Keep in mind that everything in Icecrown is post-Wrathgate, and post Varian almost going berzerk and threatening to annihilate everyone. Not that it matters anymore, but after they just declared all out war on the Horde, the Alliance should have at least watched their backs. As for the Horde... well, there's a medieval moron high up in their command chain as well (Hellscream, here's looking at you). But he can't be contained because... guess what? Varian keeps pushing the wrong buttons and supporting his cause. And what's worse is that both of them are sort of icons to their troops, and they instill their bloodlust to those troops. Basically, pitting two bloodthirsty maniacs and the armies that look up to them against each other is not going to result in good sportsmanship. And do keep in mind that this has been going on for a very long time now, and ad some point during the third war, the Horde shifted away from the bad guy role, and the Alliance is constantly taking shots at them (Admiral Proudmoore, Garithos - which by the is the biggest monumental fuck up of them all, the one that caused the Alliance to break - then Vandaar Stormpike, and finally Varian)

I personally rather liked the old 'cold war' feeling WoW had, where inter faction tensions were generated by various strategic objectives, not by the egos of two commanders. I just think that fighting for something that's supposed to give you an edge in strengthening your faction (i.e the resources of AB, the staging point for the invasion of Tempest Keep in EOTS, or the additional supply line that Venture Bay is supposed to provide) is a notch more appealing than all out carnage to soothe a pair of overly developed egos.

I absolutely love the Varian vs Thrall, Alliance vs Horde discussion.

I think Metzen hit the mark with what he was hoping to aim for with people taking sides in the debate.

Personally I'm a Varian supporter the Horde has clearly run unchecked for too long, death to the Greenskins!(Kidding my hordling friends....or AM I? <3)

You either see Varian as a somebody who sees the Horde for what they are and a need to defend the Alliance even if it means war, or somebody that shouldn't be in a position of leadership who's a hothead and has too much of a personal vendetta and is doing this for his own sake and not the Alliance's.

You either see Thrall as the peaceful Warchief of the Horde who's apparently completely innocent of the fact that he has despicable evil people in his faction...*cough* or you see him as somebody trying to hold it all together and has been declared war on unjustly.

Or you have a mix of the above and just understand the entire picture and why it all led to this.

There's also another issue here. The Alliance has one spearhead figure for the whole Northrend campaign. Varian. Everyone else (Velen, Tyrande, Magni are just sitting there, doing nothing). And I honestly don't think Jaina wstill counts as 'Alliance' after the stunt she pulled in Undercity :P

The Horde, on the other hand has their wise and peaceful ruler (Thrall), then the ruthless and cunning one (Sylvannas), the old grunt who doesn't miss the old Horde at all (Saurfang), and the raging berzerker who happens to hate everyone and is in command of all forces in Northrend (Hellscream junior). I guess this just makes it a lot easier to find a perspective you like when it comes to the Horde.

But the Alliance has the 7th Legion... and we claim Brann Bronzebeard and Muradin Bronzebeard. (more the latter, less the former, especially after you complete the quest and King Magni arrives in Northrend, Muradin vows to take down Arthas).

We also have Veressa Windrunner and Thassarian. Actually, I am not sure about Thassarian. Do the Horde ever interact with Thassarian?

No, they don't. Not unless you count the Death Knight starting area :P
They do have his blood elf counterpart, Koltiria Deathweaver, Thasarrian's only Death Knight friend, that you go out of your way to save in the same DK starting area.

And, right now, Thassarian isn't exactly part of the Alliance, and the way I see it, most of the stuff you do for him isn't even sanctioned by the Alliance.

Veressa seems kinda useless as it is now, and Muradin... well.. time will tell. He's not really doing much, as far as I remember. He just rides off to work his magic against Arthas.

And yeah, as a bonus, we do have the 7th Legion

The Kor'kron Vanguard are the Horde equivalent to the 7th Legion.

I think you make a good point that none of the other alliance leaders have much of anything to do with anything. I do wish they would get more of the racial leaders more involved with the storyline. It's depressing how little Tyrande is involved with anything anymore, and Magni, Velen, and hell, even the gnome guy could stand to be a bit more involved in the storyline.

Though, to be honest, a lot of the other horde racial leaders don't have a huge involvement either. Really, it's all orcs and then Sylvanas. I'd like to see Cairne back in action, or the troll leader, or whoever they put in charge of the blood elves these days.

Wrynn never went berzerk and threatened to annihilate everyone, he got mad after seeing the mutilated remains of people who experienced forsaken mercy and tried to eliminate the person who is in charge of the group that is a huge threat to his people. I don't understand how you can argue that Wrynn should ignore multiple open acts of war and gross crimes against humanity committed by the Horde and not declare war, but have no problem with Horde attacking Alliance forces to prevent them from securing a victory over Arthas.

I don't see how you can possibly argue that Hellscream is just an isolated 'medieval moron' who's at odds with the kind and gentle New Horde. He's just advocating a continuation the aggressive warfare the New Horde have practiced under Thrall since the beginning. Are you going to blame Wrynn for the invasion of Ashenvale, the war of expansion and extermination against the centaurs and quillboars, the Forsaken attacks against Hillsbrad, and the horrifying Forsaken experiments? The New Horde is an aggressive, expansionistic, untrustworthy group that attacks anyone anytime it thinks it can possibly gain advantage, and treats prisoners either as fodder for death sports or as subjects for twisted experiments.

Varian Wrynn is the leader of the humans and by extension the Alliance, Thrall is the leader of the horde. Wrynn can be held accountable for the human chain of command and most of the Alliance. He does not, however, have any say in the Orcish chain of command, and trying to blame the actions of Thrall's commanders on Wrynn makes no sense. The horde have been provoking the alliance since before WOW even started, arguing that the alliance responding to this provocation absolves the Horde of responsibility for their actions is silly.

I'm not claiming Hellscream is an isolated case in the Horde; I'm sure the bloodlust is still strong in many of the old grunts, but that's always to be expected from soldiers, who don't have the full picture. I'm trying to say he's just the one in command of all the armies in Northrend, and I'm sure he's doing much to rekindle the aggression that's laying more or less dormant in every other orc.

And, as I've said, invading Ashenvale would fall into the category of fighting for resources, and more to the point, it's a war with a solid end game in mind. More lumber is a key to the Horde infrastructure.
The war against the quillboars and centaurs is a matter of securing the borders against raiding parties that don't seem to understand reason. National security.

Both of these seem like solid reasons to start a war. There's a hell of a lot of difference between that and just decimating an Alliance force fighting against your greatest enemy in the area, who, by the way, happens to benefit from that in more ways than one. I mean, as a commanding officer, seriously, in a modern day army, you'd face the court martial for that. In other, darker times, you'd just be killed to discourage further incompetence from your successors.

Also, any leader's popularity depends greatly on what he believes in and how appropriate his followers think that is for the current situation. If you're facing imminent attack from a powerful enemy, the majority of the population will follow the one who's planning to fight back.

Now, things went well in Northrend prior to Wrathgate, even including the minor skirmishes, spying and sabotage that's always inherent to an expansion by two competitive factions. And all of a sudden, Wrathgate, the battle for Undercity, and you have Icecrown, which is an awesome area to play in, with good faction quests, but the military actions make no sense whatsoever. If Varian and Garrosh want all out war, by all means, they can go kill eaachother like civilized people. But both of them are just plain stupid for doing it at the doorstep of Azeroth's greatest necromancer.

And one last thing. The Forsaken mercy thing. The Alliance always seemed to had an 'Oh, look, an orc/troll/undead. Let's make a bonfire and burn it!' mentality in my opinion. I liked that, I agree, but I'd expect that after AQ, Naxx and Outland, it'd had sunk in to even the thickest grunts that there's a lot of things out there more dangerous than the opposite faction.

The most suspicious thing of the Wrathgate video is the lack of Night-Elves.

Lack of Spacegoats is completely understandable. Even the lack of Blood Elves.

There's nothing wrong with Wrynn flipping out after seeing the Apothecarium. Most players have commented something similar, that the Alliance should raze the Undercity for that, or that the Alliance would raise the Undercity if they ever found out. RAS = Scourge for all intents and purposes. Wrynn does not know - and probably would not believe or care - about the lack of oversight on the Forsaken by the other races of the Horde.

It's guilt by association, but Thrall is the damn Warchief, and he did happen to be right there (which is what really sets Wrynn off, if you remember the text).

Somewhat notably, the Undercity has never been a big contributor of manpower to war against Azeroth's enemies. They didn't show up for the war against the Qiraji, the only Forsaken to really do much about Naxx are independent members of the Argent Dawn/Crusade, and they had no presence in Outland to speak of.

As far as the Alliance are concerned, the Forsaken are just another enemy alongisde Scourge, Legion, bugs, etc. They have never been given any reason to care for them, and now the Forsaken go and gas Alliance troops and carve up human prisoners for experimental purposes. Can you really blame any member of the Alliance for going "Hell with these Scourge clones, and hell with anyone who helps them!"

It's due to what those military groups are made up of.

The 7th Legion is a pre WoW part of the Alliance military so it only involves races that were in at that time. The Kor'kron is no different with it's exclusion of blood elves.

Listening to the Algalon sound files on YouTube, I've discovered something very interesting -- a word we've been mispronouncing all this time. After all...

"Witness the fury of the cosmousse!"

There's at least one Night Elf in the video (at 3:10): after Putress plague-bombs everyone, there's a Night Elf male (glowing eyes and all) in an unmistakable "why me?!" death animation.

Your opinion does not appear to be based on events in the game or in lore. The most notable contradiction to your claim is that the Alliance, after defending themselves against multiple genocidal wars launched by the horde, merely imprisoned the armies that tried to wipe out all human life. If the Alliance had adopted the New Horde's philosophy towards 'national security' threats, or your 'lets make a bonfire' bit, then there would be no New Horde at all. If they followed the Forsaken's path, then Thrall and his present leadership would be puddles of weird green goo.

The Alliance are hostile to the horde, but that's to be expected because of the Horde's history of aggression. You can't launch offensive wars against everyone who has something you want without making enemies. The horde won't even leave Theramore alone even though Jaina is practically Thrall's vassal. The Alliance are even willing to take in former Forsaken who can't stomach the atrocities most Forsaken revel in - though Sylvannis sends commandos to kill those Forsaken off before they can talk about all that goes on in the Undercity.

Perhaps I'm missing something in the lore, but as far as I can tell the Alliance has shown extreme mercy to the Horde (more mercy than even the New Horde shows), and has bent over backwards to try to get along with and work with the Horde. Meanwhile the Horde has shown nothing but naked aggression (Ashenvale, Hillsbrad, Grizzly Hills, Wrathgate) and outright betrayal (turning on Garithos, kidnapping Wrynn, Wrathgate) in response. If you keep poking someone in the eye, even a saint will eventually get tired of trying to be friendly with you.

I don't see how, from the Alliance perspective, the faction of hostile undead led by Arthas significantly different than that that led by Sylvannis and protected by Thrall. Arthas wiped out Lorderon a while back, but Sylvannis betrayed an Allaince army to take Lorderon more recently. Arthas poked at the Alliance a little bit to kick off the expansion, but Sylvannis has been fighting Alliance forces and civilians in Hillsbrad for the whole course of WOW. Arthas makes people into mindless slaves to increase his power, Sylvannis does it for amusement. Arthas kills people and makes them into undead, Sylvannis tortures people to death to make better weapons.

The fact that you mention Outland only servers to highlight this - the opponents the Alliance fought in Outland were enemies who fought alongside the Alliance against the greater threat of the Burning Legion. The fact that it is sometimes necessary to work with one enemy to beat a greater one doesn't mean that you won't have to deal with all of your enemies at some point... and the Forsaken are a bit closer to Stormwind than Arthas.

While you can go about how Sylvanas is evil and knew about everything going on with the Apothecary's you can also look at it the other way and maybe the Apothecary's were only following Varimathras' orders and using Sylvanas' name to get those deeds done (such as the Hillsbrad quest you reference). But guess we will get the answer to that soon enough in the comic or whenever the second chapter begins in game which probably will be 3.2 be the looks of it.

Already I can predict what will make Varian declare war on the Horde for if the comic is as predictable as I think it is. Garona will go to assassinate Varian and get stopped and he will then go to blame the Horde for it although Cho'gall controlling her and the Twilight Hammer are entirely behind it.

Yea it is just how that helmets eye glow looks.

Hmmm. My mistake, then. I was actually going off the male night elf death animation more than the glow from the helm.

Let's review Garithos and Proudmoore again, because I feel they're pretty representative for the Alliance before and during the early WoW timeline.

Garithos basically hated everything that wasn't human end enjoyed making thing hard for everyone else. He had no qualms about imprisoning and planning to execut what were essentially loyal members of the Alliance who were only following his orders in the first place, based on personal prejudice. You must have a very romantic notion about what would have happened to Sylvannas and her people if they hadn't turned on Garithos.

Then there's Admiral Proudmoore. He's been hiding out for the whole third war, scratching his head, then when his life long enemies decide to leave for Kalmdor, he follows them, plans to exterminate them, without listening to reason, neither from Thrall nor his own daughter. I can almost understand someone dismissing their offspring as immature, but hey! how many daughters saved their family, their race, and quite honestly their whole planet from a Legion invasion?

Do I need to mention the Scarlet Crusade ambassadors in the Stormwind Cathedral and Nijel's Point? You know, those same guys that do all sort of nasty things to Forsaken civilians - and even to some humans for that matter.

Anyway... back to NorthrendWhile all these add a bit of flavor to the Alliance, distancing the faction from a bunch of knights in shining armor, the whole Varian/Garrosh seems like a pretty artificial way to add some PVP quests in Icecrown Although, the whole conflict between commanders is a nice touch, I feel it's either quite poorly or not quite completely implemented yet. I know the whole story is supposed to be continued, but quite frankly, there are some other promising storylines that have been cut short already.

And, as it stands now, I feel I sympathize with Thrall and Sylvannas' fight for the survival of the Horde, rather than Varian's plans to show his might.

If you look at this, and every other place where the horde have been aggressive towards the alliance, it's primarily the Warsong Clan that are instigating things. We have the Warsong Outriders in Ashenvale, and now the Warsong in Northrend (led by our good friend Gorrosh!). The primary horde in Northrend who don't have a strong anti-alliance streak are Saurfang the younger and the Kor'Kron Vanguard who come to help Bolvar, who end up being betrayed by Putress. I think one of the problems here is that Thrall turns a blind eye when it comes to the actions of the Warsong Clan, since it was led by his best buddy before his death. (And, the post I quoted is right, there is a desperate need for lumber, since most of the horde territory lacks trees)

Edit: Obviously the Forsaken have a pretty strong anti-alliance streak too, but they have a pretty big anti-everything streak.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but yes, you appear to be missing quite a lot. Many of the things you've said so far have been mildly inaccurate, to put it politely. The thing about being players in a game is that we know things that the NPCs or even our characters would be unaware of. But every single thing you've said has been from the point of view of an NPC who has fully bought in to the Alliance propaganda without ever having heard the other side of the story.

For instance, if you're going to give examples of the Horde's "outright betrayal" of the Alliance, the Wrathgate, where the Kor'kron Vanguard were willing to come to Bolvar's assistance in a magnificent example of cooperation between the two factions, is undermining your case, to say the least. Enova has already pointed out how Garithos cannot possibly be considered the victim in that situation. And the Horde never kidnapped Wrynn, the Defias did; granted they did use him as a gladiator slave, but that was without knowing who he was, and that merely proves that there was no intent of Horde hostility towards the Alliance.

There was never any outright betrayal, and any conclusions you try to base on that assumption are inherently flawed. There was merely an escalating series of petty hostilities and trivial skirmishes that eventually add up to being rather less petty and trivial. I think any rational person would agree that the Horde and Alliance are probably both equally responsible for hostilities breaking out. The difference is that Thrall at least tries to do the right thing, while his underlings (of whom he has an increasingly tenuous grasp these days) are continually giving him the runaround; whereas Wrynn seems content to drive his entire kingdom to some crusade against the Horde based solely on his own biases.

Looking at it from a lore perspective it isn't that odd that the forsaken barely helped out during those events. They have been sitting at the footsteps of the plaguelands all this time constantly fighting off the scourge and the scarlet crusade. It wouldn't be that weird to consider that if it wasn't for the Forsaken that the scourge would have spread much further through the Eastern Kingdoms.

And the lack of presence in outlands isn't that odd either. Lorewise the undeads really have nothing going for them in the Outlands. Their only real enemy is the lich king who is sitting in Northrend and judging from the Forsaken presence in Northrend they aren't going to let him get away with everything he has done to them.