Breakfast Topic: Pick a faction, any faction...

by Elizabeth Harper Jul 13th 2009 at 8:00AM

It's one of the first choices you make when you start to play: Alliance or Horde? Horde or Alliance? Orcs or Elves? From thence forward, your entire gaming experience is defined by this decision. So -- which way did you choose? Do you fight for the glory of the Alliance? Or for the honor of the Horde? And whatever you chose... why? Did a particular race appeal to you? Were you joining friends? Do tell!

What's your faction?
Alliance	8267 (37.3%)
Horde	9638 (43.5%)
A little of both	3249 (14.7%)
Oh, who cares?	990 (4.5%)

Tags: alliance, faction, factions, game-discussion, gamer-discussion, horde, world-of-warcraft-discussion, world-of-warcraft-hot-topics, world-of-warcraft-topics, wow-discussion, wow-factions, wow-hot-topics, wow-issues, wow-topics

Filed under: Horde, Alliance, Analysis / Opinion, Breakfast Topics, Factions

Reader Comments (Page 5 of 11)

Malkia Jul 13th 2009 8:45AM

I DO play alliance for lore purposes though. Same reason I play horde. There are TWO sides to every story..sometimes more. It's not fair to just listen to the horde side, even if I consider them the more honorable of the two factions. I want to see and know it all...and if that means playing on the side that makes me randomly want to switch sides every time varian opens his mouth..well that's what it means.

Zarfay Jul 13th 2009 6:15PM

That's fair enough Malkia. I more or less meant if you play your faction with great pride for lore reasons. But if that's how you play I can respect that :)

Fedya Jul 13th 2009 8:41AM

I've started playing Alliance long time ago... Probably worst choice I ever made, no idea why I choose them, now it's just impossible to reroll...

But faction change is incoming so it's not so important anymore.

Malkia Jul 13th 2009 8:42AM

Left to my own devices I would have chosen horde first. I liked orcs a lot more than the night elf I had made during my trial, but like many other people who joined so friggin late in the game (January of 2008 in my case) I joined to play with friends, so I joined their server, and chose their faction.

I have characters on both but my Draenei I rolled to hang out with them is still my main, even though I'm no longer in their guild. (Doesn't stop me from hanging out with them, I just wanted to raid and we din't raid.)

Nina Jul 13th 2009 8:44AM

I voted a little of both, but majority of my toons are Hordies. I've got 2 Undead, 2 Trolls, an Orc, 2 Tauren, 1 Belf, 2 Night Elves and a human.

I'm enjoying RPing heaps on WA, and I'm loving the time I'm playing my little Troll Witchdoctor.

Sleutel Jul 13th 2009 8:44AM

My main is Alliance, but my next-highest non-DK alt is Horde. I've got a mix of both, and with my new Shaman twink, I've played at least a little bit of every class, too.

I thought about whether I'd turn my Night Elf Warrior into a Horde race to join one of my other friends' raiding guilds if my current guild ever fell apart, but I would have to be pretty desperate. I love the NE racials, and all of the little animations associated with NE females are just burned into my brain in connection with the toon. When I use something like Orb of the Sin'dorei, everything just looks "wrong" when she moves.

shdwpwrCrow Jul 13th 2009 8:47AM

I could never play Alliance, honestly, I never gave that side more than a glance since I first came upon the character creation screen. It's just not my cup of tea, I have always sided with the "perceived bad guys with more to them than just that".

I started off with an Orc (Warrior), some 3 1/2 years back coz, well, it's was an Orc and I was new to the game and it seemed pro ! In the vacuum that waiting for TBC created for my Guild, I lvl-ed an Undead (Priest), which I ended up re-rolling to in TBC and which I still love and play the most. Apart from that 1st Orc char, all my chars are female (got 5 lvl 80s now, lvl-ing / questing remains one of the most fun parts of the game for me), I just prefer their slimmer figures. For that reason, Tauren is a horde race I'll never play, they r just too big and the female Tauren just look silly tbh.

I genuinly wonder if there are people that choose Alliance because they honestly think Horde are baddies. Any of those people out there ?

Back to work !

Markainion Jul 13th 2009 8:49AM

Started of playing Human, because I was racially phobic of all other races but humans when I stared off. I was even uncomfortable playing a different gender for a while as well. But got over it, when I started an alt to make potions for my main characters. But I couldn’t see male pick flowers all day, so I made my alt women. Later on my guild preferred my alt class better than my main for raiding, so I got over the gender thing, really quick.

My first non-human race was a Orc, which I though had a cooler look than all the other male races including alliance, which have a abundance of very dorky looking male for the most part. But when BC came out I started preferring the Blood Elf female look the most, but raised a Male instead for the same reason I didn’t want to play a women toon in the first. Got over that by the time Wraith hit, and my Blood Elf Mage became my second toon behind my Male Human Warrior to reach 80. Which are still the only ones to reach makes level. Even though my other Alliance and Horde Alt are slowly getting there as well

Pexxle -=Silver Hand (RP)=- Jul 13th 2009 8:49AM

When first getting into WoW some years back, I was initially drawn to Alliance due to the fact i had no idea as to what to expect, and the whole perception Horde is "Bad", Alliance is "Good", which today has been confirmed as false.

catharsis80 Jul 13th 2009 11:35AM

Exactly. The only Ally race I can think of that is "good" like Horde are Night Elves. And IMO, I was a little surprised they're even IN the Alliance instead of Horde or Neutral. Why would they side with the Alliance? Didn't the Orcs come to KALIMDOR where the NEs live? They met the Tauren there after all. Every time I think of a quest involving Horde fighting Night Elves, it's never made sense to me at all.

ziggler Jul 13th 2009 8:50AM

as apparently a ton of people.. started as a night elf hunter :X
a couple of days after discovered a couple of really good friends played horde side, so, my mage was created and never looked back

Rakah Jul 14th 2009 9:37AM

The only alliance race i like the look of are drenai. But since most of the alliance races are similar and about 50% of the alliance on my realm roll the dull generic humans i rolled horde. Another plus being i don't have to look at night elves quite so much.
Perhaps they need to nerf human racials like EMFH?

Yagos Jul 13th 2009 8:57AM

For some reason I don't care about the what sex they are. It's more about the cool factor.

My first character was a male Tauren shaman because I wanted a spellcaster that didn't look like spellcaster. The opposites makes him cool. This humongous cow that spits out lightning balls.

My second most played character (After my dear shammy) is a female Belf Paladin. She's not sexy, she's cool. Like Xena. I am amazingly annoyed at how small her weapons look but when I tried a male Belf I just couldn't do it. I didn't think he was cool, pretty, sexy, special or remotly interesting at all.

Binners Jul 13th 2009 8:58AM

My previous experience (from playing both a human and orc warrior in Classic) had been negative with the Horde; The players seemed too serious, and many were there for the "I'm the badass wicked-looking badguy" image, which is why I preferred Alliance.

When I came back to WoW after Burning Crusade was released, I started a Night Elf druid, and discovered a wonderful guild. I haven't had much of a chance to play my Horde characters, since I'm usually eager to meet up with my friends.

That said, when I do play my Horde characters, it seems like the faction has "grown-up" a bit; The players are calmer, and fairly helpful. Trade chat on both factions is pretty rough, though it seems worse on Alliance because there's twice as many people. PvP can be quite rough on either side; Everyone loves healers, except when the healers need a hand.

Has anyone else found the HUGE difference in PvP quality during different times of day? I've have my best experiences in BGs and WG around mid-afternoon, with both sides playing smart.

PvE-wise, I haven't noticed much of a quality difference; Certainly, there's a bigger number of "L2P's" on Alliance, but there's no shortage of really good players on either side. I think there's more mom's on the Ally-side, too. Interesting, eh?

Keep in mind, polls are only valid for the member population; This survey represents the Wow Insider population, rather than the complete WoW community. Still, it's neat to see.

Amapele Jul 13th 2009 9:14AM

I don't necessarily find that there are specific times where PVPing is of "high quality" I guess. I do however take note where we (Alliance) are doing awesome in one BG and run with it until I start seeing different people start coming into the groups. For example last night we were taking names in SoTA so I just kept queuing for it, as did the same people over and over again...so it was clearly just an awesome group of players. However, once the players started changing and groups started getting separated the quality went back to its usual self.

Markainion Jul 13th 2009 10:15AM

I learned a long time ago if you hate you battle groups in BG just get of a do it at a different time. If you’re at the highest bracket level and during busy hours, all you have to do is get of for twenty minutes or so to have a totally different experience in BG. There is no real difference Horde and Alliance with regard to PVP skill level, but at certain time of the day the difference can be massive. I play both factions so I should know, but I wish my toons on both sides were on the same Battle Group Server so I could really exploit the difference of player skill levels during different parts of the day

Hattai Jul 13th 2009 8:58AM

@info: coz BABY GOT BACK!

but im with Jay on that note, my first character was a troll shammy, i went off and played others for ages, but eventually i transferred him to my current server and hes my main once again, people think im weird for this, but theres something about the trolls that hold such an appeal for me and the lore behind the shaman class is what keeps me playing it through gimped dps and shit itemization

i also plan to roll a Witch Doc in D3 once its released so i can continue to play the same basic character

Muse Jul 13th 2009 9:03AM

I wanted to play a drow cleric. Night elf priest was the closest choice available.

joerendous Jul 13th 2009 9:05AM

my very first toon 4yrs ago was a night elf warrior. night elf because at the time i didn't think i'd be ridiculed as much for wanting to be an elf (silly me). warrior because i had bought the strat guide with it and it had said that warriors would be in abundance - i thought i was joining the crowd, little did i know that that was hardly the case.

j.s.pavlick Jul 13th 2009 9:14AM

I liked the way Blood Elves looked, I thought they looked like Legolas from Lord of The Rings. Also, my friend from school played Hoarde, so that's why I roll Hoarde.

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