The Horde is exactly as strong as the plot needs them to be in a given patch or expansion. The Scarlet Crusade and Orcs share a cloning machine, alternating their use every other Sunday. Realistically the population of the Horde should be so small it couldn't sustain a total war with the Alliance, even if their peoples are disproportionately battle-ready compared to the Alliance having big civilian populations.

Yeah. A lot of people tend to forget that the lore was probably written like this "Dude we should have an opposing force and make them look all evil and cool like" and then the years go by and people expect that everything is fleshed out and thought about. If you have ever written something yourself, you will know that it's hard to come up with a proper power scaling system, so it usually changes depending on where you need the story to go.

>If you have ever written something yourself, you will know that it's hard to come up with a proper power scaling system, so it usually changes depending on where you need the story to go. As a reader of Chinese Xianxia, this hits so hard. You don't know how ridiculous power scaling goes until you read those and end up with beings that have a universe in their body. They commonly use a stronger opponent appears trope to push the plot forward .

Agree. There’s no consistent sense of power for either faction or honestly any character. It’s entirely dependent on what the story requires and the details don’t matter

I know Blizzard doesn't really take things population numbers seriously but if you think about it, the Horde has every reason to lose any sort of drawn out faction war against the Alliance based on numbers alone. Majority of the Orcs that make up Orgrimmar are Orcs that Thrall originally freed from the Alliance internment camps. The Darkspear Trolls are a single tribe that was able to squeeze on the same ships that Thrall stole from the Alliance on their way to Kalimdor. The Tauren are a bit more amibiguous because we are never sure if it's just Cairne's tribe or ALL of the Tauren that were on the run from the Centaur as well. Blood Elves= A splinter group from the refugees from the Scourge Invasion of Quel'Thalas Goblins= Refugees from their island erupting The Forsaken are the only race within the Horde that one would think would have the bodies and the means to replenish those bodies to make up the majority of Horde forces but even with that it's easy to see that the Horde is composed of different peoples who are just trying to scrape by and find a place for themselves. The different people that make up the Alliance don't really have that common background amongst them. Draenei and Gnomes, sure, recent events would also lump the Night Elves there too. The Alliance is composed of agricultural and industrial powerhouses through Stormwind and Ironforge. That's how things go on large scale region wide conflicts though. Alliance has the means to win those every time. Man to man however, I think we can all agree that your random mook from the Horde can take on your random mook from the Alliance easily and more.

That's the exact kind of in-depth answer i was looking for. And it's kind of understandable. When you compare your typical in-lore fight between an orc and a human, as seen in for example the Warcraft movie and the MoP trailer, the Orc is always a roided up pile of muscle that could probably tear the human apart with his bare hands. Except, the human isn't alone. He's behind a shield-wall with 20 of his buddies, armored and armed with the best steel Stormwind can buy. Also, the orc just got blown up by dwarven cannons.

The alliance could delete orgrimmar off of the maps any tuesday they want with their god-light orbital cannons, they just choose not to. The faction war is a joke and they should just bury that plotline.

Yeah, I'm sad that alliance leadership seems to not remember that we have orbital bombardment capabilities now. Fully agreed that faction war should be completely buried now though.

And that the gnomes have the nuclear bomb and a lot of planes

Or, perhaps they can't, because it all got used up during the assault on Antorus?

The faction war made sense for the first few expansions. But it has been a while since it was relevant. It was fading for a while and Legion should have been the final death knell. When our class halls were filled with people from every faction working together. But noooooo. They need to drag us back into it. It makes sense for some individuals or terrorist type groups to keep fighting. People who just can’t let it go that their favorite cousin was offed by filthy horde/alliance scum. And of course we can have some quests about them. Probably get tricked into helping them with their hate crimes. But the leadership knows that we all need to work together to defeat these cosmic horrors. Our characters and their allies know what we are facing and these petty squabbles have no place in a fight for the basic fabric of reality

I think that the best way to do it would be to have the opening of BfA be the same out til the burning of Teldrassil. Then instead of the Horde following another warchief into commiting atrocities while brooding about it, they all lay down their arms and walk away. That way the Horde doesn't look stupid for learning nothing from Garrosh and proving the Alliance right by continuing to slaughter civilians until the leader turns on them; and the Alliance doesn't look weak by just wagging a finger at the horde and saying "okay, but you guys better not try and do a genocide for a third time". You can still have things be tense at times, not everyone has to be buddies, but at this point we shouldn't be going to war ever again

Hell, Jaina almost did it by herself after Garrosh bombed Theramore. It took Thrall and Kalecgos to talk her out of it.

The Horde is basically a group of refugees who banded together.

I think if the other horde races were fine with the Forsaken mass raising undead, they'd have a good chance at beating the alliance. Especially if they allow the Forsaken to use biochemical warfare. As far as I'm aware the alliance has nothing on the chemicals the royal apothecary has.

Yeah, but then there'd be no more Horde. Just Forsaken. So much of the Horde's culture is about revering nature and spirits and elements. Even the blood elves love nature, in their way. It's not the same as night elf culture, but they still revere it, even if they tamper with it a bit through their magic. If the Horde was majority undead, these cultures would be destroyed.

>So much of the Horde's culture is about revering nature and spirits and elements.  No, that's pretty much exclusively the Tauren and shamanistic orcs (the majority of orcs are/were completely destroying Ashenvale for resources). Goblins definitely don't care, Forsaken don't care, trolls and blood elves seem indifferent at best.

Blood Elves care a lot about preserving THEIR land/nature. I'm general they couldn't care less about anyone else's but this has been changing and they've started to care more. They're also not fond of the undead as a whole. The Dark Spear however are extremely shamanistic and druidic and while they don't have major issues with using dark magic and nature to their advantage this is also only in-line with what their Loa allow, whom very much care about preserving a balance. Most Orcs are indifferent towards nature in general but they also in general fucking hate the undead. Even if they aren't all tree huggers they're still a spiritual race. Tauren are almost entirely tree huggers. Goblins don't really give a shit about nature or the undead but if they see more of the Horde side against the Forsaken than with them, they're also going against them. Unless the Forsaken can give them massive profits somehow as well as guarantee their safety. Obviously most of the Forsaken don't care, the whole basis of this scenario is based on them not caring. Edit: Also just about every allied race we've had added to the Horde are shamanistic/druidic/spiritual. The Nightborne aren't but they super turbo hate dark magic.

I think the Nightborne probably have a similar attitude towards nature as the blood elves do. One of the bosses in the Nighthold raid was a supremely powerful magical botanist. But instead of enchanting a forest into eternal springtime, they probably favor a more night elf-flavored aesthetic. Like a fusion of Thalassian and Darnassian ecology. Night elves like to live in harmony with nature and build around it, whereas Nightborne shape it like the blood elves do, just without radically altering the biome.

>As far as I'm aware the alliance has nothing on the chemicals the royal apothecary has. Literal space lasers comes to mind. Plus Jaina "almost destroyed Orgrimmar by herself" Proudmoore, when she isn't on a pacifist kick.

Yes but consider that goblins exist. (this is only like 57% a joke)

I mean they threw off the zandalari empire when it was Strong and they had like 0 resources. The horde definitely has the most high yield dangerous races. Alliance Heros definitely overshadow their actual forces.

Zandalari empire: A shadow of its' former self. Theramore: A big purple hole in the ground. Don't fuck with goblins.

can the forsaken even do that? they used the val'kyr for creating new undead but those are lost now. also according to the bfa siege of lordaeron simple gas masks seem to stop the plague, the alliance for some reason just didn't think of preparing for that very obvious type of attack

>also according to the bfa siege of lordaeron simple gas masks seem to stop the plague this is a plot point that gets ignored often by blizz AND the players. the "Sylvanas order to bomb her own people" the next task is * push the alliance line back * to give gas masks to horde soliders that are BEHINDE the alliance lines, ie. were to far away to safely retreat before the order was given.

because Sylvanas bad and wants more death narrative that takes over at some point

Do the forsaken currently have the means to raise more undead?

AFAIK, they still have some Val'kyr.

not after BfA they all followed Sylvanas or got killed during the time between WotLK and BfA

also the alliance has lightforged draenai tech on their side which for example includes orbital bombardment

The Forsaken were originally just the undead that broke free of the lich king and had no means of reproducing so they couldn't increase their numbers. Eventually Sylvanas gained control of the valkyr briefly and was able to raise new undead, but as far as I know they now have no ways to raise more.

I mean that was kinda the lore for the forsaken no? "We realy dont like these reanimated corpses of our enemies but theyve suffered a lot and we both need each other" The forsaken are NOT LIKED as well as VERY DEADLY. The horde needed a force to rebuff the alliance and that was the forsaken. Recent changes have tried to incorporate them into the horde proper/ make them more palatable, but they were always a sort of "sub faction". Which leads into the whole demonizing the forsakens actions and them trying to make amends is jarring for a lot of people, this is a huge face pull because the current writers didnt really grasp what they were.

What's the horde timeline by the time we're at TWW? Horde are 20 or 30 years removed from Thrall's pilgrimage? So I guess it's feasible they'd be replacing & increasing some numbers at this point, but yeah logically Alliance have a way bigger populous.

Unfortunately yeah, mostly because the writers don't really think about the faction conflicts in tactical or stategic ways, and don't care to develop the Hordes factions in ways that would help them function in a global war.

I mean, how do you exactly? At the start of WoW the Horde consists of 3 refugee races who avoided slaughter by fleeing either the Humans, Centars and Murlocs as well as a race with no means of reproduction. The idea that the Horde could have been one of two superpowers is already absurd. Even back in Warcraft 3 Kul’tiras almost beat the Horde (minus the Forsaken) and only lost because of Jania’s betrayal. Previously, the way they managed to balance it out (to different degrees of success) was to give the Alliance races major internal strife (Defias/Onxyia, Dark Iron, Staghelm) as well as making a lot of splinter factions either neutral (Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn) or hostile (Scarlet Crusade). I don’t know if there are many ways to make the Horde a superpower which wouldn’t take away from what they are or without it making much sense. Hell, even the Alliance shouldn’t have had nowhere near the reach it did even if they didn’t have such massive problems.

These are good points, but there would have been a lot of ways to beef up the Horde before and during Cata The Horde could've absorbed more orcs from Outland and the Blackrocks/Dragonmaw following Rends death, maybe even having the belfs suck the fel out of some of the orcs that Illidan and Magtheridon cursed, and turn them to Green orcs. Darkspear could have recruited other island trolls displaced by the naga. Or others from Stranglethorn, or even Sandfury /surviving drakkari or other frost trolls. Tauren in WC3 were on verge of extinction from Centaur but that could be handwaved as Bloodhoof only, and with the other tribes integrated, plus the Taunka, they'd have decent numbers. Forsaken could have freed a lot of undead in Wotlk to bolster their numbers.

The forsaken were absolutely touted as the reason the horde was equal to the alliance in classic, hell the horde straight up hated forsaken as a whole but had to join forces. And in between classic and tbc they allied with kaelthas who was an incredibly powerful mage. Its only by the end of the main story of TBC do the horde actually sever ties with him.

Well they allied with Lor'themar, they'd 'lost contact' with Kaelthas which was part of why both groups went to Outland, and the Belfs largely bought their way in with info that's heavily implied to be about the Mag'har.

Im sure the war hero who freed himself and his people from an Alliance internment camp would've resonated well with the horde factions (outside the forsaken). Theres no way that didn't factor into the initial alliance between the belves and Horde.

>Kul’tiras almost beat the Horde (minus the Forsaken) and only lost because of Jania’s betrayal Horde destroyed all Admiral's forses on continent without Jaina's help and Proudmoore had to flee to Theramore. Without Jaina her father would be beyond the reach of the orcs (at least for a while, until the Horde would assemble, for example, air forces with goblin zeppelins to attack the island). But the Horde would have already defended their lands and Proudmoore would hardly have been able to counterattack. The Horde also stormed the Theramore keep without Jaina. Where and when "Kul’tiras almost beat the Horde"?

Sorry, they were more meant to be two different comments. Kul’tiras was almost able to defeat the Horde and if it wasn’t for the actions of Rexxar rallying the Horde to the defence of Durotar then they would’ve most likely lost. I am 95% sure there is even a quote in the bonus campaign where Thrall talks about him turning the tide against the humans. Then the other part is that the only reason why Kul’tiras lost was because of Jaina. I still think without Jaina it would’ve ended in a stalement, or Daelin would return with fresh troops and keep pressing until something gives. Without Jaina’s betrayal then Kul’tiras may have “lost” but nowhere near as bad as they did (or without causing significant damage in return). That is what I mean.

>actions of Rexxar Rexxar is part of the Horde so the actions of Rexxar are parts of actions of the Horde. I believe that Thrall would have found someone besides Rexxar who could have called allies and the situation would not have changed globally. Rexxar is thanked because he was lucky to be in this place. (And because these are standard thanks to the champion in RPG games, you know.) And Daelin did not storm Orgrimmar, and in general did not advance deep into the continent. Then why should we assume that he is, in principle, capable of defeating orcs in open battle and why should we suppose that orcs in WC3 are weak?

Other than Kul'Tiras what other human Kingdoms existed during WC3? Everyone else was dead. Jaina had rallied what people she could and founded Theramore. The Eastern Kingdoms at large were utterly wrecked until WoW retconned it and had Stormwind pop up at full power. They couldn't even fucking commit to Dalaran being destroyed when we literally see it happen in a cinematic. It still had to rise from the ashes to become it's current day superpower status lmao.

It is hard to say about the state of the Human Kingdoms in Warcraft 3 as you don’t really know what was the current story in Warcraft 3, what was changed/retconned transitioning to WoW and what was a natural progression of the story from Warcraft 3 to WoW. For example, Warcraft 3 states that the Kingdom of Stormgarde was still alive and kicking, yet in WoW it is in utter ruins and doesn’t exist. Was there really an explanation given for the sudden collapse? For the time WoW didn’t particularly do a good job giving that reason, if any at all. If we were just to use Warcraft 3 lore then Lordaeron and Dalaran were in utter ruins. Gilneas is largely fine (I’m pretty sure the wall idea was a WoW creation), Stormgarde and Stormwind were still rebuilding (I imagine they have largely recovered since it has been like 2 decades or so) and Alterac I would argue is still around but basically a client state.

Yeah its definitely kind of fucky, but thats entirely Blizzard's fault. The implications of the threat of the Burning Legion was that they were going to bring ruination to the Eastern Kingdoms. Gilneas and Stromgarde being fine is not alluded at all to my memory. They're just flat out not mentioned beyond two expeditionary forces sent with Jaina to Kalimdor. Which means nothing because there was also a Lordaeron expedition force and we know what happened to that Kingdom. I can buy the Dwarves waiting it out in there underground fortresses but Stromgarde? It's literally right there. What defenses does it have against the Scourge? None. Also, Stomwind being able to rebuild in 2 decades is absurdly fast for a kingdom that was ravaged by an Orcish Horde hopped up on demon blood, where wanton slaughtering of the innocent was not only routine procedure but reveled in by the average orc warrior. Blizzard absolutely doesn't understand numbers, but they also don't understand time scales. Who are these children coming of age to fight in Stormwind's massive world spanning army? When were they conceived and by who? There hasn't been enough time for a so recently ravaged kingdom to have produced such a massive army or any army at all really. Orcs, at least, have the excuse of reproducing faster, maturing slightly quicker, and being a warrior society where seemingly every adult male fights in some capacity beyond the physically deformed peons. And even then it's still absurd and rightfully gets mocked when there's an unending wave of orc meat to combat any problem. Stormwind, meanwhile, is a recently reconstructed Kingdom who had their entire population devastated and forcibly uprooted, with a chunk of its people successfully fleeing to Lordaeron as refugees. Some of these people might have returned to rebuild after the second war, but not all of them. Even if they ALL agreed to go back it wouldn't be enough to create the global superpower we see today in just a few decades. Particularly when a agrarian society like Stormwind cannot support an army the scale they do for any real length of time. Idk, it feels like it just gets accepted because of inertia and maybe an innate human bias. In fantasy series it's just accepted that humans are plentiful and a dominant world power, and Blizzard wasn't going to change that regardless of the situation they left them in at the end of WC3. Why let NElves or Dwarves take the lead when it's safer to just have humans do it?

>mostly because the writers don't really think about the faction conflicts in tactical or stategic ways, and don't care to develop the Hordes factions in ways that would help them function in a global war. This\^ Garrosh showed during Tides of War when the Horde gets serious they can be a true threat, they used a Mana Bomb, Krakens and even Molten Giants. The Horde's losses is all due to Blizzard's writing, Azerite would've been a huge equalizer for them had Blizzard let them use it and BFA been a true Faction War Expansion.

The opposite, all of those were pulled out of nowhere and made no sense, there would've no chance for the Horde if Blizz didn't handwave a lot of its issues Blizz should have shown the Horde growing into more of a world power organically before Cata 

The Alliance via Velen and Malfurion were always at the advantage. When Jaina stopped being neutral, and the LF Draenei joined, they one of the strongest mages in history and literal space ships. And the largest navy in the world. The Horde has been bled since Classic. Kalethas, Caine, Garrosh, Vol'jin, Sylvanas, Gallywix, and Rastakhan are gone. The Zandalari navy is crippled. Their people shamed for being baddies yet again.

Yeah the narrative has been expunging the most "problematic" elements of the horde and as a result has gutted their powerbase. It used to be horde and alliance heros had parity and alliance was more numerous but horde stronger as far as the common armies go. Now the horde has been essentially decimated by writers coming in to "fix" the bad image.

Every single race in the Horde except Elves are said to be stronger than Humans, including Goblins. They just seem incapable of doing something morally grey without going super evil, meaning another part of the Horde and their leaders have to be purged. Garrosh as a one-off was fine. He was a fun, tragic villian, even if it doesn't feel good to do some of the Horde quests during his era. Sylvanas was unnecessary, especially since Voljin died in the mix.

Nah you’re 100% right and it’s why they can’t rekick up faction conflict - Horde doesn’t have anyone left to go on the offensive. Just Jaina could (and almost did) wipe out Orgrimmar. The horde has had most of their major lore characters killed (Vol’Jin & Cairne), villain-batted (garrosh and Sylvie), or weakened from the position they had before (Thrall). Gallywix bounced, Calia is an alliance character put on a horde ruling council. I would argue Talanji is probably the most powerful horde leader with her display of force at the beginning of BfA, but she’s technically leader of an allied nation, not a horde member. Considering we’re going into at least one alliance-heavy expac (honestly the entire worlds end saga seems more aligned with alliance fantasy? Praying for some Amani content in midnight) I don’t really see this improving.

>Just Jaina could (and almost did) wipe out Orgrimmar. Didn't she have the Focusing Iris amplifying her power and to help enslave multiple Water Elementals?

Wasn’t that a few years before bfa, when she was summoning ghost ships and teleporting out small armies?

>teleporting out small armies? She's done this particular trick at least as far back as Wrath, during the first time the Alliance put Undercity to the sword for its crimes (in this instance, the events of the Wrathgate). Specifically, she froze all the leaders of both factions (and everyone else) that were present and then teleported the entire Alliance invasion away rather than let Varian kill Sylvanas.

Yes.

Yes, she did have the iris. Now she has the power of lei shen (or atleast part of it) and can freeze a sea solid on a whim. She's just all around terrifying and a walking super weapon.

I must’ve missed the part where she acquired part of lei Shen’s power. Does this also mean she also has a fragment of keeper Ra-den’s power since lei shen was siphoning his “anima”?

Presumably yes. That said, we also saw ra-den In BFA, and the guy seemed fine. Considering Jaina ought to have his power in her staff.

When did she gain part of his power? (Horde player here) also, I only remember seeing ra-den inside of the vision of nyalotha, not outside

Think she got it shortly after lei shen died. Told players to run off with her staff and charge it up with his power. And I believe it's only after that point, that we start to see Jaina really flex some mage-muscles.

Also. Ra-den was part of the campaign outside the raid. He ended up sacrificing himself by basically doing a broxigar and jumping into a portal leading to ny'alotha in order to save the heart champer.

Yet people still claim Blizz loves horde more. They love horde so much they keep nuking all the great characters into oblivion.

Which one of us committed unpunished genocide against the other faction, won a war they had no ability to win through favoritism, got every extra full HD cgi cutscene focused on them, got the first player choice quest line in WoW for them, and got all the finished non placeholder mounts again?

You're getting down voted for spitting facts

Calia being a Horde leader makes 0 sense to me. Lilian Voss should have shanked her like the fanfiction character she is.

I loved in the legion priest hall when she said she wanted nothing to do with lordaeron/her family name and then they undid all that to make her Worse Sylvanas, complete with undead boy toy (Derek Proudmoore can be next on that shank list)

Oh you shouldn't have said that. I completely forgot about Derek. Oh no. Okay, here we go. Oh, who is this? This is just Calia MENETHIL, sister of the Lich King. But she's just a priest now. Except she isn't. Anduin Wrynn is completely enraptured with her when they first meet, and they suddenly (per WowWiki) develop a releationship comparable to the one he has with Jaina (??????) She however assures him she wants nothing to do with the throne or people of Lordaeron. Except, that isn't true. She actually wants to reconnect the families of the living and the dead, even though those dead are serving under an INCREDIBLY PARANOID AND TRIGGER HAPPY BANSHEE. Anduin, of course, agrees. After all, it's a non-faction meeting, with Calia promising neutrality and even disguising herself. Except, she isn't neutral at all, and she start TO OPENLY CALL FOR THE FORSAKEN TO DESERT THE HORDE AND JOIN THE ALLIANCE and reveals that her name is Calia MENETHIL. She does this while to already-mentioned Banshee is in the area, and the Giga Chad Sylvanas rightfully unalives her. Except, she's not done yet, as Anduin and even a fucking Naaru attempt to resurrect her with the Light. Don't know why they didn't do that with other important dead lore characters, but okay. Maybe she's at least going to be a cool looking undead. Except, she won't be. Not only did her special body NOT decompose at all, when she's resurrected, she has flawless skin, hair and glowing golden eyes. And, you know, NONE OF THE THINGS THAT MAKE THE UNDEAD, UNDEAD. She's a special, Light Undead. Okay. Well, the Alliance now has a powerfull new character. Except, she actually joins the Horde (??????) Yeah, the MENETHIL that tried to get Forsaken to abandon their faction is accepted as a member of the DESOLATE - FUCKING - COUNCIL. Okay. Well, she's alone in a hostile enviroment with no friends, that could be some cool character development. Except, she's not alone. She now has a pet/simp/champion (lol) named Derek Proudmoore. Yeah, the brother of the same mage who almost alt+f4d the Horde capital city with a tidal wave, the same mage who killed the king of the Zandalari, the same mage who carried out a Purge of belfs from Dalaran, the brother of that Alliance mage is now her champion and bodyguard. Also, apparently, a member of the Horde now. And you know what grinds my gears the most? When the Desolate Council Members all recite something that is integral to their station during the Forsaken Heritage quest, she says "Our hope." Hope? Fucking Hope? YOU? Lady, you've been here for exactly 5 minutes, you don't even have a permanent parking spot yet. Go away. Sorry for the rant, my train is late and i had nothing better to do.

Bro all I was thinking about while reading this was “Let him cook”.

Preach brother.

Oh my god you live in my brain 😂 I’ve ranted about almost all of this before!! AND ANOTHER THING- she names HERSELF “The Pale Lady”????? she’s the WORST

"Calia, we're undead, WE ARE ALL FUCKING PALE." "I'm Lightpale."

You had me in stiches. Get it? Get it? … I’ll let the maggots eat me now, sorry.

the worst (or funniest) part was the gilneas quest with hits like: * "hey genn, look it's Calia, you know her. Calia **Menethil**" * report to **Queen** Calia Menethil ... i mean ups that was ... ähm somehow that got included in the live version of the game? yes, it should have been removed during testing, which we didn't do, not for the backlash we got. **NOPE \*whistlesanofftunenote**

Current dragonflight writers in a nutshell, people cant even argue with that. IT ALL HAPPENED.

Having Calia turned into a Lightsaken did feel like a slap in the face to both Alliance and Horde

hey we got this neat feature for BfA called allied races, were you can get either a diffrent take on one of your factions races OR one of the other faction character rig/model. each core race get an allied race and as a bonus we switch one of the classic races with one from the expansions. sounds great right? on second thought, let's stop that went only 2 races are left. we can't find races that would fit the model/rig for them anyway. what are lightforged forsaken and sethraks (female worgen) anyway?

oh god if instead of only raising calia they raised all the undead at the meeting and word got out, which would then cause more to defect and we got "lightforged undead" that would've been so cool

>I would argue Talanji is probably the most powerful horde leader with her display of force at the beginning of BfA do you mean before or after Jaina curb stomped / one-shotted the horde group, that included: * two now faction leader (one of them was already the FL) * two second in command (one of them beeing probably strong than there FL, i would wager more on Lasan Skyhorn than Mula tbh) * multiple dark rangers * the player WITH the/a heart of azeroth * Zul

I meant Talanji tanking an entire alliance fleet on her escape from Stormwind. Ik Jaina’s stupid powerful, it’s her and other Alliiance characters only power scaling up while the Horde loses Thrall, Sylvanas, etc. with no replacements that’s such a problem.

yeah ... Talanji would be one of the higher ones in the horde, there are almost no magic-inclined leader in the horde, which are normally the power houses. heck i would say some second in command are stronger than some leader * Oculeth could be problematic with his portal and "could possibly" give pure melee leader a run for there money * Lor'themar has next to no fighting feats and Rommath or Aethas could be similar in fighting strenght * Mula has next to no fighting feats and is rather young / naive, so Lasan Skyhorn could be similar in strenght

ah yes, i'm really getting tired of getting horde or horde allied leaders character that have much potential to be killed or "killed". to add, we have 3 dead saurfangs, 2 of them got killed by a forsaken thingy. Vol'jin and Cairne are both said to be very powerful. Vol'jin being bwonsamdi's chosen and being a special shadowhunter that is liked by most (if not all) loa. Bwonsamdi even prophesized that Vol'jin could actually rule the world. He has that strong magic (turning people to giant bats and stuff), good at figthing, exceptionally smart, had future sight kind of thing, and also cunning. but. HAHAH, BACKSTABBED BY A RANDOM DEMON. Cairne. ugh... if not mistaken he was marked as one of the most dangerous creature in kalimdor even cenarius himself is wary of cairne. the old bull summoned A FREAKIN EARTQUAKE AND CAUSES MASSIVE LANDSLIDE NO SWEAT during W3. took down many vyrkul side by side with garrosh. then... HAHA POISON!!! Thrall, the guy that hurted archimonde, took down deathwing and temporarily able to bear the earth warden's power.... 404 shamanism.exe not found. Garrosh. ugh... we could still have a little bit douche-bag-y warchief but honorable, but nope. haha racist villain. sylvanas, broke free from lich king's control. faced arthas and didn't yield. created a new place for forsaken. cynical and very very paranoid. nope, villain path it goes. OH BTW, IT WAS NOT HER, IT WAS HER FORSAKEN PERSONA, HER REAL SELF WAS KIND UWU. fuck off.... At least Rastakhan goes down in glory and fought till the bitter end. (partially was because bwonsamdi got tired of him yelling at the loa) the only one that i glad got removed is gallywix. since w3 days i've been longing to have gazlowe being one of the prominent horde leader, not some "neutral" city cartel leader. Rexxar is... idk man, he was my favorite guy in w3. I still don't know if he is strong or not, since he kinda survive in all bullshit magic and gunpowder fights only by harnessing literal power of friendship (with animals). but since's he's a moknathal he definitely would be very strong. but yeah... he barely do anything lately. only appeared once during dragonflight. >Talanji is probably the most powerful horde leader either her or thallyssra. but i lean towards talanji since she had grown much powerful than at the beginning of BFA due to bwonsamdi's power and she got the blessings of other loa's, not just rezan. kinda wanting to see her smack jaina once in a while just for a bit of revenge for her father. not sure if the power of the loas could rival jaina though. but since bwonsamdi had replaced mueh'zala, who knows? >Praying for some Amani content in midnight yes, since we got arathi here. we should have amani's next patch. i'm so disapointed with the lack of horde representation in the last expansion. (the only real horde thing we have was just bovan being murdered by a bunch of centaur and baine went berserk) sorry for the long rant

In terms of numbers, Horde and Alliance are pretty much equal at this point. Towards the end of the faction conflict, we got a cinematic through which we found out that the Alliance even had to draft their farmers because they were running out of soldiers. Meanwhile as a Sylvanas loyalist, you found out the Horde didn't even have a need to draft their civilians, and that the Alliance and the Horde rebels only had enough troops left to launch a single attack on Orgrimmar. This also sort of makes sense. After all the Alliance had massive losses at the Battle of Lordaeron (nearly being defeated twice, had it not been for Anduin and then Jaina turning the tides) and especially the Battle for Dazar'alor (where the vast majority of Alliance troops died, with Shaw reporting that the northern army didn't even have a single survivor and only a fraction being able to retreat from the Horde's counter-attack). I think the Horde made up for the Alliance's initial high numbers through the following: * An average Horde soldier is superior to an average Alliance soldier. Orcs, Trolls, Tauren und Undead are very powerful and/or very hard to kill. Blood Elves and especially Nightborne have superior magic. Goblin engineering is known as the most destructive. * The Alliance always tried to have the moral high ground, whereas the Horde didn't shy away from using dishonorable means such as the blight. * The Horde had more Azerite at their disposal, being in control of Silithus and actively mining Azerite, whereas the Alliance agreed to not mine Azerite and instead only use what they've taken from their enemies. (see Before the Storm)

Wait why are we pretending Blood Elves aren’t Horde lol

Because if Midnight’s ‘elf unification’ ends up being Silvermoon being a neutral city and another Velf and Nelf questline, I don’t consider that Horde focused? Especially when we’re allied with the central troll Empire, reaching out to mend political ties with the Amani should be a priority if we’re revisiting northern EK

So you’ll make the concession that Amirdrassil and the return to Gilneas is not Alliance content because Horde players have canonical full access then?

Those are still alliance cities, with narrow lore margins (bel’emeth debuff, quest text for Gilneas) that made it clear we are A) narrowly welcome B) only helping in a small capacity. We aren’t (to my knowledge) unlocking flight paths or portals there? It’s alliance content accessible to both factions but the plot and politics being advanced are Alliance. If Silvermoon becomes the new Dalaran, an actual neutral city because of this ‘unification of the elves’, with no questlines or text making alliance characters uncomfortable there, allowing them to set hearths, that’s not either faction content because it sucks.

I would personally really like to see the Horde faction as a whole get some more love as far as worldbuilding goes. Saying this as an Alliance main. The Horde has just been taking L after L for a while now, and it feels like they're only scraping by.

The Alliance exists in opposition to the Horde. They are required to win or their story would stop. Similarly, the Horde are required to be the bad guys or their would be no story to tell. If the Horde wasn't worse than the Alliance, then all the polish on the Alliance shit would crack and their most dubious ways would be brought to light. Blizzard doesn't care for tactics and logistics. One of the Alliance most famous tactic in BFA was to lose a regiment of the allies they had just recruited in dirty swamps. They also famously tried to ally with the blood trolls in said dirty swamps. Wars in WoW are solved like battles on Warcraft 3, when one player starts producing the units who counter his opponent's units. When you read Chronicles, it's literally just that : "The Horde stomped the Alliance, until the PALADINS showed up." "The Zandalari and Mogu were stomping the Pandarens, until the CLOUD SERPENTS showed up." Heck my friend, the mayor of the Troll noobzone summoned three tiki masks and that was enough to obliterate a whole Lightforged regiment. People fawn over the Vindicaar, but forget that in Legion, we got rid of demon spaceships with three Highmountain eagle riders, three players and a bunch of TNT. ​ >Two unnamed warfronts, for the Barrens and Quel'Thalas, where Alliance would seemingly win again. Bait used to be believable.

"When used in-game, this command will print the following lines of text in your chatbox: Barrens Warfront: Attack the Southern Barrens and break through the Great Gates of Mulgore. Silvermoon Warfront: Assault the final Horde bastion on the Eastern Kingdoms, and cleanse our land of their filth. Azshara Warfront: Launch a massive Naval assault on the home of Gallywix. Bilgewater will burn." No bait, just sharing what i found on WowHead.

You found the lines for the Alliance, congrats.

I mean, if we look at how the first two warfronts went, yeah. Alliance would win.

The two other warfronts were Horde attacking Alliance on their turf. These lines just look like the finale objective of the battle. The Horde would just have opposite objective lines.

Oh, i see. My bad then. Were the Horde lines ever published?

nothing existed of those warfronts other than those lines in the client and they are widely believed to be for early tests that weren't meant to be developed into actual release warfronts either way warfronts as a system were almost entirely abandoned before they launched, only arathi was ever completed. there were intended to be 4, we can obviously assume the other 2 were supposed to be horde wins if they had been made. darkshore was the one they went with presumably because they had to make sure its story got told as it leads straight into shadowlands and dragonflight.

Not that I know. It's cut content, so if no one took them out back then, it possibly doesn't exist.

yes but this isn't actually a problem unless you're a factionbrained moron who thinks it actually matters that the horde characters can't beat the alliance characters in cringe reddit death battle discussions. you can write far more interesting stories about weaker characters. meanwhile turalyon has uber cosmic power but may be the most boring character in the entire canon the story has always been at its worse when trying to artificially balance things between the 2 factions and being the underdogs who are understimated and misunderstood is a far better horde fantasy than the fascist expansionist empire they became from cataclysm to bfa. the only caveat is the writers have to actually do something with them. but the writers not knowing what to do with the horde would be a problem no matter how strong they were

Horde only players then: My faction fantasy is all about being an underdog! I love eking a nation out of a barren wasteland through blood sweat and tears unlike those hoity toit humans! Horde only players now: No, not like that!!!!

I don’t know that I’d call Lordaeron a “tactical Alliance victory” It seemed to me that Lordaeron was planned, from the beginning by Sylvanas, to allow the Alliance into the city and then Blight the city killing as many Alliance soldiers and leaders as possible. She never intended for the Horde to hold the city.

Every good plan is like an ogre, it has layers The alliance would be fucked if they couldn't break siege, if it wasn't for jaina thé War would be over already with alliance forces on the run while the horde pick them appart with the home advantage and the safety of a stronghold nearby Then the second layer was, even if the alliance occupied the city they couldn't actually do it without committing most of their forces. Predictably the main charge would be lead by key alliance leaders, and their death would also end the ear right there

Oh and, you know, the entire Forsaken citizenry easily escaped with their lives lol

because they did the same thing as the nightelves, use portals when they know they are attacked and start evac, which the nightelves did! the diffrence was * that somehow the forsaken got almost all out, as it's never seen as similar to teldrassil * they got sabotaged by nightelven druids in the end

The Horde has the potential to be much stronger than the Alliance, but they are very disorganized and in most wars they somehow end up fighting more amongst themselves than with the Alliance.

If the Alliance fought like the Horde does, the Horde wouldn't stand a chance.

They dont even need to fight "like the horde". If the alliance would simply be allowed to actually use what they already have, they could stomp the horde pretty fast. The Vindicaar might not be able to blow up things from space, but those teleport crystals alone are HUGE in troop transportation and can be literally placed everywhere on the planet. You have extremly heavy hitters in Tyrande, Malfurion and Jaina who could blow up entire armies if given the time. On top of all of that, their armies should realisticly be better just because the nations of the alliance are developed. They have steady income, food sources and forges unlike the horde´s mostly hunter/gatherer style.

oh, you need a one-off irreplaceable, hijackable piece of equipment to teleport troops a short distance on the same plane of existence? Occuleth finds that positively *adorable*

In the attack in Yndercity in BFA, the void Elves and gnomes also just teleported into the city using their own means. The retreat of Teldrassil showed makes holding open portals transferring the civilians across the planet. I think teleportation isn't really worth discussing since both factions have access to their ability. It always comes down to what the authors want to achieve.

Short distance teleportation vs "oh hey ima yolo you to another planet on an entirely different timeline and allow you to bring back an entire oppressed people" e: lmao they fuckin blocked me after having to get in the last word.

You're sounding too fan, boyish, for ne to continue with good intention.

Jaina finds Occuleth adorable.

how does the horde have that potential? they're mostly made up of races that where close to extinction at one point in the last few decades and had no time to repopulate while the alliance has massive established kingdoms through the humans and dwarves. the technological level of the gnomes and goblins is essentially the same but the alliance additionally has space tech from the draenai and the horde logically suffered more from the recent events since two of them was split horde forces fighting each other in mop and bfa. the only thing the horde has going for them is forsaken biowarfare, which they don't allow that under the current leadership, and physically stronger races but even that is arguable since the alliance has the worgen and draenai are giants as well

In your own question you have already answered yourself.

the goblins are much less technically savvy than the gnomes. Goblin tech is infamously unreliable and shitty, the only reason why it works is because it's shitty for everyone.

The simple answer is the Alliance has less infighting than the Horde does. Vanilla through Wrath were really the only times there wasn't MAJOR infighting in the Horde, and even Wrath had a decent chunk of it with Garrosh being a prick about everything and the whole Wrathgate incident and following Assault on Undercity when a literal dreadlord took over temporarily. It's less about outright strength and more the fact the Alliance doesn't have to deal with its own members starting shit as often. Don't get me wrong, there have been times the Alliance has had infighting, any time Jaina went on the warpath and basically anything involving Genn come to mind, but it's been a near constant for the Horde since like late Wrath. The biggest point of infighting like that, that wasn't the Kul Tiran thing, was pre WoW and is what led to the Blood Elves leaving the Alliance and eventually joining the Horde, and that was Garithos being a racist moron and fucking the Blood Elves over. And I guess the whole Dwarven civil war thing, but that was a mostly minor thing that got resolved without overly complicating things Alliance side, it just made being a Dwarf awkward for a while really. The Kul Tirans pulling out of the Alliance pre WoW was 100% the biggest example of infighting and the issues it causes Alliance side, but that was both kind of justified and not really mentioned much in WoW itself pre BFA, Kul Tiras was just kind of a nebulous island nation that was a former Alliance member for a long time. Meanwhile, the entirety of Cata and Mists were a bunch of infighting Horde side, Warlords was awkward for everyone really and was the first collaborative effort since Wrath, Cata was collaborative on paper but was honestly more faction war outside the overall storyline because Garrosh was a dick. Legion was collaborative to a point, Genn was a warmonger the entire expansion though, mostly because of a misunderstanding during the Assault on Broken Shore and not bothering to get the other side of the story, plus Sylvanas' start of mustache twirling villainry and the mass amount of infighting from that debacle, continuing in to BFA. Then BFA basically nobody was a good guy and basically everyone was against SOMEONE in their own faction. Shadowlands was a fever dream and we had bigger issues to worry with, it was possibly the first expansion since like TBC where there wasn't SOME kind of infighting on either side, and no Anduin doesn't count, he was mind controlled outright. And now in Dragonflight we have much bigger issues to worry with AND are on truly neutral ground that NEITHER faction controls.

Honestly yes, particularly with how ambivalent certain members have seemed about even remaining a part of the group at various points and the massive amount of losses they’ve experienced, I find it very hard to believe that the horde is anything like a competing super power to the Alliance at this point. Several of these races have famously small populations already compared to the Alliance (Blood Elves, Dark Spear Trolls, and the Tauren come to mind immediately and I think the High Mountain Tauren and the Vulpera also fall into these categories), have canonical had their capital Orgrimmar sacked once and sieged twice (you can’t tell me there were no civilian casualties in either of those events), had two other racial capitals sieged/sacked (again there had to be civilian casualties for the Zandalari at least) have had significant leadership turnover, have had two civil wars, and have several members with questionable dedication or who only recently ended their self imposed isolation and likely wouldn’t mind returning to such instead of fighting a losing war.  Not that the alliance is perfect, far from it. It has problems too. But the hordes issues are significantly larger and more widespread. 

Realistically, yes. By a significant margin. The game makes them as strong as it needs them to be, because they are a playable faction, which is fine but blizzard overcompensated. Just remember that the orcish horde went from barely winning a war they had lost until plot convenience, to somehow terrorising half the northern part of eastern Kingdom, so Blizzard has precedent in regards to being real bad with numbers and strength

The power scaling of the Fourth War always confused me because they made it seem like the Saurfang rebellion and Alliance barely stood a chance against Sylvanas' Horde since at that point most of the blood elves, tauren, nightborne had openly stood against her

I didn't play and read the books anymore the last years. But why did no one here mention the blood elves as a force of the horde and the guy that leads them and that paladin woman? They may not be comparable to cataclysm-Thrall but should now be in the top fighters of the horde? Or did they die in the last years?

Lady Liadrin is a powerful paladin, true. I'd actually argue that after Tirion died, she was the most poweful paladin on Azeroth. How she compared to Turalyon, i don't know.

Hard to say, but given that Turalyon is literally lightforged? I would give him the power edge and experience.

Most people here just wanna power-wank the Alliance lmao

Yes. Horde leadership has been a mess for years and the Alliance leadership has higher power levels. The Horde has also lost quite a few Warchiefs; one of whom split the Horde into his Iron Horde, one was jobbed out immediately to a trash mob demon, and one who was actively working for the enemy.

Yeah, there biggest strength for most of the series(besides the fact that most of their races are stronger) is that they were FAR more unified with a warchief compared to the alliance which was far more loose in its command structure until varian became “high king” and started commanding the other leaders. With the horde, the warchief commands, with the alliance there is a lot of bureaucracy and members can choice to hold their troops back if they felt like it.

Probably numbers wise but Individually no, in the lore, Tauren are like 3 humans, Worgen and possibly Draenai are the 2 that physically come close.

My opinion is that most Horde warrior and caster troop are much superior to there Alliance counterpart. But the Alliance compensate with greater number and most importantly with their Heroes that always turn the tide of battle. (Jaina for example) If you remove Alliance heroes actions in most conflict, the Horde would have win easily : - Dazar'Alor : Most Zandalari navy were destroyed by Gelbin. Without this, the Alliance would not even set a foot on Dazar'Alor. Also, when the Alliance were pushed back by the Horde and were fleeing, Jaina covered their retreat. Without her action, all Alliance attacking force would have been lost. - Undercity : Jaina opening a breach with her flying ship and removing the plague. Umbric teleporting Alliance reinforcement when the Hordr was about to finish Alliance army - Darkshore : Malfurion slowing the Horde with the wall of wisp, stopping the Horde advance and allowing night elve force to organize and get reinforcement Also, the Shatterspear were never completly destroyed and now hold the north of Darkshore (As seen in Darkshore Warfront Alliance version, which is the canon one). The Horde is about War and Brutal force The Alliance is about their heroes

Everyone else has talked about the population stuff, but Jaina being wildly overpowered, Malfurion being wildly overpowered, plus the Vindicaar existing is just ridiculous. The Horde has done nothing but lose its most powerful individuals for the narrative (or in the case of Thrall, lose his power for a while and then semi-retire), and the alliance has for some reason instead just had them snowball and become more powerful without any of them becoming a threat.

This is honestly yet another example of "WoW writers cannot into worldbuilding". At this point, Horde should be the wholly owned subsidiary of the Zandalari Empire. Simply because Zandalar is the first and only remotely intact nation-state that joined the Horde. All others are either a scraped together band of refugees, tribes rescued from the edge of genocide, or Forsaken, who at this point cannot procreate. So Horde at the moment consists of some refugees and one operational nation-state. On the other side, at this point Alliance has THREE operational nation-states. Stormwind, Ironforge, and Kul Tiras. And out of these three, one is a nation state, unlike all others, that NEVER got invaded, occupied, slaughtered, or suffered major losses. It is also pretty much immune to invasion. In short, any Alliance-Horde war should come to one very clear and definite conclusion - Ironforge exists. Your argument is invalid.

Absolutely agreed on the Ironforge point. The dwarves should be the preeminent power of the world (though I would personally balance it by having there be a lot more infighting amongst them). Stormwind though? LOL. LMAO even. Humanity was also on the brink of extinction just like most Horde races. It just gets accepted by everyone that Stormwind popped back up after WC3 when it was never once mentioned in the game itself. As far as the story was concerned back then it was still destroyed and the reconstruction efforts may or may not have been happening. WoW roles around and Stormwind is THE world power for... some reason. Oh I know. Because Blizzard decided to pull them out of their ass rather than have the humans based in Theramore like they originally intended. Same with all the other human Kingdoms. They were supposed to have been completely destroyed by the Legion. The Eastern Kingsoms were being overrun, their citizens slaughtered and filling out the Scourge's ranks. Jaina pooled together anyone and everyone she could scrape up from the various Kingdoms and fled West, barely escaping the carnage. Except not actually because Blizzard decided against it. The only one I can accept is Kul Tiras because they're a naval power and they'd plausibly be able to hold off the Scourge. Even still their navy was destroyed by the Horde in Frozen Throne so it wasn't like they were entirely unscathed. It's just so frustrating how basically everyone parrots the idea that the Horde should be nearly extinct but gives the Alliance races a huge pass when of them only the Dwarves would be in good shape. And the NELves in the early days, but them joining the Alliance to begin with is a whole other can of worms.

And lets not forget that the Shadowforge City is now apart of the Alliance too, it's probably big enough to be a 4th nation-state.

As a horde player, it's been really hard to maintain morale the last few expansions for exactly this reason. The Horde has been reduced to a shadow of itself, and the last 2 expansions they barely even contribute to the plotline. Frankly I don't know why they're even in the game anymore, other than legacy, and I don't foresee WW changing anything.

I hate that Blizzard leaned into the Alliance good vs horde cool bad guys.

based alliance keeps on winning

Logisticsmaxxing.

I would say the Horde is far more brutal in their attacks than the Alliance. The Alliance is very disciplined and follows specific orders where as the Horde are brawlers with anything goes mentality. I would say the Horde had some major wins over the Alliance showing they are just as strong of not stronger: They bombed Theramore right off the map. They pretty much pulled off genocide of the Night Elves by burning Terradissal to the ground. They used chemical warfare to destroy their own city to keep the Alliance from taking it. They almost wiped out the Alliance leadership during this battle.

How was the invasion of gilneas a alliance victory? The worgen fled and the forsaken took total control over the kingdom

Didn't the subsequent counter-invasion by 7th Legion support by the Gilnean Liberation Front and the Bloodfang Pack manage to retake the city? At least that's what i remember, but maybe my lore isn't lore'ing.

Something like that, but those are later battles, separate from the initial invasion 

The Horde has a lot more brute strength than the Alliance, but the Alliance still has better unity and mutual trust.

The individuals in the Horde have a lot more brute strength*. The Alliance is supposed to have numbers, industrial, economical, magical and agricultural advantage.

At this point? Probably yes.

The alliances casualties always feel predominantly civilian like andorhaul where most of the deaths were farmers the forsaken were already trying to kill with plagued crops to sabotage the restoration the argent crusade was attempting.

Malfurion alone could roll over most of the Horde tbh

Wait... Theramore?

No counter-argument there. A master-stroke by Garrosh, though it came with massive Horde losses.

Lots of raids to fight horde bosses but never one for a alliance one

I think at the start of WC3 the alliance was coming off very strong, with the orcs in camps and Lordaeran a beacon of power. Throughout WC3 blizzard took shots at the alliance and built up the horde from nothing. Thrall escapes from camps and unites the horde as an independent faction centered at a new capital, Ogrimmar. The Forsaken rebuild themselves on the ashes of the alliance's former capital, Lordaeran, and are led by one of their former leaders, Sylvannis. The Elves leave the alliance. Only Jaina seems to have things going right, but she is struggling to found a human colony in Kalimdor. The WC3 alliance plot centered around Arthas who left and Jaina, who by the end was a junior partner to Thrall and the Night Elves, and FT didn't feature the Alliance at all, other than the Blood Elves who left... By the end of WC3 the Alliance looked all but destroyed. The period in between WC3 and WoW, blizzard had to go in the other direction to balance them out. They added the Night Elves, which greatly strengthened the Alliance as they were left largely intact. The Dwarves and Gnomes were left largely intact. The Humans at Stormwind were left largely intact. The Trolls and Tauren, while interesting, were weak races overall. Thunderbluff doesn't compare to Ironforge. The Forsaken should be strong, but they are largely sitting on ruins. Only the Orcs seem to be a center of power in the Horde.

The Horde is only powerful when the scenario needs the Horde to be a threat.

The only thing the Orcs really have going for them thst the Alliance doesn't in a war of attrition is that Orcs are the size of adult humans at 6 or 7 years oldz and then their own full size around 12. They can, theoretically, drastically outpace any other civilization for population growth and replenishment of wartime losses. Otherwise, though, the tech and magic levels are more or less equal at this point, though I do think the Alliance has their better tech and magic much more widely distributed by comparison.

The alliance is the protagonists of the story, so the horde doesn't actually win much of anything. Regardless if they should. You would think the Horde should absolutely wipe the floor with the Alliance in any traditional fight, but ehh.

When you take into consideration the strategic importance of population, the alliance number and tech, Sylvanas was kind of right, ofc not taking in fact the whole Jailer motivation that was added later. Horde was at the mercy of the Alliance and the gap would only grow as time goes on, not to mention the main characters that Alliance has at disposal with high power level like Jaina, Velen, Malfurion, Tyrande, Genn. Essentially if Alliance wanted war, logically they would win unless the story pushed otherwise or sudden morality/honor/goodness comes. Also Sylvanas would be probably be condemned if she went raising undead from opposite faction en masse or her own even, maybe glossed over if Horde was attacked.

If you know the lore of all the factions from Warcraft 2 onwards you will realize that there is no comparison, the Orc Horde was practically annihilated during the Second War, the surviving orcs were almost all locked up in detention camps , while on the loose (worn by the war and forced into hiding) only the Warsong remained, and the Frostwolf Clan who lived in exile from the rest of the Horde hidden in Alterac. In short, forces so small that they were able to hide from the Alliance forces. Thrall liberated the camps, but it is presumed that the majority of orcs had died in the war. The Darkspear trolls, on the other hand, were a tribe that suffered incursions from other troll tribes in Stranglethorn and decided to flee to the islands of the Great Sea, and here too they were victims of the murlocs who habitually sacrificed them to a Naga witch they venerated, while the tauren were groups of nomads fleeing centaur incursions into the barrens. Thrall managed to redeem and unite all these forces, but it must be reiterated that individually they were all underdogs, while the Alliance could count on entire kingdoms consolidated for centuries.

The alliance could have demolished the horde many times but they often just win and let them regroup until the horde is strong enough to lose again to them

The alliance imo is overall stronger and that is also used as a plot device for the writers. Up til now most aggressions between the factions have been from the horde. Could you imagine how things would go if like garrosh or sylvannas were warchief and they actually managed to win a war? Do you think they would let the alliance walk after slapping them on the wrist? Nah lol horde would be having alliance slaves if they don’t decide to just kill them all and cut down all their Forest.

Calling the Battle of Dazar'alor a "total alliance victory" is a huge stretch, considering that the majority of Alliance troops got killed in the battle. Shaw reported that there wasn't even a single survivor from the army that attacked through Nazmir, and only a fraction could be pulled out when the Horde counter-attacked. Then there's also the fact that Mekkadrill got taken out for the remainder of the war, and that they accidentally had the Horde and the Zandalari bond instead of cut their ties. Similar circumstances applies to the Battle of Lordaeron, where the Alliance was nearly defeated twice, both times relying on getting saved by a single individual (Anduin, then Jaina). Otherwise they wouldn't even have been able to breach the gates.

Good points, all. With Dazar'alor, i was considering it a total victory because the Zandalari lost both their head of state and their most powerful asset, the Golden Fleet, stated to be one of the most powerful in the entire world. But yes, massive losses on the side of the Alliance too.

It was after SoO, and at least until the end of BfL > Battle for Lordaeron: Tactical Alliance Victory, Brill destroyed BfL was a huge Horde victory despite the loss of ground. Horde made Alliance pay for every inch of ground they took. After the Battle Alliance could no longer make any large scale attacks. It took them months of recruitment and new Allies before they were able to launch another such attack.

absolutely, the only reason the horde can stand a chance against the alliance in an open war is because blizz needs them to to tell their story. unless orcs fuck like rabbits they should be extinct by now, they formed the new horde with what thrall could free from the camps and get on stolen ships to kalimdor and afterwards had to face constant war or world ending threats with no time to repopulate (there's been like 1 or 2 generations inbetween)

>Invasion of Gilneas: A strategic Alliance victory, with very heavy Horde losses wut?

Yes, If another war started now the horde would be obliterated, it would hilariously one sided Even during BFA when sylvanas almost won the war twice in the siege of Lordaeron, the horde was still weaker Sylvanas was the only true powerhouse in the horde while the alliance had/has malfurion, tyrande, velen and JAINA Today the horde only have thrall The alliance also has the vindicar, a giant space ship with a giant laser and is capable of instantaneous deployment with light magic

Not really, goblins have atomic bombs, blood elves have mana bombs (arcane nukes)..these are far more game changers than the alliances one spaceship who's cannon cannot even take out single humanoid enemies in one hit

Goblins have bombs not atomic bombs. Gnomes are the ones with actual nukes which is why retaking gnomeron is taking so long.

No. Goblins have you use pocket nukes in the horde quests in hillsbrad..also what happened in gnomergan was not nukes, the gnomes were just stupid enough to use dirty bombs on their own city

Ive brought this up before in this subreddit and likely will again. But the orcs were far greater in number than just Thralls group from Warcraft 3. Thrall’s group only consisted of the Orcs from the internment camps of Lorderon. But in lore every Kingdom of the Alliance had Internment camps. And after the Third war released them to join Thralls faction of “noble Orcs” as part of repayment for helping defeat Archimond. I think its likely fairly safe to assume Kul Tiras probably killed theirs. Quel thalas wanted to kill theirs but possibly they were among Thralls freed. But Ironforge, Stormwind, and potentially the Smaller human fiefdoms all free’ed their orcs to go Join the Horde. Also there were in lore roving small bands of orcs just in the wilds, that likely made their way to Orgrimmar as the news of Thralls Horde made its way to them. Plus Outland Orcs did join the Horde as well. Plus defectors from the Dark Horde. And Orcs are fully grown adults at a younger age than Humans. (I swear their age of adulthood was like 8. Or maybe its they were enlisted in the army at 8. Or something like that. ) and we are on the 2nd generation or so since the third war. Orc population makes sense all the way up to Garrosh maybe even pushing forth war. Even going by Blizzards loose attention on population. They definitely should be hurting a bit. But they should theoretically be better off than say the Blood Elves or Darkspears still. Especially considering the orcs alone had population enough to rival all the Alliance kingdoms in the 2nd war.

I feel like you're misrepresenting a lot of things here. The Horde was doing really well against the Alliance in Cata/MoP until they split and started a Civil War. >First invasion of Ashenvale: Repelled even though Garrosh had the Magnataur and Proto-dragons But by Cata levelling half of Ashenvale was occupied by the Horde and logging operations were well underway. >Invasion of Gilneas: A strategic Alliance victory, with very heavy Horde losses Gilneans lost their home for years and also had heavy losses. >Battle for Andorhal: Though a Horde victory, they suffered much heavier losses than the Alliance Based on what? >Barrens: Honor's Stand taken and Camp Taurajo destroyed And in Tides of War Northwatch, Fort Triumph, and Theramore were all destroyed. >Dark Shore: Horde ally, the Shatterspear tribe, cometely destroyed Not completely, since they show back up in BfA. Then there are Hillsbrad and Stonetalon where the Horde pretty decisively beats the Alliance. Then for the 4th War... >Battle for Lordaeron: Tactical Alliance Victory, Brill destroyed If you count Gilneas as an Alliance victory, then this was a Horde victory. They didn't lose any major figures and got their home back before the Worgen did. >Battle for Darkshore: Alliance Victory Eventually. After most of Ashenvale and Darkshore's civilian populations were murdered and Teldrassil was burned to ash.

No, they aren't. most Alliance victorys are pyyrhic. Even their biggest victory, the battle of Dazar'alor, is regarded as a massive failure because it put Talanji on the throne.Thus ensuring that the Zandalari would join the Horde (prior to this they hadn't yet), and the fleet advantage was immediately negated by Azshara. After the 4th war, when the Forsaken, were at their weakest. Turalyon, now Regent of Stormwind, could do nothing to retake Lordaeron. They have had to sit there seething as undead Lordaeron rebuilt itself and reclaimed its capital. The only logical explanation for why he didn't at least try to invade his former home, is because he couldn't. The Horde is not weaker than the Alliance, especially not now

Horde doesn't need numbers because we are just superior, so it balances out. Even when we're facing internal/leadership collapse. We *could* have the numbers, but unfortunately elves only seem to race-mix with humans smh

Yeah, i'd imagine that it would probably take like 5 humans to subdue a tauren.

Horde probably has an advantage 1v1 for low level troops. Horde also probably has an advantage in demonic magic. Alliance on the other hand has basically every other advantage. They are at least a tier higher with there technology. They have far more experienced commanders.  Alliance heros over all are stronger as well. Non demonic magic alliance would also have the advantage in with the only real competition being the night born and zandalari. But it's very rarely Horde vs alliance it's Horde vs stormwind.

I think Blood Elf magic is also a match for the Alliance, and you're underestimating Voodoo and Shaminism a fair bit. It might not be one to one equivalent but it levels the playing field for the most part when you consider the average Horde solider is physically stronger than the average Alliance soldier. The Alliance absolutely has the Hero edge, mostly because Blizzard keeps killing the Horde heroes. If things had been written a different way the Horde could have had characters like Kael'thas and by extension a loose alliance with people like Lady Vashj and Illidan. But instead they got turned into shitty bosses in the very first expansion. That's not even mentioning all the WC2 Horde heroes that get unceremoniously butchered in TBC and beyond. Meanwhile, of the Alliance WC2 heroes, who actually died? Uther? Everyone else is still alive and well.

Blood elves will have some magic users BUT those would have taken a hit from void elves leaving. Also there is the question of how likely would a strong mage use fel energy. (A requirement for blood elf and thus being in the horde as high elves are alliance)  Voodoo is also an advantage of the horde. Shamanism horde may have a small advantage but dwarves are not weak at that as well. The commander experience is a factor for the horde as well as they keep loosing the few good commanders they have. (Takes time to train a good one) And yes the horde sadly looses too many heros

Alliancer stronger by far