BfA Without the Faction War

Lore Story Forum
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So I spend a lot of time criticizing BfA and Blizzard’s writing. I’m bored right now so I figure why not put my money where my mouth is and re-write BfA so that it is all around more enjoyable for just about everyone while still leading us into Shadowlands and without changing the actual gameplay and content too much.

And the easiest way to do that? Just… Don’t make it a faction war story. Seriously. Without it you have a significantly more cohesive narrative and don’t really miss out on anything as far as gameplay goes.

So here we go:

Phase 1: The War of Thorns

Teldrassil is still gonna burn, but not by the Horde. Instead the pre-patch and Invasion of Lordaeron are carried out by Azshara and an unprecedently massive naga invasion. Tens of thousands of them swarm Darkshore and begin prepping for a massive ritual.

Malfurion goes to fight and ends up confronting Azshara herself but she is much more powerful than she has been before. The night elves put up some serious resistance but are getting overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Tyrande ultimately decides to begin evacuating Teldrassil while she can.

Anduin cannot send reinforcements because Stormwind’s harbor is being blockaded by naga and the remains of their navy is being torn to shreds.

Horde-side Sylvanas is given a message detailing what is befalling the Alliance. Saurfang asks for orders but she insists on not lending aid. She insists that sending aid will weaken the Horde and that they’ll lose in their own defense if they ride off, as well as this being an opportunity to shut down the Alliance once the naga threat has ended. Saurfang is furious at the idea of hiding behind fortified walls while others die on the battlefield.

Saurfang ultimately goes against orders and takes as many volunteers as he can to provide aid. We fight our way through a naga infested Ashenvale and Darkshore, but are too late.

Azshara, the most ancient enemy of the night elves, is the one to burn their tree killing thousands.

Phase 2; The Horde’s Turn

Lordaeron is next on the chopping block. By the time we get back from Teldrassil the naga have already put Lordaeron under siege. Orgrimmar was also attacked but the Darkspear trolls received a vision from a mysterious spirit warning them of the impending attack, allowing them to summon Bwonsamdi and put up a far better defense than they otherwise would.

This time it is Anduin’s turn to not want to send aid. He instead wants to focus his efforts on tending to the refugees and keeping Stormwind, which now houses a massive chunk of the Alliance’s population, secure. He sends the Alliance PC and a small unit of champions on the down low to support the Horde, but it is all he can manage.

Battle goes on. Sylvanas arrests Saurfang for treason for going against her orders. She blows up Undercity killing thousands of naga but hundreds of Horde troops, which appalls Baine.

Phase 3; New Allies

Finally we get to Kul Tiras and Zandalar. Sylvanas still sends the Horde PC to rescue Talanji from Stormwind, although we are told this time around that Talanji was being detained because they found her with Zul rather than for no reason at all.

The reason for going to these new lands is to gain access to their navies as a powerful navy is kind of a big deal when fighting a sea-based enemy and these are the two largest and strongest navies on the planet currently.

Both sides are mostly the same story-wise, though I’d personally have Zul worship Mueh’zala to set him up for Shadowlands and remove G’huun as a concept. Instead that raid would be about killing Hakkar’s corpse that Mueh’zala and the blood trolls have been feeding blood to in order to empower it. Without Hakkar’s soul it isn’t the true Hakkar. More of a puppet of immense power to be wielded by the death loa to fight us.

We do find that Kul Tiras and Zandalar have been caught up in their own little war for decades by this point and that is the premise for the Isle Expeditions and the PVP going on there. However here it becomes clear that Sylvanas is trying to use the Zandalari/Kul Tiras war to bring the Alliance and Horde into conflict as well.

The Alliance PC’s goal is to convince them to both join their respective factions and to de-escalate their war. This ties well into Jaina’s personal arc about forgiveness and coming to terms with her past. The Horde PC’s goal is either to incite the war under orders of Sylvanas or follow Saurfang’s (who has managed to escape his prison) orders to try and find a way toward peace.

Also around this time we learn Vol’jin’s spirit is the one that warned the Darkspear about Azshara. We get to interact with his spirit but it is still weak and needs time to regain his potency.

Phase 3; Nazjatar

Here we learn Sylvanas and Azshara have been working together all this time. Vol’jin’s spirit informs the Horde that Sylvanas has made contact with some ancient being in the Shadowlands. If you’re Alliance Azshara warns Tyrande of this when they have a confrontation during the Darkshore warfront, where the naga are the main adversaries. Tyrande still goes full Black Moon to gain the power to match Azshara and her Old God master and eventually chases Azshara and her forces off, reclaiming Darkshore.

The Horde warfront are the shores of Lordaeron where we see a re-made Desolate Council organizing a defense with the remaining Forsaken who weren’t swept away by the first invasion. They make no secret of the fact they feel Sylvanas abandoned them in their time of need and state plainly that they were already Forsaken; they do not need anyone. Not even her. Go-go character development for an eventual new Forsaken leader.

Phase 4; Everything Else

This time there isn’t a full fledged civil war in the Horde. Instead Saurfang escapes, gets Thrall back, and together they rally the people of the Horde to depose Sylvanas. No major battles needed as word of her consorting with a dark, unnamed evil is enough to give the Horde Ner’zhul flashbacks to get them to kick her out ASAP.

Mak’gora still happens but they agree to “no magic” prior to the fight because Sylvanas is a banshee and Saurfang is an old man. Sylvanas gets pressured fighting the greatest orcish warrior alive and resorts to necro-blasting him into dust. She decides to peace out upon seeing the many angry faces of the thousands of orcs, trolls, and even Forsaken staring at her.

In Azshara’s raid Tyrande, now empowered by the Black Moon, has a wicked 1v1 CGI animation fight with her former queen in which Azshara is nearly destroyed. Azshara pulls some cheap moves and escapes, only to get run down by adventurers who need better pants. Maybe she dies. Maybe she escapes. Either way works.

Then we move into N’Zoth which is basically the same.

Conclusion

So yah. Azshara, the night elves’ biggest big bad, is the one to burn Teldrassil. The Forsaken get actual development. The Horde isn’t complicit in genocide. Sylvanas gets to go along on her merry way to lead us into Shadowlands but hasn’t done anything too heinous to disqualify her from a potential redemption down the line.

Most importantly it is consistent from start to finish. We still get a side story in Mecagon, but for the most part we have a clear adversary from the start to focus on and each patch naturally flows into the next without feeling jarring or like we forgot something.

So what are your thoughts? Would you have enjoyed this narrative more than the one we got?

22 Likes
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There was a faction war?

I thought it was just a few skirmishes.

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I like a lot about this, but there’s one thing that keeps me from being completely on-board:

Still … if the threshold is “more enjoyable than what we got,” yeah, I think I’d say it does that.

4 Likes
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Unfortunately Sylvanas’ story is tied to Shadowlands. Without knowing how they intend to use her by the end of the expansion I’m not really comfortable doing a re-write that dramatically changes her character trajectory as we don’t currently know it.

2 Likes
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I support this post as I think everyone is tired of being villain bated on a row of just 2 expansions and seeing plot being copy paste as some last minute homework done(Let’s not kid ourselves, SL is exactly the same premise as WoD but with Sylvanas having a god as a boss rather than a family member)

Kinda wishing that taint wasn’t part though or at least something that make her less over the spotlight and more secondary spot

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Works alot better than what we got. Sylvanas seems a bit more trusting and using more subtle methods to get what she wants so help out her charcter alot. Saves the Horde being dragged through the mud again. Also saves us having to listen to Anduin excuse the Horde of their crimes and him preaching to the Horde.

Also works on why Tyrande needed a power up to face Azshara considering her power.

2 Likes
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Or here’s a crazy idea:

Burn Teldrassil without making it a genocide. We really don’t need the genocide of a playable race in the story.

5 Likes
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With the whole “death is broken across the entire multiverse” thing, I’m still not sure what’s narratively necessary about torching Teldrassil or bombing Undercity. You may as well have the prepatch involve the players pitching a post-Legion celebratory party and then having the naga ruin that, instead.

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I am fairly sure the narrative point of Teldrassil was to show how far Sylvanas went to empower her cosmic sugar daddy (the the time between the event and the revelation of the Jailer kind of makes it lose its emotional impact regardless, so eh). In my version this still works since she was conspiring with Azshara to make it happen. It just doesn’t involve the entire Horde in it as well.

Beyond that I wanted to hit all the same big story notes from BfA just minus the faction war. Structurally I think that is the biggest problem with the expansion; it tried to be too many things at once. A faction war story, an Azshara and the Naga invasion story, a Southseas story with Zandalar and Kul Tiras, and an Old God story all at once overbloated it.

Plus if I’d completely re-written it it’d just be an expansion of us exploring Kul Tiras and Zandalar without any big meta narrative at all aside from maybe a conflict between the two nations. I’m kind of over the whole “the world is about to die!” stuff and just want to go back to exploring the world (of Warcraft).

2 Likes
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A lot of this is really solid. The thematic consistency alone makes it more attractive as a story, yet it maintains an underlying tension between the factions without pushing them to outright war. Plus, Sylvanas’s two major crimes were burning Teldrassil and inciting a war solely to create death - so if those were removed, then her character would’ve had a shot at redemption that she doesn’t reasonably have now.

My one change would be that N’Zoth’s death SHOULDN’T take place as it did in canon, but that’s more a gripe about that plot point as a whole and not really a critique of your writeup.

3 Likes
11

BFA is over but its ramifications on the story still chaps my hide. Blizzard really effed up with this one.

6 Likes
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TBH I didn’t think the faction war aspect of BfA was the worst part, and I say this as a predominant night elf player. I think it was the wimpy followup to 8.0 and 8.1 that killed the expansion for me, as they didn’t provide a good conclusion to the war’s primary victims, instead having us laser-beam a tentacle man.

2 Likes
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The faction war was the best part of BFA.

Dealing with the dumb Sylvanas stuff was easy to do while I could still kill Alliance by the dozens every other quest instead of fighting some boring 3rd party for the eleven-billionth time.

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Partly.

The major problem which most of the Warcraft narrative faces nowadays is that the emphasis has gone off the world and our factions just to focus on a tight sphere of lore heroes.

Lore heroes alone do not make up our factions, they make up a pivot-able part sure but its our blood and sweat that held it together, not these nut jobs who would see us flushed down the toilet in service to correcting their own moral dilemmas.

2 Likes
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Yah, I definitely agree with that. I guess you could say I’ve come down with “global threat” fatigue. My fondest moments of this franchise were all from exploring the world or doing small side quests with NPCs with small, personal story arcs. Which we do still get, it just… Has to be as a backdrop to these huge stories I don’t care about.

I finally got around to beginning my Shadowlands journey and I was tired of Jaina and Thrall almost immediately. The Maw felt boring and empty. The enemies felt generic. The Jailer has no character.

It perked up once I got to Bastion but even that has the meta plot looming over my head.

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That story and lead up was miles ahead better than what Blizzard gave us. I always thought Azshara should have been a much bigger threat than just a 1 patch issue. It would have been fantastic to give her an entire expansion. So on that front, I am totally game. Besides, the naga suck in general…i’m all in favor of going murder hobo on full squads of those suckers lol

2 Likes
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I can believe Sylvanas not wanting to send aid to the Alliance against the Naga, but I have a harder time believing Anduin wouldn’t send aid to the Horde against an enemy that had just decimated one of their factions major cities. Doesn’t add up for me.

Likewise, I have no idea why Bwonsamdi would defend an undead city. The Darkspear mounting some sort of defense to help the Forsaken is fine, but I can’t see where the Loa of Death would get involved unless someone cut a major deal with him and the one troll who might do that is dead prior to BFA.

I also don’t see what the Naga get out of attacking Lordaron. If the idea is that Azshara is trying to get to Sylvanas because she knows about her deal with the Jailer, Sylvanas by that point has been firmly ensconced in Orgrimmar for some time - they should have attacked there after Teldrassil instead of swimming across the sea to a different continent.

I also don’t buy rumors about Sylvanas consorting with dark powers would be enough to inspire a popular revolt against her. It’s Sylvanas - consorting with dark powers is something she has done openly since Warcraft 3 - no one is going to be surprised or outraged by that.

1 Like
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In this scenario Sylvanas doesn’t wand to send aid because she’s hoping to use the naga invasion to further her goals with the Jailer, as that is still a plot thread in my re-write because I didn’t want to mess with Shadowlands’ story too. The main difference here is it isn’t nearly as obvious she’s getting the villain bat, which will make the reveal at least somewhat better.

Anduin doesn’t want to send aid because he can’t without taking too many forces away from Stormwind and leaving it vulnerable after just losing a major Alliance city. His hands are tied, so he sends a few champions instead of an army.

You misunderstand. Bwonsamdi and the Darkspear don’t save Lordaeron. They band together and put down the naga invasion of Orgrimmar with the advantage of foreknowledge from Vol’jin’s spirit. Bwonsamdi is into it because if Orgrimmar falls so would the Darkspear tribe, and he is still their patron loa.

Azshara’s motivation at this point is more or less to cripple the Horde and Alliance with her invasions so that we launch an eventual counter-attack and fall into Nazjatar. Everything else is the same as in BfA, but with the difference of Azshara being the major antagonist from the start.

Yah, and the last time Sylvanas bargained with dark powers we got the Wrathgate. It also wouldn’t be rumors. It’d be confirmation by the spirit of the last Warchief that she conspired with an evil entity to kill him and usurp control of the Horde. If that isn’t grounds for kicking her out of office I don’t know what is.

Though if you still want a “I stand by the Dark Lady” option I guess that is fine. More or less like what we got in BfA but at least this time she doesn’t have a genocide under her belt making it difficult to justify her continued leadership. Her being evil wouldn’t be obvious until the reveal much later in the expansion.

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I like your version very much.

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Your version isn’t bad, miles better than what we got, though I think the faction war plot could have still worked if:

1: they didn’t blow up UC/Teldrassil so the story never got too maudlin

2: Treat the start of the war as something both sides’ warmongers were responsible for. Genn and everyone else who were poking the horde in the eye whenever they could getting zero repercussions and even being soft absolved for it in the “warcrimes bad” expansion blows.

3: Commit to finishing out the story. Don’t drop the story beat halfway through to talk about friggin gnomes and old gods.

4: Having us “war” and not actually deal with any lands we’re familiar with outside of the start and warfronts was really odd. Who cares if random island #23234 is being invaded when canonically the war is happening in many old world locales we actually might care about?