Faction Loyalty

So it seems that a common critique against the Alliance is that they claim to have the moral high ground. Which is interesting, because the Horde does that too. A lot. Nathanos and the Forsaken in general often claim to have the moral high ground over the Alliance, as we can see from Nathanos’ dialogue in Zuldazar.

What Faction do you play/favor?
Favored Alliance since W3.

Why do you play/favor that faction?
Always liked the “Lawful Good” trope in fantasy.
Plus, I just love the draenei race. Not really for their lore, but for being one of the most unique playable races.

Do you dislike/hate the opposite faction?
Yeah. Used to main horde for a couple of years for sake of raiding.
Had fun doing 25 heroics back then when that was the cutting edge, but as soon as the guild disbanded, I moved back to the Alliance.
I tend to play both factions, especially now that you can play races that aren’t just some roided or rotten miscreants.
That said though, I would very much prefer if Horde was just orcs, trolls, tauren and goblins. The other races don’t fit at all, especially given how Blizz makes everything so orc-centric still.

One of the funniest things is when horde wins a battleground and you hear these savage drums and monstrous “HUEGH - HUAGH - HUOGH” choirs… and see all those sissly little belves prancing about :smile: Really makes you loktar ogar :rofl:

If yes: Why?
As much as I dislike the current stat of the Alliance (basically, everything revolves around humans, the most boring race ever, and if there’s even a hint of something else stirring up, like night elves, it’s cut shortly and everything goes back to human potential), I simply dislike Horde more.
Races are what they are, you pick what you like.
But their story is the most hypocritical :poop: there is so far :smile:

3 Likes

Objection. Everything revolves around individual human characters, the humans as a race are as neglected as other races. Even more so, because the aforementioned characters stand as a substitute for actual development.

8 Likes

Nathanos is a douchebag I absolutely hate. His trash talking in not because of moral high ground. It is simply beating on the other faction because of his own inability to tell something of use. His only good attribute is his loyalty… My personal opinion…

And because you speak about this expansion only (at least you examples are): I HATE MY FACTION IN 8.X. All of it. The loyal, the rebels, the silent “leaders”. All of them.

3 Likes

I mean, in his dialogue he claims that the “war is long due” because the Alliance often “cloaks itself in righteousness”. That sounds to me like a moral highground claim, and you take orders from that guy. Unless you are with the traitors.

It’s not that I talk only about this expansion, it’s that this expansion certainly fleshed-out a lot the two factions… But in a negative way.

I play Horde and Alliance but loyal to Horde ofc Alliance is just for lore to see what is going there…spyyyyyy :smirk: Unfortunately I start to play Horde only because blood elfs …they r so fancy :heart_eyes::smiling_face_with_three_hearts::joy: If Sylvannas get kill I m going to Alliance. Still cant get over death of Kael’thas Sunstrider…Sylvannas will be wipe cream on top. with :cherries: In Alliance I dont like humans they r totally like in rl… selfish and paranoid.

1 Like

I was Alliance in Vanilla, because I was younger and very much ingrained in the ‘Tolkien-esque’ Orcs, Trolls and Undead are BAD. So naturally I wanted to play as the good guys, the heroes, my very own potential member of some heroic Fellowship. For young me, this was challenged in Burning Crusade with the advent of Blood Elves and Draenei. “But these elves look all graceful and super-duper elvish! And they live in a place that looks like Lothlorien? How can these guys be joining the baddies? Why can’t they have the ugly space squid aliens?”

So, Burning Crusade arrived and I rolled my Blood Elf Paladin. And I discovered nuance. I discovered honour, and trust, and bonds beyond that of blood. I discovered that that race of evil Undead had once been human. A farmer, a guard, a town crier - and that they didn’t choose this fate, but suffered and were persecuted for having the audacity to die and then escape eternal servitude. I discovered the Tauren were gentle giants, and that the Orcs had been evil but that they had struggled mightily to overcome the curse laid upon them.

I discovered both sides had their flaws, their pros and their cons. And I also discovered the faction I had been playing on griefed Horde so hard it was unreal (server faction imbalance I was utterly blind to when on the ‘winning’ side) and that really annoyed me. So I stayed Horde, I stayed Blood Elf and it’s the icon I’m using today. Kaeimar has been with me since the opening of BC, across two accounts, and he taught me the Horde were more than just the villains. And those Blood Elves? They had suffered a horrific tragedy and were walking a dark path because of it, a far cry from the beautiful elegant and good elves I was expecting.

That is, until Garrosh and Sylvanas’ war crimes started racking up.

4 Likes

:rage: :rage: :rage:

3 Likes

Alliance/(AU)Army of the Light/Occasional future Warchief of the Horde

Was originally a toss up between blood elf and night elf, both races I had a great interest in during WC III.

Most of them yes. Many Alliance players as well.

Because they have gone along for so long being fine with the usual set of warcrime denials and exaggerating the events of Taurajo etc. as the worst thing done ever. As a Lightforged/Nelf/Tauren player, I really must question whether one has their head screwed on to go from fighting against one genocidal army to supporting one. All in the space of months. Double standards applied in ways that would give a politician reason for pause. I’ve seen this kind of attitude IRL from people very frequently. In my foolishness, had not expected to see it in this game too from many parts of the community. So much for getting away from reality for some people.

Baine is the worst Horde character ever because some people got killed on his watch and he didn’t blow it up into a war theater that could burn down his home, but starting a world war that kills your own people happily and threatens to make you all extinct…is fine. I lost my patience with these types of thinking.

Oh yes: Human Potential is not just a meme. It truly has infected every aspect of the Alliance’s story writing to make more purple/short/eccentric mini humans. I guess the alien goats are still favoured enough by certain writers to keep them from becoming blue humans.

1 Like

Oh this dialogue. Ok I thought you talk about his hate speech on how forsaken were “betrayed” by humans. But it does not change what I said. He is a douchebag without other values but loyalty to Sylvanas. I wouldn’t give a :poop: on his trash talk. It is only good to put HIM on higher ground.
Like “I AM NOT INCOMPETENT. ITS ALL ALLIANCE FAULT!”
The Horde? He does not care.

Well its all about point of view. “Fleshed-out” is one possibility to see this expansion. I see It more as as twisted. Like my former favourite char Saurfang. His “Honour” is SO WRONG this expansion. All his doing dishonours him in all possible ways.

While Sylvanas was always ice cold murder bride, now she is simply running amok for reasons. Where is her progmatic side? I can not talk a lot on alliance this expansion, but all the Horde gets to see is, how we HAVE to do things we are not supposed to do, like MASS KILL our own soldiers… while the hero of the alliance comes to MASS REVIVE his troops. How our leaders trade the souls of his child to evil loa, while the alliance counterpart get the redemption for her “crimes” against her familiy.

And so on.

Do not understand it wrong. It’s not like all is good on the Blue Side and all is bad on the Red Side. There are a lot of problems on both of them. FOR ME the current state of the horde is worse at the moment, but overall it is still my faction.

At the moment FOR ME it is the question to pick my poison. Mine is Red. Yours is Blue. But well this was off topic again.

2 Likes

Race over faction. I play mostly gnomes, they are Alliance.

Gnomes. Earnest, always trying their best to improve the world around them, optimistic to a fault, balancing their physical weakness out through wit and intelligence… how could I not like whose awkward little nerds? Dwarves are ok, too.

I hate the continued and unchanged existence of the factiosn. But any particular faction? Nah. Horde players have my pity. I do strongly dislike the existence of clearly evil races like Forsaken and Void Elves within the hero factions, though, and would delete them, or make them their own bad guy faction if I could, so I guess I might hate that…

Anyway, not even my RP characters would have anything against real peace, considering what a colossal waste of everything the wars are. No half-butted armistices, though, they have worn out their welcome.

5 Likes

:+1::+1::+1::+1:
Tragedy that shoot them like thunder and hurricane and no one help them… Misunderstood, rejected from own ppl like Windrunner sis except Sylvannas.
That is why I m mad at Blizzard why they constantly ruin her char…and yet other sister r blessed ones. Kael’thas Sunstrider is nothing more or less do than Illidan and yet he is dead. …and once again and YET PPL PLAY BELFS MORE THAN EVER … FOR QUEL’THALAS :joy:

I mean, the knife-ears is right. You are kind of ugly.

void elves and lightforged in same faction is amazing set up for some inetrnal conflict/strife or others just finding it overtop what lightforged do . But nope nothing really

Ironic how Stormwind serves as the main Alliance faction, but they have the least developed culture and society out of every single faction in the game. The exception are maybe the void elves, but they are a brand new race. If you want to scramble together some Stormwindian culture you have to look in several different books, Vanilla quests and short stories.

I would be fine with the idea that Stormwind is the generic-fantasy-knight-faction (generic yes but it can work and can work well). But, we don’t know anything about the role of knights in Stormwind either.

8 Likes

I guess there were no human kingdoms around to bail them out, as is traditional.

Hek hek hek.

4 Likes

And yet you humans wanted them back in Alliance but how? :thinking: When you rejected them and be total racists :joy:

Nah, we cool.

The lore books are begging you to pick them up. I am refusing to reply in kind as I have no desire to derail Anouk’s rather wholesome thread.

And yet you did :joy:

If yar quoting something, quote it properly.