It’s the first question World of Warcraft players often ask each other, “Do you play Horde or Alliance?” The pride of the faction is a feature of the game that started in Classic WoW and endears into the lastest expansions.
Let’s be real, though, most players have some experience with both sides of the game. Both the Alliance and Horde have some unique experiences to offer, and here’s a list of ten of them.
10 Roll a Paladin
There are only two races in Classic WoW that can be Paladins. Humans and Dwarves, and both of them are on the Alliance side. If you’re interested in Paladin lore, this is the ideal character to roll, anyway. You won’t only learn about Paladins through your own experience, but you’ll level in the shadow of historic figures like Tiron Fondring and infamous villains like Arthas Menethil.
A Paladin is one of the few classes that can wield some of that game’s most powerful weapons, like the Corrupted Ashbringer. It’s the class to play if you want to be a hero, and it’s only available to the Alliance.
9 Roll an Elf
A serious concern for RPers and Tolkien fans alike, there’s only one elven race in Classic WoW, the Night Elves, and they’re with the Alliance. There are a few High Elf NPCs in the game, including one rather infamous Horde leader, but they aren’t a playable race.
Fans of the Blizzard RTS games from the 1990s, especially Warcraft 3, have a special love for the Night Elves, playing them as fearsome rangers and sentinels. Blood Elves won’t be available until the Burning Crusade expansion re-release, but BC servers could be a thing someday, too.
8 Chill in Dun Morogh
There’s only one zone this frosty below level 50, and that’s the Dwarven homeland of Dun Morogh. This is a popular zone anyway, known among lowbie ’toons for its scenic views, Azerothian lore, and the various quests. If you want to quest in a winter wonderland, and you don’t want to wait for Winterspring, this is your only option. Roll an Alliance character and take this beauty for granted at your earliest levels.
The nearby Redredge Mountains and Wetlands are also nice places to go as you graduate into your 30s.
7 Learn About a Secret Room in Stormwind
This is only for a class on the Alliance side, Warlocks. Unlike the Horde, the Alliance has some moral and ethical issues about using dark and demonic magic, which is pretty much all that Warlocks do. When you arrive in Stormwind on your Warlock looking for a trainer, you’ll be directed to an isolated wooden building and shadowy, subterranean rooms that most other players never even find.
Oh, sure, the Alliance sneers at the powers of the dark side, but they still wield them, just hidden in the basement.
6 Unleash Stitches
This quest chain is fairly low level, from the low 20s to early 30s, and takes place entirely in the zone of Duskwood. Although it looks and feels like a Horde zone, these quests are intended for Alliance players and the inhabitants are loyal to Stormwind. That isn’t to say that the Horde doesn’t have a strong presence here, with those undead alchemists in the eastern tower and that creepy old man who lives in the Raven Hill Graveyard.
This seemingly harmless old man, Abercrombie, starts you on a quest chain that ends with a hideous undead abomination attacking everything in the zone. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can kite him into the even lower level zone of Elwynn Forest. Good times!
5 Make Seasoned Wolf Kabobs
There are several recipes that are faction-exclusive, but this is one that’s attached to a quest of the same name a requires an ingredient that Alliance players can easily buy in Stormwind provided they can find the elusive vendor. You can get the quest from Chef Graul in Darkshire and your reward is a recipe for this succulent dish.
If you don’t want to learn the recipe, you can sell it on the auction house. Make a Horde player happy and sell it on the neutral auction house, as that’s the only way a player from the opposing faction can learn this recipe.
4 Ride a Frostsaber
Cats, in general, are limited to Alliance ’toons, with the elusive Swift Zulian Tiger being the only cat mount available to Hordies. Many players choose the Alliance faction for this reason and nothing else.
It involves a long grind, of both rep and questing, in the high-level zone of Winterspring, where the elusive cats call home. It’s most definitely one of the best-looking mounts in the game and you can only get it when you’re in your 50s, so better roll that Alliance ’toon and get started.
3 Ride a Horse
In another shout-out to our RPers and fantasy enthusiasts, if you’re hoping to ride along the shady roads of Duskwood on your trusty steed, then you have to roll Alliance. There are different colors of horses, too, so you can have a snowy white steed or a tall, imposing bay. This is the racial mount of the Humans, so it helps if you roll a Human but other Alliance races can ride horses as well.
There’s just a more coin required for the training and time needed for grinding enough rep. Paladins also have a class mount that’s a Warhorse and an epic horse mount, the Charger.
2 Ride a Subway
Okay, we know the Deeprun Tram doesn’t look like this. In fact, it looks more like a cross between an elevated train, a tram, and the London tube. Fun fact: earlier designs of the Deeprun Tram were intended to run between Teldrassil and Stormwind, hence the underwater scenes, just in case you were wondering what body of water that is.
In retrospect, that would make a lot more sense. There’s no equivalent mode of transport on the Horde side, which does have some unique points but nothing that runs underground.
1 Confront Onyxia in the Throne Room
You can attune to the Onyxia raid no matter what faction you play for, but there are some differences in the quest chains. It’s generally accepted that the Alliance got a better deal here. One of the last links in the chain is a quest called “The Great Masquerade” and it’s one of the most popular and exciting quests in the game.
Spoiler alert, but you find out that Onyxia is in disguise in the city, not hiding in some smoldering faraway cave as was previously suggested. She reveals her true form and wrecks havoc within the castle. It’s a brilliant and brutal scene.
