The faction war, and factions, is stupid and played out and makes nonsense story at this point. Blizzard couldn’t even change this if they wanted to because of the people obsessed with it. It’s just stupid all around.
Big Bad
OH NOES THE HORDE
Another Big Bad
OH NOES THE HORDE AGAIN
Threat to all life as we know it
OH NO THE HORDE PAINTED THEIR FENCE GREEN
World Shattering Bad Guy With Benefactors behind him
OH NO ITS THE HORDE AGAIN
Like jebus already this is stupid.
BfA was the concept I didn’t want, not as the seventh xpac, and especially not after Legion. As bad as Shadowlands is, I like it a lot more than BfA.
The problem with a faction war story is that it poisons pretty much any character because the playerbase can’t be objective when it comes to their ‘side’. This is the difference between, say, WC3, and all the faction wars since. It doesn’t matter what a character does or doesn’t, how badass they are, what feats they accomplish. All a good chunk of the playerbase will see is a character that is ‘against’ them.
Look at Sylvanas, who was the most popular character in all the franchise. This isn’t even a contest either, of all the WC3 heroes she had the biggest fanbase. The moment she became involved in the faction war in Cata? Immediate fracture.
Jaina is an even better example. Though she wasn’t as popular as Sylvanas, when she went ‘warmonger’ people wanted to kill her constantly and she was dragged for being crazy… but it was essentially years of her literally just saying mean words, and never actually doing anything against the Horde. Her two instances was an almost attack on Orgrimmar, and the Purge of Silvermoon which is treated by the lore as being far less dire than what the playerbase seems to think it is.
Plus we’ve been doing the at war then big team up thing since the end of WC3, so… it’s already a trope that’s over 16 years old.
Thats simply because BFA was so bad as an expansion its players spent more time afk or outside the game on forums, streams or youtube instead of playing.
Every expansion its been a factional conflct that gets set aside so we can work together to save the world.
I actually believe the closest we have ever been to true horde v alliance was in cata with Garrosh at the helm - it felt that he would rather wipe out the alliance as well as save the world instead of working with them, like a true horde warchief.
Careful saying things like “we”. To me, the faction war should have ended after MoP. Ever since Garrosh’s story ended, the faction conflict has felt incredibly forced. BfA was then attempting to “do MoP better”, and it was so incredibly bad.
The faction war was interesting at the beginning. But there’s nowhere to take it now. Neither side will win or lose, neither side will do much to the other side. The psychotic megalomaniacs are almost all dead or away from the factions, leaving leaders who actually have some sort of brain between their ears. Peace treaties and trade would be the next logical step, because if the “Champion of Azeroth” is actually working to save the world, petty rivalries between factions hardly matter with every world ending threat Azeroth faces.
The faction conflict is so incredibly bland at this point that it is the direct reason the story is as bad as it is right now. It has only been a detriment to the story, and the state of the narrative would be infinitely better without the needless forcing of a pointless combat.
Of course, Blizzard makes money off of the tribalism, so…it’s likely to stay.
Sure. I mean look at BFA. The Horde loved PvP. The Alliance said that’s not why we play the game. So maybe you are right, one half would want to PvP, but it’s only one faction with no other faction to fight against (except maybe 4 or 5…).
Do you not remember the “bonus” Blizzard had to offer to get Alliance to PvP? I do.
You can’t have a faction themed PvP expansion if only one faction wants to PvP.
PvP is and always will be a side game in WoW. If you want real PvP there are games for it. WoW is primarily a co-op game. Any PvP will require perks to be given (Alliance) or nerfs to be made if one side gains an advantage (Horde)
Eh I would put Thrall or even Arthas above her. I get the whole compassion for the wronged pretty elf, but while I thought she was a passable character, I never saw her that great
In an MMO where neither side can actually ‘win,’ you can’t have an entire expansion based around it. All you’d have are shallow victories that the players need to convince themselves matter.
Well maybe “can’t” is too extreme, but Blizzards’ writers will never (I can’t help it) have the restraint to keep things grounded, and unfortunately at least some of that isn’t their fault since the world has grown so much.
I don’t like throwing my hands up and saying “can’t be helped,” so I’m in favor of a story that’s more related to the actual world, but I think the horde vs alliance ship is just tedious, or a side-plot at this point in the world’s lore.
I really hope not. I don’t wanna see that trope of religion is really evil despite trying to look good again.
What I think they will do is the Alliance is the only side that has both light and void races. If they do a light vs void it will HAVE to impact those races. It could be them trying to do the Surfing vs Banshee politic - just Lightforged vs Void Elf and their followers.
That would require Blizzard writing about the Alliance and lets face it, they never have enough time left to finish the leftovers after they write the Horde storylines. WoD says Hi
People constantly complained about how played out that was.
It triggers me when people call BfA that and I’m not sure why. Like when people tried to call Legion “leg” and thankfully it never caught on.
I think the current trope for most things is the extreme of both ends is no good, we have seen what happens if the old gods/void gets complete control, it might be time to show what happens if the Light gets complete control, and sad to say which faction is more likely to go fanatical for the light before the true light-based villain is revealed?
But, that’s all of WoW.
The faction war takes that to a whole new level though. At least every time we fight the Legion has new stuff to see.
Good luck getting people to agree with you here, 1000:1 there are more people who don’t want a faction divide than those who want it. And they can use WM or /PVP to still have that faction war.
I wish people would stop making claims that they are the majority. You have no idea if that’s true, and even if it was it’s not an argument about what is best for the health of the game.
I’m sorry but BfA was pretty terrible. The themes of trolls (boring), old gods (overused), and faction war (nonsensical/formulaic/outdated) are basically the trifecta of suck.
I quit for almost a year because Baddie for Azeroth was such rubbish.
There is maybe half a dozen legit posts here about liking or wanting to keep faction vs. faction, if more people wanted it they would be constantly asking for it and going about how SL is bad that we are working together (while not even really working together).
This is the first legit post I have even seen where someone is saying they want to have more faction divide, but I see many that talk about wanting to remove factions and have cross faction raiding and guilds and whatnot.
This forum is just not an accurate representation of what people want. It’s a toxic wasteland just built for us to troll and insult each other.
And then Blizzard completely butchered her character even more after that mess with Teldrassil
The forums are the only representation we have of what we want. There is literally no other way to know what players want because outside the forums it is literally your word against mine, Blizzard sure are not going to ask us what we want.
Sure I could tell you what I see players in game talking about, but what proof do any of us have? This is it dude and if you want to change the narrative try and get more people to post on any number of forums that we can use.