Alliance Good/Imperial/Weak Balance?

[Skytotem]

In WC1 and WC2 the Alliance had a pretty solid heroic angle going for it, in WC3 though Stormwind was out of focus and the Nelfs joined the Alliance offscreen, and have suffered greatly since then.

How can Blizzard balance the Alliance's 'good guy' status with being imperious threats to others... and not being weak/stupid victims?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The only way to keep the Alliance from looking weak is to have them not let the Horde off the hook. They have to either 1. wipe out the Horde, or 2. occupy Orgrimmar and implement a de-Hordification campaign and reshape Horde society and eschew their genocidal tendencies. Blizzard will never allow either outcome to happen, as 1. Blizzard is made up of Horde fanboys, and 2. it would be a bad business decision, as it would be the end of the Horde fantasy that Blizzard has sold their customers for the past two decades.

One alternative that keeps the Horde intact, but defangs their threat, would be to have an Alliance mage like Jaina or Khadgar sunder the world into multiple worlds, physically splitting Kalimdor off from the planet Azeroth so that the Horde can never threaten the Alliance again.

As for Alliance heroism, that is the selling point of the faction. Making the Alliance no longer the unashamed good guys would kill their fantasy, and should not be done.

"Morally greeeey" misses the point. Different factions provide different flavors of fantasy. The Scourge and the Horde provide the evil fantasy for players who want to indulge in such. Likewise, the Alliance provides an unashamedly heroic faction for such inclined players to latch onto. Dilluting them by giving them "shades of grey" doesn't make that faction richer or entertain Alliance players. It just alienates them.

"Bumbling idiots vs morally grey storytelling" is also a false dichtomy. There is no reason why the Alliance leaders can't be good AND competent at the same time. The reason why they aren't is because of the biases of the writers, and problems with the way WoW is formatted (realistically one side would eliminate the other, but the devs won't allow that to happen because that results in the termination or the reshaping of a fantasy that Blizzard has sold to their customers, so status quo must remain king).

[Clone]

In WC1 and WC2 the Alliance had a pretty solid heroic angle going for it, in WC3 though Stormwind was out of focus and the Nelfs joined the Alliance offscreen, and have suffered greatly since then.

How can Blizzard balance the Alliance's 'good guy' status with being imperious threats to others... and not being weak/stupid victims?

Write them like the US that attempt to import freedom to other people at the same time hamstrung by bureaucracy and internal divisions. Substitute freedom for any Alliance values.

[Skytotem]

Write them like the US that attempt to import freedom to other people at the same time hamstrung by bureaucracy and internal divisions. Substitute freedom for any Alliance values.

Great, what should the Alliance's values be?

Order at the expense of personal freedoms seems obvious but... what freedoms would the Alliance take issue with? Magical research? Religions outside the Light / Elune? what?

[Darth-Piekus]

I would say you can write them as the Heroic Protectors of Azeroth but at the same time not as Lawful Stupid. What I mean by Lawful Stupid is that they should become more proactive with various Alliance based factions, discussing how to combat various threats permanently including the Horde if they decide to squander yet another chance given and finding solutions.