I guess a large part of why there is such broad appeal for this sort of thing, even outside Asia, is that school is the one thing (nearly) everyone can relate to. Schools vary, as do uniforms, but many of the things you see happen are more or less universal.
Behind the magic, weapons, and anime tropes there are people we recognise in settings we recognise reacting in ways we recognise. I don't even play LoR or LoL, so I barely know the characters themselves, but I do know the people they are representing. For example, I never actually saw a food fight at school, but I certainly saw people (myself included) try to handle noisy, chaotic environments the same way Leona is depicted here.
In contrast, my ability to relate to yet another image of a badass caught in the middle of some badassery is limited. Yeah they look cool, but that's as deep as the attachment goes.
I've only been playing hs for about 3 years now. I've looked at some of the quests from before I started playing from the ungoro expansion, and the quests from ungoro seem more powerful than the current ones...? Is that to be expected or do you guys think that the current quests are more powerful than previous ones?
The current quests are way more powerful than the Un'Goro ones, with the exceptions of The Caverns Below and Open the Waygate which both fit neatly into the 'play aggro or die to the quest reward' meta the Stormwind questlines have created. Given what Wild is doing now, maybe even they are outclassed.
Direct comparisons with most quests is tricky when they have different effects, but it is telling that Raid the Docks' reward outclasses Lakkari Sacrifice by an embarrassing amount in every way, and is much easier to complete. It is also more rewarding on the way. And Raid the Docks isn't even one of the strong ones (in Standard). Granted, Lakkari Sacrifice was always weak, but the degree of power creep exhibited here can't be ignored.
Overall, most Un'Goro quests took a similar amount effort to complete as the Stormwind ones, without the rewards along the way, and with a final reward that is good but rarely game ending. On average, Queen Carnassa ends up summoning maybe 1 'free' 3/2 every turn, for example, while Galvadon might end up doing nothing at all.
Maybe if the questlines didn't have rewards along the way you could consider it a fair fight? The Un'Goro ones might win then, but those first 2 stages should not be ignored.
If they implemented a single character boost, like pay 200 gold to level a chosen character by, say, 10 levels. Then THAT would be something to complain about, since it is seriously exploiting players' impatience. It's also exactly the sort of thing I expect modern games to do.
The Training Grounds they went with though, with it's one-off investment of 200/600 gold to permanently have a way to speed things up a bit, feels much more honest. Is it going to make Blizz a bit of money, albeit indirectly? Yes, but it's far from the micro-transaction money drain it could have been.
To me it feels like this is an instance of a perfectly reasonable game mechanic that invites cynicism primarily because its in a F2P/micro-transaction game, where everything even slightly monetised invites cynicism. Had this exact thing existed in a traditional game where you buy the whole game up front, then it would just be another thing to use the in-game currency on and no-one would bat an eyelid at it.
That's the cynical interpretation, sure, and cynicism has it's place in the world. But it sounds like you're just intent on viewing it negatively. If the first tier of the Training Grounds is completely free, and you can improve it for gold (so available to F2P players), then they are offering ways to compensate for slow grinding without asking for any money.
Besides, the most important part is that, like Pokemon, there will be 2 types of players that treat grinding very differently: First, there will be the players who are playing primarily for the solo experience, and want the game to maintain a sense of progression for a long time. Those players will be fine with fairly slow leveling, because the way they are playing the game doesn't require them to reach high levels quickly.
Second, there are the competitive players, who care most of all about preparing a powerful team to battle other players with. Those players will want to be able to level as quickly as possible so they can put their plans into action while they're still excited about them. To them, the grind is merely an obstruction to their destination.
How do you simultaneously satisfy both types of player when what they want is fundamentally opposed? You can come up with your own answers, but having baseline slow(-ish) leveling with options to speed it up is a perfectly valid approach with nothing fundamentally nefarious about it.
You don't EV train all the way to level 100. You only do it until you've maxed your EVs then try to gain exp as quickly as possible, which often does mean jamming rare candies down their throats. And the fact exp share and lucky egg still require you to do battles doesn't change the fact they reduce the number of battles you need to do.
I agree the day care isn't really for leveling though, but that was it's original intent in gen 1 when breeding didn't exist. Heck, it took 'til 7th gen before they finally removed the exp training side of it, meaning it was still meant as an option to train things passively. A crappy option, but still an option.
I mean, they are letting you train 1, maybe 2 characters passively at a time. That's still going to be a small contribution when you actively train 6 by actually playing it.
Whether it is the daycare centre, rare candies, exp share or lucky egg, Pokemon does the exact same thing by giving you a few ways to speed up leveling. No one ever takes that as a sign that the core gameplay of Pokemon is worth skipping. Rather it is a sign that the grinding isn't the only part of Pokemon gameplay, and if the competitive battles are your jam then of course you welcome ways to speed up the process of leveling up.
I never used the daycare much either, but then Pokemon doesn't really give you much reason to outside of breeding. Most of the time you only care about 6 Pokemon, and it's much quicker to train them normally. It's also way too slow for training lots of Pokemon for competitive battles (and it won't give you any sweet EVs).
I can see its use in Mercs though, where you very well might want to train >>6 characters at once, so having a passive option is nice to have.
Really? Having a means of passive leveling in a game with a grinding element sounds like a simple quality of life option to me. Where exactly does the red flag come in?
I've been having fun with a Bazaar Burglary deck with only 3 other rogue cards so my opponent can't actually finish the quest. The current iteration uses Tess, 1x Secret Passage to fast forward the quest completion, and Lilian Voss to turn useless totem spells into something useful.
I never actually thought or meant to suggest you were upset about other players getting their hands on the portraits, but obviously I failed to present my arguments in a way to make that clear. That is definitely on me.
I do think that the heart of this is the philosophy of keeping or breaking promises and expectations, and how important that is to different people. If something is stated as an actual promise, then I expect whoever made it to keep their word until the end of time or they request permission to break it. (Extreme circumstances like being held at gunpoint would also be fine.)
If the expectation is built off of precedent rather than formal confirmation, however, then I have no problems with changes if they are for good reasons. I believe this is where Blizz stands with the portraits, although if you have any quotes saying otherwise, probably surrounding Mecha-J since he was the first pre-order portrait, then I'm willing to reassess it.
Value is entirely subjective. A 1st edition, mint condition, classic set Charizard card would be worth no more than a couple of pounds to me if I had no plans to sell it, because I have very limited use for it. I'd happily spend more for some random Regi card, because I actually care about those a bit. This scenario is comparable to HS portraits: I am willing to spend money on some of them, but only those I expect to use.
However, there is a supply and demand complication for physical cards, which is where their value comes from in practice. It's the dumb, irrational part of capitalism, but hey, if people are happy to spend thousands on pieces of cardboard then who am I to stop them? That whole story is completely removed from HS portraits. They do not reside in the same world of economics, which is why comparing the two is unhelpful.
What you have failed to convince me of is why them being pre-order bonuses means it is a bad thing for them to reappear. They were exclusive for 2-3 years, and there doesn't seem to be an argument that the loss/reduction of exclusivity has any real downsides. At most, I can see a loss of faith in Blizzard's word, but that should surely have already been eroded by card backs reappearing, not to mention Mecha-Jaraxxus doing the same recently. Really though, people and companies should change their minds if it leads to a net positive, and minor as this portrait matter is, I do see it as a net positive.
As for the working hard in the real world to pay for the bundles, I accept that is a valid interpretation. I'm not sure it is helping your argument much though. I imagine the people who had to save up for the big pre-order bundle to obtain the portraits would be happy to hear future ones will eventually be made available at a much more affordable price.
There is a vast gap between exclusive physical collectibles, whose value for being re-sold is largely tied up in that exclusivity, and hero portraits in HS which cannot be resold. Exclusive or not, HS skins have no inherent value beyond whatever use you manage to get out of them yourself. So if they lose their exclusivity, absolutely nothing tangible changes on your end.
Maybe if you had to work really hard to obtain them, then there is some merit to their exclusivity because they would be indications of your ability. HS has a few card backs like that, but it's just not true with these hero portraits; all they say is you had the money to spend on them when they first appeared.
So if they have no resale value, and they don't carry any prestige due to the difficulty of earning them, then what exactly is there to be upset about with them reappearing? If you don't have a good answer for that, then I can only advise you learn to be happy with this sort of thing. It will make absolutely no difference, except you are happier, which is a good thing.
Personally i feel like 10,- Euro/Dollar would have been better prices for those skins, especially considering these 2 skins are a bit "lower quality" compared to all the pre-order skins that came after them i.m.o.. (Just look at the DoD pre-order Deathwing skin.) But even as "lower quality Premium Skins" their still better than the ones they sell on the x skins for 20,- euro/Dollar bundles these days.
I'm not sure about them being lower quality. These two happen to be my favourite shaman and druid skins by far, whereas I really don't care for the Deathwing skin (perhaps it's a big clue that I'm English that I like the aristocrat and the posh teacher...). I appreciate you said "i.m.o.", but subjective preferences don't correspond to measures of quality.
*Pushes glasses up nose* Actually it's AngryShuckie, with an i, not an l. I'm not just named after a Shuckle. I'm named after the Shuckle. The one, the only, that you absolutely definitely don't steal from the guy in Cianwood city who's scared someone will steal one of his Pokemon after Silver yoinked his Sneasel.
Even if they sucked, when I played Yellow, I would always keep the "big 3" trifecta and Pikachu in my party (Squirtle, Charmander, Bulbasaur) even if by all try-hard accounts most of them were bad (except Squirtles evolved form, Blastoise, which apparently is a half-decent competitive pokemon but I digress). Sometimes aesthetics/fun outweights sweatiness/tryharding :)
For going through the story competitive prowess in Pokemon is pretty meaningless I find. Sure the pseodo-legendaries (Dragonite, Tyranitar, Salamence etc) are always OP, but they also level so slowly that they're not really any better when going through the story, if you can even find them before the Elite 4. Similarly some Pokemon are great competitively but hopeless in the story. E.g. Smeargle and Wobbuffet.
I've used every last non-legendary Pokemon (gens 1-7) up to the Elite 4, and I proudly say I often had the most fun with the weak ones. Luvdisc was a surprise favourite. It's pathetically weak, but fast and troll-y enough that it made a surprisingly good set-up Pokemon in my all water team.
and use whichever ones look most cool at the time I find them.
Doesn't matter that Brock was a ground gym that completely countered Pikachu. Level him up enough and quick attack can still do the trick. :D
*Pushes glasses up nose* Actually, Brock was the Rock gym, while the final gym in Viridian City was the Ground gym (originally). Geodude and Onix being Rock/Ground was a bad coincidence more than anything. Just sayin' :)
I was going to do this myself, but to be fair to Sykomyke, every Pokemon in the Pewter city gym is ground type, but not all rock. Diglett and Sandshrew were there, at least in the original games. Meanwhile the Viridian gym has a whole load of non-ground types, such as Tauros, Primape and Machoke.
I don't have any grand plans. I have barely even looked at the different abilities each character has as I'm keen to go into it 'dark' (or as dark as I can). I'll just do what I do when building a team the first time a I play a new Pokemon game, and use whichever ones look most cool at the time I find them.
In the long run I'd love to be able to run a Valeera + Varian + Broll Bearmantle team, but there's a lot of things in the way of that sadly. Broll doesn't exist yet, Valeera kind of doesn't exist yet *grrrr*, and Varian has a human tribe focus which isn't very useful for a mixed race lineup. Oh well.
Hold up. The rewards track backlash was unfounded? Are you serious? You cant be. Thats the one thing that everyone agreed upon at the time.
Not everyone. Some - myself included - thought it was probably perfectly fine to begin with but Blizz had handled the communication very poorly. Given we now get quite a lot more per expansion than we used to, it indeed seems likely that the original version was going to be no worse than what we previously had. So yeah, I appreciate the extra goodies we got after the backlash, but it probably was unfounded.
The bit that troubles me most about that affair is how visceral and rude the community became, and they ended up being rewarded for it. Blizz failed on communication, absolutely, but the community looks more like the villain in hindsight.
The same thing is repeating itself to some degree with Mercs. It looks decent, perhaps not to everyone, but no game has ever appealed to everyone so that's fine. The communication has been less than perfect, but there are still several weeks left to communicate in, and they had to deal with the sexual harassment scandal at the start. And some in the community are throwing around hate for no good reason; a lack of knowledge does not entitle them to act as though their cynical assumptions are true.
She is indeed loyal to the Wrynn family - just Anduin at this point - as well as being his personal spy and genuinely being his BFF (there's a chapter in Before the Storm which describes her as Anduin's most trusted friend). She is also proud to be a blood elf, which would naturally push her towards the Horde.
Despite all that, she does retain independence from the factions, and often serves as a messenger between them as she's welcome in both. This was most clear at the end of BfA and start of Shadowlands where she was present at both Horde and Alliance meetings. She even said "It saddens me that the Alliance and Horde can only seem to set aside their differences in the face of total annihilation. If we do prevail against N'Zoth, will you yet again turn your blades on each other?" Note she uses 'we' in the first clause of the second sentence, but 'you' in the second clause. I.e. she's in the fight against N'Zoth, but distances herself when it comes to the faction war(s).
So yeah, she's neutral. She has friends on both sides and I don't think she has ever been shown to do anything antagonistic to either faction. Will she help the Alliance? Absolutely. Will she help the Alliance defeat the Horde? Probably not.
--------------------------
After 6+ years of being a rogue main in Hearthstone I thought it was time I learned Valeera's lore fully. Hence why I know all this stuff, and also why I'd be annoyed if she's actually not going to be usable when Mercs. releases.
I guess a large part of why there is such broad appeal for this sort of thing, even outside Asia, is that school is the one thing (nearly) everyone can relate to. Schools vary, as do uniforms, but many of the things you see happen are more or less universal.
Behind the magic, weapons, and anime tropes there are people we recognise in settings we recognise reacting in ways we recognise. I don't even play LoR or LoL, so I barely know the characters themselves, but I do know the people they are representing. For example, I never actually saw a food fight at school, but I certainly saw people (myself included) try to handle noisy, chaotic environments the same way Leona is depicted here.
In contrast, my ability to relate to yet another image of a badass caught in the middle of some badassery is limited. Yeah they look cool, but that's as deep as the attachment goes.
The current quests are way more powerful than the Un'Goro ones, with the exceptions of The Caverns Below and Open the Waygate which both fit neatly into the 'play aggro or die to the quest reward' meta the Stormwind questlines have created. Given what Wild is doing now, maybe even they are outclassed.
Direct comparisons with most quests is tricky when they have different effects, but it is telling that Raid the Docks' reward outclasses Lakkari Sacrifice by an embarrassing amount in every way, and is much easier to complete. It is also more rewarding on the way. And Raid the Docks isn't even one of the strong ones (in Standard). Granted, Lakkari Sacrifice was always weak, but the degree of power creep exhibited here can't be ignored.
Overall, most Un'Goro quests took a similar amount effort to complete as the Stormwind ones, without the rewards along the way, and with a final reward that is good but rarely game ending. On average, Queen Carnassa ends up summoning maybe 1 'free' 3/2 every turn, for example, while Galvadon might end up doing nothing at all.
Maybe if the questlines didn't have rewards along the way you could consider it a fair fight? The Un'Goro ones might win then, but those first 2 stages should not be ignored.
If they implemented a single character boost, like pay 200 gold to level a chosen character by, say, 10 levels. Then THAT would be something to complain about, since it is seriously exploiting players' impatience. It's also exactly the sort of thing I expect modern games to do.
The Training Grounds they went with though, with it's one-off investment of 200/600 gold to permanently have a way to speed things up a bit, feels much more honest. Is it going to make Blizz a bit of money, albeit indirectly? Yes, but it's far from the micro-transaction money drain it could have been.
To me it feels like this is an instance of a perfectly reasonable game mechanic that invites cynicism primarily because its in a F2P/micro-transaction game, where everything even slightly monetised invites cynicism. Had this exact thing existed in a traditional game where you buy the whole game up front, then it would just be another thing to use the in-game currency on and no-one would bat an eyelid at it.
That's the cynical interpretation, sure, and cynicism has it's place in the world. But it sounds like you're just intent on viewing it negatively. If the first tier of the Training Grounds is completely free, and you can improve it for gold (so available to F2P players), then they are offering ways to compensate for slow grinding without asking for any money.
Besides, the most important part is that, like Pokemon, there will be 2 types of players that treat grinding very differently: First, there will be the players who are playing primarily for the solo experience, and want the game to maintain a sense of progression for a long time. Those players will be fine with fairly slow leveling, because the way they are playing the game doesn't require them to reach high levels quickly.
Second, there are the competitive players, who care most of all about preparing a powerful team to battle other players with. Those players will want to be able to level as quickly as possible so they can put their plans into action while they're still excited about them. To them, the grind is merely an obstruction to their destination.
How do you simultaneously satisfy both types of player when what they want is fundamentally opposed? You can come up with your own answers, but having baseline slow(-ish) leveling with options to speed it up is a perfectly valid approach with nothing fundamentally nefarious about it.
You don't EV train all the way to level 100. You only do it until you've maxed your EVs then try to gain exp as quickly as possible, which often does mean jamming rare candies down their throats. And the fact exp share and lucky egg still require you to do battles doesn't change the fact they reduce the number of battles you need to do.
I agree the day care isn't really for leveling though, but that was it's original intent in gen 1 when breeding didn't exist. Heck, it took 'til 7th gen before they finally removed the exp training side of it, meaning it was still meant as an option to train things passively. A crappy option, but still an option.
I mean, they are letting you train 1, maybe 2 characters passively at a time. That's still going to be a small contribution when you actively train 6 by actually playing it.
Whether it is the daycare centre, rare candies, exp share or lucky egg, Pokemon does the exact same thing by giving you a few ways to speed up leveling. No one ever takes that as a sign that the core gameplay of Pokemon is worth skipping. Rather it is a sign that the grinding isn't the only part of Pokemon gameplay, and if the competitive battles are your jam then of course you welcome ways to speed up the process of leveling up.
I never used the daycare much either, but then Pokemon doesn't really give you much reason to outside of breeding. Most of the time you only care about 6 Pokemon, and it's much quicker to train them normally. It's also way too slow for training lots of Pokemon for competitive battles (and it won't give you any sweet EVs).
I can see its use in Mercs though, where you very well might want to train >>6 characters at once, so having a passive option is nice to have.
Really? Having a means of passive leveling in a game with a grinding element sounds like a simple quality of life option to me. Where exactly does the red flag come in?
I've been having fun with a Bazaar Burglary deck with only 3 other rogue cards so my opponent can't actually finish the quest. The current iteration uses Tess, 1x Secret Passage to fast forward the quest completion, and Lilian Voss to turn useless totem spells into something useful.
I never actually thought or meant to suggest you were upset about other players getting their hands on the portraits, but obviously I failed to present my arguments in a way to make that clear. That is definitely on me.
I do think that the heart of this is the philosophy of keeping or breaking promises and expectations, and how important that is to different people. If something is stated as an actual promise, then I expect whoever made it to keep their word until the end of time or they request permission to break it. (Extreme circumstances like being held at gunpoint would also be fine.)
If the expectation is built off of precedent rather than formal confirmation, however, then I have no problems with changes if they are for good reasons. I believe this is where Blizz stands with the portraits, although if you have any quotes saying otherwise, probably surrounding Mecha-J since he was the first pre-order portrait, then I'm willing to reassess it.
Value is entirely subjective. A 1st edition, mint condition, classic set Charizard card would be worth no more than a couple of pounds to me if I had no plans to sell it, because I have very limited use for it. I'd happily spend more for some random Regi card, because I actually care about those a bit. This scenario is comparable to HS portraits: I am willing to spend money on some of them, but only those I expect to use.
However, there is a supply and demand complication for physical cards, which is where their value comes from in practice. It's the dumb, irrational part of capitalism, but hey, if people are happy to spend thousands on pieces of cardboard then who am I to stop them? That whole story is completely removed from HS portraits. They do not reside in the same world of economics, which is why comparing the two is unhelpful.
What you have failed to convince me of is why them being pre-order bonuses means it is a bad thing for them to reappear. They were exclusive for 2-3 years, and there doesn't seem to be an argument that the loss/reduction of exclusivity has any real downsides. At most, I can see a loss of faith in Blizzard's word, but that should surely have already been eroded by card backs reappearing, not to mention Mecha-Jaraxxus doing the same recently. Really though, people and companies should change their minds if it leads to a net positive, and minor as this portrait matter is, I do see it as a net positive.
As for the working hard in the real world to pay for the bundles, I accept that is a valid interpretation. I'm not sure it is helping your argument much though. I imagine the people who had to save up for the big pre-order bundle to obtain the portraits would be happy to hear future ones will eventually be made available at a much more affordable price.
There is a vast gap between exclusive physical collectibles, whose value for being re-sold is largely tied up in that exclusivity, and hero portraits in HS which cannot be resold. Exclusive or not, HS skins have no inherent value beyond whatever use you manage to get out of them yourself. So if they lose their exclusivity, absolutely nothing tangible changes on your end.
Maybe if you had to work really hard to obtain them, then there is some merit to their exclusivity because they would be indications of your ability. HS has a few card backs like that, but it's just not true with these hero portraits; all they say is you had the money to spend on them when they first appeared.
So if they have no resale value, and they don't carry any prestige due to the difficulty of earning them, then what exactly is there to be upset about with them reappearing? If you don't have a good answer for that, then I can only advise you learn to be happy with this sort of thing. It will make absolutely no difference, except you are happier, which is a good thing.
I'm not sure about them being lower quality. These two happen to be my favourite shaman and druid skins by far, whereas I really don't care for the Deathwing skin (perhaps it's a big clue that I'm English that I like the aristocrat and the posh teacher...). I appreciate you said "i.m.o.", but subjective preferences don't correspond to measures of quality.
They're available in packs like everybody else. The pre-orders are just a way to guarantee you get them.
*Pushes glasses up nose* Actually it's AngryShuckie, with an i, not an l. I'm not just named after a Shuckle. I'm named after the Shuckle. The one, the only, that you absolutely definitely don't steal from the guy in Cianwood city who's scared someone will steal one of his Pokemon after Silver yoinked his Sneasel.
...
...
I think my point is made :P
For going through the story competitive prowess in Pokemon is pretty meaningless I find. Sure the pseodo-legendaries (Dragonite, Tyranitar, Salamence etc) are always OP, but they also level so slowly that they're not really any better when going through the story, if you can even find them before the Elite 4. Similarly some Pokemon are great competitively but hopeless in the story. E.g. Smeargle and Wobbuffet.
I've used every last non-legendary Pokemon (gens 1-7) up to the Elite 4, and I proudly say I often had the most fun with the weak ones. Luvdisc was a surprise favourite. It's pathetically weak, but fast and troll-y enough that it made a surprisingly good set-up Pokemon in my all water team.
You have no idea what you have unleashed :P
I was going to do this myself, but to be fair to Sykomyke, every Pokemon in the Pewter city gym is ground type, but not all rock. Diglett and Sandshrew were there, at least in the original games. Meanwhile the Viridian gym has a whole load of non-ground types, such as Tauros, Primape and Machoke.
So if anyone is wrong, it is GameFreak!
I don't have any grand plans. I have barely even looked at the different abilities each character has as I'm keen to go into it 'dark' (or as dark as I can). I'll just do what I do when building a team the first time a I play a new Pokemon game, and use whichever ones look most cool at the time I find them.
In the long run I'd love to be able to run a Valeera + Varian + Broll Bearmantle team, but there's a lot of things in the way of that sadly. Broll doesn't exist yet, Valeera kind of doesn't exist yet *grrrr*, and Varian has a human tribe focus which isn't very useful for a mixed race lineup. Oh well.
Not everyone. Some - myself included - thought it was probably perfectly fine to begin with but Blizz had handled the communication very poorly. Given we now get quite a lot more per expansion than we used to, it indeed seems likely that the original version was going to be no worse than what we previously had. So yeah, I appreciate the extra goodies we got after the backlash, but it probably was unfounded.
The bit that troubles me most about that affair is how visceral and rude the community became, and they ended up being rewarded for it. Blizz failed on communication, absolutely, but the community looks more like the villain in hindsight.
The same thing is repeating itself to some degree with Mercs. It looks decent, perhaps not to everyone, but no game has ever appealed to everyone so that's fine. The communication has been less than perfect, but there are still several weeks left to communicate in, and they had to deal with the sexual harassment scandal at the start. And some in the community are throwing around hate for no good reason; a lack of knowledge does not entitle them to act as though their cynical assumptions are true.
She is indeed loyal to the Wrynn family - just Anduin at this point - as well as being his personal spy and genuinely being his BFF (there's a chapter in Before the Storm which describes her as Anduin's most trusted friend). She is also proud to be a blood elf, which would naturally push her towards the Horde.
Despite all that, she does retain independence from the factions, and often serves as a messenger between them as she's welcome in both. This was most clear at the end of BfA and start of Shadowlands where she was present at both Horde and Alliance meetings. She even said "It saddens me that the Alliance and Horde can only seem to set aside their differences in the face of total annihilation. If we do prevail against N'Zoth, will you yet again turn your blades on each other?" Note she uses 'we' in the first clause of the second sentence, but 'you' in the second clause. I.e. she's in the fight against N'Zoth, but distances herself when it comes to the faction war(s).
So yeah, she's neutral. She has friends on both sides and I don't think she has ever been shown to do anything antagonistic to either faction. Will she help the Alliance? Absolutely. Will she help the Alliance defeat the Horde? Probably not.
--------------------------
After 6+ years of being a rogue main in Hearthstone I thought it was time I learned Valeera's lore fully. Hence why I know all this stuff, and also why I'd be annoyed if she's actually not going to be usable when Mercs. releases.