HAH yeah she was awesome, I liked it a lot if I recall, I never got too into star trek, I think I grew up when there wasn’t any on for a few years after enterprise? So I couldn’t keep up with what came first or this or that, but I loved the way the Vulcans came off in Enterprise, sort of Elf like imo trying to control humans etc
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Right? The whole entire game is literally founded on horde vs. alliance. Loosening faction restrictions and melding races together completely ruins what literally made the game. If you think “Yeah but its different now, we should change how the game was fundamentally made because reasons” find a different game, this one’s not for you.
How people don’t comprehend that because of their “Gimmie gimmie what I want, I don’t care about anyone / anything else” attitude is also why Blizzard stop engaging with the community so much in the first place.
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i would like them to remove faction barriers but there are alot of ways it would negatively impact the game, such as races with less stellar racials being booted from randoms dungeons/raids, races the other players have historically picked on, such as gnomes, mechagnomes or humans, undead or vulpera. there’d be alot of tribal behavior.
the emulation of the original 3 games of everquest mmorpg, called project 1999, allowed all the races to group, understand each other etc, because the population would not support full groups of the same factional sides as it was originally designed. they still couldnt walk into each other’s cities without extensive rep grinds that would make allied race rep grinds in wow pale in comparison. but it worked out great. the good races could have the best tanks (ogres), the best shaman (trolls), paired with any variation of the best healer (dwarf cleric) and the best enchanter (high elf), druid (wood elf), etc. it all just worked. i dont think wow would survive it though.
Half Elves are not technically elves.
Yes, like - for instance - removing the foundational component of the game; two factions at war over the same real estate.
The glaring issue is that you guys seem to think that the Faction dichotomy is predicated upon model exclusivity and thus removing it would destroy faction identity.
Do you guys really think that the faction divide is so weak that removing model exclusivity would actually destroy the factions?
That’s why I don’t get about the argument, if you believe that loosening model restriction would destroy faction identity, they how flimsy is the Horde/Alliance dichotomy to you to base it so squarely on aesthetics?
I love the faction divide, but I also sure believe that’s a lot more meaningful regarding ideology than faction locking customization.
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That you have a right to an opinion doesn’t exclude it to not be addressed, nor does it prevent pointing out the holes in its argumentation.
If you disagree with that, then I guess that is all we can say.
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As I said:
Now, if you posit that High Elves being playable on the Alliance should be well within my tolerance level then of course humans on the Horde should be too. Hell, there are a lot of goblin quests, and since Steamwheedle Preservation Society is a Neutral faction in Warlords of Draenor why should gobbos be playable on the Alliance? I recall getting exalted with a Tauren faction in Legion, don’t I? So hey, Alliance Taurens anyone?
It’s a wedge issue, Tal. If you open the door for one group then what rational arguments would there be for excluding others? All you would have is subjective arguments like “they didn’t do as much for us or with us as these guys”.
Just to be clear, I’m for lessenning restruictions from a customization angle, not do away with the factions themselves.
As I have always say, I just find ridiculous that a game that is arguably about political and ideological divides splits its groups by biological sense, it just doesn’t make sense.
My point is that racial exclusivity is not what gives the Factions their identity, that’s just reducing the Horde/Alliance dichotomy to aesthetics, which is just lazy.
Orc V Human, the original conflict, was 100% race based. Human Good/Orc Bad. Remember? This is one where we absolutely have diametrically opposed positions; I think you’re wrong and that race is the most logical delimiter in this game’s factions. I don’t think - even though I have one - if I was in charge there would have ever been void elves on the alliance or nightborne in the horde.
Is it lazy, or is it just in the way of what you want?
I mean for starters I just don’t believe it’s a slippery slope kind of deal. That’s just too alarmistic.
What I am saying is that the faction divide should live by what it actually stands in universe: Ideology, not an arbitrary race restriction.
We constantly see groups from “one faction” working for the other, because groups of people are not monoliths and can disagree, that’s why in lore we have Thalassians, Kul Tirans and Pandaren in both factions, because different ideologies.
And that’s all the system needs to make sense. What races could have sub factions cross the Alliance/Horde dichotomy? Those that ideologically are closer to the opposite, or have their reasons for working with the other faction for self-gain.
Why would I be against Alliance Tauren when we saw the grimtotem work with them for their own personal gain?
Mixing the faction models definitely destroys the core of faction identity and what the game is based on, yes. How could anyone disagree? 
It’s not JUST that. It’s a plethora of things, but slowly chipping away at them is still destroying it, how do you not get that? Why do it at all? Alliance is alliance horde is horde. It should stay that way. Each faction should get their own unique things that separates them from each other.
Where do you draw the line? “Well, alliance should be able to have horde mounts, too and visa versa, It’s JUST mounts I think MOUNT customization is more important than faction divide!”
Not as much as everyone else, it seems.
It’s not like everything is faction locked for customization, though. Acting like having a handful of very stringent customization’s locked to each faction is somehow too much is silly. Ion said it perfectly in my opinion. If you want to play a fair skinned elf, you’ll have to play as a horde character, end of story. If you want to play a werewolf human, you have to play alliance. You don’t have horde players saying “Well, worgen could have just have easily joined the horde” or “There are some worgens who likely weren’t in Gilneas and can make an allied race with the horde!”
Sure. You can point holes all you want, but you haven’t. My opinion aligns closely with Blizzards and how the game was during its most successful periods. It’s why I’ve played the game from the get go, I liked what Blizzard did, how they did it. Chipping away at their ideology and how they want their game ran purely because “But I want it THIS way instead!” is dumb in my opinion. There’s no hole in that at all.
No, it’s lazy. My question is quite simple; Why when in universe the Horde/Alliance divide is ideological and political the divide in gameplay is due to race? It doesn’t make in universe sense for it be based on biology because that’s silly, so silly that in the lore several groups are already present in both factions.
Faction exclusivity it’s not a lore issue, it’s a gameplay one.
So cool. Let me know when the Alliance becomes red then the Horde becomes Blue then we’ll talk.
Okay?
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You’re talking about Faction Identity, it has always been Orcs vs Humans. Red vs Blue.
So you reduce the Horde and Alliance ideological divide to merely aesthetics. Good to know that.
And that’s just saying that gameplay should triumph over lore. Which at least is a point I can understand. But let’s be clear that faction exclusivity as you put it is nothing but artificial separation.
I mean as long as you keep reducing Horde and Alliance down to their aesthetics you will come up with silly arguments like this.
Nah, it’s that I just don’t boil it down to aesthetics.
Yet the point is that high Elves are already in the alliance, so your hypothetical of worgens could have been horde is completely out of place.
Just now I have been doing is pointing out to the holes in your arguments, like “well worgens could have been horde” or thinking that aesthetics make the faction.
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Well, yeah. That’s the point, there’s a good amount of gameplay issues that back up the decision to not make every little pocket of allies each faction has into playable races. It’s one thing for the Lore to talk about how one faction allied with a bunch of obscure races like Skeksis and mushroom folk when we went to another planet, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to make them playable on its own.
You can have too many playable races. Lots of mmos do it (especially ones where a good number of races are primarily minor variations of very conventionally attractive women of body types to favor various tastes in cheesecake) And it tends to end up without much flavor for any of the races other than their appearance, and even then it can be overlappy.
With the factions being important it’s nice to have more distinct styles, and separate races for each factions is an efficient way to do that. It’s makes them visually distinct and while they’ve struggled with this some (especially for Horde) it provides more avenues for unique stories and questing where the questing intersects with the lore of the various races, so that you have completely different backstories to draw from.
Gameplay is just as important as the Lore, since, is there any reason to get into the lore for a game that’s not worth playing?
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It’s one of the many things, but why even start to chip away at any of it? Next you’re gonna say “I think alliance should be able to ride horde mounts! It’s JUST mounts”
…Which the entire game was founded on and is literally THE game, sure.
Yup. Every time someone starts to say it’s okay to chip away at faction divide at all, I’ll say how dumb it is to take away any of it purely because “wah I want to play one faction and be able to do everything and get everything the other side has”
Yup, you’d rather just chip away at faction divide. I get it. That’s where we disagree. You think it’s okay to slowly steal stuff from either faction because you don’t care as much about it. That’s fine, I’m just saying you’re wrong.
Except you haven’t.
Uh…do you even play the same game as what we’er talking about…? That’s literally one of the biggest driving factors of what divides the two factions…Horde is rugged, buildings have spikes, armor has spikes, races are monsterous- you know what, if you don’t understand that there’s really no point in continuing this conversation. It’s literally what fundamentally makes horde vs. alliance after the story.
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