For the Alliance! or: Why I'm proud to play the pretty faction

Allow me a bit of catharsis in today's post. The comments on Thursday's WoW.com breakfast topic about the possibility of cooperation between the two factions brought up many memories of being ridiculed by my "friends" for being an Alliance player, and even if the animosity I feel towards those who seem to have animosity towards me is unreasonable, it's time I finally get those thoughts all down on paper... er, cyberpaper, so I can finally let the topic go.

I play Alliance. Why do I play Alliance? Because Druids can only be two races: Night Elves, and Tauren. I use Shadowmeld more than I would use War Stomp. As a tank who has always liked taking less damage more than being able to take more damage before dying, I like Quickness more than I like Endurance. And while Cultivation would only prove beneficial to me while I was still leveling up herbalism, I'm never going to stop dying, so Wisp Spirit will always be useful. Thus I rolled a Night Elf, and now that all of my wealth is on the Alliance side, all of my alts are Alliance, too.

That's all there is too it: I like the Alliance racials more (Heroic Presence, Gift of the Naruu, Expansive Mind, Diplomacy, and Every Man for Himself speak for themselves), and I find the races and the architecture more pleasant to look at. And for some reason, making this choice has opened me to supposedly fully-excusable ridicule from those who choose to play as Horde characters. All because of some self-serving misconception Horde players have about Alliance players. What misconception, you might ask? The idea that the Alliance is full of little kids, trolls, and noobs, while the Horde is for the real players. I give no credit to this idea, for while I can't speak from personal experience, all of the people I have talked to who play both sides say that the two factions really aren't that different. Both have their jerks, both have their serious players, and at the end of the day, noobs will be noobs, whether they fly the Horde's banner or the Alliance's. It's also notable that all of the reports on wowjackass.com for my realm are about Horde players, which doesn't exactly make me eager to faction change for the community.

Besides this false idea of the relative qualities of the communities, there's also the idea that, because the Alliance are the "good guys" and Horde are the underdogs, somehow, everyone who plays Alliance does so because they believe they are the good guys, and that makes them acceptable targets. Considering the events that have transpired during Wrath of the Lich King and the events that are set to transpire during Cataclysm, the Horde are quickly losing their underdog label and gaining the "just plain evil" label, making it much harder to be sympathetic towards them as a faction. But for the longest time, the two factions were approximately equal in terms of the potential for player sympathy for them. The Alliance was hardly a spotless group, and the Horde really were just underdogs.

But while those new to the game may have easily mistaken the Alliance for good guys and the Horde for bad guys, there is one undeniable fact that favors the Horde; when the game was first released, the Horde races was much more badass than the Alliance races. So while it's easy to make fun of people who picked the Alliance because they thought they were the good guys, it's just as easy to make fun of people who picked the Horde because the Horde races were more badass, and I would imagine there were many players who did that. Both reasons are equally inane as reasons to dislike the other faction, so the idea that the Alliance are the good guys, and thus Alliance players are acceptable targets, is hardly a convincing point.

However, what really irks me about the Horde vs. Alliance mentality is something that WoW.com commenter Ophelia captured quite when when he/she wrote in a comment on that breakfast topic I mentioned before:

Ouch. The replies to this post make me want to bury my head in the sand for playing Horde. Seriously, guys? :|

"I think we should get along. I have no dislike for you :3"

"WE R TEH WHOOREDD~~!!111ONE ALLIANCE PANZZYYY~~!!"

Oi [sic] vey.

Oy vey, indeed. Somehow, the unique combination of elements within World of Warcraft has created an Alliance community that has little animosity for the Horde community and a Horde community that looks down on the Alliance community with the utmost condescension and ridicule. (If you are a Horde player who has no such thoughts about Alliance players, please don't comment just to say that you don't hate the Alliance; I know that many Horde players, possibly most, don't hold this kind of animosity. Unfortunately, the most vocal members of your community do, as does every single Horde player I have ever met in real life.) And somehow, in this community where the Horde freely disses the Alliance while the Alliance does not provoke the Horde, the Horde still views themselves as the underdogs, the ones who made the less popular choice, which is why they feel justified in having this attitude.

With all due respect, Horde players, give me a break. When was the last time an Alliance player ever showed the kind of disrespect or flat out aggression towards a Horde player that Horde players show to us on a regular basis? I have never seen a single bit of animosity towards players who choose to play as the Horde, and the only time I ever heard Alliance players mention the Horde is to say either, "They keep beating us at [X battleground]," or "I've been thinking of transferring to the Horde." We Alliance players view the Horde as just another group of players, albeit one we cannot communicate with in-game, while the Horde seems to dislike us and somehow perceive themselves as the downtrodden ones. Maybe that's why this issue is so irksome for me; the Alliance-hating Horde players seem to think that we somehow deserve their hatred, and yet we have done nothing to deserve it.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the Horde has much more pride in itself than the Alliance; the same conditions that would lead to a dislike of the Alliance would natural lead to the creation of faction pride on the part of the Horde, so it's not a jump to say that the lack of animosity towards the Horde on the part of the Alliance and the lack of faction pride on the part of the Alliance would go hand in hand. However, in the face of all of the negative reactions I get when I proclaim that I play the Alliance, I am beginning to develop a bit of Alliance pride. Now, it's not the fact that I chose to play Alliance that I am proud of. My Alliance pride is the same kind of pride that a woman develops when she is told she is of the inferior gender, or an African American develops when he/she is told he/she is of an inferior race, or a gay man or lesbian develops when he/she is told that he/she has an inferior sexuality. The pride I am developing is not pride in the fact that I chose to play as an Alliance race; it is pride in the fact that, though I am told constantly that my choice was the inferior one, I am at peace with my choice. I am not proud to be an Alliance player; I am proud to be at peace with my choice in spite of the overwhelming pressure to regret it.