I’m afraid I didn’t. The connection you’re trying to draw I don’t feel is established and hence I don’t see how it relates. Maybe this ties in to the overall concern over wokeness that you were discussing in the other thread, but as I indicated there, I don’t think that’s the matter here, so I’m not seeing the same connections that you are.
This however is on point.
Its also when Blizz stopped really trying to be nuanced in those faction conflict stories either. Cata is truly where you start seeing that shift, of using the Horde Faction as a Plot Device to help set the foundation for future content/villains; and where the Alliance started seeing “the purity test” really manifesting.
Resulting in what we have today. The Horde, a Forced Proactive Force lacking in Motives to do anything its been tasked to do. And the Alliance, a Passive Reactive Force, that’s heavily restricted in even how its allowed to react due to that artificial purity test Blizz maintains. A Faction players primarily chose to be Heroes, and are instead Villains. And a Faction players primarily chose to be Heroes, and instead are Victims. Wut is this?!
Audience expectations can suck it, WoW was a sequel to 3 and started with retcons large enough to drive a supertanker through to enforce a 2-faction dichotomy
It also sold three times the copies of its predecessor at a time when video games didn’t have the audience that they did now. Warcraft 3 itself sold 3 million copies, WoW would go on to peak at 11 million subscribers while enjoying global notoriety.
The larger the ship gets, the harder it is to turn.
And cata to BFA has been bleeding subscribers like nothing else, with the only expansion that brought things back being Legion
The point of 3 was to go against the expectations of 1-2
My point is just that the audience and the potential audience is much larger. You have a lot more minds to change, which makes it a harder task.
Technically not really, your average player doesn’t really stick with any MMO for long periods of time. They will often stick around to do content they find interesting and than leave.
The only minds a company really has to change is the long term veterans, the ones who tend to stay regardless of how Bad a particular patch or expansion is. 
To a point - and the thing I would bring up regarding the average player is that the cycle you’re referring to is a) different depending on geographic region, and b) in many cases the direct result of Blizzard’s recent design as opposed to a phenomenon that happens anyway. There is almost necessarily a trough between big content releases, but the level between each side of the trough as well as the severity of it is something that good game design can influence.
Veterans also only stay to a point. Everyone has an inflection point at which they throw their hands up and give up, and that’s different for everyone. Incrementally bad game design causes more people to have those inflection points crossed, at which point they leave the game.
The final point I would raise is that there isn’t just one inflection point. Blizzard derives a great deal of its revenue from Microtransactions, which are influenced by many of the same factors. It isn’t just that a smaller base of people are less capable of making those purchases, but the existing population may be less willing if the game isn’t good.
was reminded just now of this interview
July 2020, just days before Beta was launched, promised
Here we are 7 months into 9.0 and with all of 9.1 on the PTR (to be released likely June/July) with neither promise being met. And in fact, other than one (1) intro quest and two (2) Bolvar quests, Baine has played zero role in 9.0 and isn’t playing a role (not even VA lines) in 9.1; and Baine is the only of the three who didn’t help us when rescuing him (Thrall zapped his captors, Jaina froze the guy)
This is, in my opinion, one of the things that keeps WoW relevant, and is generally done better than SWTORs Republic v Empire faction conflict; one of the only other MMOs that has managed to maintain interest for very long (and still not as long as WoW). In that I mean the faction allegiance tends to be pretty strong among people who are otherwise not all that familiar with other aspects of the lore and aren’t min/max driven.
This is not limited to the Horde players. There are die-hard Alliance players who want Tyrande and Genn to lead a take no prisoners campaign against the entire horde, extracting reparations via blood.
And there are schizophrenics like myself who shift their zealous faction pride depending on the characters they feel like playing on a given week.
I could see them shifting away from an original plan to have more development for the orginal characters we helped in the Maw intro, but I think it would be pretty shortsighted to believe that they didn’t have plans to go further with every major character from the intro.
I’m sure they had planned on it at some point until they noticed that Cairne didn’t fit any of the zones they had planned.
They likely consider the Tauren Heritage armor quest as the resolution for this and called it a day. What a disappointment most of those have been. Gnomes, Worgen, Tauren, and Goblins got shafted hard.
Tauren Heritage Armor came out a while ago, well before this interview lol
Sigh … we’ll have to just wait and see. But Baine’s stories tend to be the first to end up on the cutting room floor over the years. In part, because his value as a character is more located in being an accessory for Anduin than an actual character himself. That being said, I truly did not expect him to have much a role in the Maw or Torghast. So him not having a presence in 9.1 does not surprise me that much.
Does anyone actually identify with the factions?
I mean blizzards writing makes that script about the powerpuff girls look like The greatest written thing in the universe.
You broke my heart, how can you leave Rommath out of consideration? He IS the Grand Magister, ergo THE most powerful Belf mage. And the few times he has appeared in-game he got VERY good development (how many characters in this game have their “adversary” -in Rommath´s case this is Umbric- aknowledging they were wrong and the adversary as right? Not many…). Also Rommath has a silly dialogue literally mocking Jaina, sooooo…
Hehehe… Have you read “Blood of the Highborne”? Cause the “good cop” between him and Rommath IS Astalor (our dear Grand Magister is the sinister one of the two, but we don´t care cause he´s one of the few elf characters that retains a functional brain and we can brag about this thanks to stuff like the Velf scenario).
Astalor development is VERY connected with the “Blood Knights” faction, so I´d say actually he has a waaay more vanilla presence in-game thn Rommath.
He was passively present in Talador back in WoD, and it was his apprentice (who he fired using “elf” language) the one related to the shady stuff.
I´m confused, you suggested that because the Highborne lost their knowledge?
That´s a price I´d be willing to pay if this means the entire cast of writer Pet characters / self inserts (Anduin et al) basically disappear from the story.
But that´s just me.
Orc and Human players might.
For me, the Alliance and Horde lost their appeal after Warcraft 2. In WC3, I was a big fan of Nelves and Undead, and that has continued into WoW.
I barely identify with any subfaction or race tbh.
I used to like the horde up until Cata. I tried treating that and the faction side of MoP as a once-off thing, but I still liked the idea of it even if it seemed like little was happening to show off the whole “good monster” thing in a way I wanted. After BFA, meh.
I know it’s probably super stupid to get into “faction identity” and all that but I never really got attached to the race I main so as far as story immersion goes, the parts of the faction concept was all I really had to keep my interest red-side. I think that’s why I find the concept of in-game racial / cultural attachment somewhat alien to me.