the “war” isnt going anywhere, its just changing who the “war” is against. there is an entire cosmos of potential enemies. at min, 100 years worth of actual game content that “could” be added in over several expansions.
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I don’t know, Remix making me all nostalgic for some faction goodness.
And? BGs aren’t a central focus of the game, and could easily be rebranded as War Games for inter-factional cooperative preparation. Like how the Argent Tournament was meant to be a preparatory event for the assault on Icecrown that, guess what, the Horde and Alliance blew way out of proportion again.
And when I mention ‘clinging to 20+ years ago’ I mean ‘clinging to AvH as a central pillar in Warcraft’. That pillar is crumbling and showing its age with how contorted the narrative has to get to justify the Horde and Alliance working together but then butting heads for some weird reason to divvy up races some more but then not actually go through with killing each other.
In all truth, SoO should have been the end of the Horde as a political entity because the Alliance army was within the gates and securely positioned to take over the city. Yet apparently Varian’s heart grew three sizes that day and he decided to just go ‘now don’t go and cause any more mischief, y’hear?’ All because there had to be a Horde for the playerbase to be a part of rather than the natural story progression of ‘The Horde is broken.’
So yes, forcing faction allegiance has been the problem since day one. There’s no reason AvH can’t happen and it can work just fine, but forcing players into the faction politics is not the way.
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Again, that’s not the players’ fault. If you want players to join a faction, make that faction appealing to join.
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I just don’t see what factions will accomplish without dividing up a player base with the current WoW milleu.
There’s a WoW strata that prefers having easy access to every faction/rep, and fractionalism will make them upset no matter how you make it. Unless you make factions available for everybody to join, at which point they’re just glorified reputations, and they argument becomes not so much about factions, but about revamping and making reputation factions more fun.
That they are not appealing to you is, quite obviously, not a universally held opinion.
Loved it 20 years ago. Love it now. The Horde and Alliance are pillars of WoW. As recognizable and cheered for among gamers as The Patriots are among football fans. They aren’t going anywhere.
So what? Every faction is a glorified rep grind, it’s just we’re forced along whatever narrative path the Alliance and Horde drag us down rather than getting to set our own paths to explore. Again, forcing membership in the Horde and Alliance is unnecessary; there are plenty of players that would love to don the Red or Blue tabard and start up the slaughter. Would they be the majority? Most likely not, but I ask again, so what?
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I’m not, and have never said, to take away the Alliance or Horde. My stance has always been to not force the player into either faction.
You want to flag up and join Team Red in exterminating every wavelength of light north of 490nm, go right ahead. All I ask is you stop trying to drag me along with you.
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Remix is reminding me just how silly the whole ‘faction war’ nonsense really is.
I’ve no issue whatsoever with factions, but the constant “WE MUST FIGHT ARR!” stuff is just ridiculous. Constantly forcing reasons for angst and violence towards each other is just bad writing.
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You can have factions without constant war and hatred. You can have bickering, division, mischief, and all sorts of intrigue and conflict without constant war and hatred.
Heck, look how we treat every neutral city. We can get along in Dalaran, Val, Orbis or whatever it’s called, all of these places, yet if you get anywhere near a faction city, OH IT’S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG, FOOL! It’s just absurd at this point.
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And the Alliance side getting all wooby-eyed going 'but-but-but why don’t they see’ is infuriating.
Maybe if you reeled it back a bit you’d understand why a, to this point, entirely uninvolved third party might not be deploying the Banners of Gratitude for being the Glorious Saviors of a land that, until the two factions visited, wasn’t in that much trouble.
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And they can still exist as pillars. They simply don’t need to constantly hate each other. And have ridiculous forced world conflict. If a night elf wants to be considered okay to be in Thunder Bluff, they should be able to do so, by raising a faction via good works (appropriate quests) over a period of time. What’s the reason this isn’t possible? WE NEED WAR DUR DUR. It’s lazy.
A perfect example of this is the Horde. With ALL of the bad leaders the horde has had, why are they still a single unit? Why do Trolls still hang out with Orcs, why do Tauren care at all about the rest, and why is ANYONE associated with the undead?
In a similar fashion, why do night elves hang out with the humans? Why do Kul Tirans care about anyone, gnomes and dwarves, etc.
Each of these should have its own faction (like the reputations they have now) but it should be flexible. Not easy, at all, but at least possible, for the races to co-mingle. and there shouldn’t still be this glorious “overarching group” mentality that currently exists between the alliance and the horde, separately.
Here’s a perfect example, all the talk about silvermoon and the elves. Blizz is obviously leaning towards this direction between that’s what the chatter is about there. Neutral hub cities, ideally with factions that you can earn to be more favored in. Or conversely, reputations that you can lower too. If you want the war, go do the quests that are against certain factions, and lower your rep. Stay hated. No one is forcing you to sing kum-bay-ah. But let players go up OR down for every faction.
Man, make the world complex. Give it depth.
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The reason it isn’t possible is because that’s not how things are designed and not-so-subtly insulting the intelligence of people that like the factions isn’t a compelling reason to change it. Neither is “I wants it, gibs me dat.”
It’s all just subjective wants and opinions and some of them, like the factions being a problem for the game since day one, are just wrong on their face. That’s just a personal dislike of the system being represented as a wide spread problem.
When all evidence points to the fact that the Horde and Alliance are appealing to many people it’s silly to assert that the factions are unappealing to all simply because they aren’t to you.
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When you say things like “all” when discussing something like this, your argument falls on its face. I mean, talk about “silly”.
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Can’t wait for round 6 of the Horde randomly going evil and trying to wipe out 1 or more race while the Alliance just takes it on the chin and walks away at the end after the Horde scapegoats a single person for the whole thing.
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Didn’t you hear? This is considered ‘good writing’ and ‘what everyone wants’, or something. Even as PVP constantly gets re-shoehorned into new and different ways to try to make it viable every expansion, because numbers keep dwindling.
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But…the evidence out there supports the claim. 20 years of leading the Mmo genre, marketing campaigns featuring the faction divide, Alliance and Horde themed merch, the list goes on.
Versus a rando asserting that the factions have been a problem for the game since day one. Think I know which I’d consider an evidence based claim.
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The fact WoW players don’t understand war doesn’t have to include two specific factions blows my mind.
WW is a war against the void. You do understand that right?
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We’ve managed to have both the faction war and the war against whoever the current loot pinata of the expansion is for 20 years. Nothing stopping us from having both. 
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They aren’t getting rid of factions. They already said that in TWW interviews.
They are just giving more cross-faction options.
https://i.postimg.cc/c4WqyvyK/GM63-j8-XYAAepxo.png
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