Why would Blizzard remove an iconic element of their franchise?
A couple of guesses.
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The playerbase is dwindling and the removal of faction barriers helps multiplayer gameplay. (Raiding, Arena, etc.)
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They can spend less time creating two different paths of content. No need to have two different storylines for each future zone. Just create one leveling experience and put that saved time/resources towards max-level content.
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Idfk. But the Horde’s Warchief position is gone, the Forsaken are about to be led by Alliance characters, the Alliance has virtually no warhawks left, Sylvanas is the narrative scapegoat for near all of the faction animosity, and World Peace seems to be the celebrated message of the expansion. This doesn’t look promising for anyone that wanted a narrative built around moral parity but a conflict of interest between two culturally/aesthetically differing factions.
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Yaggy I love and miss you but the forsaken where always lead by a alliance character, why do you keep believing her lies?
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Sylvanas never was Alliance. She was introduced as a neutral character as the High Elves were not in the Alliance during the Third War.
We have a roster of good forsaken characters like Belmont and Hercular we could draw from that fit the the forsaken forcing Calia who abandoned her people living and dead for over a decade is not a good idea.
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High elves where alliance, you literally had high elf units in wc3
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Individuals not the government. The High Elves as a faction left the Alliance those that remained were not there in any official capacity.
Sylvanas was not Alliance her loyalty was to Silvermoon.
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weird that they did that campagin with that racist human then
Tyrande calls the Horde a “rapid dog” that needs to be put down, and Greymane agreed. Tyrande’s focus on on Sylvanas, but she still doesn’t favour peace with the Horde.
I dunno, the fact they are even putting any thought into the Horde’s leadership makes me think the Horde is settling down for the future.
I’m actually less convinced factions are being erased now, than I was before 8.1.5
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Not High Elves, Blood Elves a different political faction Sylvanas was never a Blood Elf. Also Blood Elves were not even officially an Alliance member.
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yeah forsaken are ltierally former alliance, can calia is literally there former queen, she fits
Calia was never their queen she abandoned the kingdom and people both living and undead.
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abandoned lol, you cant abandon that which is dead.
I sure hope it’s on its way out!
I’ve been imagining my own characters as faction neutral for YEARS! It seems like an interesting move, too. Not just personally – but in a narrative sense. I’d love PvP to be refocused in a new way.
Perhaps multiple factions, not just two; keeping world PvP to more focused, objective-based zones or events. Like warfronts mixed with zone assaults/invasions/incursions.
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They have trouble trying to keep two factions balanced, I can’t imagine having to balance out even more.
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If it were on a smaller scale for limited periods of time instead of being bound to the life of a character, that might be fun and require less balancing. Perhaps instead of grinding rep via World Quests, you fight in a zone in the name of that faction and gain the rep rewards.
Like mercenary mode kicked into high gear. Haha.
Not that I’m a systems designer. I just know I’d prefer being an independent adventurer to a soldier and like the idea of freely signing up with a faction because my character agrees with their philosophy and mission.
I can’t help but wonder if the Order Hall narratives in Legion were early attempts at dipping our toes into those waters.
I’d put money that the next expansion will severely loosen the faction barriers, especially for instanced content.
Factions aren’t going anywhere. We’re not merging factions. We’re simply cordial with each other now.
We will still have world PvP that’s HvA. No, humans can’t go into Org and Orcs can’t go into SW. All content up to and including BFA will still be locked to specific factions (like quests, flight paths, mounts, etc.)
But all new stuff will be faction-neutral. Probably grouping/guilding will be allowed between H&A. It just makes too much sense, especially with the narrative now. They only have to create one narrative. They no longer have to design around the silly equal faction balancing, if they create a Horde mount, there has to be an Alliance one. If an Alliance leader dies, a Horde one has to die too. If Darnassus is burned, Undercity has to be lost.
They already got rid of class-specific armor. Now, they’d just have to create one armor set for the two factions instead of having to design two in some instances (such as how the warfront sets were faction unique).
This would solve the massive high-end content population disparity, seeing how high end raiding guilds would just be neutral now instead of Horde dominated. This would solve the Horde’s comparatively long BG queues if it’s just Redv.Blue instead of HvA.
PvP action is just written as skirmishes between the two factions, not full-out war.
I’m telling ya, this is gonna happen for the next expansion.
It’s going to be really good mechanically, but the lore will be messed up more than ever.
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In which ways will the lore be messed up, specifically?
I could only see this happening as an epic questline per character to cut ties with your faction.
Logistically revamping every quest to be unfaction specific would be a nightmare and kill story lore while leveling. It wouldn’t make sense for a night elf to be aiding the Warsong Clan kill elves in Ashenvale for lumber.
A max level quest per character could fix it.
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Well after both the human lands and the elf lands were destroyed by the scourge, i’m sure Kael’thas knew that he had to re-establish old alliances so both parties can survive. Although it is kinda funny how the alliance would be led by someone who would rather see elves become part of the scourge then fight alongside them. Old hatred die hard.
But anyway, the High elves were not part of the alliance during WC3. The alliance more or less broke up after the second war.
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From a gameplay standpoint they should prolly do away with factions (though Id hate this as a pvper, id have to go human, as its the best racial for pvp), they should probably keep it from a story standpoint, just my thought though.