I don’t know what else to say? Its boring, I don’t just want to fight giga demons and old gods i want to fight mortals. I want all the politics and moral ambiguity that comes with war. Maybe i want to be the bad guy and play a loyal soldier of sylvanus thats slaughtering night elf scum. Alot of people dunked on BFA and rightfully so but i don’t think just dumping gaction conflict completely was the solution. To me it was like when WoW dumped player housing just because garrisons were a flop. No its a good idea yall just did it wrong.
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I mean, I want to agree that faction conflict shouldn’t have been nixed entirely, but your “maybe I want to…” examples are exactly what was mishandled about it in the first place, so I can’t help but think that if you were in charge you would have somehow managed to do an even worse job.
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Well i obviously would not be handling the story writing so that point is irrelevant. Point is taking out completely was a bad idea in my view. Also another point no lore faction conflict totally kills immersion for pvp.
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It isn’t too late to write a good story for that. Other than the way you spelled her name… unless you mean her AU twin from Uranus or something
But other than that, slaughtering Night Elf scum while being loyal to … Sylvanas … could be in the cards.
Instead of sending them to the maw she can send them to a seed or what ever.
Honestly it was just bad taste plagueing the Kaldorei. They’d never really threatened the Forsaken. Now if it was gassing humans to takeover Stromgarde that would’ve been an absolutely delightful time.
Seriously where were the Defilers? They had one cameo in Alliance controlled Arathi guarding a farm. Which, while appropo, is hardly the extent of cool stuff they could’ve done. The Stormpike got a whole starring role in Cata Hillsbrad but the Black Bride couldn’t take some heads in the Highlands?
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Someone on X/twitter pointed something out as to why the faction war ended, and i think he is right, hereis the thread ;
ttps://x.com/portergauge/status/1890180501006352875?s=46&t=w_FqpILH2aTnIR8e5hlHtw
Here are some of his points :
1 - “The massively negative reaction that the WoW fanbase has to literally any allied character who isn’t wholly pure and indebted to the player is why groups like the Horde Council are so boring, and why all of our protagonists in recent expansions just monologue at each other.”
2 - “Characters being jerks is fun! Characters having moral failings makes for an engaging world! If we keep booting all the interesting characters from the factions because they aren’t perfectly nice, Blizzard will have good reason to not want to tell faction stories anymore lol”
That is to me true, the problem is that, when a leader is in a faction, players are not wanting them to have flaws, and be “jerks” so people complains (we saw it with sylvanas) and be like “ho but no i thogught she was good but she bad!”
And to me, it just makes Blizzard not want to do any faction conflict because players are just too triggered with that.
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The problem with having a “forever war” is that in making in fresh, you need to keep pumping the gas harder each expac to top the previous one. At one point it was bound to just get ridiculous and the really peaked at BfA.
A good ending point would have been MoP:
-Gilneas situation rectified
-No Ashran
-No Stormhiem
-And a complete skip of the first half of BfA.
With this we could of had the “tension” feel between the two factions that would have skirmishes here and there just like how the game actually was made at the start. I think if we had a faction war in TWW it would be insanely silly, especially with the two new neutral races joining.
Faction conflict is only interesting because its the only time Blizzard develops the factions.
Look at the last three expansions. In Shadowlands we learned about the Eternal Ones, the four Covenants, etc… and then the expansion was over and we don’t see them ever again. In Dragonflight we help the Dragon Aspects, find a few new races on the Dragon Isles, then its over, and we don’t see them again, despite Azeroth literally being in danger, and the Aspects having vowed to protect it.
Now, in TWW, we’re meeting the Earthen, the Arathi… are we ever likely to see them again? Doubtful.
The Factions were a constant so long as faction conflict exists. We saw recurring characters, like Nazgrim, Taylor, Rogers, Saurfang, etc… We were excited to see what they do next.
Without the faction conflict, there’s no reason for such characters to be around. Instead we’re introduced to a few dozen new names and faces, explore their cultures for a patch, then never see them again. There is no attachment, which was something the factions provided when Faction Conflict kept them relevant expansion after expansion.
That having been said, Faction Conflict was always a doomed narrative. There would never be an outright winner, because one faction cannot conclusively win over the other. If the Horde won, the Alliance would be wiped off the face of Azeroth, so the Horde can never win. If the Alliance wins, they have to forgive the Horde, because an entire playable faction, regardless of it’s atrocities in the story, cannot cease to exist. So, any Alliance, ‘victory,’ isn’t a victory at all. It’s just dumb writing to perpetuate a war that Little Timmy could’ve figured out how to stop.
Players were frustrated by the lack of satisfactory conclusions to these stories, embittered by losses of characters and settlements, and enraged that any retaliation was never enough.
The whole thing is incredibly toxic.
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I like the faction war.
War is a very nuanced thing that is ripe for storytelling, and even the smallest conflicts or skirmishes can have lasting impacts or even be not relevant at all.
I think the main issue the faction wars are coming to an end is because it’s very hard to write a protagonist focused storyline with it. That or blizzard disconsistently struggles on doing that, which admittedly they shouldn’t even try. I want to believe that blizzard still treats World of Warcraft like it is based off a hero unit RTS, but seems to confuse the fact that the hero unit needs to be integral to the story.
This is why I really wish they took the Rift approach all those years ago and make zones with an escalating and de-escalating story for each side of the faction conflict to keep things in a perpetual skirmish state.
They should’ve focused less on the main characters and more on zone characters who have wants and needs tied to the zones they are assigned or live at.
Hell if they ever decided to do an old world revamp? This is precisely what I want.
Main zone quest storyline that shows what both or all three factions are fighting for control of that sets the background of the zone as well as situations that complicate things such as an armistrice or a peace agreement.
The zone ‘event’ is a series of skirmishes that move the borderline across the map depending on progress. You don’t have to even make this alliance versus horde, you can very much insert a third faction into each of these zones like the naga or gnolls, etc.
The “reward period” would unlock something like a story delve or a raid/boss corridor is unlocked.
This would also solve the system currently in place that gives rise to mary sue moments by allowing some limelight to fall onto secondary characters.
Edit: War is also a very good tool to flesh out things on older factions that have become irrelevant. Minor tweaks in war campaigns are all that’s needed to update the lore on things like the centaurs, quillboars, etc.
The perpetual problem of war time logistics should be a burden on the alliance and the horde Which is why these zones wide skirmishes continue; it’s just impossible to bring the full might of the faction down without compromising another zone.
Very reminiscent of real time war.
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Currently there are new characters trying to ignite tensions again concerning Hearthlands and Crossroads. Maybe results into a new cold war or keeps Jania and Thrall busy. 
edit: Forgot to include the links. 
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Honestly, it’s hard to think of what a nuanced faction war would look like tbh. No one wants a war where they’re side is wrong (other than evil Horde fans), but like, there kind of is a right side to a lot of wars.
The way things are written now, we’re the faction-neutral good guys.
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As detailed in my post below you the main issue with the faction war is it ignores wartime logistics. Blizzard unfortunately has forgotten that resources are not infinite even in their own game, and the introduction of new races to each faction should provide a visible shakup of the war dynamic.
The nightborne dor example, should have been such a devastating loss to the alliance to lose them because of just how much wartime utility they provide. How do you siege an enemy that can just speed grow orchards or form telemancy networks?
I really wish blizzard remembered what war actually is because there is so many cool story lines you could write.
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Oh they remembered, once. That was the reason Garrosh’s war in Cataclysm launched. The horde desperately needed resources. To make that story work, however, the Horde needed to conveniently always have enough resources to build their war machines and armies, and the story was never allowed to ask, “Why not use these resources to survive instead?”
If Dalaran is any indication, you don’t siege them, you just blow them up with whatever MacGuffin is invented to do so.
That’s the problem with WoW’s story: a lack of consistency and logic. If the Devs think something is cool, they’ll throw away logic to make it happen.
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This is once again the main reason why a loremaster position is integral for MMO development.
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I agree, what’s the point of having factions if there is clearly no conflict?? I know there’s PVP, but that could just be a red team / blue team scenario…
They need to either end the union and create conflict again or introduce a new evil faction. 2 faction sides: ‘Light’ & ‘Void’
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This is blaming players for bad writing. It’s a motte-and-bailey falsehood: “We come up with a story for a new expansion and pick characters we think would fit best! Oh, you hate those characters? Your fault! We’re only giving you what you wanted!”
They tell the stories they want to tell and it is good, bad, or somewhere in between. Telling the fans/consumers it is their fault is a lazy lack of accountability, and rings true whether the accusation stems from Blizzard or an unaffiliated party taking their self righteousness for a stroll.
“Man, these tacos are way too spicy.”
Replaces tacos with a bowl of unflavored oatmeal
“…this is not an order of tacos. It is a bowl of oatmeal.”
“WE GAVE YOU WANT YOU WANTED. NOTHING IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!” Tips shelves over, throws cutting board at a kitten, invents Rugby again, crashes a tricycle into an orphanage that catches fire.
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Actually that guy writes for Wowhead now.
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Fair enough, but it is a sentiment I’ve seen the community aim at itself on more than a few occasions.
And to be totally fair, this sentiment sometimes is not entirely untrue, but if cdev were allowing the playerbase to lead them around by their noses solely due to whining about characters not being nice enough… well, I’ll just say the community is very vocal about a lot of things that get ignored to the point that it feels spiteful.
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Yet another thread about whether Warcraft needs faction conflict?
How about we just take the posts from the recent threads and automatically copy them here?
I don’t necessarily disagree here. He’s not necessarily talking about the faction conflict though.
And yeah Blizzard does take player feedback into account, and I could see them getting the wrong message.
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