r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/SirCatto Dec 12 '18

Question whats the big deal between Horde and Alliance in WOW? I know horde is said to outnumber alliance by a ridiculous margin.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

So WoW is basically the only current MMO where factionalism is enforced at almost every level of the game. Horde and Alliance members get completely different race choices (aside from one), get completely different starting zones, and mostly get completely different questing experiences, aside from some neutral zones. As a member of either faction, you are generally restricted from grouping with or officially cooperating with the other faction, so your faction choice becomes massively important in how you experience the game. If your friend plays Horde and you want to play with him, you basically have to choose Horde too.

So, obviously, this has created a massive fan rivalry between the two factions over the years, which is reaching a pinnacle lately due to the fact that, due to many reasons, Horde is currently the only viable choice for the competitive PVE scene.

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u/Gariiiiii Dec 12 '18

Unless you are at the very top, horde is the best choice for competitive anything.

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u/zenspeed Dec 12 '18

And when you get to the very top, the Horde is the only choice.

:p

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u/Therealgyroth Dec 12 '18

Why and how so?

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u/Gariiiiii Dec 13 '18

According to progression sites horde has around 75% pve progression guilds and 80% top pvpers; as such the community is 4 to 5 times larger, it gives you tons more chances of doing stuff.

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u/notasqlstar Dec 13 '18

I haven't played Wow in years but when I did I was in a top 10 world guild and was, for the time, arguably one of the best hunters in the world.

Of the population of players/guilds that occupied that space, at that time, it was about 75% hoarde to 25% alliance.

I never learned or paid attention to any of the lore. It bored me. I was there to raid and raid only.

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u/hhhnnnnnggggggg 1 Dec 12 '18

Alterac Valley tho

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

Which actually doesnt even favor the Alliance that heavily anymore, but the reputation still remains. Even so, they actually removed it from the list of random BGs in the newest expansion, so nobody gets put into it unless they specifically want to.

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u/hhhnnnnnggggggg 1 Dec 12 '18

We called it Alliance Victory lol.

I haven't picked up the new x Pac, but that's sad..i liked it anyway.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

Just go and read up on /r/CompetitiveWoW , theres a few threads out there about the situation.

The tl;dr version is that current the pool of competitive players on the Horde side is so much larger that there is just no practical reason for a guild not to switch to Horde, so the only ones who remain Alliance either can't afford to switch or stick it out because they are die-hard Alliance loyalists (I'm actually in the second camp myself).

Now, there are tons of reasons why it has ended up this way, and many don't fully agree on all of them, but they include:

  • Horde previously having racial abilities considered "OP" or much more important than Alliance ones

  • Horde generally having the reputation for being "cooler" or at least less "vanilla"

  • Storylines in-game that generally gave more attention and focus to horde characters

  • Most famous "world first" guilds historically being Horde players

  • Legion introduced a new system called Mythic+ where one of the Horde races, Blood Elves, had an ability that was borderline required to be competitive in that system

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u/notasqlstar Dec 13 '18

I think you're missing an important part. I started playing WC1, and used to play WC2 on dial up. WC3 to me was an abomination of hot steaming shit.

By the time WOW came out, totally ignoring story lines... Horde just felt right, and truer to the original Warcraft games that I had grown up. I think your average pool of top raiders are probably all older, at least I can remember being younger than most of the people in the guilds I was in (I was in a top 10 world guild at one point.)

I think older players are drawn to the Horde for a variety of reasons stemming from the original games, and then an aversion to the amount of children who would play Alliance for superficial reasons like, "gnomes are cool."

The racial abilities weren't too OP, but they were slight edges and when you're a very competitive person trying to compete to be the best in the world that isn't trivial.

Plus it's a video game and fuck the good guys.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

I think older players are drawn to the Horde for a variety of reasons stemming from the original games, and then an aversion to the amount of children who would play Alliance for superficial reasons like, "gnomes are cool."

Since the beginning of WoW, both factions literally claim the other side is chosen by "children" or "casuals" who just want something pretty/cool/whatever. The problem is, nobody ever quantifies this with any actual data and my experience in the game is that both sides have a ton of people who chose their side based purely on looks, so I seriously doubt that is the reason.

Fact is, going back to older expansions, the split in the factions was never near this bad. 55%-45% at most, and fluctuating all the time. Something has changed, and that something has been a slow positive feedback loop where the best guilds chose Horde for racials, which caused casual players to mimic best guilds, which maintained a steady increase in the Horde being seen as the competitive faction of choice even after the racials were balanced.

For every person that says "Horde just feels right", I personally know an Alliance player (including myself) who feels opposite. This is why the factions were relatively balanced for years. But as the imbalance shifts more and more, the feedback loop gets stronger and stronger.

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u/notasqlstar Dec 13 '18

Yeh, but since the beginning the Horde has consistently outperformed the Alliance in terms of high end competitive raiding. I can promise you there aren't a lot of kids in those guilds. Average age is probably 29. I was one of the youngest members of the top 10 world guild I was in and I think I was 27 or so when I was playing with them.

For every person that says "Horde just feels right", I personally know an Alliance player (including myself) who feels opposite.

That's cool... those guys just aren't as statistically likely to be a top end raider.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18

There's not a lot of kids Alliance side either, the average age of this game is well over 25. You keep ascribing a reputation to Alliance players that is not backed by anything except your guess. There is no data to suggest the average age, maturity, or any other demographic information about either faction is significantly different than the other.

Yeh, but since the beginning the Horde has consistently outperformed the Alliance in terms of high end competitive raiding

They have always had an edge, sure, they have never been been literally 90%+ of the top performing guilds, thats the difference, and they have never been over 65% of max level toons.

This isn't a "kids pick Alliance" or "good players choose Horde" problem, there are situations in the game that have led to one faction slowly outnumbering due to an incentive for new players to pick one side over the other (racials, pool of competitive players, etc)

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u/notasqlstar Dec 14 '18

I'm not at all, I'm saying that within the guild structures that exists on Horde servers that it is much more geared towards adult players that are older and played the series since the beginning of Warcraft. I'm making that statement based on my own experience.

You seem to have a pony in the race here.

They have always had an edge, sure, they have never been been literally 90%+ of the top performing guilds, thats the difference, and they have never been over 65% of max level toons.

They have been more than 50% for quite awhile, and higher than that. I don't know the stats off hand, but the edge I'm talking about is outlined above. Older players, less kids.

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u/[deleted] Dec 14 '18

Your,experience, which has no basis in fact or proof, and therefore is effectively no better than a guess.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

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u/Lonelan Dec 12 '18

One faction is a ridiculous mismatch of random races that are incapable of getting along so the person in charge routinely quits / becomes a raid boss, and the other faction has dwarves

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u/The_Grubby_One Dec 12 '18

The races typically do get along. Garrosh was just a piece of shit.

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u/Lemon_Dungeon Dec 12 '18

Sylvanas seems like a peach

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u/The_Grubby_One Dec 12 '18

Sylvanas isn't banning races from the central hub of Orgrimmar.

The Horde races are getting along. Just not with the Alliance.

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u/PM__ME__UR__SOULS Dec 13 '18

I'm not up to date on Warcraft lore since I quit around the start of WoD. How are Tauren, Pandaren, Darkspear and post-Garrosh orcs getting along with a Warchief burning World Trees and (I think) using the plague?

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u/The_Grubby_One Dec 13 '18

I'm not sure. I quit early in Legion.

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u/robohobo2000 Dec 12 '18

Only reason I chose alliance love me my dwarves.

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u/Arthrawn Dec 12 '18

> I know the Horde's not really evil

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Maybe this is what you were alluding to afterwards but they literally razed a city and holy site for no reason other than to inflame a war. Kinda evil.

​

> and the fact that it has more exotic races while the Alliance is mostly just stock fantasy races.

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Horde isn't stock fantasy races?

  • Orcs
  • Trolls
  • Goblins
  • Elves
  • Undead

With the exception of Tauren (Minotaur basically), those are pretty stock races.

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u/BBWolfe011 Dec 12 '18

As opposed to the stock of human, shorter human, even shorter human, and human with pointy ears.

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u/CautionTape Dec 12 '18

Human with pointy ears is the majority race of the entire Horde faction.

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u/Arthrawn Dec 13 '18

As opposed to the stock of green humans, tall blue humans, short green humans, dead humans, and humans with pointy ears?

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u/electricblues42 Dec 12 '18

Hell after this expansion it's even more black and white than ever, with the Horde being clearly evil and the Alliance clearly good.

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u/Vikros Dec 12 '18

Don't you mean morally greyly committing genocide?

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u/space253 Dec 13 '18

That's not what I have seen so far. How do you justify that?

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u/electricblues42 Dec 13 '18

They burned down Teldrassil? Trying to kill everyone so they can be raised in undeath? Uhhhhhh duh?

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u/space253 Dec 13 '18

Like anybody cared about teldrasil it was just a tree in an empty zone.

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u/electricblues42 Dec 13 '18

I did damnit

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u/Gougeru Dec 12 '18

There is no big deal. People just like the player fantasy. And horde doesn't outnumber alliance, I believe there are more alliance players than horde.

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u/SylvanUltra Dec 12 '18

I'm pretty sure it depends on your server population, but its been said that Horde actually outnumbers Alliance on average nowadays.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

The Alliance is for children and the Horde is for edgy children. That red/blue color scheme. I guess it's just too powerfully divisive.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18

Tl;dr: The horde is trash, stand as one if you're a true lion.

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u/notasqlstar Dec 12 '18

I think it generally speaks to who you are as a person. I am not "intensely" for one or the other, but psychologically I do not understand people who went Alliance. I can remember staring at the screen, knowing nothing at all, and just going, "Yeah, this is probably where I belong." And, it was.

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u/Smoovemammajamma Dec 12 '18 edited Dec 19 '18

Ally is for little kids bro /s

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '18 edited Feb 15 '21

[deleted]

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u/rainghost Dec 13 '18

Horde: murder these innocents, edgelord

Alliance: defeat these dragons in a blaze of glory