To be quite honest, this IS a legitimate concern. People have issues with the way Horde looks because there is not one "pretty" race, which means there are a lot of people that won't play them for aesthetic reasons. I realize some of you will be thinking, "Good! It's Horde! They aren't supposed to be pretty!" But consider this: married couple wants to play WoW. Husband wants to play an undead warlock, but wife looks at the classes and goes "ick! I don't want to play any of those." So they end up going Alliance instead. Imagine that that couple is just two members of an Everquest guild that decided to move together, and that out of 60 people, 25 want to do Horde, 25 want to do Alliance, and 10 simply refuse to do Horde.
Now you're getting an imbalance on the two factions. Do this on the PvP server, and the imbalance of numbers begets a strong imbalance of numbers.
So while it might seem silly to you about people complaining about the way Horde members look, this has been discussed numerous times among the beta community. Some players were appalled when the female troll model was changed to something a lot less...troll-like. But for the very first time last night, I actually saw a female troll. Even dabbling with the Horde a little bit, I noticed that females in general are lacking on Horde, but that I also NEVER saw a troll. So maybe people are actually starting to play them, now that they've been un-whacked with da ugly stick.
As for the poker house in Stormwind, Stormwind IS a ghost town, and it is probably the most extensively developed city in the game. The city is amazing, and just seethes with life. It bespeaks of activity, and quite honestly, since the auction house moved...there isn't any. It's only slightly more populated than Darnassus, and only then because it is a central flight point hub for the continent with most of the low-end Alliance content. When I went there before the AH changes, Stormwind used to lag everyone HARD -- because there were so many people there. Now, I'm usually the only person in the bank, and I only run past a couple of people while doing business in town.
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Only the exceptions can be exceptional.