I leveled up in the small horde section of a predominantly Alliance server. My time in the faction was rough, especially in the early years. I had a few horde friends, but they always picked on me. Me, being the greeniest, and the noobest, I was an easy target. They were always jerks anyway. I remember a time when one of them was about to duel an Alliance kid. One of my “friends” sang “Alliance and horde, dueling again. If horde don’t win we all jump in.” I turned to him and asked, “But what if the Alliance guy is right?” because in the duel that was about to unfold, my friend was the ganker. My “friends” looked at me like I was crazy for not automatically supporting my own faction.
Years later, those friends stopped playing with me completely. I guess I wasn’t cool enough for them. I ended up befriending a group of Alliance guys on my zeppelin. They liked me because I liked the same music (Daler Mehdi’s debut album was my favorite at the time), and because I always had a deck of Hearthstone cards with me. I liked them because they didn’t pick on me, and because they stood up for me.
Years later, I figured it all out. The horde bois were always insecure, unsure of their position in bg chart, their skill, so they belittled me to make themselves feel better. The Alliance guys didn’t need to do that. They were confident, secure. As long as I knew my place was at the bottom of the recount, they treated me well. I was their horde boi, and they wouldn’t let anyone touch me. From then on, I noticed how naturally confident and secure in their masculinity Alliance Men are, and how often horde bois try to hard to prove their skill (and how often they fall short).