They did this in Pandaria fairly well by centralizing the shady actions of SI:7 in Jade Forest and the more vengeful members of the Alliance during the opening quests and Landfall. Depicting the Alliance as this imperialist power waging proxy war in a foreign land that does not want them. It was actually interesting, and portrayed the Alliance in a more politically nuanced and morally grey way. Unlike a bunch of Nelves appearing and mass slaughtering people in a blind act of rage and retribution. That would be extremely uninteresting.
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Both sides were imperialistic. Panderia was just the latest theater of war. But yes MoP had more nuance but the faction was still very much sucked because the Horde could take actions and Alliance could not.
And then they undid any nuance the Alliance had by centralizing the entire faction under one person into a faux-warchief for marketing.
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Purge of Dalaran was not an action?
Not a compelling or well thought out one
Well again, this wasnât meant to be some 8000 IQ ending to the raid, this was just a 2min brainstorm that I wanted to use as an example of creating a faction conflict in the background of an event and how that could be used to âfill inâ story while other villains persist as the main objective.
- Was this planned by Tyrande? What does that mean for her and Elune?
- Was this Shandris Feathermoonâs idea? Does that introduce her into a more major/interesting character?
- What does this mean for the Alliance versus Horde situation? What would Greymane, Anduin, or Turaylon think of this?
- What does this mean for Thrall and the Horde? How do they act?
- What does this mean for the Forsaken Council and Calia?
Terrible writing aside, itâs the idea that creating a conflict war, at least in World of Warcraft, is better than an endless rope of just killing bosses.
- Enter raid â Kill boss X â Leave Raid â Repeat
Compared to a whole city blowing up with its citizens captured and massacred while put on display in Orgrimmar?
You tell me. Proportionally speaking.
How would that change at all in a âfaction warâ expansion.
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What you try to pull is relativism. I asked you a single question - is it NOT an action?
What I am trying to pull is that the player is playing faction war story.
One side takes disproportionate actions and the other barely takes actions.
It makes the faction war seem unfair, if you want to be technical about it and consider it an action based on the definition rather than the spirit then thats your choice.
But no the purge and the robot cat were not enough to constitute as actions. Both factions should have the opportunity to take equal action.
You know what is not well thought out? That Nelves allow anyone from Horde near their new tree? Horde should never know about itâs existance or at the very least be denied to get anywhere closeby.
That Horde has to quest with the likes of Shandris, and in SL the likes of Jaina, where these characters are still enemies to the red team.
And I donât see why Alliance would care about Baineâs drama.
Youâd think separate questing experience should be a way to go to avoid such a guffs, but ney apparently.
@Smallioz - note taken. Purge of Dalaran is not an action on Alliance part.
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I dont want ever faction conflict again tbh, i may be the minority here.
There are no real stakes when it comes to faction conflict because of mechanical aspects of the game, but they also cant ditch the mechanics of the factions either, so my hope is that the factions remain at a neutral state, with the ocasional beef between specific characters or friendship happening.
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Itâs meant to provide a familiar narrative, one that the player is invested in, to provide gaps in the endless struggle of protecting Azeroth from âBad Guy X.â
If the faction war didnât exist, or any resemblance of it was removed, what would the story of Warcraft be that wasnât purely bad guy after bad guy?
(Also, Iâm not talking about a pure repeated conflict war, where expansion 1 we raid Undercity, expansion 2 we raid Stormwind, and create this new endless cycle.)
Iâd also note that on the video game side of things, we are entering an âevergreenâ era where they might be more willing to make changes to the world that reflect an actual horde vs alliance struggle. They were willing to in some part, remove Darnassus as a major hub, they could end up doing something just as big in the future.
Compared to what the Horde has done? Not even close.
Why are these our only two options?
Blizz has a whole team or writers to figure out what the story of an expac should be, why are we still pretending like theyâre incapable of coming up with anything but these two storylines.
Feel like in a personal ideal scenario there wouldnât be a âBig World-ending Bad Guy/Threatâ every other expac and neither should there be a âbig faction warâ going on (at least not between Alliance v. Horde).
At least personally, I would prefer that Warcraft orientated itself to taking on more smaller-scale stories wherein your character can meet a variety of different characters or be thrusted into any kind of varying different situations rather than one BIG EXPANSION IDEA, right.
We can still have overarching worldwide change, but I donât like the idea of your character always needing to face a world-ending threat in every scenario.
Like, hell, Iâd be fine with just a single patch being like âAlright, the Bloodsail Buccaneers have been plundering Booty Bay! We need to launch a counterattack!â and that patch is centered around fighting on Plunder Isle or something. Then have the next patch be somewhere completely different, I really donât care lol.
Smaller-scale threats or adventures just seem more appealing to me idk.
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People have said for years that smaller-scale zone stories are what Blizzard is good at, so completely agree. I donât know why they apparently havenât picked up on that themselves.
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Obviously where those stories make sense, they can fit in and work really well as seen with the Blue Dragonflight quest. But I think having a full expansion or multiple expansions at this point in WoWâs lifespan, it would begin to feel like your character is just punching down.
Itâd be the same thing as going to watch Spiderman3 and the whole movie heâs just fighting henchmen, or inequivalent foes.
You say it was about letting go of old hatred but not even 5 years later at the beginning of wow they were back at each other throats. And that was only jaina and thralls people, not most of Azeroth which made political issues. The reason I like wc2-wc3 era is in the books and in the games you can see internal strive driving groups apart. Like the issue of succession for alterac after their betrayal. The question of a new warchief for the horde now lethargic horde. The corruption of dalaran and the practicers of black magic aka keâthuzad and similar minded people. The alliance was about to be disbanded due to arguments over keeping orcs alive and many were fighting over money and power. All this made for a much more interesting story than a villain of a week set up where the only real danger is who we will steam roll next in a raid without any real consequences of them showing up. Fyrakk will die and nothing will come of his death, irkkon will show back up one day with some random army that will just get steamrolled within a patch by the alliance and horde working together again. The void will lose due to the alliance and horde working together. Like their has been no threat to the world since Arthas, and Arthas was the last villain the horde and the alliance did not team up against. As shown in the icc with the airship boss. Which imo was a really fun boss fight.
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Just because Blizzard decided to undo the peace between the Alliance and Horde between the jump from Warcraft 3 to World of Warcraft doesnât mean that Warcraft 3 wasnât about opposing sides coming together and putting their differences aside. That is explicitly what the story around the New Horde and the attack of the Burning Legion is about in the game. Itâs not even subtext, itâs the literal text. Was it lazy writing by Blizzard at the time to just ignore all of that? Yes. Yes it was.
Also if you liked the Warcraft 2 to Warcraft 3 era politics, you SHOULD want the two faction system done away with. Political groups and actors could be more than red team or blue team in those days because things werenât boiled down to this simplified team sports mentality.
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The Alliance and Horde were not in a state of total war until Cata. The conflicts in vanilla and TBC were sponsored conflicts. Much like how the Cold War was in real life. Wrath was when the first big AvH conflict took place and even that was brushed under the rug until Cata began. Note that I am NOT referring to the wrathgate there but instead the Hordes ambush on Alliance forces at the Broken Front.
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