One of the things I love about World of Warcraft is the way that the "monstrous" races are actually just people. And clearly, Blizzard loves this as well. As Saurfang notes in the first of this patch's cinematics (the one with in-game assets,) the Horde was founded in a fundamentally corrupt way - it was an instrument created by Gul'dan for use by the Burning Legion. And the Horde has never really reckoned with that fact. They want to be something better - a force for good in the world that can make Azeroth a safer place - but the sins of the past drive them to keep failing, new atrocities echoing old ones. The burning of Teldrassil is, arguably, the worst thing the Horde has done since the destruction of Draenor. And as much as they'd like to pin the blame on that for Sylvanas individually, the truth is that everyone who marched on Darkshore was, at least in part, complicit. They may not have known quite how far things would go, but when Sylvanas ordered the tree to burn, there did not seem to be a lot of hesitation among the many shamans and other Horde soldiers fired the incendiary attacks.
When Saurfang recounts his litany of the Horde's sins, Anduin speaks of the Alliance's. But the names he comes up with, Arthas and Daelin, ring a little false.
Arthas was absolutely poised to be one of the Alliance's most important leaders, but his fall to evil was, I'd argue, more of an individual one. The Alliance as an institution did not drive him to take up Frostmourne - indeed, his father even attempted to recall him from Northrend, feeling that things were going too far and that it would be more useful for him to stay behind and fight the Scourge where they were.
Daelin, I will grant, was acting in his full capacity as an Alliance leader, but at that point, he was blinded by misunderstanding, believing that he was saving his daughter from a foe that, up until that point, he had only seen as demon-blood-crazed monsters. Daelin was wrong to fail to see the humanity in the Horde, but I don't think that's an institutional problem with the Alliance as much as it is a personality failing.
I tend to play Alliance characters for a few reasons - I found a good guild on the Alliance side, I have characters of the classes I like to play on that side, and to be honest, I just kind of like the Alliance aesthetic better - blue's my favorite color and I'm sort of bored by all the red and spikes one gets with the Horde.
You can usually feel a lot more unambiguously heroic as an Alliance character, but the other side of that coin is that the Alliance winds up not really getting terribly interesting stories.
This is the second time that the Alliance has worked with rebels within the Horde to stand against a tyrannical Warchief who had utterly destroyed a major Alliance territory. In terms of pure "my side is stronger than your side" comparisons, it doesn't look great for the Alliance, given that both times they've had to team up with part of the Horde to face down the remaining part of the Horde. What's odd about this particular instance is that, prior to the confrontation that ends the war, the Alliance was supposed to be winning - yes, they lost some ships in Nazjatar, but the narrative post-Dazar'alor was supposed to be that the Alliance was really winning on all fronts. Did that advantage really go away after Nazjatar? If so, no one told me.
But I think that the more important imbalance is in the nuance of the story. Both Mists of Pandaria and now most of Battle for Azeroth have seen internal conflicts in the Horde center-stage, while we really haven't seen the Alliance every struggle to define itself in the same way. And while if this were real life, it would probably be comforting to know that the Alliance has this kind of unity and integrity, for telling a story as one does in a game, it's frustrating to basically have us playing supporting characters to a more interesting story.
Now, I do think that there are elements being introduced to give the Alliance more nuance. Tyrande's crusade of vengeance against the Horde is currently limited to Darkshore. She basically isn't returning Anduin's calls, but she hasn't struck out against him in any way.
But her embrace of the Night Warrior suggests that we could see a far more brutal and feral Night Elf High Priestess. The real question is whether this will ever lead to any real internal conflict.
See, Anduin is an idealist - he embodies the sort of values that one wants to see in the Alliance (at least, if you were actually living in it.) And while there's been a lot of talk about his struggle to earn the respect of the other leaders, the truth is that people pretty much do follow his lead, even if he's still a young man amongst truly ancient people (I don't know what his canonical age is. If he was eleven in vanilla, he'd be 26 now, assuming time passes at the same rate... though it might not.)
Tyrande is low-key defying Anduin, but she isn't striking against him. We don't really have any reason to think that any Alliance leader wants to harm another one.
Would it be more interesting if we did?
Admittedly, one doesn't just want to see a repeat of the same sort of plots that the Horde goes through tacked onto the Alliance. And I don't want to see Anduin killed off to create this sort of crisis. Similarly, the main way in which they've had Warchiefs go bad is by drumming up conflict with the Alliance - both Garrosh and Sylvanas gained power by pushing war against the Alliance. The thing is, when they aren't fighting the Alliance, the Horde usually feel pretty much just like good guys.
I think the Alliance has taken on a lot of new members who could bring about serious conflict. Before BFA even came out, they pulled in the Lightforged Draenei and the Void Elves. Talk about a potential conflict! These are two peoples literally imbued with opposite primordial forces of the cosmos. Yet we haven't seen any real drama erupt from that. Consider also the Dark Iron dwarves, long the "bad dwarves." And then you've got the Night Elves committing themselves to this dark aspect of Elune - a being we still don't understand at all - and you've got a lot of pieces in play to create some conflict.
But when are those pieces going to move into play?
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