The balance of power on Azeroth has been shifting through the times and history and serveral powerful kingdoms and empire rose and fall again. Those nations and organisations had of course their own military backup. In the present days there are many races and factions who could still shift everything. Here is my personal list.(Sadly only MMO C allows you to do polls).
faction aligned for all of Azeroth:
The Scourge. Unmatched most successful army of Azeroth. The combination of plague, necromancy, frost magic, Death knights, and ground forces to counter each possible disadvantage are something nobody should underestimate. Biggest range of forces you can imagine. From humans to vrykul, Valkyr, abominations and many more. I don’t think it’s possible to defeat them in open battle with nothing holding them back(Well, nothing but the burning legion pre nerf status).
The Naga(The only army of Azeroth that so far has remained unharmed during all of the events until now. They always send token forces but never had to fight on their home turf against unbeatable plot armor from the good guys).
The combined armies of Legionfall(We kicked the burning legion where it hurts the most. Felt good).
The armies of the elemental lords(Their numbers should be quite a sight with the core powers that make up the foundations of the physical planes. And the Elemental lords are ripped. Duh.)
The Alliance.(No need for explanation, blizzards pet faction and full of plot nuke characters and human potential)
The Horde.(Lok’thar! All outcasts are welcome here and Zandalar stands with us now. Also hosts my two favorite playable races. Not to mention the post Garrosh era industrialisation).
The argent crusade. (They still control big chunks of the plaguelands and Stratholme. And made up 1/3 of the forces at the broken shore).
The ebon blade.(The new four rides and the back up from Bolvar seems like it buffed them up to match against the argents/silverhand).
the two political powers:
Alliance
Horde
it used to be even and equal, but the recent power ups Blizzard tiped over towards the blue team(Darkiron, Army of the light, void elf squads and Kul Tiras), boosted them beyond braindead.
Single out faces beyond the usual spectrum:
Khaz’modan/Dwarfs/Gnomes. Home turf unite! Nobody has ever succesfully sieged Ironforge or claimed to be a match for all our machines, gunpowder and sheer advantage in so many fields. I feel pride in saying I am a bronzebeard.
Stormwind(I hate to admit it, but that’s the plot Blizzard wants to tell. Humans > anyone else in terms of numbers, armory and all that important stuff.)
Forsaken. Blight, blight, more blight, dark rangers, edaquate numbers and a working, fully organized rank system that coordinates it all similar to real armies? yeah sounds like it should be feared and taken seriously.
Valarjar. Those stormforged from Odyn seem quite massive and powerful should they ever manage to get out of the Halls of Valor and join the rest of the world again. Time will tell.
United Orc Clans of Durotar(TOgether with Mag’har). They defeated the Kaldorei in their home turf how many times now without them being aided by Stormwind? Even against Cenarius plus Sentinels it was just a single clan. Now they have an actual army, extra industry from the Mag’har and an organized system to manage the forces they copied from the Ogre empire.
Navy without faction bounds:
Kul Tiras sighs
Zandalar. Even half the ships is still more than Stormwind should be able to muster here.
Stormwind. Again, see the army post above.
Extra: Bloodwake Vrykul. Jorun and “thousand ships”? This could shift the naval balance into wild territory. We don’t know enough about them yet to get a more clear picture.
I decided not to add serveral races in here, because I am not that much into their lore(Like Kaldorei, Tauren, Darkspear or Gilneas even). Maybe somebody else can tell more about those?
It was never equal, but it was still balanced. The Horde in Vanilla (up to Wrath of the Lich King) was weaker than the Alliance: Orcs, trolls, and tauren were basically a bunch of refugees, and the Forsaken were nearly crushed between the Scarlet Crusade and the Scourge. The reason the Horde was never defeated though was because of internal struggles and corruption within the Alliance. The faction was not able to fully utilize its military might. This was still true in WotLK, where the entire plot of the Alliance in the Borean Tundra deals with corruption within their own ranks, while the Horde stands as a united force.
This only changed around Cataclysm, where both factions suddenly switched roles for no apparent reason: The Alliance became this united “stand as one” powerhouse, while the Horde struggled with internal conflicts. There was no explanation at all. And the logic made a break as well, because we suddenly had to believe that a bunch of refugees seemingly became a world power overnight.
The Horde wasn’t called the “underdog”-faction for no reason after all.
According to the state of the developer, they should be the night elves and zandalari?
The night elves are now stronger than they were at the time of the War of Thorns, according to the developer. Already for the war of thorns they were 8 to 1 outnumbered by the Horde and demanded a high and immersive blood toll from the Horde.
And that only with a small army, but now in a state stronger than 8. 0 despite genocide their army on land should be by far the strongest.
The Zandalari, on the other hand, needed to lure away their army to attack the capital, otherwise it would not have worked. This means that all the peoples of the alliance were necessary to invade the Zandalari, which is comparable to the War of Thorns where it was just as necessary.
This is true, but we’ve been attacking and killing them since Vanilla. We even dealt quite some damage to them during TBC and Cata. I don’t know how many Highborne were turned into fish, but it should be a lot. Guess they have the unbeatable plot armor themselves as well.
Speaking of which, are they still active? We have no information on nearly all Class Orders, yet they should play a fairly large role imo… Blizzard storywriting at its best.
I like how every Erevien-posts has these little remarks in it, about how Blizzard loves the Alliance and how Baine is the worst person ever.
Haha, speaking about plot armor! Whoops, battle turning out badly? Deploy the Blight! Having to retreat, but not wanting to yield your territory to the enemy? Deploy the Blight!
Night Elves will always be second fiddle to the humans
Extra: Not meant to be offensive, but compared to the other big guns of the Alliance, the Kaldorei got hit pretty hard. I can’t see how they would be able to match up with Stormwind, Dwarfs/gnomes and Kul Tiras given the current situation.
It’s just weird that the Naga, like the Scarlet Crusade, seem to have an endless supply of people they can send out. I can hardly think of an expansion, apart from WoD obviously, in which they weren’t present in some way. And every time, we’ve dealt quite some damage to them.
It took humans less than 1000 years to get from a few hundread million people to almost 8 billion poulation wise. Don’t underestimate natural biology
If the Naga started out with only a handful, and retained their way they conceived children, the amount of Naga there still are left is illogical and doesn’t make sense.
But Blizzard never bothered too much with numbers… thankfully, this is probably the last expansion in which the Naga play some sort of role. I already got tired of Azshara when she said one word in Azsuna.
Forsaken. Blight, blight, more blight, dark rangers, edaquate numbers and a working, fully organized rank system that coordinates it all similar to real armies? yeah sounds like it should be feared and taken seriously.
One trick Pony…see how desperate they got when it didn’t work against the Worgen. What else did they have? Nothing.
Mantid are very unrated while its plot armour the Panda’s beat them back every now and then its also mentioned that is just a testing of the new born mantid, this is considered a massive threat to the continent and the Mantid are just weeding out the weak. One of the Mantids mentions during the Klaxxi missions that basically they are waiting untill their god calls again to launch the final assault.
Qiraji could also rebuild super quickly…and Nerubians could even be rebuilding…considering how fast the numbers of all of these species can grow…
Probally just one step under the Scourge. Still the scourge would win. It was created to be a perfect army/war machine. You can’t top that. Even with all the elemental firepower.
