The Horde vs. The Alliance

[ThePontifex]

Hey Tankspot! First time poster at this community, glad to be here!

As the Cataclysm draws closer to us the drums of war thunder and the old hatreds between the Alliance and the Horde are burning hotter then ever before. I've been giving a lot of thought towards the differences between the two WarCraft factions lately, both from a lore perspective and also regarding the player bases that support each side.

Which leads me to ask myself where my true allegiance lies? As a kid playing WarCraft 2 back in 96 I played almost exclusively as the orcs. Over the many years of my World of WarCraft experience it seems that I subconsicously drifted to favor the Alliance as most of my characters have been either humans or dwarves. Yet I find myself missing my old green friends and now I stand upon the thin red line ready to choose a side once and for all.

And so I put the question to Tankspot: Do you play an Ally or a Hordie, and why? I want to know. Is it because of lore? Do all your friends play for one or the other? Is there really a difference between the two player bases?

Please share!

[Chamenas]

Blizzard has done their best to really make it so that no one side is "better" than the other. That one side isn't clearly "evil" while another is clearly "good", and yet we form these opinions ourselves. We ignore facts in the lore that refute our opinions and harp on facts which support them. It's human nature.

Thus the entire experience is very subjective. What I see may be different from what you see entirely, but that doesn't make you wrong or me wrong, it's just a difference in opinion.

That being said, I play Alliance. This is because, on the whole, I find a lot of faults with Horde races (with the exception of Tauren). It was the Orcs that invaded Azeroth. True, they were betrayed by their leaders and driven into a frenzy by demonic lust, they were pawns, but they still wronged the humans. They never had a claim to any land in Azeroth. They weren't supposed to be here. And a lot of the things they did to the Alliance are things which take a long time to forgive, so it's understandable that they haven't been forgiven.

The undead are a fairly nasty bunch. They are devoid of a lot of their emotions and seek vengeance on the living and the scourge alike. They're utterly ruthless and self-serving, and I don't like that. I find the Blood Elves to be much the same way. They chose to steal magic rather than deal with the pain and sufferings in withdrawl. The High Elves have shown that Elves can live without succumbing to mana-tapping to feed their addiction. So it's purely selfishness that drove them. And I don't like that.

Goblins are so entirely greedy, what's there to say about them?

Tauren and Trolls are mostly untouched by me. They're simply the enemy because of the sides they chose.

The Alliance isn't perfect. And, I feel, for the sake of balance, Blizzard has done a lot in order to make sure the Alliance has looked bad too, so that the Horde isn't entirely evil, and so that people can see the Alliance as evil if they want to. That's just the way it is, but I see the Alliance as the victims, and I side with them. They have plenty of bad ass heroes that stood up for their homes and friends and defended their nations against the onslaught of the old horde back in the original Warcraft games. So there's plenty of bad assery among the Alliance.

[Goros]

I play Alliance, but not out of some sense of loyalty to the races of "good", but because when my guild came to this game we wanted to be the underdog on a pvp server, figuring that the majority of the guilds that moved to WoW from Shadowbane would roll horde because they are "cooler".
I played through Warcraft, Warcraft 2 & the xpac, and Warcraft 3, the Xpack, plus the game at the end. It was pretty clear that the game at the end favored the Horde and was showing the alliance as being untrustworthy oathbreakers, but TECHNICALLY that was jaina's father and not jaina or the king. The message was the same.

[Shieldie]

I have spent about an equal amount of time on both sides. I prefer horde above alliance only for the cosmetics, If female bloodelves were alliance I would play ally.

I like the female humans 1h combat animations alot but I just really like how fragile female bloodelves are, something just seems awesome about being the smallest (besides gnomes ofcourse) and tanking the giant badguys and saving the day, lol im weird like that.

as for communities.. Ive found it to be the same whichever side, the idea that children play alliance is only as true as the idea that children would play horde to be cool or scary monsters.
The only difference is that on horde i get griefed by 12 year old male belf dks and on alliance i get griefed by 12 year old male nelf dks :P but thats a story for later.

Im considering rolling a human paladin in cataclysm though

[Martie]

The whole good vs evil thing is nicely hard to pin down in WoW. Representatives of all races committed horribly evil and equally noble acts.
After giving it some thought, I think that looking at playable classes gives you some decent insight. I think no race with warlocks can be completely good, and no race with paladins can be completely evil. Mages walk a very thin line, and as such pull the race away from pure goodness, and priests draw a race away from evil. Shamen and druids are solidly set in a neutral mindset - both drawing power from sources that don't really care about the meddling of mortals. The more physical classes are generally alignment-indifferent, though there's something to be said for rogues tending toward the evil of selfishness.

Me, I played some alliance and then swapped to Horde, and I found that horde is a tad more mature then alliance, and that's the main reason I stayed horde. I also think the alliance is a tad too self-righteous at times, making themself out to be better then they are.

[Cinnia]

I play horde, not because I care a damn about lore, but let's face it, orcs and trolls are the sexiest races in azeroth of course the blood elves are the odd one in, but then they did not exist back then. It's good to see we get our own version of midgets too and they are green to boot!
Undead are just "meh" though, never really enjoyed playing them I want my armour in one piece, and it makes no sense to have an Undead with half broken armour when there are legions of undead out there with quite functional and working armour.

Most of my characters are trolls/orc unless for RP "/lol" purposes, the exception being my paladin as that can only be a Belf.

Naturally I do have alliance characters, they are exclusively dreanai though, humans walk like they have a stick up their back side, Nelfs just *shudders* no I can't describe my hate for them it just is Dwarfs aren't too bad though, but being able to kill a raid boss because your breath smells of last weeks keg o beer is not appealing to me. Oh I forgot the gnomes, they are entirely their for comedy purposes, It's like watching a bad version of willow! or a miniature barbie doll (yes I'm looking at all you pink haired mini britney's)

so yea that's why I choose horde

[Kyoki]

Naturally I do have alliance characters, they are exclusively dreanai though, humans walk like they have a stick up their back side, Nelfs just *shudders* no I can't describe my hate for them it just is Dwarfs aren't too bad though, but being able to kill a raid boss because your breath smells of last weeks keg o beer is not appealing to me. Oh I forgot the gnomes, they are entirely their for comedy purposes, It's like watching a bad version of willow! or a miniature barbie doll (yes I'm looking at all you pink haired mini britney's)

Sure you just HAD to pick on my dwarf warrior and pink haired gnome didnt you. Dam dirty horde scum.


In all seriousness I started out as horde but all of my friends started alliance. As you can tell that was a problem so I was forced to reroll alliance and just seem to have stuck with it. I would definatly switch horde if all my friends stopped playing or they wanted to switch but for now im playing alliance.

I always prefered horde in the warcraft1-3 plus expansions simply because I thought they were much cooler. Orcs are large green and if you get in their way they will cut you down. Also Cho Gall is going back, that guy was one of my favourite warcraft 2 characters.

[Loganisis]

Alliance. Space goats ftw! Plus it's fun walking around with a bunch of mini-me's, I mean gnomes.

Actually, I didn't have a clue when I started playing. It was about 4 months into WotLK when I joined (I think?). So I started with humans because I figured it would be the easiest to adjust to in my first MMO. After that... well I tried several times to create horde alts, but just not as interested in them for whatever reason.

[Theotherone]

Horde is evil, period; wait I have a female orc DK and Shammy. Well, then Alliance must be evil; wait I have an Alliance DK, Pally, Mage and Hunter; oh, I can't decide.

[Eressëa]

For me there are a few reasons I play horde.

1. My boyfriend plays Horde and he's the one that got me to play, so that's reason I started Horde in the first place.
2. I find the Horde lore more interesting. But this is subjective.
3. I find that there are more mature players Hordeside, but whether or not this is relative to the server(s) I play on is hard to say.
4. I have some lowbie alliance toons on another server and I just can't stand some of the obvious, goodygoody, sparkle sparkle vibes I get from the quests, lore, and areas. I have a baby nelf hunter (of course! The classic alliance toon) that I'm currently levelling just to see the alliance side before cata.
5. The Horde races are more interesting to me as well. There's more to them than just being variations of pretty/sexy (in regards to females..).

Dwarves are win though

[MellvarTank]

Good vs evil depends on what side you are on. You would also need to consider that evil people are capable of doing very good things, despite doing them for Evil reasons. (ie. You kill an oppressive dictator only because you wanted his gold, you made a lot of peoples lives better despite the fact that all you cared about was money.)

Horde vs. Alliance getting into it? Not really. It's the same as it ever was, gankin' n00bs is gankin' n00bs.

[mero12513]

I recently faction switched from Horde to Alliance to play more casually with family. I only played horde originally because friends did, but I have grown to really love them. Orcs make the best warriors ever, so I was very sad to lose that flavor.

[mero12513]

You would also need to consider that evil people are capable of doing very good things, despite doing them for Evil reasons. (ie. You kill an oppressive dictator only because you wanted his gold, you made a lot of peoples lives better despite the fact that all you cared about was money.)

I believe the literary term is "Anti-Hero", and they are awesome. Dr. House is a pretty good example in my opinion. Selfish jerks who make the world a better place.

[Kazeyonoma]

Horde, for numerous reasons, but mostly because of Grom Hellscream, and all that is noble in Thrall.

[Superspy23]

I went Horde way back when tier 2 was just hitting the scene in classic. Mostly it was the general character of the races that drew me.

By in large the Alliance was to much of a rigid oligarchy in the humans, exceedingly free spirited but lacking testosterone in the elves, annoying and geeky in the gnomes and lastly the generally cool but with not enough free spirit in the dwarves.

As for the Horde I can't think of anything in the character of any of the original races that I didn't overwhelmingly prefer over the alliance races. I think individual character appeal over race agenda was what set me firmly in the Horde family.

I know this is all subjective but it all carries a feel of big govt (alliance) vs. comunity (horde) to me.

[Mend]

I play as an alliance Nelf Hunter, and a Dranei DK. I also have a Human paladin and my only horde character, an Orc Warrior.

I joined the Warcraft universe back in W3 when my friend gifted me a copy of the game, I played through all of the scenes and my favourite are the night elves especially the archers. They just seem like a cool and "down to earth" race. (Pun Intended)

I play my human paladin for the fact that they are the "holy warriors" of the alliance and their main heroes "Uther and Turylon" are Human.
And as for my Orc warrior, I really like the lore behind thrall and I just think that the warrior in the cinematic was really badass.

[Passive]

My friends played horde in Vanilla but I never played then. As such when they picked the game up again when I started, we all decided to role alliance on a new server. My warrior started out as male draenei but as soon as re-customisation came out I made it female. Since then pretty much all my alliance characters have been female and I find it really hard to play any of the alliance races as male.

This isn't because of some desire to pretend to be a girl online, more so the fact that in my experience a lot of males playing male characters seemed really immature. The question "why do you play female characters if you're a male in real life", seems odd to me. I see it more as "why do you feel you have to play a male character if you're male in real life". You're not a gnome in real life, you're not a mage in real life, then why should you have to be the sex you are in real life? Role-play actually makes me feel awkward and the idea of actually pretending to be the character you're playing seems very strange to me.

Additionally, I found male alliance races to have very awkward feeling animations and feel to playing them. Unlike the female races smooth and precise movement, the males seem clunky and forced.

- - -

I tried horde side first, raiding in a horde guild and due to these ideas I'd formed on alliance, I tried to find the best female horde race. I tried female troll first, then female undead. I couldn't go female blood elf as my main is a warr

[leethaxor]

I rolled horde because everyone i know irl plays alliance, and i found it really fun to annoy them in game by killing their characters. I rolled undead because the lore suited my play style perfectly. While it sounds like a dick move, we really had fun with it.
I stayed horde because of the community. I've always had more fun, and met better people on my horde chars then my alliance chars totally subjective.
Lastly a zombie riding a poisonous raptor that can throw fireballs, yeah i'm a nerd.

[The Hoof]

for-the-horde-baby.jpg

(We have cookies)

[Crommi]

For the Horde!

But I must admit that the story has moved on and the Horde is no longer the same it was before TBC, same goes for Alliance. For past two expansions both factions have fought together against common enemy in some distant land and it has somewhat caused the factions themselves become irrelevant, more about cosmetic choice than anything else.

I have high hopes for Cataclysm, after the war on Draenor and Northrend the players return to home and find new war right on their doorstep. I'm still bit wary of the direction Horde is being pushed to, early screenshots of Orgrimmar show the black and spiky architecture that looks a lot like Hellfire Citadel which was built by the first Horde soon after they had become slaves to their demon overlords.