost of a single character transferring. Add perhaps an alt or two for an account, erring on the side of downplaying it. Assume at minimum twenty accounts per guild, then multiply by the number of entire guilds that swapped. Round up if you like for the people who weren't in a raid guild, but still wanted the superior grouping situation.

Doesn't take too much to see that's a boatload of cash, and Activision isn't exactly known for charity.

Absolutely, the financial benefits they have reaped from providing the service has made them delay addressing the issue for a long time.

[Ogren]

I mean, if you just want more alliance players, giving them better racials is a good start. Granted stoneskin and the dark iron equivalent are pretty good. Shadowmeld is very useful, and I personally think Run Wild is underrated. Granted the only statistics I found on why people create characters showed 60% do it for gameplay reasons (42% for the right class, 18% for the highest stats), 17.4% was "other", 12.6% was for looks, and 10% was just for the name (I guess like making a worgen named boneslobber or something).

As far as lore goes, I've recently given up faith of bliz writing a good story, but I guess there is always hope.

As far as the "people just want to play monstrous races"... I'm not so sure of that. Everquest for instance had a nearly opposite breakdown, with trolls, ogres, and Iksar (lizard people) being some of the least played races. The "Evil" races had a much lower representation in general, mostly brought up by Dark Elves.

Some other interesting stuff from the EQ stats. (I think it would be really cool to see similar stats on WoW):

Makes a lot of sense.

I don't have the chart on me right now but a similar trend exists in FFXIV, most of the male characters player are Midlander whereas most female are Miqo'te. (Cat girls, next best thing to elves.)

Ironically this supports why the Horde needed Blood Elves even though ultimately that decision slowly killed the Alliance pop as the Horde had great racials on top of the best player model in the game.

[Talon8669]

OP racials and cool race