I get the whole faction pride/identity/“rivalry”/whateverthehellyouwannacallit, I truly do, but keep it at subplot at best, not the main shtick of an expansion. Maybe if blizzard created more Nazgrims and Taylors who grow through the ranks alongside the player character over multiple expansions that players from both factions respect then I might be interested, but I don’t see that happening soooooo…I don’t care for this faction identity right now.
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Any time someone says this I know they have ever only played one faction story and ignore anything such as nuance.
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Look at WC1 gameplay and watch the movie. Only the Frostwolves from them were any good, the goblins from WC2 and the ogres were all evil, all the necrolytes were evil.
And all the forsaken have ever done ever in their entire history of being in WoW is trying to find out ways to kill as many as possible and to spread the plague to others. The trolls are cannibals. Even read the books. According to cannon lore the Horde is the evil faction. The most evil race within the Alliance were some of the Night Elves but they all left thousands of years ago.
And 100% of every battleground that exists is because of the Horde too.
WSG is from the Horde chopping down all the trees, they then began to slaughter every Night elf who tried to stop them. So then that was WSG. Arathi Basin is when the orcs also came in with the forsaken to try and take over Alliance lands. And every other BG out there has the Horde as the attacker, Alliance as the defender. or do you actually think that Sylvanas destroyed Teldrassil because the Undercity was attacked first? No. that is not what happened. What actually happened is that SHE attacked first.
And actually play the RTS games. It is all about Horde invading and slaughtering everyone in their path and burning everything and invading with the Alliance defending. 1 clan of Horde orcs went against the others, all others chose the evil way.
Every bg out there only exists because of Horde aggression. The majority of the goblins who came out during cata only came out because they were all former servants of DeathWing and the Black Dragonflight.
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When people talk about the Horde as faction they mean the Thrall Horde.
Are elves that caused the Sundering better or humans that have made deals with demons?
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Possibly because they kept getting flack or something for not making the “war” in “warcraft” alliance vs horde.
I am one that wanted faction conflict but not faction WAR in WoW. More so since we had other wars to deal with, like the war of the shifting sands (AQ), the war against Illidan (BC) the nexus war and war against the scourge (wrath), etc.
At this point, I do blame Blizzard for the bad writing, but I also blame the “unga bunga, the only war in warcraft is alliance vs. horde” dingbats.
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Hopefully by the time that happens I’ll have moved onto a new MMO. God, I hope Ashes of Creation is good…
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People also love to ignore that the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of the Scourges living and willing members are humans. But somehow they never get blamed for any of the Scourge’s atrocities XD
Nah man the Lich King Arthas was clearly an horde character.
Oh also those dark iron dwarfs kinda messed up with Ragnaros.
See, no nuance. You hand wave any bad Alliance races have done by saying they are gone while trying to emphasize the bad of the Horde. Yeah the trolls cannibalize. They can regrow limbs. The undead have greatly improved themselves over the years.
Lol remember when they decided to just nix Ner’zhul from Arthas? He just took over completely? What a wasted opportunity.
I keep trying to point this out, as a lot of people seem to think I just want BfA all over again.
That’s not what I want. An all out open war makes no sense in this game because it can’t be resovled. I want the faction s to be proper RIVALS. Different experiences and stories, different motivations, etc.
And a constant simmering antagonism towards the other faction, but not all out war.
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That’s fine we can leave that to rest like the orcs internement camps the alliance did.
True, i mean its not like its not the Alliance fault that the Legion came to Azeroth every time.
Look at groups around the real world. Most of the middle east, for instance, seems to want to be at peace. But some extremists want violence and chaos.
Same in the EU. Same in the USA. Same in Canada. Same in pretty much all of south America. Same in China. Same in Africa.
So its entirely possible that small groups can still have their little wars while walking away from the overarching faction war thats been beaten past skin and bones, into glue.
Could even just have pvp based on guild conflicts. your guildies against mine. And have achieves and rewards, even trophies or something.
Wait they created the Guardian and the Guardian created a door for the Orcs to come. But then we all just blame the orcs for trying to have a place in this world when their home world is dying.
almost literally the reason for every sport ever created.
And this is where the “Horde is the evil faction” prove they don’t really know the lore. It is WC3 that WoW continues from, you know the one that ended with Alliance and Horde fighting the Legion at Mount Hyjal?
Cannon lore is that the forsaken were allies of convivence for the Horde.
I believe the Darkspear did away with that aspect.
REally, even if it is 2 good factions, one can be the “damn the consequences, we need to do whatever it takes to beat back this evil that wants to kill us all” and the other can be “we need to tray and not do more harm to ourselves and our world/home while we defeat this evil”.
I just wish Blizzard had the talent, the passion, and the balls to create nuanced but consistent factions.
Factions with ideological convictions that players can understand and relate to, with different priorities and cultures. Factions that are complex enough to be flawed, but worth fighting for. And most importantly, factions that have believable reasons to fight, despite neither being truly villainous.
None of this is super complex or original. In fact, it should be the bare minimum for a setting like this. The early years of WoW weren’t perfect at this either, but they were on the right track. Besides, shouldn’t we expect a game to improve over time? If Blizzard can’t pull off the faction fantasy in World of Warcraft, what are we even doing?
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That’s essentially what we had from Vanilla to Wrath.
There was no open war. Even Thrall wanted peaceful coexistence, but it wasn’t that easy becasue there’s always factions within factions that don’t want the old ways to die (blood fueds, territorial disagreements, or just outright plunder).
Both the Horde and Alliance were allied with sub-factions like The League of Arathor and Frostwolve Orcs in Alterac that they were obligated to support (much like the West is supporting Ukraine) which kept that simmering conflict going, but never fully erupted.
That’s what I want back. Not BfA.
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Just like the real world.
People saying “the cold war setting was not realistic” were stupid. It was perfectly realistic.
And so is the notion of “the game can’t go back”. Sure it can.
The real-world “cold war” ended in the 1990’s. But look where we are, now.
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