anyways FACTION WAR am I right?
Let the pasta vs Pizza war commence
Sorry not sorry 
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Lasagne am I right?
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It is amazing. One of my favorites
Yeah, few people want a faction conflict. Why? They are always formulaic. No faction can truly win. Status quo must be returned.
Blizzard formula: Have Horde go full genocide mode. Suddenly one of them gets the idea that âHey, maybe genocide bad?â
While the Alliance is written to be lawfully stupid and pulls their punches. âWe canât press our advantage because that would be meanies.â
Written like the G I joes fighting in Afghanistan from that robot chicken sketch. look it up.
Then, the horde removes the leader saying. âSorry, we genocided.â The alliance says, âOh, you silly willy.â Rinse and repeat.
We just spent the last two expansions trying to fix BFA.
Perché non possiamo averli entrambi?
Anyway, I kinda miss the old vanilla faction war. It was one of those things that you knew it existed, but werenât required to participate in if you didnât want to.
The game could use a little bit more of that honestly.
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Iâd love a situation like this - and having the conflicts be tied to the story and character-driven, like Genn vs Sylvanas in Stormheim.
That one was required PvE content, so not perfect. The best in my mind would be a scenario where the faction conflict plot was a set of non-mandatory bonus objectives/side quests/zone stories woven into the main questline, where the player can participate and feel relevant, or refuse to participate without losing out on anything unique (achievements, toys, unique mogs, etc).
Thereâs a lot of setting history tied in with faction conflicts, and Iâd love to see them brought up through the lens of various characters whose lives were affected, and whose experiences drove them to do good things and do bad things.
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We just need better writing, yada yada yada. The problem is that there is no reason to expect better writing when the mistakes they make in the faction war are the same mistakes they make over and over all the time and refuse to change.
Itâs like your bad pizza place, when told not just take bread and put ketchup on it, refuse to believe it should be donâe any other way. You need to see them use something more sophisticated as ketchup for a tomato sauce before you can believe their pizza wonât be the same dumpster first as always.
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This whole dang thread is making me hungry for pizza.
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Pizza with a side of yummy pasta
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No, no, no. No pasta. Just pizza with a side of pizza.
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I love a good calzone though too. SOOO good 
Edit: I know I misspelled it.
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Spaghetti Pizza!
And for nickname! I though you would say something cool like about the fact i am obnoxious and all!!!
One of the biggest writing problems they have in my opinion is that they always write characters, even if they are elves or dragons or whatever, like they are humans. Its like the writers are very bad rpers who dont, when writing a dialogue ask like âso what an elf would sayâ they just write it like humans, for them, 20y is a lot, so for characters 20y is a lot, even if its an elf who live thousands of years.
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I donât disagree, but people continue to point at faction conflict and insist that is why the story failed.
But youâre not that obnoxious!! We have a whole bunch of people 'round here who are far more obnoxious, toxic, odious and generally uncooth.
Why would I give someone I like a mean nickname, Linguine Draino?
Nobody has ever really given me a nickname before now that I think about it
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Yes I have.
You are my Karebear!!
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I donât know if people insist it was THE reason. I have seen people give a lot of reasons they think it failed. Some are reasonable, some are very much not. Personally, I think Blizzard made a lot of mistakes. But I would argue that regardless of what else they failed at, a good faction war is not possible anyway.
It is kind of like someone trying to do a 100 yard dash when there is a brick wall 60 yards down. They trip and faceplant at the 30 yard line. Sure, you can say they failed because they tripped. But they were never going to succeed anyway.
Sure, Blizzard made a lot of mistakes. But it was never going to be good anyway.
Which is why we donât want them to ever try again. Even if they fixed everything else they did wrong, it would still be bad.
Which is silly and dumb. Iâm assuming weâre talking BfA here.
BfA wasnât bad because âFaction War!!!â It was bad because both stories that got shoved together ended up feeling directionless and detatched from each other.
I mean yeah, the faction war stuff was absolutely bad. It felt unmotivated, out of left field, meandering and divorced from the actual leveling experience (Horde-side at least. Alliance did get a sudden surprise invasion that the Horde never knew about) and abruptly stops after 8.1.5 until it gets quickly resolved in 8.2.5.
But a lot of the reasons for that has to be that they were also trying to tell a half-done Nâzoth/Old Gods story as well. Which was also quite bad, if weâre being honest. Itâs largely missing from the leveling campaign Horde-side beyond the weird âartificial old godâ slug-leech monster Ghuun who felt less like an Old God and more like a cautionary tale about flushing pets down the toilet because they might become mutant monster things. Then this storyline keeps taking turns in the spotlight with the War Campaign for half a patch, until weâre dealing with the much more interesting Nazjatar, nagas and Azshara. And seemingly forgetting that the Horde and Alliance are supposed to be warring right now.
Because neither storyline got enough focus, both felt underwhelming. And while you can have an underwhelming Old God story work if thereâs some fun hooks to it (Nazjatar and Azshara, the fun corrupted gear of the final patch), you canât get away with that as much with a Faction War.
When youâre pitting the playerbase against one another within the confines of the story, you need to have a few things. A solid start, an escalation that makes sense for both sides, and a finale that can satisfy both.
Cata/MoP did have a solid start; we saw things starting to combust in Wrath, the lowbie zones did a decent enough job showing the fighting getting started, and we were reminded of the war with Twilight Highlands. It also gets points for escalation; Theramore makes logistical sense to blow up, and while itâs a big bit off that the fighting suddenly shifts from Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms to Pandaland, at least we saw how that escalation played out with Krasarang Wilds, the ongoing campaign story, and small interactions on the Isle of Thunder. It really can only be argued to have failed in the finale, which was more just lackluster and probably should not have taken place in the Hordeâs capital city.
BfA didnât have a solid start, because we were just thrown into things. Legion started with the Horde and Alliance trying to work together, Genn assuming the Horde (specifically Sylvanas) betrayed the Alliance, but beyond Jaina, Genn and Sylvie, everyone seemed more bummed that we couldnât work together at all. And then we just stopped trying and let the class orders handle things, and the two factions took a seat waaay in the back. We had a Genn v Sylvie thing in Stormheim, but that felt less of an Alliance/Horde conflict and more of a âGenn really hates the zombie woman who murdered his sonâ conflict because of their own specific histories.
BfA also lacked an escalation. After we suddenly see Teldrassil burn and Sylvie blows up her own city, things just⊠Fade away. For Horde, we abruptly have a campaign focused on getting a corpse for reasons, and I dunno the Alliance story. Baineâs all âthis is so badâ while going along with things, until he gets super-sad the corpse is Jainaâs dead brother. This isnât escalation, this is daytime soap opera.
Dazarâalor gets raided, which is about as escalated as it gets, but after watching two cities get wiped off the game maps, having an army invade a city to murder a troll king doesnât feel escalated at all. It feels more like winding down.
And then the Horde rebels actually rebel, everyone joins together, weâre at Orgrimmar again, and itâs resolved in a cutscene because Sylvanas really, really cannot kill hope or something and flies away after negging us all.
The end.
BfAâs faction war lacks a start (itâs just suddenly genociding time), an escalation (things just sorta meander and happen), and a finale that satisfies anyone at all; not the Alliance (âdid we even win???â), not the Rebel Horde (âdid anyone even win???â), not the Loyalist Horde (âshe just⊠called me nothing and flew away???â).
⊠This post is long and kinda meanders itself. I guess itâs like BfAâs Faction War!!
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