Basically Streamers who PvP i think are more popular then ones who do PvE content. Blizzard want’s to turn WoW into an esport (Or at least make PvP more engaging to watch) this is likely the reason for the GCD being made so prominent. They wont WoW to be a streamer game and since many streamers pvp they are trying to make the setting more pvp friendly.
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As it stands the only two WoW eports that have official support are arenas and mythic dungeons, neither of which are tied to the faction conflict in any way. The biggest un-official WoW eport would probably be the Mythic world first races, which also aren’t related to the faction conflict.
In fact I’d go as far as to argue that the faction conflict is actively detrimental to WoW having success as an esport since it creates an artificial dividing line in the community instead of just allowing players to freely group together based on skill level.
If anything, I think it would help the epsorts side of things if battlegrounds get nominally turned into war exercises and World PvP is based on factions other than the Horde and Alliance with a robust mercenary mode.
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I didnt play guild wars enough to actually know their lore. The first dragon age final goal was to kill a dragon!
And yet the elder scrolls is basically like a mythic item that permeates the story, usually popping up at a very important plot junction. In WoW case, the faction conflict is much the same. It is relegated to the background at times but it was always going to be important.
As for the starcraft thing, I doubt it was meant to be taken too literally and considering it was a modified name from Warcraft still reflected partially on what warcraft was, a war based RTS but this you do it in space/across the stars!
That is only half true, ultimately when Blizzard decided to split the player base between the Alliance/Horde it was them saying “hey let us stick to our WC1-2 roots”. And even if it was only based on Warcraft 3, Warcraft 3 had the faction conflict as a pivotal plot point in many portions of the game! One could argue that starting from the destruction of Theramore to the end of Legion WoW more or less followed the same overall arch as Warcraft 1-3.
Blizzard is hardly known for making logical decisions
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Didn’t Blizzard already try to turn Arenas into an Esport and get laughed out of the line-up so badly that they ended up buying MLG and forcing them to broadcast arena matches? That said, pro’s and streamers should be very careful signing on to play seeing what happened to HotS and the fact that WoW is on life support.
And small wonder they want to prop WoW’s story up with a PvP storyline. They clearly don’t have the chops for good writing, and dumbing it down to Red vs Blue and hoping the players are slow-witted enough to only care about sticking it to the other side that they don’t notice the repeats and thrive off the toxicity.
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WoW is hardly on life support, the fact is we are getting content at a steady pace. In fact a quick check of activision blizz last quarterly report states they will increase the number of developer working on the game.
Lets start with the fact Blizzard has planned to do this long in advance, clearly BFA was planned since at least pre-Legion. Second, yes there is always going to be a certain amount of toxicity with regards to splitting your playerbase and having them compete with each other. Of course, the flip side is it makes people more invested in the story, for good or ill.
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You mean the part where Realmpop has the US and EUrope combined sitting at 2 million subscribers? YEah, not low at all…
Increase player investment by encouraging player toxicity, how quaint. Just what the online community needs more of.
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Ignoring the fact of the vast majority of the game not concerning dragons, right…
And what about the franchise’s next two titles?
They’re important but hardly an important element to the plot. Example, Oblivion didnt have anything to do with Elder Scrolls regarding its main questline. Neither does ESO for that matter.
Again, the title of games, books, films, etc. dont require them to spell out their entire plots for you.
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Did I sat it has? The most I said was “constant warfare is the name of the game”. The fact is it is Blizzard themselves who have said the faction conflict is the core of Warcraft. If nothing else the War part of it name is living up to that fact.
Even back in Warcraft 3 anyone who didnt see the whole Varimathras arch, the eventual need to deal with Sylvanas and the impending faction war seemed like they were deluding themselves.
There were PLENTY of bones to pick long after the Legion got defeated.
[quote]They’re important but hardly an important element to the plot. Example, Oblivion didnt have anything to do with Elder Scrolls regarding its main questline. Neither does ESO for that matter.[/quote
I agree entirely with the point you’re making. ![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
But I’m going to be the pedant this time because I’m a Dragon Age fanthing.
Dragon Age is a bad example. It refers to the time period.
In Thedas the centuries are named based on omens or major events happening around the turn of the century. The ninth age was named the Dragon Age because dragons were thought to have been hunted to extinction and they were seen for the first time in centuries shortly before the turn of the century. It was prophesied to be a century marked by violence and dramatic change.
The first game takes place in the year 9:30 Dragon. The second spans 9:30 Dragon to 9:37 Dragon. The third in 9:41 Dragon.
I’d say it’s an accurate title.
![:nerd_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/nerd_face.png?v=6" ":nerd_face:")
Since even I’m tired of pointing out the fact there’s plenty of ongoing problems for us to be at war at instead of each other, lets take a different approach.
Why wouldn’t smaller scale conflicts between the Alliance and Horde satisfy the “WARcraft” folks? I’d personally have much less of an issue with the faction war related nonsense if they’d stop framing it in a way where the end goal looks like it has to be “kill the other faction entirely because they’re a threat to our way of life.”
It’d be nice to return to a state where there’s small scale conflicts over resources, especially since we can feasibly have an ending to conflicts like that that are more satisfying than the Alliance just giving the Horde a slap on the wrist and making them promise to never, ever do it again or next time they’ll mean it, only for the next time to be yet another slap on the wrist.
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They should just re-release WC2 for the “WARcraft” crowd, since WoW is too advanced and progressed for a simple black vs. white story that can be repeated ad nasuem.
If human history is a guide, wars sparks because of ongoing problems, not inspite of it.
For one the small scale conflict ie. BG has usually not ended with anything significant happening. A full scale war has the ability to shatter the status quo. Hence why we all now lack one faction capital. As for trying to wipe each other, the point at least for the Alliance for the actually be better and kill the root cause of the problem and try not to cause a genocide.
Oh please, Warcraft 3 has always had these black and white stories as well.
Human history didn’t have to worry about making sure both sides of a war came out alive for the sake of a continued narrative.
It also tends to lack literal apocalypse level events for people to unite against.
This is only because Battlegrounds have always been a side thing meant to be perpetually ongoing. Their stories were created to justify their existence as opposed to the battlegrounds existing to push a narrative ahead.
I think it would be perfectly fine if smaller scale conflicts were written into expansions with purpose, an actual victor in the end, and allowing it to impact larger events.
I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable for the Alliance to want dismantle the Horde as a power at the end of this without killing literally everyone within it.
But that can’t happen without drastically changing how the game operates, so it’ll end with a slap on the wrist once again.
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Obviously, i would love it if the Alliance finally disbands the Horde but that is not gonna happen. As for how this entire expansion will end we can only guess. Blizzard seems confident we will all be awed by how it end. While you can certainly be sceptical about that, I think it also means it wont end like MoP.
Presumably Darkshore will have a canon winner. That is a start at least. And even the Dalgazorsic raid is a relatively small part of the conflict that had an end.
WoW’s story works best when the faction conflict is auxiliary to the main story. It just doesn’t hold up with too much time in the spotlight.
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You implied that, if you didn’t then there was no need to reply to me. My point is that the title isn’t required to make the game which is a derivative on my main point (relating to this thread’s premise) in that the “War” in Warcraft doesn’t equate to the faction war.
Blizzard developers, as you constantly reference, may disagree and state otherwise yet that’s the point of my posting here. It’s because I disagree with Blizzard’s current direction. WC3, their most successful RTS in the Warcraft franchise and the foundation of WoW as it is was not marketed as a full-on faction war. Just look at WC3’s announcement trailer (and WC3: Reforged remastered cinematic of the same trailer); both the human and the orc get rekt for holding onto old hatreds while the Legion invades.
War is a consistent theme in the Warcraft franchise, the faction war isn’t.
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My point is in the vast majority of video games the title is directly related to important plot points/important things about a game!
That actually proves my point of how important and inescapable the faction conflict is. The very first scene of Warcraft 3 is about the conflict between the Alliance/Horde and the last event of Warcraft 3 are about the conflict between the two(Daelin ill fated assault on the Horde).
One I am not sure how accurate. Two as long as Blizzard considers WoW a viable product and keeps giving us updates that is probably more important. Three, even ill admit BfA has its flaws, but it is hard to actually determine if WoW pop decline is actually due to that or any number of other factions(like the rise of new games, the aging playerbase etc)
Or you know egging each other is actually natural and that dollop of competition and maybe reasonable insults is to be expect/actually healthy.
Its accurate enough to get a good read at active level 120 players. WoW peaked at ten million at the start of WoD. Going to two million in that short of time is not healthy.
Oh, I didn’t know death threats and physically attacking people at conventions is just good hearted fun. I guess the Overwatch team has a lot to learn, trying to stop playing toxicity and all.