It came about through a roleplaying narrative that’s been ongoing for several expansions and dictated my character’s exile and transformation from blood to void elf as lore developed past Legion. Void studies to protect her people led to being lumped in with Umbric’s exiles by way of Rommath’s politicing and fears. Consequentialist philosophy boils it down to four words;
The Horde forced me.
Interesting that racials appear to be a bigger reason for people playing Alliance than for Horde. It’s often said on these forums that Alliance need better racials to convert people over, but it looks like more people who are interested in racials are already playing Alliance. More interesting story and racial lore appear to be the things that might make Horde mains go Alliance?
That might be due to my method of evaluation though.
If people answered that their reason to play Horde/Alliance was a certain race, without going into details, I counted that as equal parts racials, appearence and race lore.
But interestingly a enough racials were almost never mentioned as a reason in both threads. So people (or atleast the ones on the forum) seem to not care much about them at all.
People who care a great deal about the Racials specifically probably don’t care which faction they’re playing on.
IE, if the Horde has better racials for PvP and Raiding (which is usually the case) they will play Horde, but when the best PvP racials are Gnome and Human they’ll switch to Alliance, and as such they won’t be responding in threads like these because they don’t “choose” to play either faction, they just switch along the Flavor of the Month.
Yeah but I also think those people are just a small minority of the playerbase.
One thing to also keep in mind is that the people here on the forum are probably not your average wow player. A lot of them care a lot about lore and I think the percentage of rp players is also somewhat higher here than if you look at all the players.
My friends decided for me. They don’t play anymore, and it is too expensive to switch back.
But to be fair the only real difference between the factions these days, is the banner.
Ah right, yeah, that makes sense. But you’re right, racials are barely mentioned in either thread so I doubt that it’s the deciding factor for many people (assuming that there are far more average players than ultra min-maxers).
For aesthetics, I’d much rather play Alliance and be a pretty nelf druid. I also prefer the Alliance cities (Suramar isn’t a proper functional city otherwise that would trump all others) and am generally more of the goody-goody type that’s represented on Alliance. But friends/husband mean that I play Horde and I’m not unhappy here. It just wouldn’t have been my choice if I’d had a totally free choice.
I was maining horde for 14 years, althrough my first ever character was Human Paladin.
-I like the Alliance racial themes and architecture especially gothic part of it. On Horde its all about bones and tusks…
-Horde cities are boring, especially Orgrimmar. Stormwind is graphicaly outdated but feels more live even if there’s no players in it. Also, latest in Bfa, Even tho Zuldazar is very pretty zone, Dazar’alor is ugly and non organized. Boralus is pretty much basic themed but again, so much more live and beautiful than any other city.
-As i’ve been playing for so long on Horde, community has changed. So much more toxic people are getting into horde and the attitude they have is not for me.
-Alliance races are much prettier than horde. I like Tauren and Undead (orcs too, but armor on them sucks), but all other, especially female chars are ugly and have weird animations.
And I kinda like the rp mentality good-looking bad/evil guy/girl, rather than ugly and bad equals.
Because Alliance is superior in many ways. Better looking garrison, cities, races. Better quests, zones, stable leaders.
Can’t be bothered to play boring, overrated, overpopulated, mediocre, cowardly, easy faceroll mode faction that is Horde.
People playing there are stubborn, arrogant and full of themselves just like developers of this game.
Every single horde in-game is a murderer, honorless coward and guilty of their crimes. They always blame someone else but themselves for what they do.
So despite blizzard’s Horde bias not everyone want to play their pet faction.
Stop forcing and promoting your pet faction blizzard, because it won’t work on me. Not going Horde at all, abandoned it for good in wotlk.
Also without “pretty” and “cute” races it is Horde that would struggle with bad faction balance instead of Alliance.
Take away muh pretty belvez, muh Nightbornez and muh cute vulperaz and suddenly Horde is no longer dominating the game or that popular.
Shame that cowardly, honorless and stinking savages wise enough not to eat their young dominate the game for over a decade.
But what can i say? People are just dumb mindless sheep, that play what is more popular or “better” instead of what they like.
I happened to be levelling Borbarsa when I started to sub. I actually came into the game preferring horde, but trying to get my (lack of) money’s worth out of the starter edition meant that I crossed the red/blue divide early on.
As for what kept me on this side, I quite like the European feel of the Alliance-focused zones in the Eastern Kingdoms. They just seem to be a lot more thought and effort put into them than “here’s a savannah/desert with x colour dirt and y special thing like water in Thousand Needles”, which is also why I like the Forsaken starting zones a lot too (the quests help a lot too).
That, and I like being basic (in the case of humans) and being a space goat, though I only have one at the moment.
Because I am a chronic altaholic and need to have all races and all classes to the max lvl with nice transmog so I can sometimes just scroll through them and see how well they all look.
Nuh uh.
The real difference is that one side is lacking space goats.
The Alliance has bloodthirsty gentlemen werewolves. 
I used to play a MUD (yeah, that old) together with fellow nerds. Then people started vanishing, as they quit to go play wow. I got an invite from one of them to play on a specific server and roll a certain faction, and did so in order to keep playing with them.
But I had quite a long way to catch up, and they were raiding, so I made new friends along the way.
I couldn’t catch up enough to raid along, and eventually they transferred to Horde, but I found that expensive and also wasn’t keen on starting all over so I stayed behind with my new friends. After all, I had leveled up with them!
I now play both factions, and have 10+ alts, but my main ally toons are exactly the same as 12 years ago.
I originally started playing alliance human because I was unfamiliar with the Warcraft lore so I wanted to play it safe.
Later I started to play horde because it felt they had better players.
Then I moved to alliance again because a real life friend was playing Alliance so I begrudgingly faction changed. Now that friend does not play any longer but I CBA to faction change ever again.
I am also in that Goldilocks zone guild that can get (normal+heroic and a bit of mythic) raids and M+ done while not having anxiety and obligations other than not being a tool and enchanting/gemming gear. How could I ever leave them.
To play a glorious Human and solve the ongoing insidious threat the kingdom of Stormwind was facing, i was already a role player or should i say a dungeon master but sometime i used to play my chars… since childhood so before i even got the game i had already decided to make that character thay way and the professions etc…
I have no interest in playing something evil and or hideous. I am even if it doesn’t interest anyone here a very very vain person, the kind to put expensive perfume alone at home for exemple… so it was human female all the way before even owning the game and i never enjoyed or played a elf on any other games or role playing as one i find them hideous ,uninteresting and on a cultural and thinkering way retarded.
I could have gone for orc female but there was the undead and i don’t like evil doer or being affiliated with them and in the short or long way as often i made the right choice seeing the results and way the game went.
I cannot stand playing a game or an rp session where it’s just about doing only evilish things though character with a nice gimmick, like beig incredibly greedy in expemple or a small mischief and funny grief is more than welcome.
I wanted to see houses more than huts. Also, my friend’s guild was Alliance.
Because horde had no decent race at that time. Their character had back problems, some had never seen a dentist and one race was literally walking corpse. And they lived in tents…That is not alliance I want to invest into, so humans it was.
All the bullies in school played horde, so I wanted to track them down and kill them 
Wich I did, alot, and loved lunchbreaks when they talked about this troll who always was there to kill them