Abesik Kampfir for Warchief!

There's also a huge difference in the medium. Movies are not MMOs. Plotlines that work for passive media with a single perspective do not work for immersive media with dual perspectives. Making a character drama in immersive medium is hard enough, but it's been done in games like Alan Wake and Silent Hill. But imagine that you had to play as the NPCs in those games rather than the focus character, it'd be terribly uninteresting.

Further complicating the matter is that they're trying to have an epic plotline that can not have an epic ending. All Epic tales end in victory for someone and defeat for someone else. The hero might not win, but someone does. The greeks sacked troy in the Illiad, Sauron was destroyed in the Lord of the rings, the Empire was shattered in Star Wars, the Allies destroyed the Axis in WWII, the Soviet Union collapsed in the Cold War. Those are epic stories with epic endings. That will not happen in the Horde v. Alliance story arc of WoW, so it's silly to try and raise the stakes that high because they're setting everyone up for a letdown.

"This is their darkest hour, but they shall fight back. They shall fight them on the beaches, and in the cities, and in the landing zones. They shall fight on until they've secured a stalemate, God willing."

It just doesn't sound good.

Horde getting more spotlight than Alliance isn't a problem.

Playing both sides, and having played all Warcraft games, the Horde bias is clear to me, simply because on every front, whenever the Horde and Alliance has faced each other on a battlefield anywhere, the Horde has always won.
The only reason there is any humans, dwarves, gnomes or blood elves alive in eastern kingdoms at all is because a huge part of the Horde deserted at a critical moment in the Second War. So it can't really be said that Alliance won the war in their own right (because they were better, when they clearly weren't). The Horde just defeated itself.
In warcraft 3, there were 2 horde-alliance fights and 1 horde-night elves fight. Horde won all three. Also, they killed Cenarius. Who is now alive and neutral in the horde-night elf conflict. Makes sense that he is no longer caring about whether the horde is cutting down every tree in Ashenvale or not.
And then we have WoW, where the Horde has won every single, in-game, in-lore, fight against the Alliance.
Ashenvale, Stonetalon Peak, Southern Barrens, Azshara, Western Plaguelands, Hillsbrad Foothills, Twilight Highlands, Swamp of Sorrows, Gilneas, Lost Isles, Arathi Highlands, Silverpine Forest, Icecrown, (upcoming) Dustwallow Marsh? Horde Wins every time.
This clearly shows that compared to the Horde, Alliance is useless in combat.
Comparing the races, it's clear that the Horde is much more powerful.
I mean, for example, the Goblins managed to conquer a new homeland. The Worgen had to be GIVEN a tree for their entire nation as charity!
The Darkspear tribe managed to retake their home. The gnomes failed to do the same.
The only hope, as I see it, for the Alliance to win a decisive victory against the Horde on the battlefield, is if some external faction comes and helps them. But there is none!
The following factions will never interfere if the Alliance is slaughtered by the Horde, for any reason (that's what being neutral means) :
The Kirin Tor and Dalaran
The Red, Green, Blue and Bronze Dragonflights
The Earthen Ring, including Thrall
The Argent Crusade
Steamweedle Cartel
The Sha'tar, including Khadgar
Cenarion Circle, including Malfurion
The Demigods, including Cenarius.
ALL of the above has taken a stand not to interfere in Horde-Alliance combat. So I don't expect any of the to do so, for any reason, including, but not limited to, the death of Jaina Proudmoore and everyone in Theramore at the hands of the Horde.
So, to put it short, Alliance has no chance against the Horde on the battlefield, as we have already seen, unless someone comes and help them, BUT THERE ISN'T ANYONE LEFT TO DO THAT SINCE THEY ALL THE ALLIANCE'S FRIENDS ARE NEUTRAL.
There is, of course, the chance that Vol'Jin, Lorthemar, Baine and/or Sylvanas turn on Garrosh and helps the Alliance defeat him, but if the Alliance needs help to fight the Horde, they still suck.
The only thing that can convince me that the Alliance can beat the Horde would be to see, in-game, the Alliance conquering and keeping either Grom'Gol or Hammerfall, or both. (And maybe rebuilding Stromgarde, too.)
But my guess? We will, after the Horde takes Dustwallow March, never EVER see the Alliance winning over the Horde in such a way that maps and borders are redrawn. Blizzard loves the Horde too much to ever have Alliance taking one of their strongholds.
I would like to be wrong, but I'm not.
Thankfully, I play both sides, so I can at least feel like a winner half of the time. As Horde, I love to fight Alliance in quests because YAY we get to push the scum out of yet another area FOR THE HORDE! As Alliance, I hate quests chains that turn me against the Horde because wow... ANOTHER retreat... or in the case of Andorhal and Stonard: YAY we are winning... oh wait.. we lost, time to go home...

@Hobstadt Simple question: Look at the world map. Which faction has more zones?

Storytelling in an MMO setting is harder than a movie, book or single-player setting. One of the biggest hurdles to Warcraft storytelling is that Blizzard can't ever have one side truly lose. Blizzard needs to keep both sides, it's built into their game, it's built into their playerbase. Considering the uproar over Theramore, what do you think would happen if Blizzard outright eliminated the Alliance completely as part of the story?

They've dug themselves a nasty hole. They want the story to be about the Horde/Alliance conflict, but it's a conflict that can have no real resolution or it undermines the entire game. How can you perpetuate a game that relies on a conflict if you resolve and end that conflict?

As much as people WANT it, perhaps the overall WoW story would actually be better and more robust if they gave up on the Horde/Alliance war and moved on to other stories. For example, the most praised/favored raids are Karazhan, Ulduar and Icecrown. None of that story had anything to do with the War that is supposed to be so important to Warcraft. Blizzard might be able to tell a good story here, but it's gonna be very hard when the players are constantly calling for story equality for the two sides.

Killik, some zones are worth a lot more than others.

And if you think you're allowed to ignore the entirety of Hobstadt's post because you can count, I suggest you see a movie starring Dustin Hoffman were he plays a character who can count, too.

Hm, let's count.

Zones controlled by, or won by, the Alliance (after you've played through them):
Azuremyst Isle
Bloodmyst Isle
Teldrassil
Darkshore (doubtful)
Dun Morogh
Loch Modan
Elwynn Forest
Westfall (doubtful)
Redridge Mountains
The Alliance don't get to control Wetlands or Duskwood, it's just that there aren't any horde there.
Oh and the Alliance control Gilneas, I think. But you'll never know or see that unless you play the Horde. And it's not so much as they control it as the Forsaken hasn't killed everyone off with their plague yet, since they need to deal with the insurrectionists in Shadowfang Keep first.

Total count:7-9 (10 if you count Gilneas).

Zones controlled by, or won by, the Horde (after you've played through them):
Durotar
Azshara
Northern Barrens
Southern Barrens
Stonetalon Peak
Ashenvale (doubtful)
Dustwallow Marsh (upcoming)
Eversong Woods
Ghostlands
Tirisfal Glades
Silverpine Forest
Gilneas (if you play as Alliance)
Hillsbrad Foothills
Western Plaguelands
Arathi Highlands (doubtful)
Swamp of Sorrows (doubtful)
Twilight Highlands

Total count:12-15 (17 if you count Gilneas and Dustwallow Marsh).

Oh and BTW? Anyone noticed that when the Horde play a zone, even a zone that is one-sided, they get to WIN a decisive victory and own the whole zone, while the Alliance gets zones like Wetlands and Duskwood, where they get to control maybe 5% of it after all quests are done? I mean, seriously? The Alliance isn't even powerful enough to control Westfall...
Now, I know that Blizzard loves the thought of screaming and honorable Horde warriors steamrolling over everything in their path, especially Alliance, but while it makes it awesome to play Horde, it makes it less and less fun to play Alliance.
Cause let's face it: who wanna play on the losing side?

Which is also why Blizzard would never let the Alliance thrash and conquer Horde cities. They play mostly Horde (as can be clearly seen on Blizzcon and in interviews) and they don't wanna lose, either.

Oh, and the suggestion that the heroes are losing ground and only wins dramatically when it's almost over? And the referenses people make to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings? Can't be applied here. Why not? Since the Alliance aren't the Heroes of the story and the Horde aren't the Villains. Neither side isn't, in any way, supposed to have the moral high ground. Horde are just that much better in combat. And honestly, since the Alliance CLEARLY can't stop the Horde expansion, the Horde should just keep steamrolling them until none are left. That's what I would do. There's no hope for peace anyway. (Remember, this is Warcraft, and Blizzard have clearly stated that they want to put more War back in it.)

Oh, and the zone argument. Would actually be valid if the Horde could take a lot of zones from the Alliance and the Alliance could take some somewhere else. As it is, I predict that Alliance will lose and lose, and then there will be status quo and frozen borders forever. Or the Horde will just think that they don't need more land and stop expanding their borders. (Which, either way, means that the Alliance suck vs. the Horde.)

Oh, and Blizz? Stop comparing the Alliance to the Rebel Alliance, Gondor, or WWII USA and the Horde to the Empire, Mordor, or WWII Japan. You're not fooling anyone. Silly.

:-)

@Hobstadt You are discounting Alliance levelling zones from being Alliance territory because there are no Horde mobs there. That shows we're probably arguing about different things here.

I agree the Alliance could do with a resounding victory or two over the Horde, simply to even the scales. The question, I suppose, is where? I'd like to see the razing of Theramore spark an Alliance resurgence that pushes the Horde out of Dustwallow. Perhaps Arathi is another candidate.

From a position of ignorance; I've never played an Alliance character through the Twilight Highlands. Do the Alliance and Wildhammer Dwarves get completely pushed out then? My impression was that once the two groups had joined together, their victory was pretty much assured... and then some sort of wedding?

Killik:

No, I am discounting the zones that the Alliance don't conquer, or is mostly in control at the end of the quests, as being Alliance territory.

If all Alliance control in a zone is Darkshire, or Menethil Harbor, I can't really say that Duskwood or Wetlands is Alliance territory.

And meh! The Horde can have Theramore and hang Jaina from a tree outside it for all I care. Let the Alliance have Grom'Gol and Hammerfall instead. And rename Hammerfall Swinedeath and Grom'Gol Idiotscream. That should offend and piss off the Hordies enough to ensure further conflict.

Twilight Highlands on Horde: Prove your worth to the Dragonmaw by raze every Wildhammer town you can find.
Twilight Highlands on Alliance: Save the retreating dwarves! Run, little dwarves, run!