That the ending to BfA’s faction war (Horde civil war 2, deposed evil Warchief 2, armistice 3 or 4) was an entirely foregone conclusion as early as its pre-patch is laughable, but MoP was guilty of this too: we knew we’d be raiding Garrosh in a siege of Orgrimmar before ever stepping foot on Pandaland.
These global wars have been absolute disasters of storytelling, and the last one was such unutterable garbage I wonder sometimes if it wasn’t Afrasiabi just torching the franchise on his way out. I know Ion changes his mind like a girl changes clothes, but I’ll be happy if the team’s purported shift back to localized faction conflict sticks.
It’s completely stupid as a main plot though and needs to be relegated to an ongoing Cold War with flashpoints, proxy wars and smaller conflicts with unofficial groups that have plausible deniability.
A. Because just like in our own world MAD is assured should the two superpowers come to blows. As it’s been proven like 14 times now the constant existential doom Azeroth faces every Tuesday can only be defeated by a coalition of her most powerful nations.
And
B. From a meta perspective it’s going to be an inherently dissapointing affair. Because much like a sitcom everything must return to the basic status quo in a MMO. So neither faction can meaningfully win or lose.
This is why it’s best relugated to instanced battlegrounds and PvP zones / PvP objectives within zones. Because the war for those is eternal but players actually can win or lose the battles over them.
I think the Faction Conflict can be used well. I do not think it should be shelved entirely.
One reason BfA did the whole Faction Conflict idea harm was because one Faction was busy being wrong and trying to right itself. That isn’t a conflict between the two Factions, that is one Faction slowly beating the other until they shake the evil that drove the conflict.
That aside, the I think the more grounded Faction assaults during BfA were an interesting representation. Utterly meaningless as far as outcomes or who gains what in the canon - but it allowed for the Factions to fight for rewards against NPCs and sometimes other Players.
Warfronts could have been programmed and designed better, but I think the idea of old zones being transformed into seasonal warfronts for rewards is a good place to start.
Calia was most interesting as a former royal semi-anonymous priestess living out the rest of her days helping to heal those in need.
Basically heeding the faction partisan demands that someone needs to use her to legitimize their claims to Lordaeron was the least interesting and most damaging direction they could have gone with her.
She’s just a figurehead for a defunct government now, as if the old crown and throne of Lordaeron actually mean anything when the entire hierarchy of nobles who existed to recognize its right to rule is gone.
Without the landed claims and associated labor and material wealth, their old titles basically hold no real power.
The whole point of a royal family is that they’re the royals because they’re recognized as such by most or all of the other families with the means to press their own claims to rule.
The ruling infrastructure of old Lordaeron is gone. The land and property that made its lords and ladies the nobility is no longer theirs, so their titles no longer have any actionable power behind them.
Moreover, any surviving nobles who are undead no longer have future familial heredity to cement their claims going forward
You people lost your minds if you think I’m gonna support some sparkle fairy leading the zombie faction.
The one cool thing about Forsaken is that they were crazy and evil. That should never change, but seeing how Blizzard have decided to turn them into ugly, smelly humans who are just sad, I’d say that coolness goes bye-bye.
I blame this on the incompetence of the writing team and their lack of imagination. I have the suspicion they are trying to “fix” the zombies cause they can’t write for scat in general, much less an evil race.
The problem with Blizzard keeping the Forsaken as evil (which I think they should to a degree) is that you can’t have the Forsaken constantly crapping on the Alliance and doing evil things to them cause that isn’t fair. The Alliance won’t get any kind of retribution and they get left as the punching bag. Let the Forsaken be evil but have it be against neutral parties and such.
The Forsaken for too long were used as cheap disposable blight throwing props for chaotic evil that in bordered on chaotic stupid. Their canon lore story reached back to W3, which long demonstrates that they are able to have a fun range of personalities and alignments. They have far better and more potential than to be mindless blight-throwing fools.
I mostly agree with the above posts, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the Forsaken are (or used to be) a straight-up “evil race” with no nuance or variation. As I said in another thread
I think people need to forget their good vs evil meter and consider a few things.
One is that the Horde will always be considered evil by the Alliance and the Alliance will be considered evil by the Horde since both are in competition and both will try to mess with each other’s crap.
The orignal Horde and Alliance were perfect until they started fraternizing with each other. You had member races that hated each other, the orcs hated the humans because they kept em in concetration camps, the humans hated the orcs because they tried to literally wipe them out. The Forsaken hated humans because they went to humans for help and humans screamed EW ZOMBIE and tried to kill em and humans hate zombies because zombies are bad. They are.
We need more conflict between races not less. And less is what we got when they started creating these buddy-type relationships between the leaders of the Horde and the leaders of the Alliance.
The game requires the factions to come together and fight some big evil, that’s fine. They can still do that. To me such cooperation is more meaningful when you got two opponents who hate each other decide to put their personal feelings on hold to fix a more urgent issue.
I guess what I’m saying is that essentially the Horde was done right as a faction, they were the right amount of evil. What they should have done was make the Alliance more like the Horde instead what they did, making the Horde more like the Alliance and the sparkle undead disney princess is a result of that and it’s boring like hell. Nothing interesting happens any more. No conflict, just the Adventures of the Alliance and their Ugly Buddies. Bleh.
There’s no problem. In my previous post I said the Alliance should be more like the Horde. I’m not a writer, I’m a consumer when it comes to this stuff, but I honestly think I could write a better Alliance than what we have now.
Meaning if the Forsaken hit the Alliance, the Alliance hits back, with the same force. The Alliance takes a hit, the Horde takes a hit, fair. But instead we have the Alliance led by Anduin who does what after the Forsaken blast the Alliance? Cries a bit?
The Alliance (and the current Horde) need characters that are more interested in hurting each other than being each other’s buddies.
I haven’t read the full thread of replies, but from what I can remember the forsaken that died a long time ago are not the only forsaken. Sylvanas and the forsaken needs new bodies new undead to keep there army up, so they used Valks to get new undead.
With that problem what would Calia’s opinion be on rezzing more? She seems like a good person for a console but lead? I don’t think so, Syl is pretty much Thrall for the undead, IMO a strong character.
Calia isn’t that bad, in and of herself. But Blizzard has killed of so many Horde leaders, and done so little to replace them, that taking a character from Alliance lore to make a new Horde leader reinforces the view that the writers have little to offer the Horde in the way of development that isn’t making them villains.
