Ah, I got it to open with some difficulty.
So, the whole thing goes all the way back to the zone imbalance in Vanilla.
Why couldn’t they just have started Vanilla with an equal number of zones for each side, then added some more Horde zones in a later patch while simultaneously opening up the additional already-completed Alliance ones? It would have saved us all so much heartache in the decades to come.
I would guess at some point early on, they probably needed to show some number cruncher something - like, “let’s show all this Alliance crap that looks vaguely familiar to people, and we can work on the Horde stuff down the line.”
And that line has been moved ever since.
This forum hasn’t trusted me with links ever since I posted Cheetor from Beast Wars as my cat form template for mechagnome druids. Predacons on the mod team, I swear.
It just….it really explains SO MUCH about why Cata on nearly every front, fell flat. They should have rebuilt Azeroth piece meal via TBC and Wrath.
Than they could’ve worked on new zones and story content that was engaging for everyone. Instead of you know content being gutted alliance side because They ran out time and meme and movie/show reference quests being the norm in most zones instead.
I would say I’m shocked, but I’m not. Speechless and a little dumbfounded sure, but not shocked
Well, from every dev interview regarding Vanilla, they clearly did not expect the success that they got. So they probably didn’t want to hold back leveling content when they just did not expect that many people to even level through content to begin with.
I’d also imagine they never once considered that people would be upset about something called “zone imbalance,” or even thought such a thing could exist to be complained about, given that both factions still had two or more options at every level range.
Surely they at least expected to have a few patches, though?
.
Its almost like building the entire continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms as two halves of a grand battlefield instead of subdividing each zone into regional conflicts and relatively self contained storylines came back to haunt them.
Hindsight is 20:20 I guess.
I felt that Nathanos had moments where he could have gone another way. We saw him feel regret when Stephen was sacrificed to give him a new body, he was taken aback when Sylvanas ordered the Desolate Council members at the Gathering killed, and he outright hesitated when Sylvanas first gave the order to burn Teldrassil.
Instead of him trying to stab her, I could have seen it as him just freezing in shock when she abandoned the Horde after the Mak’gora, and having that moment of realizing “she left and I stayed.”
It also could have given loyalists players that character to connect with, who represents them. Plus it would have given the Forsaken a clear successor to leadership over Voss, the newcomer who joined at the start of Battle for Azeroth stepping in.
Now as to the faction conflict, I would be fine with a cold war scenario. However after two Horde civil wars, I don’t exactly have faith in Blizzard’s ability to write a war between the Horde and Alliance.
I was just kind of annoyed they gave the kill to Tyrande of all people 
Guy has been scolding Horde players for years and SHE gets the killing blow? 
Smh.
People argue “HurDuR bUt OuR TrEe!” due to the epic bonfire party the Horde had — but that means nothing considering the Nightelves are always ungrateful – Enough is never enough to the Nelf community … They argued they should deserve the kill, then afterwards brushed it off like it wasn’t even a morsel to them, lol
I genuinely don’t mind Tyrande got the kill.
I just wish it was more satisfying.
Like is it wrong to blood eagle Nathanos, strap him to an ancient of war, and march his flayed body to Sylvanas until it sets itself and him on fire?
I have been playing way too much Diablo IV.
I would’ve preferred a group effort kill, like 2 VS 1 for the killing blow — where at the end, you see two heroes slash their blades in opposing sides for the finish. 
Original “bring back faction war!” poster while misspelling Sylvanas’ name not withstanding,(Sylvanus? C’mon…)
Uh, anyway. No. No. No. I’m not sure if the OP roached out, but either way, no. They can’t do a convincingly good job without smashing the Horde with the villain bat. And as far as memorable characters we do have left, it’s few. Enough so, that I don’t even feel like I’m playing a “faction” anymore, Horde-side, because of how few memorable characters we have left, and how unimportant our faction seems to be in the current story.
I mean, I guess they could just start perma-killing our characters at this point, since we’re the only remaining characters the Horde has, just about, that they haven’t killed off.
I’m cool with them making a third faction for any of those warbois from SWTOR that want to be the mustache-twirling baddies, but that wasn’t even what sold the Horde faction in the first place, and has consistently left them in a worse place than before because of said faction conflict.
So no, hard disagree.
Good question, but I’d imagine they would rather spend their time on high level and next expansion content instead of leveling zones since wow became very popular quite fast.
Keep in mind that they started developing the eastern kingdoms first, starting with the human zones. Then when they started developing kalimdor they started with the orc zones. This is why Kalimdor got less content compared to the eastern kingdoms, and why the Horde have less zones and objectively less amount of quests/content during vanilla. They simply realized they could not spend as much time on kalimdor/the horde as they did with the early EK/Alliance zones if they wanted it out in a time, and once it is out you have to put the rail (new content) before the train.
Now one can argue if it was a wise choice or not.
But from a dev PoV I can see why during a world revamp would be the perfect time to rectify this.
I couldn’t find any concrete numbers for it, so unfortunately this is going off memory, rather than statistical analysis.
But I felt what you’re saying ringed true specifically because from what I remember, there were a lot more Alliance players than Horde players, back in Vanilla. Obviously it was server dependent, but in terms of overall players faction vs. faction, there were more people playing Alliance than Horde.
It wasn’t until The Burning Crusade, when Horde got Blood Elves, that the metrics sort of evened out. (Not to mention, the whole Shaman vs. Paladin thing.)
So at least at the time, I’d understand why they’d cater to the more populated faction in terms of content. Not saying that’s okay or whatever, but.
Okay, but then why not hold back a few Alliance zones at launch, so the factions would have equal territory? Leave out, say, Redridge Mountains, or Duskwood. Add them in a later patch along with an equal number of Horde zones.
They couldn’t have known what the faction balance would look like before they launched the game, though.
Well yeah, I imagine they expected to at least reach Wrath in terms of expansions.
But that isn’t my point. They were expecting players numbering in the low six figures if they were lucky, not to quickly rise to the millions. They didn’t expect it to really make much difference to those fewer numbers of people how many 1-20 zones the two factions “had” (after 20, everyone gets a bunch of contested zones so the issue effectively ends, even though effectively factions had their own “safe” leveling paths to levels 30), because ultimately that’s a small portion of the gameplay.
The problem, ultimately, is really the Barrens itself in Vanilla.
Cuz while humans get the Westfall-Redridge-Duskwood safety net, and while Wetlands is technically contested but with no Horde content (note: Night elves and Forsaken both have “safety zones” to level 20), the entire Kalimdor Horde had the Barrens, just the Barrens.
The three races of the Eastern Kingdom Alliance effectively can spread out throughout their leveling, while all three Kalimdor Horde are funnelled into that one zone, the Barrens. Every player who picked orc, troll or tauren is expected to share this zone, and it got awfully competative when waiting for quest spawns. This is ultimately why we had “Barrens Chat” because two of the most popular Horde races get funnelled here, and tauren too. And the alternative, the other continent, as soon as you’re done in Silverpine, it’s off to the bloody slaughter World PVP extravaganza of Hillsbrad, or… You can also go to the Barrens, because they have quests for another 10 of your levels. So even forsaken players would end up going there, just to avoid the bloodbath.
And unlike with the Alliance’s “safety leveling path,” the Barrens has a flight path the Alliance can utilize in Ratchet. And they can access the zone by boat from Booty Bay, also to Ratchet. And right down the road from Ratchet? Crossroads, the zone’s main town. Getting to the trifecta of Redridge-Westfall-Duskwood required Horde players crossing STV, then running/riding to which ever town they wanted to grief with no easy access, while Alliance could literally fly in from Darnassus or take a boat, and be roughly near the middle of the zone’s hub. Wanna go for Loch Modan or Menethil Harbor? Your journey starts in Arathi Highlands.
When Vanilla players complained about the number of zones per faction, it wasn’t about just the number. The Barrens was so huge that it would have been substantially less of an issue if it was just about how many zones each side had. But for reasons, the Barrens was unwittingly designed to be the easiest uncontested zone for the enemy faction to invade.
And this is still only 2004. Player behavior wasn’t as well-documented as it is today. I doubt the devs ever once would have thought to look at the Barrens and see the problems. Sure, three races are being shuffled into one zone, but it’s the single biggest zone in the game, approximately the size of two or three other zones. Plenty of space to mob-grind with some breaks to do a quest! And yeah, Alliance players can get there, but are people really gonna no-life camp a town that is a single flight point away from the Horde capital? No chance!!
So you have:
And that all led to a massively congested, laggy Barrens. So people complain there aren’t enough Horde zones, not really because the number matters, but because they want a Barrens alternative.
TBC gave a third path for Horde with Ghostlands; even though the 20-30 “safety zone” problem returns, and blood elves are shuffled to either the Barrens or Hillsbrad, it’s largely irrelevant because world pvp has effectively died off entirely. Sure, Hillsbrad sees some fighting, but no more than any other contested zones. Crossroads still gets raided, but now it’s a sad batch of 1-5 people, struggling to handle the guards.
By TBC, arguably earlier with the introduction of battlegrounds (but that just lessened the issue really, TBC more or less fixed it), the problem effectively solved itself.
…
So this is part of why the devs messed up with Cataclysm. Because as we here on Story Forums know all too well, WoW players have never walked past a dead horse without beating it, and even if something gets resolved, people will still complain about it until their fingertips are bleeding from typing too hard. The problem of the Barrens Conjestion is over, but you’d never know it to look at anywhere people discuss WoW. And the nuance of the problem, the conjection, gets forgotten in favor of something you can measure against.
Alliance have 6 uncontested zones from 10-30 (Darkshore, Bloodmyst, Loch Modan, Westfall, Redridge, Duskwood) and the Horde only gets 3 (Barrens, Silverpine, Ghostlands)!! Alliance bias!!!
So the devs break up the Barrens to fix the congestion. They give the Horde Azshara and Hillsbrad (which funny enough still leaves them down by one, but the “Alliance Zone Bias” camp largely forgets that). Horde zones get extra attention across the board to make up for a problem that had basically solved itself.
As a result, the Alliance zones get far less attention.
New problem arises.
…
Well, that’s my Barrens / Horde Zone Imbalance speech. Thanks for attending my ALYNSATalk.
This absolutely, the “war games for the next world ending threat” stuff is so profoundly lame and boring.
Better than World ending threat happening? Yes! BUT MUST ATTACK THE OTHER FACTION! RAWR!! that usually happens in these faction war scenarios
No it’s not better. People loot during natural disasters irl soo. But I’d also just prefer villains that aren’t world ending.
Also, saying that you’re preparing for the next world ending threat is like, lame because you’re half breaking the fourth wall by admitting it’s a yearly occurrence.
Regional threats are a good thing, but I think blizzard sucks at maintaining a regional threat long term logically with the immense power they’ve given player characters in the story. Why should a regional threat even be a real threat when the HERO is there?
And how - if this is a credible threat - are we supposed to be able to act against the really big threats?
Imagine a lvl 20 dnd character get trown at a lvl 5 threat…its not fitting.