I don’t know anyone who was happy with how the faction wars turned out, on either side. The horde looses but has to get their crimes swept away so they can exist as a faction and the alliance gets to look like idiots who never get revenge for the hordes crimes.
It’s a loose loose narrative for everyone involved
I always felt like I was taking crazy pills when I saw people excited for the faction war in the BfA buildup, because it was garbage back during Cata-MoP too. I remember how much the forums hated it then, but for some reason it felt like I was the only one who remembered that. The excitement people had for a second round never made sense to me.
And I was right, it was just as awful in BfA as it had been in MoP. Even worse, in fact.
The faction war cannot be done well. Never has, never will.
The faction war not only pits half the of the playerbase against each other, It actively damaged characters along the way to bend them into shape into pressing them into the war effort. It was a travesty that cannot simply be handwaved away, it happened and we’re stuck with it.
Conflict can take many forms, but the faction war has been a direct net negative on the whole of the franchise when it was appllied to the MMO. When it was player-directed in the background it was fine, but once it lept to the foreground it becames a soul-sucking growth that bent the game into something unrecognizeable.
Could it be good? Maybe, if this wasn’t a two-faction MMO where players had any agency in fighting for causes they believed in and not suddenly strung along
I was willing to entertain it for a moment because it showed the Alliance as the Agressors and Sylvanas being a “For the Horde” style character, which to me pointed at them maybe shaking things up with the usual faction war narrative and also Sylvanas Character development.
How quickly those were dashed when they were like "Oh, but did anyone ask why the Aliance was invading to start with? 
" and I sighed the deepest sigh knowing the old habits had once more emerged
I feel like people were hyped for BFA because there was a sort of assumption that the writers may have learned from their mistakes from Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, and were ready to tell a more nuanced and well… “morally grey” faction war story with valid points on both sides.
Instead, WE learned that the writers have not just learned nothing, but that the writers room is just complete chaos at best, and outright full of malice at worst.
I do think there were parts that were objectively enjoyable in Cata and MoP. They were enjoyable for the game play reasons, however, and not so much the narrative. Landfall (5.1) where we had the Vol’jin quests and Dominance Point vs Lion Landing up and down Kasarang was so much fun back on Emerald Dream, and Im sure other PvP servers too. 5.2, Isle of Thunder, was equally as fun as 5.1 between the Kirin’tor and Sunreavers in those split PvP/PvE quests. Tol Barad was fun (again, on the PvP and RR-PvP servers at least) continuing the very popular Wintergrasp games. Twilight Highlands also had some fun WPvP shenanigans do down between the Wild Hammer and Dragonmaw. People who still played enjoyed these aspects of the expansions, almost regardless of the narratives involved.
So its these experiences and memories that people mostly fall back on when they hear ‘faction war’ that perhaps will be revived when it happens. I know I’m someone who wishes for these gameplay aspects to come back. They don’t think of the narrative destruction that it all brought. You could even forgive Cata/MoP for Blizzard trying to be creative or test new stories in a MMO (excluding all of the leadership issues to say the least) that clearly didn’t hit the mark. BFA, however, was just an absolute failure as we all know. Coming off of ‘everyone is kinda friends’ Legion, it was the 180 we all know that followed into even worse Shadowlands. The content wasn’t even fun with Azerite and eventually Corrupted armor, finding BIS pieces with RNG Azerite traits, farming for your neck, having to choose bis Covenant abilities that could just be jarring to your own personal fantasy or having to switch covenants completely because one thing or another got buffed/nerfed. I’d even throw artifact weapons in there for the first year or so of Legion. The most fun faction war stuff in Legion was Stormhiem and if they just kept with that pattern (1 ‘faction war’ zone per expac) plus some fun side things to do, the faction war story, feel, or expectation could slowly be rehabilitated, but they’d need to be very self conscious and carefully developed choices.
As an aside, I’d argue War Mode also greatly diminished how people feel about and experience the faction war, be it large scale expansion sized or smaller zone isolated events, despite its intention of increasing PvP participation and feeling of faction conflict but thats an argument for a different day.
The faction war is the Warcraft franchise. It’s what makes Warcraft Warcraft instead of just another D&D clone. Without it this game’s world is very bland; and foreign to what Warcraft was built on.
The narrative has suffered much more without the factions in it. Shadowlands and Dragonflight are without a doubt the worst narratives this franchise has ever had, and with TWW continuing this factionless garbage is going to ensure the narrative continues to fail. WoW needs the faction war to exist in the setting for this world to feel like Warcraft.
Nobody has to lose if the war never ends.
Agree with everything you said here.
I’m never against Blizz experimenting but the faction conflict being a forefront role for Warcraft was tried and has since failed.
Brings nothing but inter-conflict within the community and removes player agency through its outdated gameplay application.
As you said, it’s a net negative.
I mean, not really.
The ‘Alliance’ didn’t even exist until War2, and the Alliance we play as didn’t exist until WoW. War3 wasn’t about the faction conflict and that was quintessential Warcraft for most people. Warcraft has never been solely the faction war, and I’d argue that it isn’t even essential to Warcraft in the way many people think it is.
Warcraft has always been a D&D-styled world, it borrows tons from it, the faction conflict doesn’t remove any similarity nor does it differentiate it in any meaningful way.
The faction conflict has only ever been a tool for merchandising and marketing, beyond that it’s made for worst Warcraft stories.
If the war never ends everyone loses.
Over and over and over again.
With nothing but shallow victories in-between.
Every single time the Faction War was front and center, the game suffered a noticeable dip in subscribers. Which should tell you that it’s not as popular as the minority wants people to think it is.
Honearly i enjoyed Battle for Azeroth a lot. I enjoy the faction war- and it particularly is fun roleplaywise.
I do think it wouldve benefited if the entire expansion was faction war instead of turning to Old gods half way through.
You think D&D doesn’t have wars between humans and orcs?
Counterpoint: Legion didn’t have any more faction stuff than SL/DF, and it’s one of the most popular expansions ever.
I don’t mind there being some faction conflict stuff in a given expansion, especially to fuel PVP. It’s when the faction conflict becomes the main storyline that we start to run into trouble.
I agree that BfA felt disjointed because it was trying to be three things at once—a South Seas expansion, a Faction War expansion, and an Old Gods expansion. But I personally was getting Faction War Fatigue and was grateful for the opportunity to do something else by the time the Old God stuff came in. (Also, I could be wrong, but didn’t we get incursions in the same patch? So there was still faction stuff happening.)
I would say that’s a bit of an exaggeration.
I started Legion and played through the Suramar story on a Night Elf Druid. I remember killing shipwrecked Forsaken in Azuna. And the stuff in Stormheim.
Legion had an appreciable amount of Faction Conflict in the Lore for an Expansion where we work together.
DF and SL are in a different league.
Stormheim is like the most talked about zone in Legion with the cinematic with how it ended. People were pretty divided over how that zone went.
The faction stuff in Legion wasn’t terrible mainly because it didn’t feel like blizz was trying to force feed it you and than insist you like it
Someone should have told Chris Metzen this before he shoveled as much Forgotten Realms as he could into a Comic Crossover Summer Event plot sandwich to come up with Warcraft 3.
I’m not unsympathetic, really. I think there is a case to be made that the trajectory of WC3-WOW onwards is essentially really bad Forgotten Realms (and I am not an FR fan in the first place) and shouldn’t have happened. But it did. And we’re all stuck with the narrative, and more importantly, social consequences.
And anyone who supports the ongoing existence of faction war because they think it will give the Horde and its cultures any meaningful narrative spotlight separate from the Alliance hasn’t learned lessons from the reality of how the game has been written, or noticed how challenging hard faction divide storylines have proved for other MMOs.
People get “hyped” for faction war easily; that’s the benefit of selling a dichotomous narrative in ANYTHING. It’s extremely easy to tap into and unleash the tiger. But once the tiger is free, you quickly realize your ability to direct it without a leash or a cage is minimal. In single perspective narratives, dichotomy leads to exhaustion; everything else tastes bland. It’s hard to continue the story after that. In dual perspective narratives, someone has to lose or nothing of consequence has happened. Hyping Faction War and getting surprised when it sucks is like getting hyped for Open World and then getting surprised you got an Ubisoft / Bethesda checklist; do people think that happens because no one wants to do anything but a checklist open world, or because it’s actually really freaking hard to deliver and the seductively exciting concept is quite misleading?
Also, it’s kind of exhausting to see “reasonable observations about the success of story concepts” called “gaslighting”. It’s a term about abuse, ffs. I know hyperbole is cool and all, but you’re not being gaslit when someone has a different perception of an extremely huge community.
We deserve a true Black Empire expansion.
“All wars are Popular for the first 30 days”
I think there can be good meat in dissecting and examining and unpacking a lot of the damage the faction stuff has caused. But anything that pits player against player that’s decided by the GM (Writers) is something to be avoided at all costs.
The Horde and Alliance friction worked best when it was player-voluntary. When it’s you vs that rogue who kept ganking you, it’s personal and it’s involved. It’s a real grudge to settle. When you have to sit in on the third Dictator Deciding that a faction you personally ahve no qualms against has to explode for (insert reason here) it’s exhaustion-inducing.
People are sick of being prescribed a cause they don’t care about and it having explosive consequences on the fictional world they live in.
For me, the Wrath - Cata - MoP AvH works because of the escalation. Wrath planted the seeds with the Wrathgate, the Battle for the Undercity and the Broken Front incident. Cata expended it by making it a war of resources in the newly changed world. This spews into total war in MoP. With the Horde wanting to take control of this newly discovered continent by any means necessary. Even if means resurrecting an Old God.
In contrast the faction conflict in BFA only had Legion as the build up and it was just a continuation of the Gilneas vs Forsaken conflict from Cata. You did have Azerite, so once again it was a war for resources but Azerite played such a minor role in the overall conflict. To the point that having naval supremacy was the main focus of BFA. Given that the leveling content was about bringing Kul Tiras and Zandalar into the Alliance and Horde respectively. Along with the Battle for Dazar’alor’s primary objective was to cripple the Zandalari’s Golden Fleet from the Alliances PoV.
I still reckon BFA should have ended with Eternal Palace. Have N’zoth being released as a cliffhanger. Much like Sargeras’ sword was one at the end of Legion.
Then 8.3 can serve as the pre-patch experience. Keep the whole ‘use the re-origination device to destroy N’zoth’ plot line. Given that it was set up in Uldir with G’huun and a more localized version. Ny’alotha is the expansion setting. With a section of the grand city being dedicated to each of the Old Gods. So one for C’thun, one for Yogg and even one for Y’shaarj. With each end of raid boss being those Old Gods as well. With N’zoth serving as the final boss.
While that is going on, Sylvanas does her thing so when we return, we find the scourge running amuck. Only for their attacks to become more coordinated.
Wrath - Cata - MoP works as an Alliance story or an outside observer. As a 6 year played narrative for someone who joined the Horde, you’re either:
That’s some pretty backwards logic if I’ve ever seen it. What you’re saying hinges on the prerequisite that the storyline we got was the one that we asked for and were promised and the thread you are currently in disproves both.
What makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills is all these people like you who think Cata-MoP is the only way to write a faction war and therefore the very concept is poison. How can you all be such inside-the-box thinkers? It drives me I-N-S-A-N-E!
You speak as if people at the time wouldn’t have agreed that Cata-MoP sucked. The fact that it sucked was the exact reason why people were hyped for BfA. It was supposed to take it in a better direction, not retread old ground. This is why fears of “Garrosh 2.0” were flying around everywhere because no one wanted to do that twice.
You could say the exact same thing about our ongoing conflicts with the old gods. But I don’t see you complaining about that.
While you’re right that the faction conflict story CAN be done well, Blizzard has shown twice that they not only can’t do it. The last effort was so hilariously, incompetently handled that it feels like a joke whose punchline we never got to see, and so nobody trusts them to take a third swing at it, because why should we? Blizzard has shown they aren’t able to write the story in a way that doesn’t piss off most of the players that actually care about the story, so let’s let this aspect of the story die instead of taking the risk of finding how they could do it worse.