World of Warcraft Stokes Deep-Rooted Rivalries in New Campaign

Blizzard Entertainment and creative agency gnet have released the latest campaign for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, "It Matters."

The campaign taps into the tribal rivalry between the two main factions of the World of Warcraft universe, the Horde and the Alliance. For the uninitiated, the giant MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) set on the fantasy planet of Azeroth sees the two factions tussle over everything from territory to pride. And while the two have grudgingly united against greater threats, fans take these factions very seriously. Loosely speaking, the Horde is a hard rock group made up of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, Blood Elves and the Undead (with some stray talking bison and pandas popping up) while the Alliance are the Enya-listening goody two shoes comprised of Humans, Night Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, Werewolves and pretty pastel-coloured aliens.

The new campaign coincides with the upcoming release of the game's latest expansion. World of Warcraft was first launched in 2004, a follow on from the popular Warcraft games. 'Battle for Azeroth' marks the seventh expansion in the game - basically a new set of adventures and story for players to sink their teeth into. At its peak of popularity in 2010, WoW had 12 million subscribers, though in 2015 the subscriber base had dropped to 5.5 million - and at that point the game's developer Blizzard announced that it would stop revealing official subscriber numbers. However, WoW still has had a significant impact on popular culture, with shows like Family Guy and South Park parodying the game over the years - and of course there was the Duncan Jones-directed feature Warcraft, released in 2016.

Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, also runs gaming franchises like sci-fi space adventure StarCraft and gothic fantasy Diablo. Most recently, it's been focusing on building its own eSport league for it's bubblegum-pop first person shooter, Overwatch.

But as this campaign shows, even those lapsed WoW players still have an affinity for their teams. And while we at LBB would never want to show any bias... FOR THE HORDE!