As if edge of Night did not have her already be like that. She was literally was like this way before bfa.
But the only thing Christie wrote of Sylvanas was before the strom and it was for bfa…
Someone I follow on Bluesky is apparently going through BfA for the first time and falling for all the same dorky framing techniques Blizzard used to try and make things seem morally equitable and I get mild PTSD every time I see them post about it.
2 Likes
Also bear in mind, we end Legion as the head of a neutral third party faction, it’s laughable on many levels that anyone who did the Legion classhall campaign would in any way help either faction commit a warcrime against civilians.
Except maybe DKs… they did challenge a dragon Aspect afterall…
5 Likes
I have always suspected that the storyline of BfA was hastily rewritten during development at least once if not twice. There are lots of little details that don’t really make sense and that could be artifacts of previous drafts.
They really seemed to be going out of their way to give the Horde no moral leg to stand on.
No, she also wrote Sylvanas in War Crimes.
Seriously? 
Is this person playing Horde or Alliance?
3 Likes
Right??
My blood elf hunter spent the two years before BfA palling around with a night elf and a gnome (Addie4eva), hanging around with members of just about every single race and being given command over all the every hunters.
But now because a zombie lady tells me to burn a tree, I’m just gonna shrug and do that?
Talk about an abrupt shift in morals.
4 Likes
Horde, it seems. They’re a big Horde fan from what I can tell but never did BfA? No clue, just funny to see the exact same things all over again.
Not remotely. This feels like a ‘there are only two kinds of X’ comment. Pick one trait, say they have it in common, so they must be the same.
So, that is just not true.
Interesting to you. Not most of the community. Blizzard tried it, twice.
WoWs faction war conflicts were not well received.
Yes, but I also think it is more than just that. There are a LOT of fundamental story issues with any storyline that leads to an all out war. And an MMO environment with players on both sides wanting to win a war that fundamentally cannot be won because of said MMO nature of the game. It is a lose, lose proposition.
And Blizzard actively tried to make Alliance players feel the pain of it. Look at the whole save the civilian’s quest where it is impossible to get more than a tiny fraction of them. They meant Teldrassil to hurt. And went out of their way to highlight it.
Honestly, I think it is people that conflate edginess, dark themes, and conflict with good stories. There are lots of people that think if there is not violence, death, and dark stories that it is not mature.
Fully agree.
Possible, but…
Most of the ones I noticed make a LOT more sense if you realize they wrote the entire Horde story first and then went back in and built the Alliance one around it. Some of it requiring changes to Horde quests as well. That necessitated some changes that felt really out of place and with weird pacing and events.
Blizzard has shown they are pretty bad at telling simultaneous, interacting stories. They seem to approach everything the same way they did the old WC RTS game campaigns. They approach them in the same serialized way, but when you had to have both Horde and Alliance campaigns happening at the same time, that messed up a lot of the writing. The Alliance stories were somewhat off, missing beats, etc. And the Horde had these weird places where they had to change something they couldn’t make work with the Alliance, thus leaving wholes/problems for later parts of the campaign.
Split factions means a split player base. I don’t think the right poll is “do you want there to be a faction conflict or not” it’s “what do you care about more, a faction conflict in the story or unlimited flexibility to play with your friends, regardless of their faction?”.
This game is at its best when you have a group of friends to play with. Blizzard knows this, which is why factions at war don’t make as much sense anymore.
If you want faction conflict, go out there and do some PVP against the other faction. Don’t wait for the game to put up a bunch of NPCs from the other faction to whack and pat you on the back and call you a hero for it.
1 Like
I think, the blame of this is to be put on Legion, because, as much as peoples love the call halls : they are very bad, because you already had a faction conflict in Legion : in Stormheim, but while this was happenning, people still check five with member of the other faction…
I think the moment when i saw worgen rogues take their poisons from Faranelle who literally use the plague on their people in stormheim at the same moment was very dumb…
Yes Legion was wrong with all the “coming together” and class halls things…and bfa was not wrong for putting an end to this non sense.
Oh i forgot that one, but well Sylvanas in war crimes was not very different…
Its where i find that things are very “problematic” the fact that for you, its the Legion Order Halls having the 2 factions coming together which felt abrupt.
You wont my honest thoughts? I think a big majority of people wanting a faction war, dont even play wow since 10y ago and are classic handies…
2 Likes
In general, I think that the war within somehow lacks a bit of a spark. BFA wasn’t brilliant in any ways, but it created investment, from all sides somewhere, the forum was more active, of course there was a lot more whining, but on the whole there was more interest. But the war within, it had one or two moments, but just…there is somehow a “spark” missing to start this chapter properly, I hope it will come, so far it was a bit stale.
You could be right. I do suspect they are all people who didn’t play the previous faction wars. That might be the ones that wont progress beyond classic. Or it might be people who quit back then and are coming back.
That is actually not a good thing for BfA. There is a fairly consistent number of people that like to discuss the lore. When the number spikes, more often it is a sign of discontent. People are more likely to give feedback when they are upset about something then when they are happy. Case in point:
People came to complain much more, yes. Why? Because a lot more people were unhappy.
The calmer state of the forums now is a result of more of the player base being at least content with the content.
1 Like
Eon was some glorious Sylvanas characterization. Sylvanas was cunning and collective, her unaliving herself gave us a glimpse of the 3D chess game she was playing before even before meeting Zovaal.
The only thing I complained about was the fact that she left the Forsaken high and dry, other than that I loved it.
Fast forward to Warcrimes, BtS, and BfA, and we see her ripping the heads off forest animals and drinking their blood, and trying to kill hope derp. It just felt too mustache twirly for me.
I get the impression that, aside from the “I want to beat up the other faction (but will get angry when my own faction faces losses)” people, a lot of the support for faction conflict comes from people with a desire to see each faction’s own goals and motivations form the main focus of the story, who feel that it only reliably occurs when the factions are in conflict with each other.
That is one thing that faction conflict (but not usually faction war) does fairly well - because the two factions have to be fighting, it requires that each faction has their own, separate, specific goals - like Sylvanas wanting to take over the val’kyr vs Genn wanting revenge on Sylvanas. It gives the Horde something to focus on that’s distinctly Horde, and the Alliance something to focus on that’s distinctly Alliance. Plus, it can give a lot of character drama for the NPCs involved, and give a chance to see familiar NPCs showing their own dedication to the player’s faction.
This doesn’t have to happen only in faction conflict stories - my best example would be the first half of the Wrathgate, where each faction got their own distinct and flavorful representation against a shared NPC foe - but, alas, the neutral stories tend to blend the factions together and not show off that faction flavor.
I think this faction conflict request is raising its head now because of how the faction perspectives have vanished - there’s a single view now, “stop Xal’atath”, and little space to explore each faction or race’s unique perspectives. No character is going to stand up and say “I don’t think we should stop Xal’atath” (unless they’re then revealed as a doppelganger/traitor and summarily face death-by-murder-hobo), whereas faction conflict requires (or at least should require) at least two acceptable motivations that are incompatible with each other - giving the player more to think about and make their own decisions around. That’s why a lot of faction conflict events are the ones still repeatedly brought up and re-argued years after the fact!
For me, at least, that last part is very important to me. It’s what drew me to this setting above many other fantasy settings: having two far different perspectives on the world, two different sets of assumptions and motivations, both of which made sense and could not be easily dismissed - but which often clashed with the opposing view/goals and led to conflict, with neither side being fully right nor fully wrong.
I’d love to have the current faction armistice and widespread peace stay permanently, as long as the factions kept their distinct character and clashing worldviews, kept their own strongly faction-flavored character rosters active in all new stories, and kept their disagreements and competitions. Unfortunately, I feel like that has been missing for DF and TWW.
16 Likes
I mean, I like faction conflict because it’s the only time I actually get to quest with Horde characters anymore?
Like, don’t get me wrong, BfA fundamentally ruined the setting and a number of my favorite characters. It was actively miserable and alongside Shadowlands, threatened to kill my interest in WoW entirely.
But, I liked actually getting to quest with Nathanos and help out the Zandalari whereas the Dragonflight/TWW era is just ‘here’s the Alliance campaign, I guess a couple token Horde can tag along’ and with the most recent short story set in Silvermoon being entirely focused on Alliance character drama, I do not believe for a second Midnight will be anything more than the Alleria show.
The things that drew me to the setting, the races, their internal conflicts, characters, and stories are missing and replaced with the same set of generic, largely Alliance action heroes standing around grimly going ‘that bad person is bad and we should do something about it’ and I long for faction conflict because that’s the best hope I have of breaking away from that and getting to quest with the Horde again.
16 Likes
I was playing a Nightborne during the War of Thorns. Even before burning the tree I was very uncomfortable with the questing. We had just ended a war with the Legion of all things and are brand new members of the Horde but don’t have any animosity towards the Alliance because both factions helped us. We just relate to blood elves better and suddenly I’m being told to march throigh the forests my cousins live in and KILL THEM IN THEIR SLEEP(one of the ashenvale quests once we got to Astranaar had us kill them in their sleep). These are my cousins! I’m highborne they’re lowborne but we’re related and I’m out here being ordered to murder them…why? I hated the war of thorns. I hate faction wars and conflict and I’m glad they’re done with that.
3 Likes
I have to say, it was the opposite for me. I became increasing alienate from the story. It got to the point were, when my guild stopped raiding, I realized that there was simply nothing I wanted from the game anymore and unsubbed. Given that I had once been someone who only did story, that was a real nadir.
Blizzard hasn’t shown they can actually write a faction war. They can’t even write factions in general really.
Every time we get one it’s the Horde’s warchief turning evil and the Horde player having 0 agency in whether they participate in atrocities or not and just having to wait until the rest of the Horde rebels.
Meanwhile, the Alliance just gets further homogenized into being humans and friends where no one has a single thought in their heads and are just there to prop up the morons from the Wrynn dynasty.
5 Likes
There is stuff to enjoy about the Faction Conflict, and stuff that has been grating.
It irks me that Blizzard had 2 opportunities… and flopped with both, in almost the exact same way. Leaving very few people satisfied or content with the outcome.
In a 2 Faction game, one might think Blizzard could at least take turns giving one side a win over the other… but nope. The Conflicts just always end with some Wrynn giving a speech in Org.
I would have liked a Faction War to end with raiding Stormwind for the sake of fairness. Talanji needs justice for being imprisoned. I hope the Troll Warbands rally from Starnglethorn and bring Stornwind to heel.
But that’s not gonna happen. Even if the Alliance does bad things to the Horde, the Horde gets no justice. The Alliance gets their heroic ending, and the half of the Horde that worked with the Alliance gets to hide under the Alliance’s skirt for a few more expansions.
I can understand people who don’t want a Faction War. Horde Fans are tired of being the punching bags for Alliance Power Fantasy. Alliance fans saw how the Horde has been treated and they don’t want to be the losers in a story like the Horde has been.
I’d like a little parity in the story. A Horde leader leading a raid on Stormwind is long over due. Maybe we will get that raid on Stormwind, if Turalyon or Yrel or the Arathi try to turn it into some Light Fortress and the Alliance begs for the Horde’s help.
7 Likes
It’s mostly this, and people who lack the wherewithal to PVP.
It’s just a consistent theme that Horde players on the forums complain about being the bad guys but then when their content is made neutral they complain that it’s too neutral. We’re getting an entire patch centered around goblins and there’s still complaints about Horde rep, because it doesn’t count or whatever because they saw a human player running by them or something.
The complaints about rep are seriously overblown. You spend 90% of the game outside of the campaign interacting with rock dwarves, half-elves from an entirely different culture, and spider people. People act like they have to personally kiss Alleria’s feet every time they log in when most people probably can’t even remember the last time they spoke to her after completing the campaign. I can’t remember the last time I spoke to her.
Midnight is going to be set in Silvermoon, we’re going to be spending a lot of time around Blood elves, and there’s already preemptive complaining about Alleria’s involvement. As if it isn’t obvious Sylvanas is also going to be involved, Blizzard’s most adored character, who was basically the protagonist for 4 years alongside Anduin.
1 Like