Alliance and Horde leaders

Lore Story
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Today I had a weird thought. If the Alliance and the Horde leaders had a fight, with nothing else included, other than their own skills and powers… it would probably be pretty quick, with the Alliance leaders wiping out the Horde ones in probably a few minutes.
I just can’t see a reason to create such an enormous difference between the two leaderships (power-wise), so I’d like to hear your opinions on this. I will list the leaders and their “skills”, just to make the comparison easier.

Alliance leaders:
Anduin Wrynn - something between a priest and a paladin, obviously very powerful in either of the cases. He can mass rez/heal bunch of soldiers without even getting tired.
Muradin Bronzebeard - a famous warrior, but I suppose that’s about it.
Gelbin Mekkatorque - an incredible Tinker, can do some nasty stuff with his mech and other inventions.
Tyrande Whisperwind - a living embodiment of Elune and her raw power. Able to summon a mini moon/(star?) and kill a Val’kyr in just a few seconds. Also froze and killed a whole camp of Forsaken without even blinking.
Malfurion Stormrage - the official first and most powerful druid… What else do I need to say?
Prophet Velen - one of the most powerful priests, a skilled and incredibly experienced wielder of the Light.
Genn Greymane - well, I guess he’s a good warrior. He can also turn into a good boy if he gets angry.
Turalyon - one of the first paladins, a skilled wielder of the Light.
Alleria Windrunner - the first mortal to harness the powers of the Void without going insane… for now.
Moira Thaurissan - a priestess. Honestly don’t know much about her, but I guess she wields the powers of the Light.
Jaina Proudmoore - one of, if not the most powerful mages at the moment, has a lot of fighting experience and (I believe) her staff is infused with the power of the Thunder King. Or at least the power that remained after his defeat.

Horde leaders:
Sylvanas Windrunner - a former Ranger General of Quel’thalas, now a Dark ranger. She’s able to use some lighter forms of Necromancy.
Varok Saurfang - the legendary High Overlord Saurfang, a mighty warrior of the Horde.
Thrall - a former shaman, Warchief and the leader of the Earthen Ring, who is now a warrior.
Rokhan - one of the Horde’s best scouts, a shadow hunter.
Baine Bloodhoof - I don’t remember him fighting much. A warrior.
Lor’themar Theron - a former Ranger of Quel’thalas, now its Regent Lord. A skilled and experienced fighter.
Jastor Gallywix - can do absolutely nothing in a fight.
Mayla Highmountain - also hasn’t fought much. A warrior.
Thalyssra - First Arcanist of Suramar. An experienced and skilled mage, but probably can’t do anything game-changing if the encounter wasn’t planned.
Geya’rah - hasn’t done anything significant yet, as she’s still kinda new. A warrior.
Talanji - a powerful Loa priest. Has an interesting theme going on, wielding the powers of the Light, while working with Bwonsamdi.

Oh yeah and the Pandas:
I suppose Ji and Aysa are equal, power-wise.

So, as you can see… While most of the Alliance leaders wield some kind of magic, the Horde leaders are mostly warriors. I find that a little stupid, and I can’t really see a reason to do this. Some of these characters, like Mayla and Baine, could use a lot of developement and become more powerful. I think it would really be a shame to miss this opportunity. What’s your opinion on this? Feel free to discuss!

I’m sorry if a similar post was here before, I didn’t mean to copy anyone. Also correct me if any of my statements are wrong!

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Jaina and Malfurion alone trump every Horde leader as far as feats are concerned to be honest.

Regarding Malfurion, Blizzard really needs to decide what this smurf is. A demi-god who can annihilate entire armies of demons, or an average druid who loses to a banshee?

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True. But wasn’t Sylvanas losing her fight against Malfurion, before Saurfang saved her?

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Yeah, I checked wowpedia and it says that Malfurion almost killed Sylvanas before Saurfang dishonorably rescued her. Nevermind.

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Blizzard has a long history, of killing Horde leaders and characters left and right, while slipping one power nuke after another at the Alliance. Calling this biased would be an underestimation of the situation, that haunts us ever since classic launched. Worse enough, our only powerhouse(Thrall) was turned into a shaman-less warrior too it seems. So it is no surprise you never see the normal people(Horde leaders), showing up in the neutral plot about cosmic forces, ever.

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Depends on the setting.
Jaina was killed by a bullet to the chest, Malfurion was incapacitated with an attack to the back. Thrall was rendered useless by taking him to a place where he could not call forth the elements.

These kind of situations depend entirely on the setting.
Even a “low-tier” fighter like Gallywix could proclaim himself the winner if he brought with him a goblin hand-gun and instantly shot both Malfurion and Jaina in the head before they could do a thing.

I repeat, something similar happened to Jaina in the War Crimes novel.

Edit: And regarding how emphatic you are about the “warrior” status of several characters, a throwing knife to the head is almost as deadly as a fireball. Even if less flashy.

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Imagine thinking the Alliance superpowers are any good or useful in this story. Their characters are constantly held back and neutered for the plot they feature in to make at least some sense which only ends up spawning countless arguments in the fan base as to why oh why their powers failed them in whatever crucial moments they find themselves in.

See: Jaina at the Broken Shore and Tyrande in Darkshore.

Their anime tier power levels are indeed detrimental to their characters because they’ll never truly be allowed to showcase their full potential thus in turn making them appear inconsistent or incompetent at worst.

I’ll take Saurfang, Bob, Muradin or Genn or any other mid tier hero any day of the week over either Tyrande, Jaina or Malfurion. It’s certainly fun to conjure up hypotheticals of how utterly stomped Horde leaders would be in a matchup against their Alliance counterparts but that is also the only avenue in which those powers are of any use. In threads like these.

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Indeed. There is pretty much no reason why Jaina (pre-8.2 at least) and Malfurion have not nuked Orgrimmar already.

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You’re probably right. A fight is tricky, we can’t tell what would happen without knowing the exact circumastances. But if we’re talking about raw power, being a mage is definitely better than being a warrior.

Sadly Blizzard will never make their characters use the super powers they made them have, so they shouldn’t have made these characters OP in the first place. But oh well.

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Why do people feel the need to validate their faction this way? It is almost like people need to stroke themselves whilst going “Jaina can do all of the things, we have space ships, and Jaina can do all of the things”

It pretty much is more like “Jaina can do all of the things but Lor’themar Theron can kill her from almost a mile away” Unless of course Christie-Alliance-Golden is writing it. Anduin can…somehow do things that he should not be able to do because…ahh, Christie Golden. You can pretty much dismiss a lot of the Alliance ‘power’ characters, because of the bias of the new Pet Dev. A Bias she has actually -admitted- to, and does not hide. But yes, they were stupid to make so many Alliance superheroes, it is just a bunch of Medan’s, and it is why of all Superhero’s Superman is the most -Rubbish- of all. He’s either good at everything (Oooh, sound like any Alliance heroes?) or there is some magical ‘thing’ that is supposedly stupidly rare that makes him weak, but it turns up every bloody time because they don’t have the bottle to go “We goofed and made a Mary Sue character, who is actually completely rubbish in terms of having ridiculously bad narrative, but he’s here now, lets…uhh, throw some Kryptonite at him? It worked last week?”

That’s why the Horde leaders are a bit more believable, they aren’t superpowered. Sylvanas is the closest, But she isn’t Anduin ‘Magic Bones’ Wrynn, who can kill a -frickin- TANK with a sword, which incidentally, his class cannot actually use…Or Tyrande ‘am I a hunter, or am I a priestess?’ Whisperwind. The answer is no one knows, Tyrande. You don’t, we don’t Blizzard don’t seem to either. Jaina is just Elsa from Frozen, She has way, way passed the realms of being taken seriously at this point. In fact, if they got rid of Jaina and Sylvanas, this game would be so much better… They are both so appallingly written.

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The Alliance has all the walking WMD’s, but the Horde somehow is always able to mostly keep the territory they conquer in whichever war they start :thinking:. And then repeat it again!

Lazy writing is lazy at times. Still :heart: both factions, tho.

Is how the Horde players validate their faction too, honestly, it’s a problem on both sides even you and I (sometimes? Regularly?) fall into.

Which things are that?

No you can’t, many of the Alliance “power” characters where already powerful before Christie Golden, but the Horde had World-Shaman Go’el, Shadow Hunter Vol’jin and Banshee Queen Sylvanas Windrunner to “sort of” balance it out a little bit. Honestly, Thrall should’ve remained a shaman and Baine should’ve been made either a Sunwalker or something. Atleast now the Horde got Talanji and Thalyssra, and you can kick anyone down that claims Thalyssra can’t be that strong, because we know for a fact the Shen’dralar and draenei are powerful, by that same logic a 10,000+ year old Thalyssra must be too!

I like Superman, he has good stories and actual weaknesses unlike Bat-I-can-B=beat-everyone-C=cuz-I-am-a-rich-ninja-detective-master-of-all-martial-arts-and-extremely-smart-man.

Your bias is showing, Garrosh beat a full grown Twilight wyrm with an axe when he was the Horde faction leader, and survive a crash.

Sorry that faction leaders are able to do things, and survive things, that players aren’t but it has always been the case.

Also, Tyrande is a more unique mix of Hunter and Priestess, showing her role as the absolute ruler of both the Sisterhood of Elune (night elven religious organisation) and the Sentinel Army (night elven military).

Not only Jaina and Sylvanas are appallingly badly written :man_shrugging:

Luckily there’s still al ot in World of WarCraft that keeps me playin’.

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Oh yeah, I still love the game, people often mistake my posts as rants filled with fury and spite, I’m actually just chilling and gently mocking most of the time. I love playing both factions too. Just got my Gnome Heritage armour, Maaan, I may never take it off, its great.

Yeah, that’s what I was digging at, is that suddenly Sylvanas can do -all of the things-, I mean don’t get me wrong, the BfA cinematic, the Banshee scream, that was cool, that was tres tres cool, how she reformed and the yell of “For the Horde” and how it still had that reverb echo, that was brilliant. I just don’t like how she seems to have all these super powers yet the mental consistency of a wet tea towel because it suits the narrative that she is a villain, I mean she is, but why not go the whole hog and give her a moustache to twiddle and a set of train tracks to tie someone to…

Well…Use a sword for a start… Call upon the Light as a good Light Fearing boyo, then using Shadow to mind control soldiers sent by his father to rescue him, just because he wants to go off and play kid explorer. He’s really not as nice a person as people think. Oh, and now he has an early warning system against evil thoughts. Shame that only came about -after- you had just made Alliance soldiers your mind-slaves just because you didn’t like the fact that daddy sent them to look after you…

Go’el, yes. Definitely, he is definitely an intensely powerful character. Vol’jin? No. I mean I really liked Vol’jin as a character, but he was never OP, and besides…He’s dead.
Sylvanas -used- to be spooky powered but not overbalanced, now she is just utterly over the top, they can’t go anywhere with the character now…

Baine as a Sunwalker would be pretty interesting, but he is most certainly not overpowered as a character, he’s just a burly Tauren with a well developed moral compass. I think you’re right, Baine as a Sunwalker would be fascinating, and I’m just recalling the Baine ‘Leader’ short story, and how the Sunwalkers were described, and I am now mad keen to actually make one for RP purposes, he made them sound like WH40K Terminators.

Or rather, we could. If 40 year old Jaina can suddenly send her and four other incredibly powerful people, including Talanji, and also the God-Emperor hero of Azeroth scurrying away. I could buy it if it was “We need to leg it, as this is like the Capital of the Alliance, and a Jailbreak, not an invasion!” but it is purposefully staged by Blizzard as ‘Jaina is this inexorable force against which nothing can stand’ Which is…stupid. Being 40 does not give you a sudden level increase in ability, trust me. Her power levels are obscene and ridiculous.

In fairness, I hate them both. Batman is equally stupid. “I fight all these villains, and I never use guns, but the villains use guns, at some point in my crime fighting career I was probably shot. A lot of times. I should be dead…and were it not for a successful comic franchise, I realistically would be” Whereas Superman must be really regretting his mobile app that his parents used to choose his destination. “Maaan, they sent me to Earth, which somehow inexplicably is where all the fragments of the planet Krypton seem to turn up with weekly frequency, not only that, but even different colours of Kryptonite? Who knew that could happen? Couldn’t they have sent me to Mars instead? That seems like, much safer, less Kryptonite, that way I can always visit Earth to do the hero thing, come back to a place with no Kryptonite, and not have to work a crappy 9-5 job with a boss who is frankly an a$$hole, who I could destroy just by looking at him funny…”

Oh I’m not biased, Garrosh is just as ridiculous, and I said so at the time. At least he has the grace to be -dead- But yeah, Garrosh was ridiculous. He is however, Dead.

I get why, I absolutely get why, I just hate the fact that at times Blizz are so determined to rub the class of an npc in our faces, then make them act in a way that their class cannot. Tyrande and Anduin are the worst. What is wrong with just saying Tyrande -is- something unique? You can do it with the Night Warrior thing, so why not just do it? I mean you even have a name for it! She is a Sentinel! There you go, no connotations with Priest or Hunter, jobs a good 'un, she can be as unique as you like.

Same with Anduin “Wait, so you’re a 16 year old Priest? Alright, I mean you’d be lucky to have made it to Altar-Boy in our world by that age, but fair enough. Wait, you can now use swords? you can do heroic leaps, you can somehow smash a foe with a single blow that causes a dust wave…are you sure you are a Priest, and not a Priest/Paladin/Warrior? Wait! Did you just stab a tank to death!”

For me that is waiting for Nathanos to get the Gods almighty smackdown that just about everyone hopes he is going to get. One thing that I am sure will unite Horde and Alliance players, is our desire to kick the tar out of that insufferable junk character…

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A simple Warrior who strategically roflstomped Malfurion all the way from Ashenvale to Darkshore, predicting Malfurions traps and avoiding the Horde armies falling to them, and launched a surprise attack behind them, so yeah, he’d lose in a 1v1 but in strategy he won over a supposedly 10.000 genius… also Malfurion can wield power from Azeroth and the dream ONLY when fighting serious evil like The nightmare, as is depicted in the Novel before the Storm. So he is not as OP as u think cause Azeroth wouldnt lend him strength to murder her children ( troll tauren and the like)

Its not confirmed if his power has returned or not and with his powers he is THE Earthwarder, so I wouldnt bet on his loss…

LoL. Probably only Alleria and maybe Jaina can 1v1 Sylv. She is way stronger than appears, as is shown time n again. She had her arrow pointed at Anduin in Arathi, she just didnt want the political mess that would follow

Also we have Ebonhorn who is a black dragon, and as far as

Cant say with certainty yet, but she seems seriously OP! She wields light magic, Death magic, assisted by all the Loa and their various powers (used electricity from Akunda to charge gmod, used Paku wind etc) i dont see a scenario where she is cornered since she can just Unleash Bwonsamdi in the worst case scenario

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I’m honestly thinking of going back to my old mog on Shadow… a more adventurer cloth set.

Wasn’t this just a gameplay over lore thing?

I meant in the past, but a Shadow-Hunter is blessed by the Loa, so wouldn’t that make them a grade or two/three above the plebs? Certainly not as strong as Tyrande and Malfurion should be, but probably more on the level of what Jaina should’ve been.

It is! Especially if you consider how they described the differences between Draenei apprentice magi and ogre archmagi in the chronicles, but that suddenly went out the window.

:drooling_face:

A sentinel can’t do the priestly things, tho.

Also, I’m not that anoyed with Thrall, Anduin, or Tyrande being able to do things we can’t, Blizzard said it themselves when people started whining about Anduin wearing plate and a two-handed sword, “A NPC can wear and do things normal players can not” (paraphrasing here).

(I like Nathanos, least he doesn’t kiss our asses everywhere we go. Gods how I wish we would just remain the nameless faceless adventurers and all our kills would be spread evenly between the faction and their NPC leaders and heroes).

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Varok Saurfang himself confirms that, in a 1v1, there is no dishonour in losing against a godlike creature as Malfurion Stormrage, and Malfurion has never been a “military genius”, only a genius in the study of druidic magic. So Varok Saurfang winning a military battle, instead of a 1-v-1 dual makes sense?

Go’el is not the Earth-Warden, no idea where you got that idea from.

When was that show? When she went semi-Banshee form and flew away? When she used her Banshee magic to take down one siege tower? Compared to the feats of many other (former) faction leaders she’s not that impressive.

Who does not fight for the Horde, he serves High-Chieftain Mayla Highmountain as a advisor and keeps watch over Neltharion’s old lair. He currently also works with the Champions of Azeroth.

And Malfurion can just unleash the power of Nature, and Jaina can just use the power of the Arcane.

Really, it isn’t (or shouldn’t) be that easy to “just unleash” an insane amount of power that gives you an insta-win and Bwonsamdi has shown that the mightiest champions of the Alliance can beat him, and we’ve beaten down Loa before, both Horde and Alliance.

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The loa are so weak, don’t we kill one in the questing experience? Also, didn’t the loa of spider die to the dungeon boss Yazma?

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Uhm if u play through Cataclysm and read the book , Thrall which is amazing btw, u would know he pretty much assumes the missing place Deathwing left vacant in the Dragonflight. So yeah… play cataclysm and read the Book. Then return child

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Oke, you’re just trolling now.

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From the Book “Thrall” where the Aspects with Thrall fight Chromatus, Before the events of Cataclysm and the fight with Deathwing (which events further empower Thrall when Deathwing splits his soul etc. BEFORE these events<<)

They did not need Deathwing for the ritual. And despite Chromatus’s challenging words, Thrall realized they did not need Deathwing now. They had Earth. They had Thrall, and for this little while, the to hold something so strong, so profound, that it had once been granted by the titans themselves. Just as he had exchanged his armor for robes in order to fight another sort of battle—one to calm and heal the earth—Thrall realized he had exchanged his ability to help as an individual for something far greater. He was not, could never be, an Aspect. But he was what helped bind them together, to do what they needed to.

So as you can see he acts as their missing link, which was Deathwing, before the events that make him a super shaman with the Dragon soul.

Do ur homework I said son

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He stepped in, you dunce, because he was a powerful Shaman that could fill up the missing link.

He did not acquire Neltharion’s power, nor did he increase in power, nor did he become as powerful as an Aspect because he would not and could never be one.

After the events he was just as strong as before, which is very powerful but not even close to any of the Aspects.