It is obviously quite weird to switch now. SL 1st raid is the dwarf-raid and top guilds are considering switching to alliance for it. It is especially weird when they do not have recruitement problems.
Fine… Bad idea.
Like I said; I don’t care either way.
Not about blood elves, not about void elves, not about high elves.
Nor is the faction unbalance an issue for me personally.
So; I have no pony in this race.
It was just ‘an idea’. Forget it. 
Not having crappy racials and getting “cooler” more savage looking races that can be chosen right off the bat without a questline or rep grind.
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Thats the top 1-50-100 range tho and they already have their set rosters. So its pretty much: Change. Clear. Change back.
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Well, they also switched to horde, what caused the snowball effect. Why did they switch to horde and stayed?
Better recruitment options further down the line if the need arises.
Same reason as to why the 100-300 guilds switch. Better and bigger playerbase overall in terms of options.
I am not seeing these better recruitment options. They were the first who switched. They CAUSED this snowball effect.
Anyway; this all has nothing to do with blood elfs or whatever race.
Thats another issue. Just explaining why some guilds currently are swapping for shadowlands. Back on my old realm (ravencrest) for instance from the top 6 only 3 remain. P G, Rogue Ninjas and my old guild Lost and Abandoned. From the ones leaving none of them suffered recruitment issues in terms of not being able to raid.
That’s not the only issue, think, the raiding population and the casual population.
Raiders and semi’s value performance - horde wins
Casuals value content atmsophere, cool factor - horde wins.
Look at the responses, the alliance is perceived as lame. Boring, monotone - and it has had little interesting development. And feels like it’s one race, the human race with a few sidekick tokens in all the other races. And even they are support characters for a horde dominated narrative. That’s a huge issue, their races are totally underutilised and often shipped to the horde when anything cool is developed.
Example 1 Night elves ,
Fascinating race, diverse to be a faction of it’s own, they got pre-sunering elven wizadry and advanced magic, elven forest loving magic, edgy fel demon hunting aspects, with a cool night and star focused core - how much of this is actually utilised? - blizzard did the arcane half, but shipped it to the horde, almost 0 is made up being night or children of the stars - nothing highlighting either outside a few lines - like it’s ignored. only the nature side highlighted.
Then to boot, the race has such an illustrious past but whe you expreience htem in game they’re rubbish, have a reputation for being whipping boys by in-game storycontent invast contrst tot heir original lore as “most advanced” “titanic Race”, “first ever legion defeaters” etc
This highlights in a nutshellt he allinace problem - they aren’t used.
okay Nightborne went horde, fine, leave them there, Now properly develop the night elves - let’s see much more of the moon Priestesss, he highborne and moonguard groups and the Illidari - make em cool…show us why they’re so advanced magic users, and badass fel users and have an actual goddess behind them - Let them be the major ofcus for all things related to night elf history, lore, whether arcane/pre-sundering, nature/long vigil, divine/Elune etc - show and so the majority of the things there, not with the Nightborne. Switch the focus.
Void Elves
Do the same with the void elves. Yes, let the high elves, void elves be a serious thing, don’t develop blood elf stuff more on the horde, shift the focus, let void and high elves become appealing and attractive.
Example 3 Draenei
Here is another one, the Light, the light and nothing else. Sure, they have a cool twist on the Light with the Naaru, but for a rcail lore thathas Eredar Man’ari, Broken - why are these only relevant in an npc setting and barely touch on the actual playable race? Where are the conflicts new adjustments for broken, emerging cultures they bring? what about the aftermath of the Legion’s defeat and the Man’ari now - some with theIllidari yes, but others trying to solo it, rejoin the Daraenei? conflicts there?
Velen’s more a mixed priest now, having worked with Illidan, there is so much. then what about all those cool Draenei assets in AU Draenor? Surely they can import some of them.
Example 4 Dwarves
Okay I’m repeating myself, I’ve said this above, but Dwarves could be so much more interesting given their lore, the 3 hammers, the diversity there, and their EK interactions, character, and sturdiness - they should feel like powerful force for anyone to reckon with. They do not.
As long as alliance feels lame, the horde will keep hugging characters and dominate, and it would lead to the cascade effect you see here.
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I’ll add to what I’ve just said above:
I think casuals generally like the alliance, snowball effect means that playing experience is much better on the horde, you get more groups, more activity and this is what keeps you playing.
Whiles Alliance is a bit lame, but it’s not that far behind the horde, you don’t need massive overhauls or cutting off blood elves/nightborne like some suggest
My recommendation:
Part 1
would be give them a good expansion, the void expansion, use that to boost void elves, high elves, night elves, draenei - they all have a stake there right?
Void elves: I love the idea that with a high elf counterpart they are able to handle the void better with 0 whispering affectations - it gives a purpose for high elves coming alongside void elves with relevance.
Night elves have void experience with the Night warrior, and the Highborne Shen’dralar too - this not only connects to void elves for a non-human involved friendship, but can lead to cool arcane/void things focusing on Priestesses of the Moon, Highborne
Throw in a cool new city for the elves and you’re sorted.
Draenei - have this whole light thing, it’s basically the enemy of the void, so they can have a huge role, you can also follow up with the Krokul, broken and Eredar deserters from the Legion, and factor them in majoriy.
This can all be done in one expansion, where they get cool stuff, cool city, cool story line where you tie in many of their missing factors.
That’s it… Expansion after that, it’s a fair game, with their elevated profiles, it’s even game for appeal.
Part 2
Free faction transfers, including guild ones on low pop super servers for both factions.
If a super server has much lower alliance, then allow free faction change to alliance, and if it’s the opposite, do the same for the horde.
My point is that free transfers would mean nothing if the alliance isn’t cool or attractive, no one will transfer. You have to give them incentive to transfer, then make it easier for them to
How about a new car in RL, a few mounts in WoW and a new set of kitchen furniture’s because you play alliance? 
2 Likes
I am so close at having my own faction and you people start to make ideas how to ruin it! 
Unless blizz makes alliance way stronger than horde there’s no hope. Even if they did it would just flip it around and horde would die.
It’s gotten so lopsided now that most people are gonna pick the faction with the largest pop over the one they find more visually pleasing and/or interesting.
Mmmm. This is subjective.
I personally think the alliance wins in terms of atmosphere and ‘cool’ factor.
2 Likes
Personally, as someone that doesn’t care at all about raiding, the biggest problem I have with the alliance is that it feels stagnant. The horde still feels young and undeveloped, with the potential for growth, change and personal discovery. The Alliance however comes across very much as being solely reactive and set in its ways. They have no impetus. And whilst they have all the traditionally heroic races, that might appeal to new players, their general aesthetic is rather bland.
If Blizzard wanted to convince me that the Alliance is a real, dynamic force, they would need to make some fundamental changes. Beginning with a statement that the Alliance is changing philosophy. A declaration not just from the developers out of game, but from the Alliance leaders in game too. No longer will they be a reactive and undriven human dominated civilisation that occasionally has a little help from its friends, but instead will be a proactive, assertive, multi-species superpower that actually goes out into the world for the betterment of its people.
Then they need to double down on their statement. Show that it is not just all talk. Not with a few sympathetic plots and occasional dialogue here and there, but with a complete rebranding of the entire faction. Change the leadership.
Get rid of the human dominance. May be give leadership to someone/something that can visually represent the concerns of multiple races at the same time. Then - and this is very important in my opinion - give up the faction’s connection to the colour blue. Blue is cold, apathetic and impersonal. And it just feels tired at this point. Find a new unifying colour. One that is hot, passionate and inspiring. A sunburst yellow maybe? I don’t know. But I think that if Blizzard did something like this, I at least would find the Alliance a lot more appealing.
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The joke is this is actually the alliance philosophy, it’s just not pursued in game.
The alliance races are linked by idealism. They believe in “better ideas” to put it bluntly. Horde is linked by pragmatism. On paper the alliance should be more interesting because their faction stands for stuff apparently, whereas the horde just seeks to exist
Yet we don’t see it. We don’t see the alliance wading around installing peace, or justice where they believe it lacks. They’re committed to a vision of something but happy to not encourage it.
Even nathanos remarks the reason the alliance are bad news is because they seek to remove anything that doesn’t fit their vision of what should be. Thing is he’s talking bull because the alliance don’t pursue this aggressively. The main reason they’re going after the horde is retaliation for teldrassil, not because of some foreign policy they have.
Seriously blizz, make them do this. They’re supposed to want to transform the world for the good, so how about they go out and actively do this rather than waiting until the horde does X before they do anything?
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Imo, if you want to make the best out of Ali racials in raids, you should only play dwarves and draenei and their allied versions.
Give the alliance some edge
They act like they are the perfect good guys
The only time we ever see them do anything bad is when they are angry at the horde
Theyre just thematically bland a lot of the time
Change the culture each race has in the alliance to be more their own people. I know they’re an alliance but they don’t need to take it so literally.
Theyre all the same personality only dwarfs like mining and gnomes like tinkering.
I honestly think that is their biggest problem.
Everytime they try to make the alliance stand out the alliance playerbase complains about it. So ignore them.
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Personally, when playing through the Alliance storyline during BFA, I felt I was watching a cheesy Disney movie. There was nothing wrong with the storyline arc, but the way it was presented was incredibly cringeworthy and clearly written for children.
Horde side was really good.
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to be honest, I can’t think of anything right now…
they did nerv the horde racials, to the point, that a lot of alliance racials actually sim better, they repeated the same horde story 3 times
- Warcraft with daelin
- MoP
- BFA
Alliance got to raid a horde main hub twice
horde barely had any pressence in Legion
Horde got to be the bad guys again for no reason in BFA
Horde got to lose their warchief AGAIN
Alliance got 30% WM bonus
…
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