The Horde wins

I have been in a losing team twice with the Horde, months ago, and all the rest have been wins. Some have been close. I have developed a real aversion to rogues and stealthed night elves and am now making it my business to produce as much cat's eye potion as possible, to last me and some select team-mates through sap-ing and backstabbing while on innocent, peaceful guard duty.

But I am not the only one who is surprised. The long, long streak of wins with the Horde on Argent Dawn has been the cause of discussion in the forums. Some claim the Alliance just does not cooperate with each other, some blame the habit of zerging*, while others claim it's all in the attitude. The posts that most people agree on are the ones concerning tactices.

But Sunday I read a post on the European forums that I have desperately tried to find all morning. It was started by a Tauren who had played Alliance, got tired of seeing the Alliance lose all the time, and switched to Horde to see for himself if the Horde side really was overpowered. His conclusion was that it was all about the way the Horde thinks. The Horde refuses to lose, his words as I remember them "we are bigger, badder and we just have to win". Another comment in that direction was from a female priest, who also plays on both sides and in this case same class: "As a human I heal as an undead I melt faces. Nuff said."

There are a lot of discussions about horde being favoured, overpowered shamans and shadow resistance. There's a certain writer at Terra Nova who spent a quite a bit of energy at State of Play explaining to me why the Horde will always win, all things being equal. The Guild members who have level 60 characters at the Alliance side do not agree with him - I'd love to see them get involved in a number-crunching discussion about who can do what where when... - I'd get a cup of tea and lean back with a tape-recorder running for later reference.

But no level of imbalance explains why most of the time I find more Alliance players at the top of the kills list, with most Horde players at the bottom. The Horde dies more than the Alliance, and kills less. Still the Horde gets the bases and the points, and thus the wins. It's getting weird - and interesting.

*To zerg: when all swarm over the area in one huge group rather than strategic split forces or using players on defense