World of Warcraft: Horde vs Alliance
The war between the Horde and the Alliance is the overarching theme to the World of Warcraft. The faces of these factions are, undoubtedly, the Orcs for the Horde and the Humans for the Alliance. These two races fought a fierce war that ravaged Azeroth. The Humans would keep the Orcs in internment camps, while the Orcs were the ones that invaded the Human’s lands.
One of the key features of the war between the Horde and the Alliance is the blurring of the theme of good versus evil. Upon first inspection one might assume that the Horde is evil, as they are comprised of monster looking races. On the other hand the Alliance is comprised of the, well, non-monster looking races. However, that has not always been the case.
The Orcs were the ones to invade Azeroth, but the back story to the invasion is that they were under the influence of a powerful demon. The Humans, on the other hand, were under no such influence and they tried to eradicate the race of Orcs. This theme is further explored in Northrend where the Alliance and Horde battle against the scourge.
An Alliance army, led by High Lord Bolvar, engages the Scourge at the Wrath Gate to finally put an end to the Lich King’s reign of terror. Shortly after the battle begins a Horde army, led by Saurfang the Younger, joins them to fight back the Scourge. The two leaders exchange pleasantries as they join in battle. They understand that they must put aside their differences if they are to eliminate the bigger threat. Prior to engaging the Lich King; however, a group of Forsaken (members of the Horde) deploy a plague that destroys all armies engaged in battle.
King Varian, leader of the Human’s of Stormwind, hears of the news of High Lord Bolvar being killed by the Forsaken. In an outrage, he decides to ignore the Lich King and concentrate on destroying the Horde. Unable and unwilling to listen to reason – this is just one example of the Alliance being the aggressors in the war.
The in game experiences of players may disagree with this assessment. Alliance was by far the more populous of the two factions upon the release of World of Warcraft. This presented the Horde with a problem during their engagements with the Alliance throughout the world as they were generally outnumbered. Blizzard would then introduce the honor system that forever changed the way the open world pvp took place.
With the introduction of the honor system came battlegrounds. Battlegrounds are instances dedicated solely to pvp and offer better honor rewards than open world pvp. In these cases the numbers were even. There are limits to how many Horde and how many Alliance players could join these battles. With the numbers even, for whatever reason, the Horde players began to show that they were better than the Alliance. Across the board this rang true. Perhaps they had to deal with being outnumbered for so long that they became better and the Alliance were only used to having the numbers that they won.
As time went on players would switch sides and eventually the battles would become pretty even. Time will tell how this war unfolds.
October 01 2008 03:20 pm | Uncategorized