the fact it’s so inconsistent and inconstant makes the thread pointless, is what i’m saying.
but blizzard gives few concrete details about these things, and what details they do give will change whenever one of blizzard’s writers finds said detail gets in the way of a story he or she wants to tell.
in such circumstances, any logical analysis you do is pointless - sure, you can pull together what few details blizz has set down thus far and make an analysis based on that, but it seems like a waste of time to me when blizz’s writers are constantly trampling on established lore in order to impose their narratives on the universe.
your analysis might suggest one side or the other will win the war with ease, but that outcome will never come to pass if blizzard’s writers dislike it. they’ll change, add, and ignore whatever they need to in order to prevent that happening.
That is the point though, similar to Demonhunters, Lightforged are “specialised” in dealing with demons. Thats why Demonhunters have huge glaive weapons to be able to give “killing blows” to Demons who are usually larger. Thats why such weapons are inconvenient when fighting small puny mortal races such as Humans for example.
So no, Lightforged are specialised in dealing with Demons thats why (would explain it) they are caught unaware by Azerothian tactics of War (voodoo in this case) cause out in space they have never encountered these fighting styles and magics. You overestimate the Lightforged.
On topic though, probably Alliance would win but not before Horde has wiped like 80% of it. After all we have Valkyrs, Death, Silvermoon which is comparable to Dalaran as far as magic goes, A Black Dragon, Suramar and can always call a DarkShaman or a Warlock if things get rough
In terms of pure tech and man-power, probably Alliance.
But Sylvanas’ ability to raise and control the dead, as well as her willingness to use weapons of (relatively) mass destruction where the alliance wouldn’t may put the horde ahead.
In all seriousness, this isn’t a discussion that can be meaningfully answered. It depends too much on how the magic systems of WoW work, but they’re so vaguely defined that there’s no telling what is and is not possible. That and a lack of meaningful numbers (city populations, army numbers, e.c.t) means that any discussion is rooted in head-canon.
For example, how does a portal work? Is there strict D&D-esque rules to it about the mage needing to personally know the place they’re porting to? Is there any risk to the mage? Is there any risk to the people going through the portal? Or do the portals intuitively open in safe spaces only? And if so, how does that impact warfare? They clearly seem to have unlimited ranges, but then why are there castles and city walls in a universe where you can so easily get around them? Is it because anti-magic barriers are a thing? And what about maintaining them? It’s been stated in-universe in a few places that portals are difficult to maintain, so are all of the active in-game portals instances of ludonarrative dissonance that exist for gameplay benefit, or is it easier than I’m making it out to be?
The same type of questions can be asked about every type of magic in WoW. This is why it’s impossible to have a real discussion about who is more powerful or would win against who, because there’s no measured ‘power level’ behind anything. The setting is this way to fit WoW’s “continuity doesn’t exist to tie the hands of the creator” mentality, but it makes this faction war thing pointless and stupid, because whatever happens doesn’t happen for an in-universe reason, it happens just because that’s what the writer wanted to happen, and that’s disappointing and feels bad for whoever ends up on the loser’s end of the stick. Just look at how in the space of a single patch it went from 'Stormwind has to release Saurfang because we’re losing so badly we’re conscripting farmers" to “The Alliance is winning on every front and the war will be over in a few weeks”. The story just flip flops like a slinky all the way to it’s destination.
One massive advantage of the Alliance is ability to Deep Strike troops via Void. Heck, if they wanted to they could drop entire Tank brigade right on Horde head quarters, and retreat them back before any response could be even considered.
I believe Voodoo should have it’s niche, it’s strongest trait is that it’s a subtle magic. While Arcane and Light are more about raw power and confrontation like a blast through the door, Voodoo is like a smoke that sneaks beneth the door and when it passes in then it does a damage.
At least that was mine interpretation of it. And I found quite some understanding of this magic after ironically playing Witch Doctor in Diablo 3.
Also Voodoo is likely a magic native to Azeroth only, so imo it makes sense that Liteforged were totally unprepared for it. And likely won’t find a counter measure to it soon because of the nature of said magic.
We have Oculeth of the Nightborn that does exactly the same, opening precision portals right in your basement.
The only Lore difference is that not anyone can cross a void portal as when a being of light (Tyralyon in the thousand year war) crossed the Void portal he felt extreme pain and was harmed.
So like half your humans paladins and priests cant “void-teleport”.
well the Alliance hands down, horde would not stand a chance.
the night elfs alone would beat both the goblins, trolls and the orcs in just cheer numbers, pretty much, have to rember the elfs, got alliance and lots of them, already the Chimaera would decimate any horde who would try to enter Ashenvale, alone, meening horde would be stuck in Azhara and barrens whit no way out.
thunder bluff would be destroyed from air in matter of days or even hours whit them not being able to defend them selfs, origmar would be under heavy bombardment and air battles for some time. Goblins might try to use their canon on Darnassus but even if it would hit, it would only kill civilians putting the night elf army in to high gear, I would say 1 shot is all they would get, and after that no more.
in eastern kingdoms, undercity would fall fast, due to no support from kalmidor, Silvermoon would be next, and probably the place that would take longer to conqure but it would eventualy happen.
and if we start to wonder about allied races, horde might have a figthing chance whit the highmountain and nigtborne at broken isles, but at same time no way to get and help on the main land.
pandaren would most likely end up in a civil war or just stay out of it all togheter.
The Night Elves aren’t as powerfull as people think them to be, it all depends on what Blizzard their plan is in the end. Same happend with The Burning Legion supossed to be a extremely powerfull, but in legion for both lore and gameplay reasons they were turned into everything but a threat.
Same with Taurens, one Tauren should be able to break a human’s body in one slap with a weapon but for gameplay reasons and most likely therefore lore reasons to doing that would be impossible.
By who, the Alliance isn’t the only one who can fly.
You mean Stormwind, Darnassus is already gone and Stormwind would be a good option to destroy most of the Humans.
This is heavly Alliance baised, both sides have weapons of destruction, both side won’t hold it back to use, the only weapon the Alliance has what’s better then the rest what they have is that the Horde for some reason always ends up into a conflict. First war then second war, Garrosh and now Garrosh 2.0.
It is true, but we don’t see Oculeth doing that to secured locations, like Umbric and Jaina did with Dazar’allor
In Suramar questline Oculeth mentions that he can teleport people into Suramar coz Shal’dorei are incredibly slow to implement security updates in their magical defense.
That’s true, but there are differences in the way these types of teleportations work.
Occuleth needs coordinates where he can open the counterpart of the portal. That means he either needs someone who has been there before or someone who has spied on the place.
The light forged ones are rather a comparison, they act in a similar way, but it doesn’t work with coordinates but rather with visual contact, as we have seen so far. They either had to be on site or they had to be within sight of the transport vehicle from the ship.
The Voidelves act a little differently: There are two forms of locomotion there
Form 1: Moving in the other realm: There is an intermediate Realm in which you have already moved yourself, on Argus, a Realm of shadows where you still see everything and experience what is going on on the other side. And you can simply open cracks in and out (Is that already powerful enough what it offers for military possibilities)
Form2: The right teleportations, unlimited possibilities, untraceable, and on top of that you never have to have been there or really know the place. One could even appear in Orgrimmar in the Throne Room without anyone A) feeling it and B) stopping it.
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