May your blades never dull...
For whatever reason, most of the Horde players seem like college student age or above. Opinionated (I don’t know if I’m spelling it correctly) people from diverse walks of life all congregated in Orgrimmar and around The Barrens’ and the General Chat, which introduced me straight out to the Horde mentality: Super serious or super crass. Trade Chat became the new Barrens’ chat, but that thing is filled with conversations almost 24 hours a day. Every time I log on to whisper a Horde char, I always see something like “Was Hitler really a bad person” or “Obama is an *****” or “Our educational system is broken” or “debate about atheism versus religion”. Nobody seems to have any predilection to censor themselves once they realize that WoW makes them completely anonymous, and so they will just reveal their true selves. It doesn’t matter how reprehensible or weird; people on Horde are like a giant group of adult misfits.
Of course, that fun also leads to some heated differences of opinion, and a high standards of performance. See, you’ve got two kinds of people on Horde: the achievers and the complainers. Horde seems to think that World of WarCraft is a merit-based system, and so any wipes/failures in any content will almost always result in the blame-game. Someone will post healing meters (as if those meant anything), or damage meters, or tell the tank to go <blank> himself due to a perceived wrong. Then, if you’re the person in question, you had better make a case for the group keeping you. Or, you could just strike back with the same venom and fervor, if not moreso, to get them off your back. I suppose one must show that they are the biggest dog in the yard, so to speak. After that, everyone just works their hardest because “they have things to do” or “you are wasting my time”. There’s real incentive for these people to play well and fast, not just for public ridicule but for their own time management (assuming they hit the upper register of the age range, anyway, which they tend to do).
The Alliance, on the other hand, seem content to just play the game and have fun. If you had to make a real-world comparison, Alliance would be like the people who call for “tolerance” in every situation – it’s just a game, after all. Nobody ever gets mad at each other, and people just do their jobs. Rather than assume the strategy for people to follow (which, in Horde, always leads to wipes and the blame game), somebody almost always explains something complicated in advance. This saves the entire group both time and hassle, making us much more efficient. If things go bad, nobody gets angry; they just re-explain problematic stuff, and try again.
Even the trade chat staggers me with its friendliness. Everyone talks about the game. Everyone plays the game, talks casually about the game, and talks only about the game. I can imagine this arising from two factors: young kids play Alliance, and thus have zero interest in any conversations outside the game, or they are adults who just want to escape from the real world for a few hours in Azeroth. In a way, you could consider it a bit boring. Personalities never clash, and people don’t often jump into gigantic fits of rage over trivial things.
Horde plays with teamwork and strategy without saying a single word, a concept I find hilariously foreign, Alliance players try to organize via chat messaging but it generally doesn’t work. Horde just wins the majority of PvP situations, since they actually, without prompting, heal people up so they can continue fighting. But, I kid you not, this thing happens regularly. Healers don’t just decide you are a fine casualty, or just yell at the strangers who are causing the game to implode: they just work together and move onto the next challenge. They are coordinated without trying, and I have no idea why.
Simply put, Horde and Alliance appear like two entirely different cultures. New converts to either adopt the ethos of either one, and often find the other side just plain weird by comparison. As for me, I am getting tired of being an Alliance player and its community, and have been thinking about playing Horde and become a Horde player. It is, for lack of better terminology, exciting. You never know when you’ll see a naked blood elf jumping up and down on a mailbox screaming WHITE POWER WHITE POWER for no apparent reason. Alliance has its fair share of weirdos but usually they’re role-playing rather than reigniting real-world racial tensions. I don’t know anymore if I want to live and breathe within that kind of digital culture, really
The unreality of Alliance just doesn’t suit me all that well, I suppose. I like to see what people really think and feel; the more independently-focused mindset of Horde brings that out without fail. You meet similar people to your own personality type, and I think that’s why I have always had trouble connecting with Alliance players in general. The atmosphere of one faction over the other will not appeal to all kinds of people.
… and may the Eternal Sun shine upon thee.
God bless you.
