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

[OwenBurton]

Basically: Brutality, arrogance and division.

I completely get that the Horde is running rampart all over the world if nobody actually decides to DO something about it, despite their ability to do so. I'm not saying go forth and genocide some orcs, but stop being a punching bag and strike back for once.

I want things to be different. But not necessarily mirror Mists of Pandaria and Battle for Azeroth. That would lead to losing more players in the long term rather than achieve a positive effect for society. A corrupted Turalyon has been frequently discussed, along with Yrel and the Lightbound being the main antagonists. But it seems SO predictable and boring by now that I wonder whether even Blizzard itself has second thoughts on this matter.

Im not talk about just some quests thats cool, but like indead and orc get new building style etc. mostly they and humans get the attention. Other races are sidekicks of the humans in the alliance faction. They are there, but not really. When we get the kultiran humans why not give vyrkuls instead and the fat human can be a choice for body type. Waste time. Uninteresting subrace. They have so many opportunities to make the races and the story better. In a fantasy game we get humans.

Agreed. An Alliance victory honestly always seemed so...tainted, honestly, and seemed like a false victory more than anything.


https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._war/?sort=new

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

End the human hegemony over the alliance, bring back diversity to it. I'm so tired of seeing stormwind guard armour, gimme some regional stuff! And down with the high king nonsense. Bring back the nobles of stormwind into play. And of course peasant tensions in westfall and elwynn.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Basically: Brutality, arrogance and division.

Imagine a paladin dragging a Forsaken bound with Light-infused chains into the Stormwind Cathedral to torture them for information, the holy ground and chains searing their rotting flesh.
A commoner speaks up in protest, only to be "disappeared" by nearby guards.
Finally, a priest begins a sermon advocating for "justice" against the Horde, using their psychic magic to affect their congregation's minds and whip them up into a frenzy.
Some aren't affected, but they go along with the mood of the crowd for the sake of their own safety.

Outside the Cathedral, a couple of Night Elves watch from the shadows as the sermon ends. Only humans are allowed inside the Cathedral these days...

Come on man, this is a child's idea of edge. Adding more grimdark cynicism to WoW won't fix the pretty simplistic issues of forcing your playerbase to pick a team.

WoW's issue lies in wanting to create a team rivalry, but failing to make the Alliance appealing. The Horde favoritism has always come in the form of the developers thinking the Horde is cooler -because it is, by design, even. Cause it feels like the alliance was only put together to hit the same traditional fantasy notes that every other game/setting has, but without showing it the passion and love the Horde got on its worldbuilding.

What the alliance needs is for someone that is actually excited for them to write them, someone that takes the potential and manages to crack at least one good story about the Alliance and what it *means* beyond its leaders and beyond reacting to what the Horde does.

The alliance doesn't need division, arrogance or division; for that to even have any meaning on the first place we need a watershed moment where the value of the alliance as a faction is galvanized, where its the unity and trust between its people what shines.

And what gets to me it's that it would be *so easy* to build on the War2 Nostalgia, showing how that "alliance" still exists and fights by each other's side. But as they cannot win alone, we get to see how all those that have joined since have made the alliance stronger.

The alliance needs unity, it needs to make sense as a faction first and foremost.

[Aydinx2]

Basically: Brutality, arrogance and division.

Imagine a paladin dragging a Forsaken bound with Light-infused chains into the Stormwind Cathedral to torture them for information, the holy ground and chains searing their rotting flesh.
A commoner speaks up in protest, only to be "disappeared" by nearby guards.
Finally, a priest begins a sermon advocating for "justice" against the Horde, using their psychic magic to affect their congregation's minds and whip them up into a frenzy.
Some aren't affected, but they go along with the mood of the crowd for the sake of their own safety.

Outside the Cathedral, a couple of Night Elves watch from the shadows as the sermon ends. Only humans are allowed inside the Cathedral these days...

Edgy != interesting.

[VladlTutushkin]

Come on man, this is a child's idea of edge. Adding more grimdark cynicism to WoW won't fix the pretty simplistic issues of forcing your playerbase to pick a team.

WoW's issue lies in wanting to create a team rivalry, but failing to make the Alliance appealing. The Horde favoritism has always come in the form of the developers thinking the Horde is cooler -because it is, by design, even. Cause it feels like the alliance was only put together to hit the same traditional fantasy notes that every other game/setting has, but without showing it the passion and love the Horde got on its worldbuilding.

What the alliance needs is for someone that is actually excited for them to write them, someone that takes the potential and manages to crack at least one good story about the Alliance and what it *means* beyond its leaders and beyond reacting to what the Horde does.

The alliance doesn't need division, arrogance or division; for that to even have any meaning on the first place we need a watershed moment where the value of the alliance as a faction is galvanized, where its the unity and trust between its people what shines.

And what gets to me it's that it would be *so easy* to build on the War2 Nostalgia, showing how that "alliance" still exists and fights by each other's side. But as they cannot win alone, we get to see how all those that have joined since have made the alliance stronger.

The alliance needs unity, it needs to make sense as a faction first and foremost.

Only kind of “edge” Alliance needs now is the “victory but at the cost of morality” but played in the same nonsensical “cost onpy on paper” shtic Horde does.

They should either show how neutral factions turn away (or even against) the Horde due to “bad rep” Horde acquired or make Alliance do the same shit and get no comeuppance.

Cause judging from “neutral adventures” promised in Dragon Isles world still in general ignores what Horde does with surprising regularity.

Also, if they want to play on “edgy” themes in Alliance itself best thing would be revanchism and uniting under the banner of “lets rip the Horde a new one for all they did to us” with factions united by how much they despise or hate the Horde instead of being disunited.

- - - Updated - - -

Edgy != interesting.

Not necessarily, but Blizz made it a contest, contest they only “participating” in as Horde. So Alliance needs its own edge, but i dont think tearing it apart from inside will be a good idea considering how faction’s main issue is not its internal affairs (that too but only as a byproduct) but its complete and utter impotency in wars and external affairs.

[Raelbo]

One of the major complaints about players regarding the Alliance - and why they favored the Horde, even back in the original game - was the Alliance seemed too bland or uninteresting, while the Horde was much more nuanced and complicated.

<snip>

While I have no reason to doubt that this is the position of a bunch of players, it is entirely subjective, and a bunch of other players prefer the alliance the way it is. I simply don't believe that the faction imbalance problem really has anything to do with any of what you have written about, and everything to do with players gravitating towards to faction that will give them the biggest in-game competitive advantage.

The real problem WoW has that leads to faction imbalance is that being on the more populous faction is an advantage. Which means that whichever faction is more numerous will tend to become more numerous over time. It's an inherently unstable system. Like trying to balance two marbles on top of top of each other. Just the slightest bias in one direction and it cascades. And this isn't even by design, it's simply a property of the game being multiplayer and having 2 factions.

I reckon the only way to "fix" this problem is to create systems that counter the inherent advantages of being on the more populous faction. WoW players, being the creatures we are, will switch factions if we believe it gives us an advantage to be on a faction that gives better buffs against monsters and in PvP. And as long as the system adapts dynamically to faction representation, it will stabilise faction balance and keep it there. It's that simple.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Only kind of “edge” Alliance needs now is the “victory but at the cost of morality” but played in the same nonsensical “cost onpy on paper” shtic Horde does.

They should either show how neutral factions turn away (or even against) the Horde due to “bad rep” Horde acquired or make Alliance do the same shit and get no comeuppance.

Cause judging from “neutral adventures” promised in Dragon Isles world still in general ignores what Horde does with surprising regularity.

Also, if they want to play on “edgy” themes in Alliance itself best thing would be revanchism and uniting under the banner of “lets rip the Horde a new one for all they did to us” with factions united by how much they despise or hate the Horde instead of being disunited.

It's not that the alliance doesn't need more morally complex stories, it's just that, first and foremost, needs to be made appealing. They do need that "fist bumping moment" and much like it has happened for the Horde, the alliance needs a narrative about "what it means to be alliance", and have that be framed in a triumphant manner.

You really can't subvert the alliance and its beliefs when there's nothing solid and strong to subvert on the first place. You should only play with the tropes when you have the bases down first.

[VladlTutushkin]

While I have no reason to doubt that this is the position of a bunch of players, it is entirely subjective, and a bunch of other players prefer the alliance the way it is. I simply don't believe that the faction imbalance problem really has anything to do with any of what you have written about, and everything to do with players gravitating towards to faction that will give them the biggest in-game competitive advantage.

The real problem WoW has that leads to faction imbalance is that being on the more populous faction is an advantage. Which means that whichever faction is more numerous will tend to become more numerous over time. It's an inherently unstable system. Like trying to balance two marbles on top of top of each other. Just the slightest bias in one direction and it cascades. And this isn't even by design, it's simply a property of the game being multiplayer and having 2 factions.

I reckon the only way to "fix" this problem is to create systems that counter the inherent advantages of being on the more populous faction. WoW players, being the creatures we are, will switch factions if we believe it gives us an advantage to be on a faction that gives better buffs against monsters and in PvP. And as long as the system adapts dynamically to faction representation, it will stabilise faction balance and keep it there. It's that simple.

Well yeah. And Blizz specifically buffed Horde racials into stratosphere and then added “pretty” race to the Horde in BC.

Imagine if they got goblins back then instead of blood elves and racials on the leven of gnome.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not that the alliance doesn't need more morally complex stories, it's just that, first and foremost, needs to be made appealing. They do need that "fist bumping moment" and much like it has happened for the Horde, the alliance needs a narrative about "what it means to be alliance", and have that be framed in a triumphant manner.

You really can't subvert the alliance and its beliefs when there's nothing solid and strong to subvert on the first place. You should only play with the tropes when you have the bases down first.

Yeah, but such moment should only come either against the Horde or against faction that would completely tramp the Horde.

For example, let Yrel invade with her crusade and tell Alliance that “its all good, just do what you were doing!” Before bouncing off to eradicate Horde on Kalimdor to the point where we actually see Orgrimmar being besieged and bombarded by Lightbound.

Then she does something REAL bad like brainwashing Azerothean paladins or something, and Alliance crushes her. So indirectly they “beat” the Horde by beating the force Horde couldnt counter.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

While I have no reason to doubt that this is the position of a bunch of players, it is entirely subjective, and a bunch of other players prefer the alliance the way it is. I simply don't believe that the faction imbalance problem really has anything to do with any of what you have written about, and everything to do with players gravitating towards to faction that will give them the biggest in-game competitive advantage.

The real problem WoW has that leads to faction imbalance is that being on the more populous faction is an advantage. Which means that whichever faction is more numerous will tend to become more numerous over time. It's an inherently unstable system. Like trying to balance two marbles on top of top of each other. Just the slightest bias in one direction and it cascades. And this isn't even by design, it's simply a property of the game being multiplayer and having 2 factions.

I reckon the only way to "fix" this problem is to create systems that counter the inherent advantages of being on the more populous faction. WoW players, being the creatures we are, will switch factions if we believe it gives us an advantage to be on a faction that gives better buffs against monsters and in PvP. And as long as the system adapts dynamically to faction representation, it will stabilise faction balance and keep it there. It's that simple.

I mean we can't deny the the facts tho, the developers did made the effort to make the Horde more appealing early on. Like as much as we can say that the Horde favoritism is subjective, you have many devs making clear their predilection for the Horde, as well as the meassures that were taken early on like Blood Elves and stronger racials.

The problem is that they didn't realize how everything compounded and kept escalating to the point the imbalance went on the other side. It's not just the narrative or the gameplay, but a collection of issues that built into each other, born of a decision to make the Horde more appealing.

You're right that most playerbase will just choose the faction that is most advantageous, and the Horde was that for a while and for several, intended reasons. The problem was they couldn't reach a new balance. By the time it became an issue the other way around, it was perhaps too late.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, but such moment should only come either against the Horde or against faction that would completely tramp the Horde.

For example, let Yrel invade with her crusade and tell Alliance that “its all good, just do what you were doing!” Before bouncing off to eradicate Horde on Kalimdor to the point where we actually see Orgrimmar being besieged and bombarded by Lightbound.

Then she does something REAL bad like brainwashing Azerothean paladins or something, and Alliance crushes her. So indirectly they “beat” the Horde by beating the force Horde couldnt counter.

Perhaps. I do think that an scenario where the alliance succeeds in a place the Horde fails could be the easiest scenario to make it work, but then it has to be based inherently on the strengths of the alliance as the alliance, and the problem there is that it's a delicate tight rope between demonstrating what the alliance is best at without simply making the Horde incompetent -and thus, creating more animosity in the playerbase-

So in a way, the best way the alliance needs to show its value might be on its own rather than in mere contrast to the Horde, Perhaps what the alliance needs its to define its worth by itself and not in relation to the Horde.

Maybe the answer doesn't, or can't be, "The alliance is better than the Horde." Factions to really be compelling must stand on their own merits, not by the reflection cast on, or by, them.

[VladlTutushkin]

I mean we can't deny the the facts tho, the developers did made the effort to make the Horde more appealing early on. Like as much as we can say that the Horde favoritism is subjective, you have many devs making clear their predilection for the Horde, as well as the meassures that were taken early on like Blood Elves and stronger racials.

The problem is that they didn't realize how everything compounded and kept escalating to the point the imbalance went on the other side. It's not just the narrative or the gameplay, but a collection of issues that built into each other, born of a decision to make the Horde more appealing.

You're right that most playerbase will just choose the faction that is most advantageous, and the Horde was that for a while and for several, intended reasons. The problem was they couldn't reach a new balance. By the time it became an issue the other way around, it was perhaps too late.

- - - Updated - - -



Perhaps. I do think that an scenario where the alliance succeeds in a place the Horde fails could be the easiest scenario to make it work, but then it has to be based inherently on the strengths of the alliance as the alliance, and the problem there is that it's a delicate tight rope between demonstrating what the alliance is best at without simply making the Horde incompetent -and thus, creating more animosity in the playerbase-

So in a way, the best way the alliance needs to show its value might be on its own rather than in mere contrast to the Horde, Perhaps what the alliance needs its to define its worth by itself and not in relation to the Horde.

Maybe the answer doesn't, or can't be, "The alliance is better than the Horde." Factions to really be compelling must stand on their own merits, not by the reflection cast on, or by, them.

They made Alliance both weak, military incompetent and dumb at the same time on several occasions to hype the Horde up.

They wont lose their gonads if they do the same once for Alliance.

[Lord Pebbleton]

No ways unfortunately.

I am Alliance at the heart as a proud dwarf player, but mine was a choice against gameplay. The horde has generally had the best racials, which always drew more people to it, which in turn drew friends and friends of friends. Add that the horde has race options for every taste, and people don't really have a reason to be alliance anymore.

I still remember the talks about trolls being extra good in Throne of Thunder. That was in MoP, years after release.

The only fix is to let everyone group cross-faction.

[Iain]

The only fix is to let everyone group cross-faction.

I firmly believe this is why Blizzard introduced Covenants. What we got in the Shadowlands wasn't exciting, but it was merely a prototype. The goal is to have the Covenants substitute factions.

Horde and Alliance will still exist, will still have narrative relevance and the hostile NPC's will still send the guards on you. But for the end game, players can group together in battlegrounds and instances.

When imagining this concept, try not to constrain yourself to how Shadowlands executed the Covenants, they can be much bigger and much more meaningful to a player. In Shadowlands they were 'chose your own adventure' as you could pick four flavours of running the story campaign, some cosmetics and that ability.

In a more advanced version. The Covenants are competing against each other in PvE and PVP. They can claim territories in zones. They can have their own war effort like the Gates of AQ going on. And each week the best performing Covenants could be awarded with special perks and rewards.

Because there's more than two Covenants, and players have some limited means of switching between them (like once per season, or even once per week at a penalty) the factions become more dynamic and easier to balance. The Covenant that outperforms the other Covenants one week can run into diminishing returns the next week. Smaller and weaker Covenants are incentivised to gang up against the dominating Covenant.

For people who are sceptical such balance can be found; Look at Magic The Gathering's 'Commander' mode. In this game mode 4 players free for all against each other, but in order to stand a chance of winning, each player will have to target whichever player is in the lead and take that player down a peg.

That same mechanic is how you balance competing Covenants in WoW. There's so much fun stuff you can do once players have this level of autonomy over with which group they associate with.

[Jacques]

I firmly believe this is why Blizzard introduced Covenants. What we got in the Shadowlands wasn't exciting, but it was merely a prototype. The goal is to have the Covenants substitute factions.

Have you played Legion? We already had the order halls two! Add-ons ago.

[Iain]

And before that we had Aldor and Scryer in Shattrath. Order Halls have many elements of the Covenants, and were largely more satisfying. But they're tied to a player's class and competition between them wouldn't be desirable as that's not what playing a class is about.

The most potential a class Order Hall could offer is competition within the class itself, and that's definitely something I would love to see.

The point of Covenants is that they provide a factions for players to align themselves with without being constrained to a faction or even this fixed server balance. The relative strength between Covenant will be dynamic and much more easy to balance than the Horde vs Alliance ratio which is ultimately a self-reinforcing server demographic trend.

[Raelbo]

I mean we can't deny the the facts tho, the developers did made the effort to make the Horde more appealing early on. Like as much as we can say that the Horde favoritism is subjective, you have many devs making clear their predilection for the Horde, as well as the meassures that were taken early on like Blood Elves and stronger racials.

The introduction of the blood elves (and their huge popularity among Horde players) is a pretty strong counter to the notion proposed in the OP that players prefer the more savage races. And the fact that the devs felt the need to make the Horde more desirable would indicate that the Alliance was the more popular faction prior to that.

The problem is that they didn't realize how everything compounded and kept escalating to the point the imbalance went on the other side. It's not just the narrative or the gameplay, but a collection of issues that built into each other, born of a decision to make the Horde more appealing.

You're right that most playerbase will just choose the faction that is most advantageous, and the Horde was that for a while and for several, intended reasons. The problem was they couldn't reach a new balance. By the time it became an issue the other way around, it was perhaps too late.

No, the problem isn't that they couldn't reach a new balance. It's that they failed to recognise that it is an unattainable goal. They tried to solve the issue of faction imbalance by trying to reach a new balance instead of recognising that they are dealing with an unstable system. In other words, their solution needed to address the instability, not the imbalance.

Think back to Wintergrasp. They were close to the right idea there, but not quite. The big problem with Wintergrasp was that the fight always favoured the more populous faction. Simply put, having a numbers advantage in the battle made it more likely your faction would win. In order to address this Blizzard introduced the tenacity buff where, if one side was short on players, they would get buffed in order to compensate. The problem with their philosophy though was that the buff wasn't strong enough. It helped to mitigate the disadvantage to some degree, but being on the side with the bigger numbers was still advantageous. In other words, they made the system less unstable, but it was still unstable. What they needed to do was to make the tenacity buff stronger than a numbers advantage. This may sound unintuitive - because why would should the smaller army be stronger? But from a system design it would have made a LOT of sense. Because what it would have achieved is giving the players an incentive to balance the factions. And it doesn't matter which faction was numerically superior, such a system will always tend towards stability.

It was the same thing in the battle of Naz'jatar in BfA. Those battles, while epic in theory, were just ridiculous because almost everyone used the group finder tool to find a battle in which their faction was numerically superior. And the nett result was that almost every battle was just incredibly one-sided to the point that it was appealing to neither side. I mean you were either desperately trying to find someone from the opposing faction just to get the HK you needed before the battle ended, just to qualify, or your faction was so outnumbered that it was pointless even trying to fight. The ideal of an actual battle with multiple players from both factions struggling for dominance simply never materialised. Or at least it was incredibly rare.

[Loreth88]

Agreed. An Alliance victory honestly always seemed so...tainted, honestly, and seemed like a false victory more than anything.


https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._war/?sort=new

Yes and the alliance lost, not just that battles but the whole game, they give us xfaction grouping so they give up the balance issues.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Some wish for Turalyon to go mad, or for Alleria, something I deeply disagree with since turning characters into villains just for the sake of having antagonists and without valid explanation or good storyline to go with is one of WOW's oldest, most recurrent and worst story tools and that it didn't make the story of the Burning Crusade better with Illidan and Kael'thas, nor with the Horde during MOP and BFA with Garrosh and Sylvanas.
It would just make the story again worse that it already is.

[Feanoro]

Some wish for Turalyon to go mad, or for Alleria, something I deeply disagree with since turning characters into villains just for the sake of having antagonists and without valid explanation or good storyline to go with is one of WOW's oldest, most recurrent and worst story tools and that it didn't make the story of the Burning Crusade better with Illidan and Kael'thas, nor with the Horde during MOP and BFA with Garrosh and Sylvanas.
It would just make the story again worse that it already is.

Largely, that's people still butthurt about Garrosh and wanting revenge on the Alliance, rather than realizing it was the writers/devs and their petty bickering.

The only way the Alliance will be more interesting is if they have writers and devs who like it. Considering you literally have writers complaining about Alliance somehow equating to slave owners and other woke boogeymen, don't expect anything good soon.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

Largely, that's people still butthurt about Garrosh and wanting revenge on the Alliance, rather than realizing it was the writers/devs and their petty bickering.

The only way the Alliance will be more interesting is if they have writers and devs who like it. Considering you literally have writers complaining about Alliance somehow equating to slave owners and other woke boogeymen, don't expect anything good soon.

When you see how cruelly underdevelopped and underused dwarves, gnomes and draenei are, and how cruelly abused the Night Elves have been so many times by the writers it's clear that most don't even pretend to like the Alliance and will never produce a story with quality about the Alliance anytime soon.

[Alanar]

Three words: Mad King Turalyon.

It just fits honestly.