Honor > Faction Loyalty?

[Juhneen]

People who think Horde are supposed to be the "evil aggressor" are the ones who never played the RTS games, especially WC3. It's not supposed to be black vs white, it's more like gray vs gray. The actual lore is less "the faction of absolute unquestionable evil is trying to exterminate the faction of absolute unquestionable good" and more like "two factions make both righteous and morally questionable choices while simply trying to survive and gain an edge on the other".

The Alliance pride themselves on being the faction of honor and justice, but they still interned the Orcs in concentration camps even after they had broken free of the control of the Burning Legion. We must #NeverForget the six billion.

This

[Dr. Doom]

People who think Horde are supposed to be the "evil aggressor" are the ones who never played the RTS games, especially WC3. It's not supposed to be black vs white, it's more like gray vs gray. The actual lore is less "the faction of absolute unquestionable evil is trying to exterminate the faction of absolute unquestionable good" and more like "two factions make both righteous and morally questionable choices while simply trying to survive and gain an edge on the other".

The Alliance pride themselves on being the faction of honor and justice, but they still interned the Orcs in concentration camps even after they had broken free of the control of the Burning Legion. We must #NeverForget the six billion.

I don't disagree with this.
"returning to the old WC1/WC2 dichotomy" is precisely meant to explain that the richer and more nuanced story that was developed with WC3 and TFT was watered down, and for the sake of simplicity in terms of gaming (just code 2 factions) as well as in terms of storytelling (A and B will bash heads cuz that's what A and B do).

Even though the lore supposedly tried to rearrange what had transpired before (the fact humans and nelves would somehow become best friends in detriment of orcs doesn't make an iota of sense in the aftermath of the battle of Hyjal), you still get the theme of Alliance being often pidgeonholed into the generic and tedious white knight in shining armor (which is the reason why the faction gets the stupid fantasy-ridden kids), with Horde being pidgeonholed into the generic edgy and aggressive faction, which is why you guys get the, "I'm angry at my dad, fuck alli, let's go screw over yes!" crowd. NR: Obviously not every player in the 2 sides is like this before someone comes complaining at me.

That's why the behaviour that the previous poster mentioned takes place. Being aggressive comes more naturally to H, being more self-centered and do-your-thing comes to A.

[Dr. Doom]

In penix i rolled and stayed alliance.

Here i decidee to try horde instead. It seems i like being the antagonist, looks more right how orcs invade humans, more than humans invading orcs. It feels less wrong to be a brutal aggressor as an orc

Certainly. Orcs are an animalistic variation of humans, so it feels more coherent to display beast-like behaviour. The brutish huts, badly constructed towers, and rougher landscapes of Durotar fits with that.
The aesthetics of humans here are medieval/fairytale gimmicks, going for valiant knights riding horses rushing to the defence of they very, very, very white walls and ivory towers of Stormwind. It's a tougher pitch to build a more aggressive tone with them. You'd have to rely on outlaw/brigand behaviour like the Syndicate or the Defias Brotherhood.

There's a reason why I haven't rolled a human character since 2010 or so.

[mozibake]

*clipped*

Actually I agree with this for the most part, as well. I keep coming back to the feeling that if this were a more recent game that the faction system would be radically different and that the inflexibile system of "go kill these guys, they are our mortal enemies because reasons" was mostly due to technological limitations. For one thing, there are quite a few groups and organizations lorewise that transcend faction boundaries. It would have been a neat mechanic to have more than two factions with different levels of hostility towards each other or to have the character's class as well as race affect faction and organizational alignments. Examples, mages would likely more concerned with advancing their magical studies than their factions; on Horde, our class quests involve working with human NPCs (I still hate you, Tabetha) who by all rights should be hostile. Warlocks are a seedy bunch and a barely tolerated presence on both sides, and often collaborate with warlocks from the enemy faction to share their knowledge.

But WoW was always "setting over story", I personally am still waiting for them to release WC4 and retcon the events from Vanilla through wotlk so that plot important recurring characters are actually involved and not just fapping in a tower somewhere while some nerd named xxlegolasnarutoxx and 24 other faggots kill Arthas. Then we can pretend all the xpacs after that never happened.