Missing the Plot...Follow

.. but not quite as much as I thought.

A little while ago just after I'd got my second character up to 90 and had started on the remaining ten through the well-crafted but linear MoP grind it suddenly struck me that I was only seeing half the story.

I'd never played Horde past about level 20 and as I watched the cinematic of the battle at the Jade Serpent statue for the sixth or seventh time it occurred to me that I had no idea of the horde story that led to it.

I hopped on to my 22 BE Hunter, who had been sitting in Ghostlands for a couple of years, and started him through content I'd never experienced.
In Hillsbrad there were some interesting quests.
In Arathi I started to run into what was to be a recurring pattern. There were some Horde specific quests and some "mirror-image" quests that were exactly the same as the Alliance except for the quest text.

I then started a DK partly to help my hunter through instances and partly to do the Outland content.

SM (or Scarlet Halls as it now is) was new to me anyway as I hadn't run it on Alliance since the latest changes.

RFK and RFD were no different apart from no quest from an NE corpse - understandably.

Huntering on through Desolace and Ferolas I tried to avoid neutral quests like Cenarion Circle since I knew the content and stick with Horde specific. It was hard to find. Ferolas was again the mirror image of the Alliance for the most part.

Thousand Needles was much the same. I was hard-pressed to find somewhere horde specific - Fellwood has gone neutral - but have parked in Badlands where there look to be some.

I switched to levelling the DK

Hellfire was refreshingly polarised although I started to pick up some mirror quests. Zangarmarsh much the same.Just a different person wanting 8 wasp wings or the like

I did Terrokkar which had some Horde quests before turning neutral with the Lower City

Nagrand was quite interesting but I didn't seem to pick up the right leads for the main quest sequence - and by then I was so fed up with the whiny orc that I moved on.

I did what I could and there were some good quests in Blade's Edge and Shadowmoon Valley. By the time I'd done the horde specific bits I'd hit 68 and it was time to move on.

Northrend started off really well with strongly different questlines in Borean all the way through to the sadly truncated Wrathgate line.

Then I had to swap to lower level and neutral in Grizzly Hills to keep some Horde base and eventually did the entirely neutral Sholazar to get 77 and get back on a Horde track in Icecrown.

Apart from a different airship the quests are so far mirror-images of the Alliance

I know that in Cataclysm there is some horde/alliance differentiation in Vash'ji and TH but everywhere else is, iirc, neutral

I look forward to clearing that and seeing if MoP is any different or just more of the smoke and mirrors

{TLDR}

If you only ever played one side you didn't miss much

I have tried to keep up with both sides for a long time. I worked hard to get through all of the Alliance classic stuff before Cata hit just to see both sides. About the only thing I didn't manage to do was the Ony chain on Alliance side before it went away. As for Pandaria, I haven't set foot there on Alliance yet but I plan on doing it eventually. I have just been too busy on Horde side.

I have no idea how well the Horde and Alliance stuff mirrors each other through Jade Forest, Krasarang Wilds and Kun-Lai Summit but I'm guessing the tone is a bit different at the least. While I love playing Horde (Trolls especially), I don't really like the war-mongering tone that they set for Mists to go with the overall story. I know they are just setting up the stage for the final raid to take out Garrosh but I still somewhat resent having to be on the side that falls short and has to be corrected. They do include some 'good' as well especially with the quests in Krasarang involving the Taurens and there are certainly some fun quests that aren't directly related to showing just how bad Garrosh is but there are enough to annoy me.

Just to pin the tail on this particular donkey.

I just today got my Double Agent achievement.

Playing Horde has been really good fun. I still have some things left to get right like Nagrand but by and large I've seen the differences and the similarities. There were a lot of mirror-image quests but there were good differences too.

If you've never played the other faction - give it a go. It might surprise you