Counterargument (to the person on X): Nathanos was pretty popular with Horde players, and they killed him off anyway.
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Most of us were confused with Nathanos at best, hated him at worst, saw him as Danusers proxy as the middling opinion.
“Liking” him is a strong phrase.
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Like it or not the faction conflict probably was dead/on its last breath the moment cross faction was introduced. I dont think Blizzard wants to deal with a fan base that would say be as divided as it was during BfA or MoP.
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I really wonder what people are going to talk about here if/when they remove all faction restrictions in game. Lorewise we have seen few if any talk about the factions themselves. For better or for worse, I think it’s really only a matter of time before they shift away from the factions all together at this point.
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Cross faction guilds. All races having all classes(Eventually). Being able to use your house while on the other faction(Midnight when housing launches). And a few other things blizz added or will add that I’m sure I am missing.
These things are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to lowering the faction barriers. Every game with a two faction system does it eventually.
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It gets murky when people start talking about numbers… how many of who felt a certain way about a character…
For my part, he was a fun character to interact with. I liked him. He had his fans and his detractors, to be sure.
I never got that whole “hur dur Danuser insert” statement, that has been going on for years. Nathanos was created before Danuser was given control of the narrative. Nathanos got his new more Human form, and was close to Sylvanas, before Danuser took control. It isn’t all something he foisted onto the narrative as a “self insert.”
Some people are mad he stuck by Sylvanas until the end, instead of the Horde. People didn’t want Nathanos to be all ride or die with Sylvanas or something? Like they wanted him to be Jon Snow and stab his Queen or something?
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It was by no means a disaster. Cataclysm did a lot of damage to the brand, but the worst thing MoP had to wrestle with was a lot of misguided Kung Fu Panda comparisons.
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For me, you won’t see or hear from me at all. I’ll have finally written off the game and moved on.
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The factions will always exist in some form or another, I doubt they’re actually going away in the way some people are thinking. Most likely scenario is both factions won’t be at the forefront going forward.
As someone who was playing both factions during BFA-SL even if I was primarily horde, the entire Night Warrior arc was the most frustrating part about the entire plot line.
Tyrandes apparent incompetence compounded with Nathanos unexplained penchant for eluding a goddesses avatar and the completely tactless cat and mouse that ultimately lead to an unsatisfactory end for both sides of the spectacle I think is where my own displeasure stems from.
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Also that Alliance player revolt in its back half; never forget the robot cat.
Kosak actually talked about this recently on not-Twitter. Apparently - and, for all the cries of Horde bias its requisite focus generated, very ironically - the entire Siege of Orgrimmar plot was a failed attempt to placate that bloc of angry Alliance players who never got over the redistribution of zones in Cata.
I do think the disaster of BfA fitted MoP with a more generous nostalgia filter than it maybe deserves, but I distinctly recall loving its faction conflict. Rehabilitation of the Horde’s underutilized leaders, like Vol’jin and the blood elf formerly known as Bob? A “morally grey” shakeup of the status quo whose victims, for once, were the Horde? Dalaran joining the Alliance, Silvermoon stepping up as its rival? Grand Magister Rommath as my quest giver? I was a robot cat in cream.
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Where exactly is this post?
I’ll put it another way: if current day WoW is the new status quo, it will not pass muster for me. If hiding or ignoring the tension that makes stories interesting (Talanji being the go-to posterchild by way of example; Aethas and Jaina are a more recent example) is the only path we’re going to go down, hackneyed character writing and villain clichés are nothing I want to invest in.
People were fond of it as soon as WoD, which I could have chalked up to WoD being that bad for many, and Legion, which is basically as good as WoW gets after WotLK. On some level, there is always going to be a negative reaction even to good content—human beings tend to vocalize complaints more than compliments. I remember a lot of people being upset that the Warchief twist was predictable because some blue post suggested it would be otherwise. A lot of people hated Garrosh, but that was by design.
MoP did a good job of grounding the story in faction characters for sure. I think that is what people miss the most, as others have put far more eloquently than I: we want to experience stories based on the peoples and cultures we invested in many, many years ago.
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https.://bsky.app/profile/thefargo.bsky.social/post/3lbsuhyo5ce2p
Specifically his replies.
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I’m sure Blizzard thought seiging the Horde capital would be a “fist bump” moment for the Alliance but yeah this is entirely criticism worthy. Not the least of which for robot kitty.
- they piled cata losses with another loss to even start the war. Theramore.
- we never even got to kill Garrosh. Heck Thrall had to be the one to do it because he was “Thrall’s mistake” even though seeing Jaina finally get some cathasis would have been so much more satisfying(and saved the Horde a half a dozen expansion of is Thrall a shaman or not)
- we couldnt even permanently damage Ogrimmar! Ghostcrawler back in the day effectively said it would be impossible/they didnt have the tech to allow us to do it. I always found it interesting that Blizzard inevitably created the neccesary tech to do things they never could like destroying faction capitals and have a truly underground area.
I found a lot of his insights to be welcoming and interesting. Sounds like one of the few devs who actually cared while he was working for Blizz
What does he mean by “Goblin” camp? The Goblin miners someone has the Alliance player kill just to satisfy a desire for revenge? I wasn’t willing to do that quest because I wasn’t going to (or even pretend to) kill people out of racist revenge.
Ignoring the difference between civilians and people manning a fort realy makes it seem that all that mattered was how many of the “other side” you kill.
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Color me unsurprised. Would you happen to have a link for this? I’d really like to read it for myself.
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The link is in Ellera’s post four posts up. Kosak drop a lot of insights into why cata felt like a failure to people
It was pretty insightful to say the least
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It’s sort of impressive ineptitude if you think about it. The “evil Warchief, Horde civil war” arc penned to pander to disgruntled Alliance players somehow did the concept more justice than the “examination of the Horde” Danuser claimed justified its embarrassing rerun in BfA.
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