When it comes to defection, I don’t think it’s quite black and white, but you definitely need to think about what you are doing (even if your character happens to be one of the races who could fairly easily defect without drawing too much notice).
One important factor is indeed your race. An orc would basically stand no chance in the Alliance whatsoever no matter what. There’s far too much bias. I can’t see any orc going to the Alliance over neutral organisations like the Earthen Ring, even if they did decide to defect to begin with. The same applies to many other very distinctive races like draenei, trolls, void elves and so on - arguably the majority.
Some races have a bit of an in but must use specific methods and great care. An example of this is Horde humans - you are probably not going to get into the Horde proper, ever, but the Fogsail Freebooters are Horde allies who at first simply offered them a port of harbour and then from 7.1 outright fought alongside the Horde against the Alliance, acting as WQ targets and support for the Tiragarde faction assault. Joining those pirates, and RPing accordingly (ie, join an appropriate guild and actually do stuff, don’t just chill in Orgrimmar) is the only thing I could see working, though even that will be hard due to the game mechanics in place.
A lucky few such as goblins and pandaren have a firm established presence in the settlements of both sides and can totally avoid being pointed out as a defector through simple secrecy. Get a fake background, new clothes, change your name if necessary, and you’re probably set (though again, for goblins, game mechanics might hamper). For blood/high elves the difference is mostly political and the Sunreavers even have a blue-eyed blacksmith, so yeah. Just call yourself high or blood elf appropriately.
Generally speaking for me the issue is not defection in itself, it’s that any race that is distinctively associated with one faction (ie most of them, even the humans despite the Fogsail’s efforts) will probably be captured and interrogated at best if they try to chill in the opposing faction’s capital. To me, defection just to do statue RP in the opposing faction’s taverns is kinda pointless. You clearly have enough of a grudge to outright abandon your faction, so act on it.
My two copper.
(Wow that turned out longer than I thought)
