Hello folks, this will be quite a long post, but there will be tldr at the end to summarize what is all about.
What I wanted to talk about is that for all of these years we have faction related things in the game and they seem to be not doing very good from both story/representation and mechanical/balance perspective.
What I see currently is that one of the factions, namely Alliance seems to be not in right spot of this whole thing in both of these aspects for most of the history, and here I would like to provide a list of things which I really don’t like about alliance:
- Lack of mature representation of the faction, in comparison to it horde is that cool guy always
- Territorially faction seems to be mostly losing or being in less control of the lands they once had
- Faction balance went downhill since TBC with OP horde racials and consequences still visible
- Alliance painted as morally grey faction now thanks to current writing → especially did not like alliance destroying relations with (at the start) high elves and alike
Now to shortly explain each of the points:
- Alliance feels more like reacting force all the time or even like a punch bag for these brutal orcs/forsaken you name it. Horde always felt like something cool, brutal and interesting to most of the players, Nobody wanted to play boring hoomans because of that. Also blue faction doesn’t feel strong compared to the horde, horde always can start conquerring new lands, where alliance at best can defend their territories.
- Now about territorial gains, this is something which we can clearly see since cataclysm where horde was conquering and taking over lotsa land in both eastern kingdoms and kalimdor and alliance was constantly losing territory (prime example: stonetalon, where horde went full on destroying everything night elven druids had and the alliance was trying to defend what was left of the once glorius zone). And then the final blow was burning of teldrassil which even addition of neutral bel’ameth did not compensate much in my eyes. And what allaince gets in return after “victory” in bfa? Nothing to see in the actual game sadly, no rebuilt stromgarde, no retaken darkshore (still you can end up in horde controlled version of it randomly) and no other sufficient gains to justify the “victory”. Even on Zandalar where presumably they won by killing Rasta’khan, we did not see much changes in terms of land control either, more like just plot victory. Also I was saying that it feels like Alliance losing or having not full control in their own lands, here are few examples: gnomes still were unable to fully reclaim Gnomeregan after all these years, Stormwind was half in ruins in cata, meanwhile Orgrimmar was looking even more spicy and fortified and received facelift. Night elves lost entire city, forsaken on the other hand can clear the poison after some time and reclaim undercity or literally start living in upper part of the city after some rebuilding. And I would agree that bel’ameth was good replacement if it was not neutral city, if night elves should get new city the city should not welcome opposite faction who literally burned their home once.
- This is pretty much self explanatory, horde had OP racials since TBC until maybe legion, and then people just were already used to horde anyways so it was too late for blizzard to fix the issue
- Now this is the big one: In short, story of the alliance was not of my liking, how they were represented by the writers. I always wanted alliance be like that good guy who always strives for good and tries to always be in the right on the moral compass, unlike the horde who don’t need to care much about morals, they just want to survive regardless of cost and the ways. But blizzard was viewing the blue faction differently, so they planted even war crimes since the inception of warcraft franchise starting with concentration camps for orcs and then that infamous Garithos story, who was acting like douche with elves and thanks to him alliance lost all relations to now blood elves. And then we had Jaina repeating the same thing but in Dalaran. And then we had some other shady stuff, like Taurajo thing. And maybe I could tolerate the crime part of the story if they at least found guilty ones and teached them a lesson, but they did not even do that. Jaina is still to be prosecuted and roams freely. Speaking of crimes, it seems that the most of the crimes were committed by humans. A lot of people saying draenei are bad because muh eredar, but I would just take retconned story where there was a chunk of “eredar” who did not join the legion and these are Velen and his people. And even if they were once bad, this is long in the past and they are not following that path since eons. And other races: dwarves were mostly minding their business with gnomes, most wars even back in wc2/3 were fought by humans from alliance side. But overall, my point is, I don’t feel like it is fun when blizzard paint your favorite faction dirty sending it into morally grey realm, I know being all for good might be boring for someone, but that’s why horde exists if you want something new or not so conventional, let others enjoy their cup of tea as well.
And here are my points addressing why I think that alliance is not in good spot right now. And before someone jumps in with “Horde is so underwhelming, we are now like lapdogs of the alliance, forced to partake in ally story”, you guys at least had your hour of glory during cata and mop, where alliance always were in this weird situation of reacting to the attacks and trying to defend their lands, and then after bfa ended it just went to these neutral/“alliance painted” stories which just feel shallow and not giving true significance to the faction.
Anyways feel free to discuss, just keep it civil
TLDR: Alliance treated poorly storywise and in game by devs and writers.
