Last Titan lore and production is midway already. But please, vent away to the bots.
Sure they are, they arent midway trough mdinight yet, but sure, blizzard have 4 expansions already in mind
And it’s often those… outspoken… players who are the biggest pushers of the HvsA conflict as the only thing that matters in WOW…
What story? Working with the Taunka and/or having yet another grumble at the Alliance? I didn’t go to Northrend to fight things that aren’t undead and/or Lich King-adjacent, I went there to kill the Lich King. Anything distracting from that without sufficient impact is dumb.
Both factions helped DEHTA, both factions helped the Kirin Tor, both factions helped the Argents, both factions worked to help throughout Dragonblight. The story was strongest when it was focused on the main threat instead of spinning off for the Alliance and Horde to have yet another armed conflict that predictably went nowhere.
Arguable. The Argents needed bodies, not specifically the Horde and Alliance. They needed numbers they themselves did not have. So they used the Tournament to attract skilled warriors to their cause. Again, the Horde and Alliance happened to be in the area, they weren’t there at the behest of Tirion (yet, anyway). In fact, they probably might have preferred their lead fighters didn’t come from the Alliance and Horde given what happened at Wrathgate and what almost happened during the Torunament.
I’m not saying don’t have it happen, I’m saying the story shoulddn’t treat it like a ‘cool moment’. It was not a cool moment. We endangered the mission, strengthened the enemy, and lost potential allies to our cause over dumb, dumb pride. And this always happens when the factions decide to have a spat, they take away from the narrative of the overall expansion to waste time with pointless conflict.
Firstly, the Defias only threatened Stormwind, not the Alliance writ large, so that, like Hogger, is a Human story. The Dark Horde was a problem for the Horde, correct, but it was also a problem for Azeroth as a whole, making it a neutral story. Again, just because it involves one race of a faction does not make it itself a faction story.
Second, the impetus is on Blizzard to set up these races with tidbits and hints scattered throughout the world before the big reveal, but this is also another problem with the factions; how did such large organizations not notice the presence of these people beforehand? Remember, we’ve literally been in Azeroth’s orbit in Legion, we should not be surprised by new landmasses or regions anymore. At least not unless we start world-hopping. You can only coast on WC3 for so long, as we’re finding out.
Because, again, Blizzard has no idea how to write for characters that aren’t Orcs, Humans, or Elves. They’re unwilling on taking a chance on the other races carrying the weight of leadership, there’s always a ‘safety’ Human or Elf or Orc nearby. Hell, the Dracthyr have Visage forms because Blizzard was terrified the concept of ‘dragon people’ might not be acceptable. So even more Human and Elf concessions, this time at the cost of the core race identity. This same problem plagues Worgen to this very day, and is why I maintain Two Forms, or any racial transformation, is a massive mistake.
Yes, against genuine threats to the peace and health of the world. We needed to annihilate the Sha as best we could, we needed to annihilate the Lich King, the Old Gods. Those were necessary wars, and I never claimed otherwise.
Alliance and Horde spinning up the war drums against one another though? Pointless and stupid, every time it comes up. We’re literally fighting to achieve the same thing, but we’re being utterly pig-headed and inflexible about it. Which, again, makes sense for Varian and Garrosh’s characters, but it does not make me like them or their factions in the slightest. I do not appreciate being railroaded into supporting idiocy.
Then they’re not trying hard enough and/or the game is not flexible enough. This is the again the problem with forced faction membership, the PC is forced into being a cheerleader for awful, awful things and falls to Designated Hero status rather than properly being the fantasy hero we were sold by the game’s offering. This is doubly annoying when it’s plain as day what is about to happen and I’m not allowed to do anything about it. I don’t want to rule over ash, I want to stop the world from getting to that point in the first place.
Introducing a neutral faction strictly for PvE would solve many of these gripes and allow the factions to have teeth again. Turalyon wants to commit some spicy crimes against the Horde, or some zealot within Horde leadership wants to depopulate another city of civvies? Well, I don’t have to be at the forefront of that barbarism, I can focus on trying to keep a dying world living and moving forward for just a little longer.
Doesn’t change the fact that he, not Sylvanas, was the leader there. Varian also just showed up to get punked too. ‘For the Alliance’ doesn’t make it a cool exit, you could have done more to stabilize the situation first. He didn’t even do anything with the sacrifice, he beat up a few demons and got wasted by Gul’dan anyway. At least Vol’jin got to make it home before giving up the ghost.
Because the factions almost never add anything to whatever they weigh in on. ‘We’re gonna fight the Horde/Alliance in Borean Tundra and secure our landing!’.. We were already doing that and are just introducing pointless conflict here. ‘We’re gonna fight over Barrens and territory!’… So… We’re just gonna ignore the dragon that nearly snacked on all of Stormwind? Cool, cool. Love being constantly misdirected from the actual threat to go pointlessly bounce off the other faction for a patch or two.
Again, I get being passionate soldiers and hot-headedness, but this was not some skirmish off in the Barrens. If we lose this fight, we all die screaming. So I don’t think it’s too tall an ask for these supposed elite soldiers to keep level heads and keep the measuring contests out of it!
Again, it forced every Horde character into being a monster and every Alliance character into being a victim. Bait-and-switch indeed, where’s my ‘Heroic Fantasy’ again?
Did you miss the point where I said the Faction Champion is assumed by the narrative to have been at every major event? So no matter what, I always lose hard when it comes to BFA because I was either ineffective in saving lives at Teldrassil, or I was among those personally responsible for those deaths. Neat! Real cool hero we’ve got here!
Until that particular point, I could roughly deny that I had much to do with the faction conflict, I was hanging out in the lower half of Kalimdor or cleaning up the Plaguelands. Being told I should be proud of Teldrassil was so tone-deaf it was basically an insult.
And yet Orcs still feature more than any other race outside of Elves and/or Humans in cinematics and narratives. They’re still at least present in more stories than other races that also have every right to be present at the forefront of these plotlines. Also, in fairness, the inhabitants of the Dragon Isles likely may have taken umbrage at how the Orcs ‘handled’ dragons, so maybe a good idea to leave that clan behind and only ask for tips from afar.
But we’re still identifying the same point: there are Hero Races and then there is Everybody Else.
As long as expansions and narratives have a singular enemy, there will always be a union of the story. This has been true since TBC. Both factions need to have the ability to reach and fight the Lich King, Illidan, Onyxia, whatever. It’s simple player parity and it’s also a reason why nothing can ever be truly at stake when the factions get grumbly. Hell, we see it on these very forums with arguments about one faction supposedly getting ‘more’ than another with the most inane of things.
Also, the above could be completely short-circuited if Blizzard’s writers could ever incorporate the PC into their storytelling, making them the focus, but they again have demonstrated no idea how to do this, because they’d actually have to make the PC care about the plotlines they’re in and have agency in the story. XIV’s Warrior of Light moves and shakes the world with every step they take, WoW’s Faction Champion just doddles along at the behest of their faction leadership whether right or wrong.
So are Venture Co. stories Horde stories? Those feature Goblins after all. Are Argent Crusade stories Alliance stories? Humans abound. What you say makes no sense. The quilboar raid whether or not the Tauren are part of the Horde, and I didn’t see anyone from Org showing up to help Camp Narache. That was up to the Tauren specifically to solve.
Just because a member race is involved in something doesn’t make it a faction-wide issue. Not every Tauren story is a Horde story.
What I mean is the stories would make sense if the narrative were ‘the PC is an Alliance/Horde Soldier’ instead of ‘the PC is an worldly adventurer initially sponsored by the Alliance/Horde.’ In my mind, activating War Mode should actually be enlisting in your faction, it shouldn’t be forced upon every single character. My Tauren wants to wander the world, she’s not interested in the politics of the factions at large. My Pandaren is happy to have gotten a sponsored trip to the mainland(s) but she doesn’t care about the squabbling and would rather be left out of it to focus on world threats.
Divesting the factions from the central PvE plot and designing PvP-oriented plotlines around the Alliance and Horde allows them to engage in the animosity so many of their patriots want to engage in without hurting the story at large, because they’re busy tearing each others’ throats out, they’re not interfering with the efforts of the actual heroes on-site.
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If I could take my characters out of the Horde and Alliance, and not have anything to do with either one, I’d do that in an instant, no hesitation, no looking back.
“Sorry, I can’t help you idiots kill each other, I have a world to save… evidently so you can keeping killing each other over whatever remains.”
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Yes, and the vrykul, and the wildlife and the nerubians, tons of story there
You did, because you are an alliance or horde soldier, you do what you are told to do
You receive orders from above, this is how it always where
and we also helped only our factions in our respective campaigns and we also fought each other in skyrmishes
100% disagree, the story is the strongest when we have BOTH elements in the story
What you want is cutting a huge size of warcraft for no reason other than not liking something logical in the narrative
What made wow cut above is having BOTH, other mmos already failed at having only one, as wow is failling today
And what better numbers than the unified armies of both factions who have tons of different races?
The tournament wasnt to attract numbers:
To the south lies our goal. We will march to the Citadel and cut out the heart of the Scourge where it dwells.
But this is no task to be taken lightly.
A massive attack with every able-bodied man would end in needless slaughter. Every soldier lost would rise as the enemy. Azeroth would be left defenseless against the undead threat.
Instead, we require a small, concentrated strike force for the attack to succeed. For that reason, we have created the Argent Tournament.
It was merely to find the right team to strike the lich king like a special operation while both armies kept the scourge army occupied.
The moment is just there, who think is cool or not are the players
People think the zepelin fight was cool, because it was.
IT IS COOL TO FIGHT EACH OTHER, ITS COOL TO SEE EPIC MOMENTS LIKE THAT
And im tired to pretend otherwise, its fiction, the faction are made to do that
If you still think the conflict is pointless you just dont know what it is about
thats absurd pointless, stormwind is the center and heart of the alliance, they being threatened means the alliance itself is threatened
This is why the faction conflict is so good and essential, its those kinds of geopolitics that make the worldbuilding, stormwind destroyed, who else will give support to the other alliance nations? they would be easy prey for the horde
The dracthyr by example, couldn’t be scattered throughout the world before, they were locked as soon they were made
Again, what else do you do with then? nothing, because they dont bring any conflict or problem into the narrative
Or, because they arent forced to write with factions in mind, they will just write for popular races, since they have more lore behind then
What do you think? they would be using a dwarf and a gnome in shadowlands? a tauren and a troll in TWW even if they knew how to write then?
You need to stop being naive on that account
Not the world, sometimes we need to face each other for resources, the game is more about big bad villain vs good two shoes heroes
If you think its pointless and stupid it means you never understood then in the first place
It does, because sylvanas who was giving orders, not him
Factually wrong if you actually played the game.
Yeah that was the problem, but everyone wanted a faction conflict when both were morally gray
they gave us bad vs evil instead
is a blizzard writing problem, not an alliance vs horde problem
So? there are countless of conflict where people die and you dont do nothing about it
Again, writing problem not faction war problem
Orcs arent featured ever since wod, Saurfang shows up in bfa cinematics to die and thrall is just a token
How nothing can be at stake?
The pc is incorporated into the storytelling as a soldier of their faction
Now we are just the “champion” siding with the actual heroes.
The kind of story and world Final fantasy have is completely different from warcraft, it doesn’t work the same and it cant work the same with how the setting is established
Again, different games, not everything will for for every game
Those do not belong to the factions, unlike the taurens i mentioned, so tht isnt rly an argument
the moment you create your character you are enlisting to your faction, thats literally the starting zone quest
It should be forced to every single character, if you dont like it, ask blizzard for a neutral faction where everyone can defect or play another game
somehow its always mostly the elf players who think that way
The Nerubians were an existential threat to the entirety of the planet under the Lich King’s sway, so they were a neutral story. The Vrykul as well. We didn’t need to be Horde or Alliance to have a reason to fight them. We fought them because they were servants of the main villain we all showed up to fight.
And that’s supposed to make me like the faction I’m under the command of? Making me enraged at the very questgivers I’m meant to sympathize with is certainly… A choice, narratively. It certainly isn’t doing the factions any favors.
This kind of storyline works in an RTS where every unit you crank out of a barracks is the same, but this is an MMORPG.
So far as I recall, I only remember the airship battle and the prisoner exchange in Borean Tundra as far as faction-on-faction interactions. One was understandable and was addressed properly (punishing desertion) but the other was completely reckless and lauded for its stupidity.
WoW rose to prominence due to the Warcraft IP and its ease of entry for casual players, not because of how it handled its factions; that was done far better in games like Shadowbane or Everquest where you could actually change your factions and influence who, and what, liked you. Want to be welcome in Freeport even if you’re KoS? Here’s a few quests you can chip at and slowly earn your way in the walls? Want to be hated in Qeynos as a Paladin? No problem, there are many folk you can engage and take down to boost your infamy to the point where your own ‘friendly’ city will consider you KoS. Those are actual factions that can shift and change, not stapled on at creation and unable to be changed forever and ever.
It also makes all of the Order Hall content completely moot; who does my Rogue serve, the Uncrowned or the Horde? I can’t have two masters, especially in a setting like that. Oh, I’m meant to bond with my siblings-in-arms, but if they wear a blue/red tabard it’s war? That’s goofy storytelling, and I’m giving it as charitable a description as I can manage.
Which makes the airship battle even stupider. Read this 1,000 times or until it sinks in why it was such a bad idea:
Every soldier lost would rise as the enemy.
We had this drilled into our heads throughout the Argent storyline and decided to throw it all away at the most critical moment of the campaign. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Augh, the more I think on that encounter the dumber it becomes. What a waste.
I’m not going to cheerlead my fellow soldiers when they’re being morons. I’m going to chastise foolishness and demand they get better. And I want a reason to believe in the people I work for outside of a ‘team sports’ mentality. Instead, the writing presupposes I like my leaders because, well, they’re my leaders and they’re on my team and I want to cripple the other side because they’re on the other team. It’s lazy writing and pointless in the face of escalating global threats.
If you want me to want to follow a leader, make them likeable. Slapping down complaints with ‘they’re Horde leaders and you’re a Horde soldier so you like them and want to support them’ is the fastest way to get me to utterly check out of a story and just pound buttons hoping the next narrative beat isn’t so repugnant.
Stormwind at large was not at risk from the Defias, the Wrynn bloodline was. The Defias wanted to run Stormwind, not destroy it. Also, again, I don’t recall any Dwarves, Gnomes, or Night Elves deigning to show up and even comment on the situations either with the Defias or Hogger. That was a Human story, full stop.
This is why they have to be pre-seeded with tidbits hinting not just at their existence but their origin. The big conflict for them is meant to be their self-doubt over being the ultimate creations of a mind engulfed by madness, and their search for a proper place in the world. The big conflict for Pandaren is the realization and rationalization of how they could choose a foreign legion over their own homeland as they watch it get torn apart by the greed of the factions, and knowing that unless things can change, this cycle will only endlessly and painfully repeat until everything is ash. I admit I don’t know much of the Earthen but I imagine they have their own schisms driven by the demands of both factions.
You have to write stories that confront the characters at those points, rather than lean on the convenience of being able to scream ‘For The Alliance/Horde!’
You and I are in agreement that they would only write for popular races, but you seem to not understand that this is already happening. Again, Aysa and Ji got overlooked for a diplomatic mission because Blizzard wanted to use a Human and an Orc instead. That’s how it always goes, if it’s an important narrative beat, it’s always an Orc/Human/Elf at its center.
What I want is a Blizzard brave enough to break out of slavishly writing popular fiction and actually include everyone being given an opportunity to do what they do best.
Except the faction conflicts haven’t been about that, it’s been about trying to strike a crippling blow against ‘the enemy’. Whether at Taurajo, Theramore, Ashenvale, or even Tarren Mill. We’re not fighting to survive, we’re taking opportunistic shots at the enemy to advance an agenda.
I am not interested in a narrative that makes me fight people that would be my friend if only they wore a different tabard that day, and makes me follow people that would be my foe but they’re wearing the right colors today. This is RTS storytelling in an MMORPG and it doesn’t work.
She only ever gave orders to those under her direct command, and she only gave all-encompassing orders once Vol’jin was incapacitated.
How did the Factions make Shattrath’s efforts more effective outside of raw manpower? Same question but for the Argents. Or the Illidari. Or insert third faction actually trying to solve the problem here?
Muddying the effort with forced conflict pointlessly endangers the overall mission, and I’m tired of being told to root for this nonsense.
And there’s the problem right there. You can’t have big moments of faction conflict because neither side wants to be made into a villain, and rightfully so. So because the factions still have to allow the actual story to happen at some point, they’re made to pull back and twist and torture logic to allow them to come along on whatever campaign the expansion is providing as a whole.
This is a completely different context though, this was way beyond something like Taurajo or even Theramore, this was specifically and intentionally targeting noncombatants on a huge scale. Taurajo at least was the product of confused intelligence and Theramore was a military outpost that had civilian families on-base, but Teldrassil was known to be a capital and to house noncombatants of a huge number.
Being incapable of saving someone and being actively responsible for their demise are two very different things.
It would not have happened or even been a problem if it did if either the faction war did not exist or my character was not made to be part of said factions.
Again, this is still better than the literal zero other races have had in any cinematics. I can’t even remember the last time I’d seen a CGI Gnome not using the in-game engine rendering.
Simple. Regardless of how hard either side ‘loses’, that faction’s players still need to be able to, y’know, play the game. So it’s all pointless in the end, there can never be an actual victory and end to the conflict. Perpetual war for the sake of war is boring.
You’ve actually identified the problem really well, but not in the way you think. Warcraft’s typical writing doesn’t work in an MMORPG format, Blizzard is still trying to write as if it were an RTS. This is not an RTS, we are individual characters that are meant to be the heroes of our own journeys, trampling that fantasy with faction obligations we don’t have the option of refusing is beyond frustrating.
But they’re Goblins, and Goblins belong to the Horde, yes?
No you’re not, you’re either engaging in rites central to your race’s culture or having to fend off a threat to your home at creation. Worgen are very much not pledged to the Alliance at creation, nor are new Tauren, they have to complete quest chains to go to Orgrimmar and be inducted into the Horde proper.
As far as the neutral third faction or even going factionless, I’d love it. Keep this third faction/lack of faction focused strictly on PvE activity and the threats to the world and I’d never look at the Horde or Alliance again. They offer nothing to me.
Clearly you can’t tell that the female Amani look more like Orcs than Trolls tells me you need your eyes checked.
Not all of then were under the lich king
We did because you are a soldier of your faction, they are threatening the factions
How is that not simple
Seems like the main problem here is that you do not want to play warcraft, you want to play your own version of epic fantasy, which i honestly recommend dnd
Why are you being “enraged” by every questgivers?
Maybe you just pick your faction wrong or… this game isnt your cup of tea?
there was much more than that, we even got a battleground for it, but isnt cointained to that, horde and alliance butheads all the time, heart of war mention how Garrosh scolds one of his captains because he seized the opportunity to attack the alliance while they attacked the scourge
and why nobody knows or cares about the factions in those games and everyone who play videogames knows about horde and alliance?
Where are those games now?
The horde, obviouslly, the order hall was a lame gimmick for the legion and once the legion is gone you are either boted out or the organization ends
MY GOD
STOP USING META KNOWLEDGE TO DETERMINE HOW THE CHARACTERS IN THE NARRATIVE SHOULD THINK
ITs stupid TO YOU as a player, not for the characters present
They do not care about it, they think they can get away with it, and still win, this arrogance is what make then feel real
What happens to a nation when the bloodline rulling the kingdom is finished?
the country becomes unstable, nobles crave for power, the citizens unrest, soon the alliance cant spare soldiers or resources to ashenvale, and the night elves slowly get conquered
Again, you do know the factions interactions, the geopolitics of the world, thats why you feel contempt about then, you do not understand how they exist in the setting, thats a you problem.
Nobody will freaking care about dracthyr 'Self-doubt" story, this is not a therapy game, its a war game where we face each other and the villain of the expansion
The stories you want are for novels or shortstories NOT FOR A GAME
BECAUSE THEY STOPPED WRITING FACTION STORIES
I literally gave you cataclysm as example of that NOT HAPPENING, because they had to write for those races since it was all about factions
What you trully want is another game and i dunno superpowers from santa, cause that might have the same chance of happening
Except they were from vanilla to mop, even bFA started about resources until they bait-and switched
Azerite plot was dropped in the pre patch
Again, you do not understand why they fight each other and you think its just because they wear a different tabard you dont rly understand warcraft
I rather have zero appearence if that means my race is get ruined
ask the night elf fans if im not right
You dont need to have an end to have stakes
Look at theramore
Pèrpatual fighting villain of the week every expansion for the sake of fighting villain of the week every expansion is boring
It worked pretty well from vanilla to mop
Not all of then, which is why the argument is vallid for the tauren because the tauren being attacked by the quilboar ARE FROM THE HORDE
I played every single horde character, everyone is how you are a young new recruit of the faction and now you need to defend your people and your faction
This is the game you sign up to play
Enough of them were that action was warranted and necessary. And notice we didn’t put them all to the sword, those that were alive and sane were spared.
And that’s snore-worthy storytelling. ‘You’re there because your commander told you to go, don’t ask questions.’ Wow, such compelling, so intriguing.
Again, this works in an RTS, not an RPG, and it’s a reason every time the game tries to gas me up regarding my faction of choice I roll my eyes and skip dialog until I hit something interesting. Faction nonsense means less than nothing to me because either it will be taken away, equalized, or otherwise made irrelevant to the story by the other team and by then I’ll have already moved on to the actual meat of the story. Case in point, why should I care if Org has a big ol’ gun pointed at Stormwind? It’s never going to actually fire, and if it ever does, it’s for the last time because player parity will strike and Org will be rent unto ashes.
The problem is faction leaders on both sides were utter morons throughout everything pre-DF. Inventing reasons to strike at an imagined foe is the realm of the insane, not the heroic.
You consider Wintergrasp of all things to be story? And it’s an open question whether the books are healthy for the game; if it’s an important narrative beat, why is it not being experienced in-game?
Reread the above; WoW had the inertia of Warcraft’s entire lineage behind it versus bespoke offerings with no roots like SB or EQ. The Alliance and Horde have their popularity because of the RTS games, not because of what WoW did with them. As far as where they’re at? SB died because PvP-centric MMOs have no longevity, and EQ lives on in passionate servers at various levels of legacy, kind of like how WoW does Classic. XIV also has factions, and actually does them well enough, inspiring proper rivalry and team-building versus cutthroat kill-at-all-costs mentalities that result in toxicity the instant one ‘side’ is seen as being favored.
Which is incredibly stupid, as I found the Uncrowned far more appealing than the Horde or Alliance’s offerings. Again, why are we slaughtering our siblings-in-arms when a global threat is literally within visible distance?
So is professionalism just not a thing on Azeroth? I thought these were the elite of the elite, as winnowed down by the Tournament? I feel like screaming at them like Walker did in Spec Ops: The Line - 'You are DELTA OPERATORS. ACT LIKE IT!" Instead, despite knowing our foe gets stronger with every death on our sound effectively counting double, knowledge reinforced by the Argents constantly warning us about this and taking great strides to limit the amount of inter-faction conflict present in Icecrown, we throw down in the sky like angry kids in the playground dirt.
It would have been upheaval, maybe even revolution, but not the destruction of Stormwind. A situation that probably wouldn’t have even gone that far if Stormwind’s nobility would just pay them. The Defias to my knowledge did not have any particular issue with the rest of the Alliance and probably could have worked out ways to continue supporting the faction’s efforts without too many hiccups. That said, I primarily play Horde so I may be foggy recalling those storylines and welcome correction.
Either way, this was strictly a Human story that had no impact on the Alliance at large. Just like the quilboar raid on Narache would barely have affected Thunder Bluff had it succeeded, let alone the Horde at large. Narache is a Tauren story.
This isn’t a war game either, this is an RPG that happens to have the occasional war as a background element. Self-doubt at a questionable origin is a key aspect of many great heroes. Hell, many of Warcraft’s own leaders had strong battles with self-doubt because they saw their efforts inspire unexpected consequences.
BFA was an entire faction story, and it was nothing but elves, humans, and orcs. That it’s a faction story doesn’t insulate it from Hero Race syndrome. You even fell into the trap yourself when you said Sylvanas was the leader at Broken Shore, when Vol’jin was actually the commander there.
While it’d be nice, I’d settle for each individual race actually being important to the story in non-negligible capacities. Ironically, the Horde Council is actually a great step forward in that regard and holds a lot of promise, but I have less than zero faith for Blizzard to capitalize on this opportunity to let other races take their shot at being the heroes of the Horde instead of recycling Lor’themar and Thrall a couple dozen more times.
BFA’s storyline was centered on Sylvanas trying to strike at the Alliance and gathering Azerite to do so. The Azerite was a secondary plot element to Sylvanas trying to decapitate Team Blue. So we were poking and prodding again for no good reason, especially once we realized what Azerite actually was.
Then feel free to elucidate me on why things like the airship battle had to happen. And no, you don’t get to use ‘rule of cool’ as a defense.
The NE have arguably been ruined since their introduction in WoW with their forced membership in the Alliance. Man, faction stories are ruining narratives even in Vanilla!
And? It was taken due to losing Taurajo. Again, player parity. Just like we lost Undercity when Teldrassil went sky-high.
I can’t even remember what we won in BFA that was worth it.
At least you have variety with villain-of-the-week silliness, and can even hit on some greats. Being told to go fight the unkillable faction for another expansion is outright tiring.
No, it didn’t. From the very beginning, WoW’s writing was not good when you decouple it from the popularity boost of the first three games. The NE got defanged in order to fit on the Alliance, and the Horde’s entire theme was wrecked with the introduction of the Forsaken to their team. Then the stories contorted back and forth to accommodate the forced conflict again and again because goodness forbid anyone actually learn a lesson in WoW.
They are citizens of Mulgore, a land under the Horde’s protection but they have not taken the oath of service yet. I distinctly remember this moment because there’s a whole swearing-in and ‘Blood and Thunder’ and yada-yada.
Narache’s storyline is no more a Horde story than anything involving Venture Company.
Then we remember very differently. I was a fresh-faced Tauren that was pressed into the defense of Narache by an imminent threat, not a soldier of the Horde yet. Or I was a Pandaren on a turtle-island that was rushed into their philosophy by a critical accident, not a soldier of either faction yet. The only races you can say start as Horde agents were those that are ARs, and that’s only because Blizzard isn’t willing to give them proper starting zones and storylines.
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Whats the difference of 'you are doing this because its the right thing to do?" such compelling, so intriguing to have only one path, only one choice and only one goal
It worked fine since vanilla till legion
Except then arent? you are fabricating a problem
…it part of the bigger story
Not thats bs, the RTS wasnt that big of a deal, that is not the reason why horde and alliance as factions entered pop culture and the zeitgeist of media
Its lik saying harry potter houses are a success because the story is filled with stories about wizards
No, that is part of worldbuilding, people love to attach themselves to that label, they feel sympathy, they feel a sense of pride and identity, its pure tribalism
Same way everyone knows about their hogwarts house, everyone knows about horde and alliance, you cant deny their popularity and how they are important and integral aprt of the game just because YOU dont like it
For you it is, but they mentioned they are doing that for the legion in specific, once the legion is gone nobody needs to keep together
I aint doing that, the alliance are my enemy, not “siblin-in-arms”
You are being naive, like an activist who chain herself in the road and stop cars and everyday work to get to their job because you think you are changing the world
You do not control what other characters do, you only control what you do
If a captain or general decide to act on his own accord it just means that he did by himself and you cannot stop after its already done, end
You dont need its destruction to cause a massive crisis in the alliance
open your eyes, think the faction and races as real nations, not like you think they should act based on your conceptions
World of WAR craft
war craft
meaning, crafting, making war
iTs nOt A wAr GamE
It wasnt, they bait and switched the story in the first patch
And even then, you are wrong, we got troll, undead, for the horde side, we got gnomes and dwarves for the alliance side
Every race shows up doing something in the war effort
play the game and you will know how it was diverse
Since the beginning im being doing that
you are just ignoring and handwaving because you “dont feel like it”
Forced? you trully dont know how the factions work do you?
They joined the alliance to fight the horde
they wanted tod rive the orcs out of ashenvale, but couldnt do it alone, what better option would be if not join the faction that hated orcs?
No it wasnt, it had nothing to do with it
read tides of war
Do we?
its always a bogus villain wanting to destroy the world, only the skin is different
It did, wow made the most success during that time
if you dont think that isnt doing pretty well nothing is
no? they remained pretty much the same, the difference is they became more lord of the rings elves because the players wanted that
Go look for the horde in warcraft 2, then see if they dont fit the horde theme
Bub, look at the real world, war has being raged trough history non stop, today there are conflicts that exist since thousand years ago
and everyone is human
But you think in wow, where the are different races, religions and actual magic would be any different?
they would just learn their lesson and sing kumbaya in what, 10 years?
You are defending the tauren, who are what faction again?
Because the ‘why’ of your character deciding it’s the right thing to do is something you can come up with given the variety of approaches one might be able to make if faction participation wasn’t forced. ‘I’m here on behalf of the Kirin Tor’ or ‘I’m here as a Shadow Council agent to steal secrets of undeath’ or ‘I fell asleep on a ship and now I’m fighting to survive out here, somebody help!’
Being forcibly made into a Faction Soldier cuts off a huge amount of player expression at the knees, and it actively hurts the narrative of the game, both the actual narrative as well as potential narratives. Forcing factions only works for RTSes. Being able to choose your character’s motivations and expression, that makes for intriguing narratives that draw players in.
No, it doesn’t. It makes the story one-dimensional, and the story can’t even properly end because the Horde and Alliance are never actually being threatened with destruction, at least not at each others’ hands. Every time the ‘RAH RAH WAR’ engine spins up, I know it’s a filler arc because nothing’s actually going to happen or matter. Meanwhile if the big bad of an expansion gets up to stuff, I pay attention because this might actually affect things.
Huh? Thrall was an idiot for not planning for his people’s future, he went full repentance mode and self-sabotaged the Orcish people. His generation probably needed to repent for what they did on Azeroth, but forcing the sons to pay for the sins of their fathers is how you get the likes of Garrosh, who Thrall was too starry-eyed to see as a proper threat. Garrosh meanwhile was a petulant child with an oversized axe since his introduction, and everyone that wasn’t named Thrall in Horde leadership knew this guy was going to get everyone associated with him killed if he was ever allowed near a command post.
Meanwhile, Varian’s over there malding over the fact that Thrall and the Horde get to exist after recovering from his stint in their arenas, and constantly tries to poke the bear or even invent reasons to strike first out of fear and paranoia, something his son constantly tried to warn him off of. Then he goes and gets himself full-on deleted by deciding to engage a demonic horde instead of just dealing with the problem preventing his airship from escaping and staying alive another day. But hey, there’s that player parity again; Horde lost Vol’jin, Alliance has to lose someone, and Varian’s number came up, so he got made stupid and belligerent in the face of decent tactics.
Of what? I honestly cannot remember how Wintergrasp even factored into Wrath’s story at all, was it Titan artifacts? To me, it was just a battleground you doddled around on, maybe rode a tank at someone, and then promptly bailed on when your Raid Lead called you up for Naxx.
My guy, Warcraft was one of the defining games of the '90s and early oughts. This, along with the likes of Half-Life were what put PC gaming on the map. There was a massive amount of inertia going into WoW generated from the Warcraft games, and you’re being very silly for thinking otherwise. Also, talking to HP fans (and being close friends with two very dedicated ones), people care far more for their wands and access to wizardry than which house they’re in. I myself was rated as a Hufflepuff when I did the Sorting Hat.
No, it’s Blizzard being unwilling to take the opportunity to finally break the faction lock. It would have been the perfect time for it too; we reach out and become the pinnacle of our class, we network and establish bonds with other practitioners and realize our faction membership has been holding us back this whole time, and now we’re faced with a choice, leave our faction and remain a neutral agent of our Order Hall, or abandon our newly-made ties and return to our rank in the Alliance/Horde. This could have been super compelling and a great narrative beat, but a combination of Vanilla Spaghetti Code and Blizzard’s unwillingness to write for the PC means we’ll never get to know.
So, self-sabotage then.
Huh? Where is this coming from? All I’m asking is are these elite soldiers or not? If they are, why aren’t they professionals? Why do they act like little kids having a spat at a playground when they’re at the doorstep of a world-ending threat?
The Airship Battle was one of the dumbest moments of WoW I’d ever experienced.
I… Am? Worst case scenario, the Wrynn family line falls, there is upheaval in Stormwind before councils start forming and rationalizing that they must work together or die alone as the Horde tries to exploit the internal divisions. Humanity bounces around fighting out how to decide leadership before settling on something and with the existential threat of the Horde pushing them, coalesces around their new leadership, whatever form that might take. Best case scenario? The Wrynn family makes the nobility pay their share (including their own debts), the Defias are satisfied, and Stormwind continues on barely disturbed.
The Alliance as a whole is not and does not need to be a part of the above story. This is a strictly Human internal affair.
Warcraft is the name of its parent franchise, not what we do. If this were a proper wargame, I’m still waiting on my army to command, rather than do everything myself.
I did, and everything that wasn’t a Human, Orc, or Elf existed solely to allow in an AR. Once that was over with, they and the AR they helped introduce promptly vanished from the greater narrative. The KTs and ZTs got maybe an extra patch, but even they got sidelined once Azshara showed up. Then it was back to The Usual Suspects as the narrative leads. Oh, and would you look at that, the battle in Dazar’alor meant nothing. Nothing changed hands, the Horde didn’t even lose anything of note; we were keen on getting rid of Rastakhan 'cause Bwonsamdi was pretty much done with him anyway and we were just the vehicle of his demise.
No, you’re not. You’re just saying ‘but this is how people feel’ and completing ignoring that these are supposed to be professional, elite soldiers.
So they teamed up with the side they also waged war against in WC3? And the Alliance was chill with this development, given how they treated the BE? That’s quite the motivation whiplash.
I’m not talking narratively. They lost a town because we lost a town. Player parity, remember?
As opposed to the exact same skin that the Alliance or Horde always wears?
'Welp, it’s Varian/Garrosh/Jaina/Sylvanas causing trouble again. Guess we’ll go hurl angry words at them until the back off and swear ‘next time, Gadget.’
Again, the inertia from the previous Warcraft entries as well as its boasted ease-of-entry for casual players made it the go-to when MMORPGs were hot. Remember, at this point, quest markers were almost unheard of, you were expected to type in archaic commands to NPCs and hope you got the right text entries. In WoW, it was right-click and off you went. This actually invited some derision from old-school grognards as the ‘baby mode’ of MMORPGs.
The NE were fiercely independent and xenophobic, only coming out of hiding when the literal end of the world loomed before them. That they would then decide ‘y’know those Humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes were pretty rad after all’ despite having fought them as hard as they did the Horde in WC3, and having witnessed what the Alliance did to the BE in TFT is brain-melting. And the Horde of WC2 wouldn’t even fit the theme of the Horde in WC3, let alone WoW’s interpretation of the Horde.
I imagine they’d probably learn their lesson after the repeated lessons of the universe screaming ‘work together or die alone’, but hey, I just work here.
And? If I’m killing Goblins, am I betraying the Horde?
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You dont decide anything dude
This is not a tabletop rpg, you do not get to decide anything. You cannot decide to fight for the legion or against it, you are set to face the legion and thats it
You werent forced, you chose to play the game where you play as a faction soldier
“oh man i hate this FIFA game where im forced to be a football player, i wanted to be a basketball player”
Play another game?
The story was literally tri-dimensional
you had alliance pov
you had horde pov
and the neutral pov
“let me, the player, with full meta-knowledge of the facts, past, present and future to bellite the character for acting like flawed people and not perfect beings”
right right
Im starting do doubt what you remember of the game story at all
Together with many others, like starcraft and diablo itself
But only horde and alliance are remembered for generations
you cannot deny the impact those things have, full stop
Doesnt matter what they like more
Everyone knows about the houses, thats the point
Because “breaking the faction lock” is 1.dumb, 2.doesnt make sense in the setting 3.only a small minority, who dont care about the lore anyway want it
and im asking, are you being naive or just playing dumb?
I literally told you a story about a professional general, who ignored orders and launched an attack that end up with his dead and his army annihilation
This things happen they are facts, and happened trough the history over and over.
And its listed as one of the favorite and most cool moments in the warcraft franchise by many players
So again, maybe its a you problem
Lmao, and you think the horde will not seize the opportunity to drive the blade deep in the alliance when they are in turmoil?
You literally dont understand geopolitics if you think everyone will be waiting until stormwind finish its own internal business
That literally what we do all the time, waging war against different foes
each other
lich king
illidari
deathwing
legion
old gods
yada yada
So they shouldnt use the raes they introduced in the faction? and no, there was more of it, i just explained how undead and darkspear were present in zandalar
Yes, because the alliance did not establish themselves in the night elf lands, the horde did
how is that hard to understand?
Nope, thats not how it works, there wasnt parity in that, many vilalges and outposts where destroyed in the war
theramore had nothing to do with taurujo
its not the same skin, but yeah now instead of 1 enemies we have 2
2 is better than 1, more content
So? you are here whining you dont want to be the bad guy, do you think people wanted to play a xenophobic racist race? they obvious got watered down.
the theme is pretty much the same
flashback to the “war to end all wars”, how that end for us?
Like i said, you are being EXTREMELY naive, to think every citizen of azeroth will care about your mumbo jumbo cosmic war bullcrap
People living in a village only care about surviving another day and how to put food on the table, the races and leaders need to care about then too,
You are being disingenuous now
The ‘why’ is the important part here. I know I’m going to fight the Legion, the question is ‘why’. The Order Halls offered many and multiple ‘whys’. I’m fighting them because I want to do so on behalf of my Uncrowned allies, or because I’m genuinely a Horde patriot, or because I’m doing so backed by the Kirin Tor. The Legion needs to be defeated, yes. But the interesting part is ‘why’.
That’s not what the box said. The box said ‘epic adventure’. I don’t even see mention of the Horde or Alliance. Nowhere does it say I’m signing up to be a simple ‘soldier’. I’m ‘joining up with thousands of mighty heroes in an online world of myth, magic, and limitless adventure’. Sounds like high heroic fantasy to me, rather than some war-sim. Can you point out where ‘you’re going to get suckered into a faction war’ is?
And the first two don’t count since it’s just ‘RAH BLUE/RED BAD’ and is an excuse to justify World PvP. The faction conflict literally does not matter because not only can it never definitively end in anything but a draw, but if one side loses something, you can bet the other side will lose something comparable very, very soon if not immediately. Being told ‘everything your side does is right and you believe this because you’re a soldier of said side’ flies in the face of my own character’s experiences in the actual game. Every Human is not bad because I’ve met Humans I’m on good terms with. Ditto Orcs. Ditto Forsaken. Ad nauseum. Yet the Horde would dictate I slaughter every Human I come across.
Can you see why this is narratively stupid yet?
Anyone with a working brain and the ability to conceive of consequences would have been able to see that Thrall’s entire settling and lack of planning afterward was a doomed martyrdom. He was wrong to condemn his people’s future to starvation knowingly settling in a desert, he should have settled somewhere reasonable and then established his martyr’s camp in Org. The Orcs would have been far less desperate and would not have been so driven toward pillaging and thus antagonizing the Night Elves. This is something he’d have had more than enough time to consider when it came toward Orgrimmar’s establishment, and it wouldn’t have been like he would be unaware of the NE’s presence in Ashenvale either. Thrall forced his own martyrdom on the Orcish people just as harshly as Garrosh forced his bloodlust on them, and they’ve had a bad deal either way.
Here is your opportunity to educate me, because as far as I remember of Wintergrasp, you occasionally drove a tank and blew up walls before some DK killed you because they were busted back then.
… What? You’re honestly saying that, what, no one remembers the Terran Confederacy or the Protoss or the Zerg? Or the GDI and Nod? Come on, be serious here. Well-liked popular entries grant a huge amount of inertia to games and concepts featuring them, hence why the Alliance and Horde are so well-known. It’s not because of WoW, it’s because of Warcraft.
Doesn’t make sense? What are you talking about, we’re epic adventurers at this point, the pinnacle of our classes. It would make perfect sense at this point to be confronted by the possibility of leaving our faction and working independently from that point forward. We’d have the support of an organization that would have interests in the world beyond just the Legion (well, maybe not the DHs, but that’s what happens when you write a narrow-as-hell class narrative), we wouldn’t be obligated to get involved in faction war nonsense, and we’d be able to determine and stay true to our own player identity.
Hell, as long ago as Cataclysm the Tauren were honestly wondering if their interests were being served by the Horde and Lor’themar was about to outright bail until Jaina stepped in to make sure we didn’t need to actually worry about the status quo getting altered. So leaving factions is perfectly in-universe and actually respects the lore of the world, races and classes!
Did said general have repeated, constant reminders that what he was about to do was, in fact, a very bad idea? Also, said general wasn’t on the front line of a war effort against a literal world-scale extinction event. Not just ‘lose your army and individual life’ level threat, but a 'we screw this up and our entire planet dies.’ I would expect slightly better discipline in such circumstances, but hey, apparently expecting elite soldiers to be professional in the face of global death is a bridge too far.
You might be right, I prefer to not follow the orders of fools and prefer to work alongside people I can actually count on to not make my job harder.
That’s worst-case scenario, you know. As in, ‘Varian just can’t be bothered to order the Stormwind nobility to pay what’s owed to make this whole conflict vanish in a heartbeat’. Then again, it’d also be an opportunity for the Defias to realize that while their anger is entirely justified, now might not be the best time to act, given the other threats facing the city right now. At least, not in a violent sense. Negotiations could ensue, the Defias might get a seat at the table, who knows? But then, there’d be intrigue in a Warcraft storyline and we just can’t have that.
And it only makes sense in that order. As in, the time for us fighting each other is long past. And notice how many of those aren’t us VS us?
The Forsaken were present, but at that point it’s debatable whether Sylvanas was there representing the Forsaken, the Horde, or strictly herself. After all, her actions hadn’t lined up with Forsaken interests for a while at this point. Let’s check out how she was ‘recruiting’ new Forsaken back in the Garrosh days. What a focus on ‘free will’ she had there with the insta-brainwashing and such.
And the solution is… Abandon your seclusion and decide ‘well we’re fully in your corner and not just temporary allies until this gets cleaned up’? All the edge the Night Elves had got sanded off with their membership in the Alliance.
When I speak of ‘player parity’, I’m not speaking narratively, I’m speaking mechanically. If one side loses a city, the other side loses a city. It’s generally a very bad idea to ever leave one of the sides of a two-sides game in a worse position than the other, and I really shouldn’t have to explain why.
What? What on earth changed when we fought the Alliance between Classic and now? The background? It’s the same enemy, same scenario, same lack of actual impact on anything.
I mean, have you read some of the posts on these forums? I’m pretty sure people would have adored being on the xenophobic ‘Night Elf’ faction instead of being shoehorned into the Alliance.
… You need to replay WC2 and WC3 and then look back at this post and realize how wrong you are.
And you think every citizen of Azeroth is cool with the Faction War? They’re probably sick to death of their faction trying to beat the war drum since the last time they did so the process of death broke.
At this point I’m amazed there hasn’t been a peasant’s revolution against all faction leadership.
You were the one that said all Tauren stories are Horde stories. Aren’t all Goblin stories Horde stories?
EDIT: This will probably be my final response on the topic. This is going nowhere and I’m not going to keep paragraph-dumping into a void. Simply put, the faction restrictions are strangling the creative potential of both the writing team and player expression, and the game would be healthier as a whole if it allowed players to leave their factions and just work with neutral factions instead.
Poor OP is stuck thinking it is a faction war when Azeroth is being destroyed 
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Sure, the Lich King is about to enslave every living thing on the planet under the veil of undeath, but we’ve just gotta figure out whose super-special floaty-boaty is TEH BESTEST
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I honestly thought the entire Trial of the Crusader area was kind of not wise & kinda off tangent
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I always kind of rationalized it as ‘practically every Priest and Paladin is present so if someone dies during the Trial/Tournament they’ll be rezzed before the Lich King can turn them’. So it didn’t bother me too much that they were working on filtering out the best of the best.
Those ‘best-of-best’ then going skyward to have a moment during the operation though? That was criminally dumb.
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I don’t want these Were-pigs ruining my alliance. How about you can have both the Amani and the Haranir…
you must work for Microsoft human resources, and the CEOs bank if you have this level of information. Can you share any other inside details with us that none of the rest of us would actually have?
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