I am convinced the reason they keep pushing the faction barrier is because their spaghetti code won’t let them mix factions without breaking the game and they’re sweating when typing “NO IT’S… IT’S A STAPLE”.
Brought to you by the same folks who couldn’t give us more bag slots without bricking servers.
Please don’t bring Danuser into this.
Kinkshaming Danuser IS my kink.
As much as this wouldn’t necessarily surprise me, it’s almost literally just a switch. It’s a thing they toy with frequently. They started with Pandaren, moved onto Mercenary Mode, and rounded out with the Dazar’alor gimmick.
And those are just “some” of the potential work arounds.
There may be more truth to this than some might think. Wasn’t it based on the WC3 engine?
It’s actually funny because private servers regularly got rid of things like faction restrictions and other “unchangeable core gameplay mechanics, pillars of the game.”
I had an incredibly brief introduction to a private server once way back when I was a kid. While I’m sure it was some incomplete, unpolished console command, there was literally just a toggle that swapped your faction because it was just some value or something.
Older though the systems were then, and I’m sure some other nonsense in the background of just how authentic the server may have been, that’s all it took.
Blizzard talks about their technological struggles on occasion and, code being what it is, I always endeavor to assume the best. But, frankly speaking, any time Blizzard says “we can’t”, it means “it would take too much of our resource / development cycle”. And what that means is, “it’s too costly”. It’s not that things “can’t” be done. Because we’re working with technology, we literally make the rules. It’s that there’s some factor or context that means they don’t want to, which would be fair, if they didn’t repeatedly lie and sell players trash the goes directly counter their interests.
This is true too, but at least on Prologue, it wasn’t terribly stable. Then again, they tampered with a lot of systems.
Personally, I think it will be saved for when an expansion severely under performs. Kind of like how new customization is a selling point instead of a patch feature.
There’s a lot of parallels between Sylvanas and Garrosh.
Like, beyond the super obvious ones, there’s some meta ones. Like her backstory/history starting to get quietly retconned to seem more consistent with her current personality.
The more I recognize, the more bitter I get. Especially since they lie about both.
Eventually they’ll just declare that she actually planned to become a Banshee because she’d already made the pact with The Jailer back before WarCraft 1 but knew if Arthas didn’t do his full arc the Crown of Domination would never be empowered enough to be broken because she’s a 974d Chessmaster Tactician.
You thought that bare midriff power slide into Frostmourne was a blunder?
[Deep Foreboding Chuckle into Anger] YOU FOOLS.
This is a random side note, but because it’s the anniversary event they have those crystals that let you watch all the expansion cinematics and some of the in-game ones for important moments.
Well, I watched the end of Warlords of Draenor with the horrible, “Draenor is free!” moment, but then Yrel speaks and says they will rebuild Draenor together. She was standing there beside Grom and whoever the other Orc was, and it gave a positive ending… And now we are supposed to believe Yrel just went Light extremist and decided to just kill Orcs who won’t join her and turn the one that do into Lightbound?
Okay Blizzard…
I actually think, comparatively speaking, it’s one of the less offensive examples, because at least 30+ years passed for that to happen.
And they did show Velen distrusting the Light on Argus, so I think the idea was that they fell without Velen’s guidance.
The Light being evil is still dumb though.
Considering how the draenei are coded, it was a very bad narrative beat.
Also even if they were sold on the idea of Yrel turning evil, they didn’t even bother to carry through her actual arc into why she might go down that path, considering the fact that Grom was the one who forced Ner’zhul to sacrifice her sister in order to create a magic WMD to wipe out literally everyone she knew.
Nope, too much Light just made her crazy and she decides to betray her “good friend, Grom”
It was a horribly crafted story because they lazily wanted to give Horde AU Orcs without putting any real thought into it and they also have a Hellscream fetish.
You know what would have been cool? An Outland spanning scenario with our universe Mag’har Orcs built on them working with the Furies and other remaining native species to stabilize what was left of outland to prevent further decay.
Afterwards the Mag’har of Outland begrudgingly pledge more support to Sylvanas (only to find out later they have been working with Saurfang the while time).
Has it ever struck anyone that we’re about to kill N’Zoth, the last Old God and possibly tactician behind Cataclysm, and nobody gives a crap?
I can’t even get that far because every time I remember that anime beam cinematic my brain turns off
Man, I always thought the solution could be as simple as “the Draenei want revenge and/or are terrified of the Orcs attacking them again.”
Suddenly, the Draenei are still in the aggressor role, only their motives are more understandable, and the Mag’har still flee and join the Horde, only it’s more nuanced. And it remains all entirely emotionally-grounded.
In other but related Blizzard news. While trying to sell us a new Hearthstone expansion in a few weeks they released a patch for it that includes:
Just stop, my guys. I get it. You want me to reflect on my formative years dedicating time to your games and immediately feel remorse. I get it.