I would really like to see Blizzard introduce a third faction as a result of the internal power struggle within the horde. This third faction should probably consist of the undead and blood elves and maybe the nightborne. The blood elves mainly joined the horde because of Sylvanas and if she leaves then so do they. The nightborne are allied to the blood elves primarily and would probably leave the horde with them. This might solve the horde’s high population problems and would kind of be a nod to the idea of horde players being able to fight against each other in pvp.
Eventually, I’d like to see the naga and the broken draenai join the new faction to make it similar in composition to Illidans forces in outland plus the undead. The faction identity should revolve around obtaining power and ensuring their own survival. I also think the undead would provide the faction RnD similar to what the gnomes and goblins provide for their respective factions.
The Garrosh storyline has been done and sometimes people just want to roleplay as the bad guys in a game. It’d be so much better for Sylvanas to leave the horde than being corrupted/killed off within the story. The horde is almost always being forced to become good in the end and kinda fails as the bad guy option.
But, there are quite a number of issues that would have to be resolved first:
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There are only two races with the demon hunter class. A third race with ties to Illidan would have become capable of choosing demon hunter. The lore could possibly be tweaked to include fel orcs from Hellfire Peninsula/Tanaan Jungle into the horde. The fel orcs from Tanaan Jungle are very similar in appearance to vengeance demon hunters in my opinion. Another idea might be to include the broken draenai as part of the horde.
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Alliance having more races than the other two factions. Blizzard would need to introduce more races for the other factions to balance out the options which might mean the Alliance would get less attention. There are already alliance threads complaining about horde favoritism and it’d probably get worse.
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Balancing Racials. The new faction won’t have as many good damaging racials for raiding and the horde would lose their utility racials. This could be fixed with the introduction of new races to restore the lost racials with similarly functioning ones.
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Achievements and other rewards. Most Achievements that concern the horde before the split would have to be duplicated for the new faction. Horde mounts/pets and transmog would have to be shared with the new faction. It makes sense to keep reminders that the new faction was once a part of the horde and all new content could then focus on becoming different.
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The horde and alliance brand. Blizzard has spent many years advertising WoW through the faction conflict. Adding a third faction might not work with the same red vs blue advertising. At the same time, a third faction might breathe new life into the game and entice old players to play WoW again.
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Resources and time investment. It might be too taxing for blizzard to maintain three factions with patch 8.1 apparently being the real start to BfA. On the other hand, legion was jam-packed full of content and was largely a success.
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I won’t argue with your detailed, well-thought-out reasons. I’ll just add this:
During the time WoW was being created (2002-2004) one of the top 3 MMOs had 3 factions. That was DAOC. WoW copied many good features from DAOC, while avoiding DAOC’s biggest problems. One thing WoW avoided was “too many races, too many classes”. Another thing WoW avoided was “player housing”. A 3d thing was “three factions”.
DAOC had British, Irish and Norse factions, and a good variety of PVP options. Problem? On every server, only 2% to 5% was Norse. Faction balance is not something the game designers can control, and few people chose Norse for all their gameplay.
With just 2, WoW has a problem with WPvP faction balance on some servers. And WoW has another problem: 14 years of two factions. How many years would it take for a 3d faction (even if it was popular) to catch up and have just as many players? 6 years? 12 years?
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Hey, now a third group of dudes tagged mobs so I can’t kill them!
No thanks.
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The Horde would collapse as a faction if they didn’t have elves.
From a story perspective, I think it would be fantastic to see something like a third faction.
A lot of the story lately has revolved around internal conflicts within faction leadership, so it certainly wouldn’t be out of place, thematically.
But from a gameplay perspective? Treacherous.
I think the best option for a third faction is an outlaw / pirate faction that any race could join… not accepted by either Horde or Alliance, this band of outlaws (with their pirate island main city) offer their services to Horde and Alliance alike as mercenaries, but remain loyal to no one…
I don’t see either the blood elves or the nightborne joining the forsaken in this scenario. Valtrois has already expressed unhappiness with what Sylvanas is doing, and I believe Lor’themar will only do what’s best for his people. Sticking with the dead bois doesn’t seem like something he’d do.
Pretty sure if the forsaken leave, they’re on their own, save for maybe some defectors of each race.
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I would love to see a 3rd ‘undead’ faction providing true evil option, but its unlikely to happen simply because it would break up existing guilds and groups. They would have to provide free faction/race changes to anyone with a race that is defecting. Its the same reason we will probably never see a race defect to the other faction. They would also have to make changes to pvp and the queue time for instances would be longer for everyone. Its a cool idea, just probably impractical without an overhaul to how the LFG works.
So the OP would like to weaken the horde so his/her alliance would feel stronger. Get over it. Horde wins! The Alliance was always going to lose. Just sit back and wait until you are all undead and working for the Horde!
#HailTheBansheeQueen
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Sounds like the next season of Game of Thrones.
A third faction is bad because we’re already split. Separating the player base even further through the means of a third faction would only lengthen queue times and make finding people for teams more difficult, especially in WoW at the moment which isn’t in the best state it could be. A third faction might have been possible during WoW’s peak performance. But right now? Not even both factions can sustain the want for high content. Alliance, in particular, is suffering in the content field of things.
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Elves vs Ocs(and their cows and trolls) vs Undead vs Humans(and smaller humans, and even smaller humans) their dogs, and their hooved /waggle mounts.
There’s your 3 Factions.
I don’t see it. For one, as others pointed out, lorewise the Nightborne already don’t trust Sylvanas, and although the Blood Elves partly joined because of her involvement, it was also because of the vehement racism against them during the Third War when they were imprisoned and scheduled to be executed because they managed to survive a suicide mission because of the help of the Naga.
Also, 95% of the game world is based around two factions. There are some neutral settlements, but literally nowhere on Azeroth, Outland, Draenor or any of the subzones would there existence a haven for any sort of third faction. Adding bases, hubs, capitals and such would be on-par with the Cataclysm revamp, which cost the game a raid tier and a real end to the story that wasn’t “oh, I guess it really was the dragon all along.” Undercity is even gone, so the Forsaken have nowhere to go but the Horde.
Overall, it’s an interesting concept, but after 14 years, that ship has long since sailed off the edge of the Maelstrom. We’ve got two factions, some balancing issues aside, and they’d either have to wholesale add a third in order to give them any desirability, or gut parts of the existing factions at the relative drop of a hat in order to make it fly. What if you were an Undead or Blood Elf that liked being Horde? I guess you’re just out of luck, then. People would be livid and quit.
Gimmie an undead faction and let me be a fleshy Forsaken.
There will probably never be a third faction. From a logistics point it’s a bit of a nightmare. Think about the playerbase probably being in decline, and then splitting them up yet again. We already have events in game which force players to play at certain times of the day so that we will feel like the world isn’t empty, this would split it up even more.
I think there are better arguments to be made about there eventually only being one faction rather than two or three.
Can’t happen. They won’t force players to move to a third faction. Also, Blizzard can’t even manage two factions without blatantly favoring one (Horde).
Oh, how’s that 30% buff and free gear?
I don’t play this game anymore. I’m posting here hoping for change until February when my time expires.
Perhaps if you weren’t Undergeared you’d have a different opinion.
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