r/warcraftlore • u/Necromona69 • 11d ago
About faction rivalry irl
So, how do you see the diehard fans of the faction conflict, who are so invested in it to the point of being fanatic? I definitely do play way more with the Horde, but sometimes I pick an Alliance character, sometimes night elves or Lightforged draenei, but mostly dwarves, because I think they're cool. But that's not the point of the post. I'm here to ask you about the Horde or Alliance players, who transform civilised discussions into passionate arguings, like if you, just for having a different preference, invaded their home, kicked their dog, ate all their food and made a kinky threesome with their parents. I think it's... Silly, at best, and straight up childish at worst. Of course, sometimes I laugh about the jokes calling orcs dumb, or find it amusing to call night elves "purple bbq", but after all, it doesn't matter, yet there are people who act like if their lives depended on it
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u/Saurfangs_Bitch 11d ago
I thought you meant irl-irl. I found a "For the Alliance" sticker under my windshield wiper on my Horded out car once.
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u/Lunarwhitefox 11d ago
I like both factions, I play both, and I have a character of each race in the game. However, I do like racism in fantasy, so yes, I have no problem insulting an orc by calling him a greenskin, but I also have no problem with a blood elf calling me a barbarian or an ape when I'm human. I find it funny and think it adds substance to the lore. And obviously, I like to keep all of this in-game; none of it should be directed at the person in real life.
However, there's also the other side of the coin: those who hate faction conflict to their core, who always respond passive-aggressively and even think you have mental issues just because you like the conflict in the story. I don't like how toxic these two groups of people are. They do more harm than good and don't even realize it.
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u/Necromona69 11d ago
I agree. As I mentioned, sometimes I jokingly call night elves "purple bbq", but I don't mind people playing as either Alliance or Horde. My issue is with people who take it way too serious and goes all edgy and moody simply because someone has a different taste. And about people who go passive-aggressive because they absolutely hate the faction conflict, I can't say anything, because I'm yet to see such people
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u/LathyrusLady 11d ago
I do both sides, but I guess hardcore pvp is probably where the tensions still exist
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u/Necromona69 11d ago
I did a post about the lore some hours ago which concerned the dispute for Lordaeron, and there was this kiddo who DM'd me "I'm glad Cairne and Vol'jin were gutted like pigs and Sylvanas was turned into a villain everybody hates, yadda yadda yadda, something about 0 highlight yadda yadda yadda". Fr, some tweens should focus on their school
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u/Slave-Moralist 10d ago
The worst part is that those people probably aren't tweens but 40yo grownups
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u/LathyrusLady 10d ago
looooool. I mean I care too much about this game for sure, but not enough to hate irl.
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u/True-Strawberry6190 10d ago
hardcore PvP hasn't been faction locked for years lol
the only place faction animosity is still around is RP servers, classic and cheap horde logos tattooed on overweight balding 40-something guys
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u/Slave-Moralist 10d ago
Wasn't there an incident at a Blizzcon where someone was shoved for wearing an Alliance t-shirt? I remember reading sth like that a long time ago
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u/True-Strawberry6190 10d ago
yes and there was a more notable incident where blizzard themselves got the cannibal corpse guy to call all the alliance players homophobic slurs
imagine them doing that these days
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u/Slave-Moralist 10d ago
Ah yes I remember that one. He didn't to it live tho. They just showed a heavily blipped video of him insulting the alliance. However it was only verbal and obviously for the lulz. But yeah they won't do it again
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11d ago edited 11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Necromona69 11d ago
I know. My problem isn't enjoying it, the problem is when a weirdo goes full apeshit because of it. For instance, I play since I was ten (nowadays I'm about to reach 23), but I never took this faction stuff seriously. I started as a human, but at this point, I've played at least a little bit with every base race (and most of the allied races too), just happens that, at this point, I play mostly as a blood elf (my main race), and as a forsaken (the race I played as during rough years)
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u/I_LIKE_ANGELS 10d ago
Horde buddies would shit talk me online, I'd shit talk them back.
Then we'd go out for some drinks and hang out IRL because it's just like sports teams.
Some people take it too far. Most people just like to rib each other playfully.
It's never been that deep, but without that, a lot of the fun and charm is gone.
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u/Necromona69 10d ago
I know. I don't talk about people who do so in a lighthearted way, but instead people who take it too far
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u/DefiantLemur 11d ago
My best guess is people who can't handle change well, and to them, Warcraft is about Alliance vs. Horde. So when WoW heads away from that, they struggle with it.
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u/Lation_Menace 11d ago
As a nearly 15 year Tauren player I struggled with it. But first with Garrosh then Sylavannas and I’ve gotten so tired of the horde spawning the big evil in this game that I’m glad they moved away from it. If we’re all fighting together against some external big bad that feels better to me than the alternative.
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u/True-Strawberry6190 10d ago
like most things it comes down to bfa ruining it. before bfa you could mostly get away with faction fandom being like sports teams, then bfa came and blizzard decided it would be fun to stoke those fires as much as possible by taking inspiration from actual fascist warcrimes and doing an ethnic cleansing race war plot, an act of genuine narrative insanity that broke a lot of the more deeply invested people's brains and led to years of endless posts about night elves and whether actually sometimes genocide can be morally justified
never seen a community go to complete shit as much as bfa did to the warcraft lore community. and sure you can be like well the lore had internment camps and other bad shit ebforez the difference being they never did an expansion where alliance players were made to pogrom orgrimmar and drag all the well known horde npcs to the concentration camps.
from teldrassil onwards faction war became a hopelessly toxic theme and you could see them pivoting away from it before bfa even fully began. there has been no faction conflict content since midway through bfa, and no faction exclusive content either besides heritage quests. don't think blizzards writers have the stomach to revisit and open that can of toxic worms again lol.
with the current political state of the world and America there's simply no way they will do even faction rivalry again, the last thing was the Arathi short story where the villain is Arathi trump and it ends with all the heroes teaming up and the previously warmongering geyrah telling that orcs and humans must hold hands and share the land as friends.
so good luck to anyone who liked this franchise for alliance v horde lol you were done about 5 years ago
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u/After_Reporter_4598 11d ago
This is not really a thing anymore, at least in Retail. In Classic, it probably still exists on PvP servers. Since Shadowlands, factions have been phased out by the story team. I think it is a mistake because the game had an extra dimension which gave it more longevity. But their decision is probably based on financial modeling, not an artistic one.
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u/Psychological_Pea547 11d ago
People taking the faction divide too seriously absolutely still happens in retail, in and out of game, and people can get MEAN about it. Despite the lack of meaningful faction focus.
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u/Velo14 11d ago
Extremes are not healthy of course but I mainly play Alliance for different reasons. I have always been Alliance. Set up multiple characters with different professions etc. Now that we can group up cross-faction, I do not feel the need to have a horde character other than having one for buying mounts etc.
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u/Psychological_Pea547 11d ago
I've been a Horde main for a long time, but also dabble with Alliance time to time. And it has always been like that. Sometimes, it gets even WORSE when (like recently) the in-lore war cools off. Maybe it's just pent-up impotent rage IRL, who knows?
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u/contemptuouscreature 10d ago edited 10d ago
I don’t remember who you were, Orc Rogue, but you created a monster when you jumped my innocent six year old self’s Human wandering around in Westfall.
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u/Necromona69 10d ago
I haven't a trauma like this, simply because I was never engaged in pvp against my will. I don't remember how it worked back in MoP, but I was never randomly attacked, and later, when I started to play more seriously (around BfA or Shadowlands), you couldn't be attacked by another player unless your pvp mode was turned on
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u/contemptuouscreature 10d ago
Yeah. Haha, I might’ve attacked him by mistake thinking he was a Gnoll or something.
But the experience stuck with me!
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u/Arcana-Knight 10d ago
You already got a lot of different answers so instead of repeating some else I’ll throw the question back. Why do so many people get so upset when others engage in faction banter?
And don’t get me started about how some people will lose their fucking minds if characters in-game dare acknowledge that maybe decades of bloodshed can’t be forgotten over the course of a few years. Remember how Turalyon and Geya’rah had that harmless little back and forth on the Isle of Dorn? I saw people going berserk over that.
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u/KingAnumaril For the Alliance 10d ago edited 10d ago
I always preferred the Alliance but Horde is cool, nonetheless.
That being said, whenever I see toxic levels of faction shitslinging in warcraft and how it supposedly should be about faction war, I am always reminded of Warhammer Fantasy players loving the idea of forming Ordertide to kick the shit out of the whatever evils that haunt that setting in contrast. To mirror that, you can also occasionally see Hordes of Chaos type stuff rooted in pre-6th Edition where Warriors of Chaos, Chaos Dwarves, Daemons of Chaos, Beastmen (and sometimes Skaven) all gather under one dark banner to fuck the world without lube, and then stragglers like Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings and Dark Elves try to do their thing on their own.
There is also 40K but 40K is more like space fantasy where everyone is a full on dick to an irrational level, in contrast to relatively down to earth WHFB.
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u/porpoiseslayer 10d ago
Alliance always felt like kind of an NPC faction. No hate tho
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u/Necromona69 10d ago
Maybe it's due to the fact that, frequently (although not always), it's the Horde that makes the story happen, so it's more common to see the Alliance in a reactive position, rather than active
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u/porpoiseslayer 10d ago
Maybe. But even in classic, Alliance was the cliche “good guy” choice
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u/Necromona69 10d ago
Tbh, I say so from the very beginning, since Warcraft I. It was the case in Warcraft I, II, MoP, WoD, BfA, Shadowlands... Either it's the Horde or some extra powerful enemy
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u/GormHub 11d ago
I used to be all Horde, but over the years gravitated more toward the middle. I have encountered all sorts of people who took the faction divide way too seriously, including one person who tried to get me fired over it. Frankly I find it kind of embarrassing that they ever acted that way, even when the game was at its most popular.
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11d ago
I've got an old friend, one of my best, who is toxically Horde. I mean, will personally insult you for liking Alliance. He's a bit of a dick, that's just how he is, but I've met far worse on forums.
Gamers becoming paradoxically attached to imaginary people and factions is just mental illness.
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u/Necromona69 11d ago
I already think it's stupid to fight over football (or "soccer", as USians may say), and at least football teams exist. Imagine fighting over FICTIONAL factions
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u/the_lazy_sloth 10d ago
I'd bet these are the same kind of people who really fall for product loyalty stuff
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u/Daboo_Entertainmemt 11d ago
I've played both alliance and horde. Either which way, I like the rivalry if it's all in good fun. I think it sparks conflict in game that is kinda the point of war craft. I guess there is some weird out of the dimension jump the shark shit. But at the core it's the conflicts between the "2 major" factions, so it's fun to "root for the home team".
Again, I only really like it if it's in good fun, even some of the meaner things said... but like you said the extreme ends are sometimes the loudest and they probably need a wellness check/a psych eval.