This isn’t a rant thread or a troll thread, just thoughts I’ve been having recently.
Over time, I’ve begun to see the futility of the Horde vs Alliance split, which often does more to hurt the story than help it. You go from carrying Thalyssra’s near lifeless body at the beginning of Legion, to watching her basically declare war with the Alliance over a spat, and just as we helped the Nightborne grow their tree, the Nightborne helped burn down the Night Elves’
Beyond that, now that the war is over, what did it teach us? The same lesson every time the Horde and Alliance fights, it weakens Azeroth and makes it more vulnerable to forces like Azshara and N’zoth.
I want to see the story evolve in a real way, and not have every other expansion be some horrific genocide just to piss players off.
It also makes no sense why half of Pandaren hate the other half just cause of one incident in the newbie zone.
In Shadowlands we’ll be in the same cities, and covenants as each other, like we were with the Order Halls and Legionfall. The question is, should WoW evolve? is it possible to erase the borders between the factions without destroying the cultures associated with those factions?
Yeah, absolutely. The faction war had a good conclusion in Mists of Pandaria. Breathing new life into it over flimsy and forced reasons and trying to get us hate each other after being outright told that we’re stronger together just doesn’t really click now.
Battle for Azeroth, by and large, should have been an Old God expac. With how things are ending now, we’ve hit an impasse where the faction war narrative and the N’Zoth narrative are fighting for dominance, but neither of them really get enough time or spotlight to be wholly satisfying. By not picking something and sticking with it, a lot of us end up asking ourselves “why exactly did we need to do all of that again?”
However, it is over now. 8.3 seems promising now that the focus has shifted wholly to the Old Gods, a narrative that has been building for a while. Even if it’s not as much as I’d like for a villain who’s been building since WoW’s beginning, it has the distinct advantage of not being a faction war. Past that of course, Shadowlands looks amazing narratively.
So short answer? Yeah, the boundaries between Alliance and Horde are very artificial and forced. The game spent years building up the message that Alliance and Horde should rely on each other for the good of all, but gameplay apparently demands that the plot bend to infighting.
Alternatively I liked the scenario where you had to work with Jaina and fight the Sunreavers that had become Sylvanas loyalists. I do like some elements of the faction war, however it would have been better if Battle for Azeroth was about trying to heal the division.
The stuff about Shaw just wanting to get the job done, as opposed to a Paladin’s more noble justifications for the war.
It’s cool, but I feel it could have been done in which there were forces like Azshara & N’zoth trying to keep Horde & Alliance from uniting. If we got glimpses of Ashvane being whispered to by N’zoth when she went collecting Azerite on a sea mission.
I wanted to see more naval battles overall, and not just cutscenes, and blowing up ships that are parked.
like you said I have promise for 8.3 because Ny’alotha looks gorgeous, and I hope the rest of the content is fun to do, and has an interesting narrative.
Battle for Azeroth, by and large, should have been an Old God expac.
By most accounts it is.
4/5 raids will end up being Old God (or their minions) Themed. The idea of it being about the faction war was sort of a ploy by Blizz to make it seem like it was mysterious how the expac would play out. The disconnect comes from how many resources they devoted to the faction war (like 4 cinematics? Way more than any other expansion).
But really the Faction War is basically a side plot masquerading as the main plot. Or it was supposed to be. I feel like Blizz really dropped the ball majorly here.
It was like that until the Horde decided to burn Teldrassil. Blizzard ironically succeeded in driving a permanent wedge between the two factions despite suggesting the opposite at the end here.
A faction war expansion can be good if done well, for example if alliance starts it for once.
BfA was just the horde commiting horribly evil and unforgivable atrocities again without a real reason and now we are somehow forgiving them instead of actually striking back.
Mostly because they started it by having the Horde cross a moral event horizon that, since they did not show more Horde against the burning even after the fact, painted the Horde so dark there is little way they can be redeemed without it feeling forced.
This “faction war” story would have been perfect in an RTS where one side could defeat the other for good, but for an MMO they really need gray and showing disunity in the factions as far as what is done and what is going to be done.
Well it’s too late for ifs and buts. They really can’t go back on this storyline without completely retconning the entire war. There’s too much tied up in it. So now we’re at the point where any peace is nonsensical and forced and working together out of the question.
We’re never going to be past Horde and Alliance. Game mechanics aside, there’s too much bad blood and too many differences between each side for it to never come up again.
It was better when it wasn’t The main focus of the plot though, when the conflict between the factions was kept to the fringes in little swaubbles over land or resources or the occasional raid on a settlement that, when it was over, was still standing.
What they need to stop doing is writing the story so it inflicts permanent damage to one side or the other and crediting the opposite faction. They think it hyped people up but it just creates grudges among the players and leaves some longing for a level of retribution that can only be granted by more of the same kind of writing that pissed them off in the first place.
Leave the faction conflict in - just don’t make any more expansions about it.
And the reason I dislike the Faction Conflict Story Thread is right here.
It is not treated like an actual story thread that should amount to consequences, change, growth, or loss. It is treated like an extension of merely the PvP it was designed to facilitate on a story level. Its a game. Where you slap on your faction pride jersey’s for a few patches in between the real story. The expectation is that it remains this, because there are too many contradictory expectations from different segments of the playerbase for it to become anything else.
It also sort of bothers me the idea that outside of a brief period during the WotLK-MoP era, the Horde has never been a match for the Alliance. This is especially true now more than ever due to Legion, and the absolutely absurd influx of demigod tier heroes the Blue Team acquired. This was something that people scoffed at when Thrall was among that power level, but now is just normal to see on the Alliance … and almost entirely absent on the Horde.
I mean, is that the lesson? Or is the lesson that forgiving genocidal monsters never leads to long-lasting peace and the true answer is that the ram must touch the wall.
They can end properly if it’s a 2 sided war and Blizzard doesn’t declare Horde the winner by making it the faction who lost nothing compared to the alliance who lost so much.
What if after the horde commited genocide, the alliance commited genocide too? Just to show that both factions can do evil stuff. And then the war could end properly with both sides having lost equally as much.
Yes we are past of the 2 factions that have become a joke at this point. Besides most people wants to see their race in the spotlight rather than deal with humans and orcs as if they were the only members that matters in the faction.
I think every race going for their own path would be accepted more than being dragged by orcs or humans into dumb conflicts
Then people would be up in armed about it because the Alliance are the “lawful good” archetype who forgive and forget while the Horde are the “chaotic monsters.” Now when they were a group of races just trying to survive.
Blizzard does alright with Good vs Evil most of the time, but lets hope BfA showed them they suck eggs at writing morally gray.
Wouldn’t it be better if neither side lost anything permanently to begin with? That kind of tit for tat expectation from the player base is exactly what makes the faction conflict, when it takes center stage of an expansion, to be so miserable.
Everyone wants an eye for an eye, but the list of grievances is so long at this point that it couldn’t end satisfactorily without both factions being completely gutted and having to start over again from scratch.
Leave the faction conflict to the players, where all gains and losses by design can only be temporary, not the writers where it becomes a major plot point that is constantly revisited.