“Maybe this time it will be different.”
T. Deluded faction war fans.
Guarantee we’ll hear it again the next time Blizzard tries to jury-rig it it for a repeat tour yet agaon.
1 Like
I wonder how many times WoW suscriptions have to nose dive everytime the faction war is front and center befor Blizz learns their lesson?
SO FAR it looks like they took some lessons from BfA, considering how bad that expac was received, and appear to be slowly loosing the whole faction divide peacemeal.
I guess time will tell though if any lessons were actually learned from the last time they tried making the faction war the center of an expac
We’ve just been going through 2 expansions in a row of neutral narrative/faction cooperation against a greater threat
The first one (SL) was collectively dismissed as the uncontested worst story beat in the history of WoW, the second one (DF) is widely considered to be a let down when it comes to the writing, displaying basically the exact same weaknesses as SL actually (the other aspects of the expac have been pretty great)
In other words, people arguing that the undisputable narrative failure of BFA is evidence that faction conflict is an inherently bad writing trope should remain consistent with their own reasoning and argue that neutral narrative/faction cooperation is also a bad writing trope, since it has been closely associated with narrative failure. But… they can’t do that, because if we’re left without faction conflict AND faction cooperation, then what’s left for the writers to tell ?
Hence the correct opinion is actually that the reason why a narrative sucks is that it was badly written ; which means that all it takes for a faction conflict scenario to be good is to be well-written, not driven by intra-devs drama, writers malice, and Christie Golden
(note that I’m not necessarily talking about an all-out-war narrative, I’d be more than fine with a cold war-type of plot with faction rivalry going on as a core background element, as was the case in every expansion up until Legion)
6 Likes
The last time anyone actually like the faction conflict, that I recall and it’s been stated a few times, was in vanilla when it was just a background thing to justify open world pvp and the battlegrounds.
It should NEVER be the main narrative focus, and honestly, DF isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. I just think people generally don’t know what they actually want, so they complain about every expansion Blizz releases, regardless of how well recieved it may be by the general playing base
2 Likes
DF is not a good expansion storywise, and people have been pretty consistent in their post-SL story requests : return to Azeroth and discard the cosmic for a while, explore things they actually care about, make the narrative less big character-driven. DF has us returning to Azeroth but not to a part of Azeroth we are familiar with, and the cosmic focus remains to some extent ; nobody cares about Dragons, and the only DF beats so far that have really been drawing lore fans’ interest are the Orc Heritage questline and the Nelf stuff (so, racial lore) ; DF is completely big char-driven, and said big chars are not well-written. There is also a significant tone problem, as people have been massively pointing out.
DF storywise is a relief by virtue of not being SL and not actively damaging the setting. It isn’t exactly good though. The only genuinely good piece of storytelling so far has been the Blue Dragonflight stuff.
3 Likes
Except nobody’s pointing at solely BfA and saying “this is proof the faction conflict doesn’t work”. They’re pointing at MoP and Cata as well. Which totals every expansion where the faction war has been front and center.
But the same cannot be said for what you’re refering to as “neutral/faction conflict” content.
Legion is overall highly regarded.
Wrath is, for many people, peak WoW.
Burning Crusade… Some people really like it, and I think that’s weird, but you do you.
And even the faction-focused expansions? When people wax nostalgically, the group poetically discussing the faction war content are the minority. Those rose-tinted glasses people talking up MoP? It’s usually the Pandaria content, the Sha/Yshaarj lore, etc. When they talk up BfA? It’s more often for the Zandalar and Kul Tiras stuff, or Naz’jatar or god only knows why, Mechagon.
But your own mileage will vary, of course.
3 Likes
They did that with DF and returning to Azeroth, yet people complain, proving people often don’t know what they want from the story. I’m not saying DF was perfect or anything, but it is better than what we got from BfA and SL. It was a fun expansion with relatively low stakes, which was a nice change
That’s my opinion anyway
Ironically Wrath was an expansion with a pretty heavy faction war focus. Hell I’d argue it had an equal amount of faction warring as BfA if you take into account that BfA dropped it halfway through.
1 Like
People liked Wrath for Arthas/The Lich King, not the faction fighting
1 Like
Speak for yourself I liked both and so did a lot of people. It’s especially nice since they only gave us light taps with the guilt bat instead of brutalizing us with it like they did in later expansions.
And anyway it doesn’t matter because it proves that the faction war can have a strong presence without hurting the story
1 Like
I dunno, I remember a lot of people being unhappy with the horde betraying the alliance at the broken front and how the battle for UC went
Not saying people didn’t like the faction war back than, I’m sure there are people who did, it’s just most people remember Wrath fondly because of Arthas is all
3 Likes
I’ve heard this a couple times, and I’m sorry but I just do not see it.
You have the aftermath of the Wrathgate, really just the attack on Undercity, then some nonesense in Icecrown (the zone). Then a single encounter in the least loved raid of the expansion, and a boat fight in ICC.
Yogg-Saron/Old God Crap had more of a presence. Titan keepers had more of a presence. Both are brought up in multiple zones, even being the main focus of Storm Peaks, and an entire raid is dedicated to that storyline.
Frost Trolls have more of a presence, with an entire zone and two dungeons. Vrykul are the same.
The beginnings of a faction war are certainly there, but I really think the nostalgia goggles are making it appear more prominent than it really was.
Compared with BfA? You’ve gotta be joking if you think there’s any comparison. The entire 8.0-8.2.5 campaign revolves around the faction war. The pre-patch too. A full raid revolves around it. The sole reason we end up in Naz’jatar is because of it. Numerous cinematics, half of the world events, it’s all about that HvA action.
I could see a compelling argument that Wrath’s faction fighting is similar in focus to Cata’s, but not so much with BfA. The faction fighting might have been dropped for the very last patch, but it dominated the rest handedly.
2 Likes
I agree I’d even argue that was the first big mistake with the faction war because Varian became the first unambiguous aggressor (motivations are irrelevant). I liked it at the time because it cracked the Alliance’s good guy facade.
But it set a very bad precedent and the negative response from the fans would result in the first instance in a depressingly long streak of Metzen taking away the wrong lesson from his failures.
3 Likes
I’m not at my computer rn so I’m gonna have to put a pin in this because I want to respond to this later with the elaboration you deserve since I’m actually starting to respect you.
2 Likes
Except the only expansion among those that fits my definition of “neutral expansion” is Legion (which I for one find to be quite overrated by the way but that’s another subject). The other two, ESPECIALLY Wrath, have strong faction presence and use faction rivalry as a core narrative design tool. Factions compete with each other over new ressources and regional allies, leading to occasional skirmishes. That’s what I mean by faction conflict :
Those are inseparable from the faction war context though.
They didn’t, I explained why in my post, but feel free to disagree
Oh I’m really, really skeptical about this. What made everyone fall in love with Wrath was the overall setting. At the end of the day, the Lich King-centered MSQ was… rather weak, and full of plot holes.
Thats fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions after all and it’s okay to feel differently about any particular expansion. We all have things we enjoy about WoW that others dislike or hate 
4 Likes
Tbh I think it was also a lot of playerbase generated faction-war. I feel like world pvp was more active back then and heated arguments about who was in the right/wrong. Then cata came and escalated it to 1000.
I mean, if you’re going to make the definition of neutral so arbitrary that Wrath, focused primarily on Arthas and secondarily on Yogg-Saron, doesn’t qualify, then I suppose we’ve never had even a single neutral expansion.
Legion had Stormheim after all, so that must be disqualified along with TBC (for no reason offered).
WoD would obviously also need to be disqualified, given Ashram exists. I’m fine with that, we can absolutely call that a faction war expansion if you want.
Shadowlands should also arbitrarily be added to the list; Sylvanas is a major focus, Anduin is a major focus, and it’s absolutely the epilogue to BfA’s faction war.
Your very arbitrary definition makes every single expansion faction war-focused except for Dragonflight.
I cannot have a discussion with someone who will apply uneven arbitrary qualifiers to their argument, so I suppose we are done. Unless we’re going to be actually reasonable here.
4 Likes
Okay this is the part I got to disagree with. Full of plot holes, sure. It’s Blizzard writing, the plot being so riddled with holes that it looks like swiss cheese is par for the course.
But I won’t tolerate people calling it weak. Arthas was such a delightful ham that I didn’t even mind him being a helicopter villain because he was so much fun to watch monologue. Honestly cartoonishly edgy characters who know their evil and love it are the best Warcraft villains imo.
Too many newer villains have these half-baked “””complex””” narratives or have a tragic lack of ham. Gul’dan, Ragnaros and Arthas were all oozing edge and ham and that’s what made them memorable.
Fyrakk had a bit of that but he overplayed his part imo.
6 Likes
“Edge”? I’m sorry, but what now? How are any of those three “edgy” exactly? The only thing edgy about Ragnaros and Arthas is that you could probably nick yourself on them and the only thing edgy about Gul’dan is the now non-canon breeding experiment that made Garona and all the skulls he has on his outfit.
1 Like