Something that has been on my mind lately. Why did the conflict between Horde and Alliance fail? Is it because people were tired of the ceaseless conflict? Because Blizzard cannot write a compelling story? Or was it something else?
2 Likes
You can’t war against each other all the time, and when a Big Bad guy rises at each expansion, you call it a day and team up to beat him
34 Likes
It didn’t.
The problem wasn’t that the Alliance vs Horde conflict didn’t have any juice left, it was that the marquee expansion for a renewal of that conflict (BFA) had terrible lore. They wasted their opportunity with that one.
13 Likes
For me, it’s simply that I’m not interested in PVP and that’s fundamentally why the faction war existed,
( plus, I started getting really tired of certain endless real world faction divides, so spending my play time in the middle of one wasn’t a fun fantasy )
15 Likes
well you can.
If you write it well.
Games workshops pulls this off with wh40k.
6 out of 7 days of the week an eldar exists to do one thing. Be purged as is the Emporer’s will. Purge the mutant, the heretic, the alien.
And for one big bad fight in a key fight against a universe ending bad guy…day 7 of 7 they lived. they did not shoot at the fleet. so they could do mystic magic to limit how bad this gets.
Okay its a new week. See eldar, shoot eldar in head, say “Emporer be praised!”. As is the way.
4 Likes
Because Blizzard stepped away from the Cold War setting of vanilla/bc/wrath (which is an EXCELLENT setting) and did a hot war.
Twice.
Which is stupid, because NEITHER side can win without making half the playerbase unhappy.
27 Likes
There is only so much you can do with the Alliance vs Horde conflict. And through the RTS games they had alliance and horde working side by side to take on a larger threat.
-
Then Vanilla came out and there was some faction conflict, but no real War. The players were the war with open world PvP.
-
Then in TBC we went through the portal together and then worked together or at least co-existed with no large conflicts.
-
WoTLK. Again… no real firm conflict. We-Co-Existed with minor skirmishes and conflicts. No War.
-
Cata we cooperated and worked together to stop a great foe.
-
MoP: Started with minor skirmishes, but then full on, joined forces to stop a greater foe.
-
WoD: Worked together all expac.
-
Legion: Worked Together
-
BfA: Full on Faction vs Faction War…Until the end, where we Join forces to stop the old god and Sylvanas.
-
Shadowlands: Full on work together all expac
-
Dragonflight: Full on work together so far.
The conflict between Horde and Alliance failed, because by and large the two factions have worked together in World of Warcraft more than they have really been in open conflict.
And in my opinion, the real stories of Alliance vs Horde Conflict and War are in the first two Warcraft RTS Games. Where the Horde come through the dark portal and are a clear invasion force looking to conquer. Which they do. They end up settling and creating their civilization on Azeroth. Almost everything since, is just skirmishing, with little open war between the two sides, Aside from 3/4 of BfA.
And even in BfA the Warfronts, Island Expeditions, the Battle of Dazar’Alor, and those airship events were the open conflicts. It almost felt like War, but there wasnt that feeling of two Nations bringing the full might of their militaries against each other.
I think, that if anything, we are just headed to no more faction barriers. The factions will exist as culture, but the two sides will be at peace.
12 Likes
Cuz the writers aren’t good at their job.
7 Likes
They skimped out on wotlk and made dks for everyone instead of dead paladins. They had the chance to separate the playerbase then and they chose the easy way out of rpg. Could argue the same about shaman and paladin, classic is pretty cool because of the dividing aspects between the factions and how a lot of disagreement stems from imbalances between the factions. Racials are a drop in the bucket compared to shaman vs. paladin.
An us vs. them mentality will never work as a narrative covering an entire world, starting with cata there should have been at least 3 factions instead of two. Undead could’ve broke off on their own, blood elves could’ve divided, night elves could have taken a step away to mend the lands, dwarves could’ve started mining for azurite (imagine if they had the forsight to add azurite deposits in cata), worgen could’ve been divided between night elves and the rest of the alliance.
Poor zone design as well, idk why they never had zone events before. Ashran as an example, they could’ve had an event like it in every zone in wod and it would’ve fit thematically.
1 Like
Hm, so why not dissolve both Horde and Alliance and all the races go their own way. We as the player can still group up and visit towns but for the most part all the races focus more on their own problems and such.
3 Likes
Nations don’t dissolve just because they’re not at war with each other.
8 Likes
I think the devs are too afraid to mix things up too much, or kick people out of a city they’ve been in with their friends for 20 years. I think an expansion where stormwind and orgrimmar legitimately get destroyed would be good for the game. Let it be rebuilt after in terms of what you’re saying, the playerbase can’t handle big change all at once, you need to destroy what they’re used to, make them realize its not a big deal, then handfeed them what it should’ve been
The faction conflict is the setting. Not the story.
1 Like
The Horde and Alliance are supranational military alliances, they’re not nations.
Think of EU or NATO.
1 Like
They’d jst have to rotate the wins out really.
Welcome to tabletop gaming. “Good guys” can lose. Man up, accept defeat and lets go to chapter 2 of this story.
Somedays the Space Marines of WH40K are triumphant. and other times…the Orcs gave dem humies a right propa stompin’.
See I slowly creep back to WH40k. The “good guys” lost years ago. and now its a crap storm. Okay, looks like we have a mess to clean up.
2 Likes
Isn’t the idea about WH40K that there are no good guys and everyone is just terrible?
3 Likes
Because it really felt forced after MoP.
WoD we were cool with each other to chase a fallen Horde leader.
Legion we kinda tensed up against each other over a misunderstanding at the beach plus the whole Genn Sylvannas thing.
BfA was just a big wtf. We put the space devil in forever timeout after he STABBED THE PLANET. Oh hey magic rocks, let’s kill each other for it.
SL was basically WoD 2 in terms of we were cool with each other to go after another fallen Horde leader.
2 Likes
The Alliance always HAS to win, though, and Blizzard knows it. The Alliance playerbase would show up with torches and pitchforks otherwise; they complain even when they’re constantly winning.
2 Likes
that’s war in general if the writing is done proper
I think part of it was blood elves. Blood elves encouraged a lot of alliance to switch to horde, and a lot of people realized they didn’t actually have that much faction pride if it meant the side they played had certain advantages in both PvE and PvP.