When did I say one side had to be EVIL? Is that how wars always work in your mind?
You just keep putting words in my mouth and arguing against things I’m not even calling for.
I’m so glad I blocked you.
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Honestly, I am not fully sure. I think it could be done.
Given our current state, it would be a bit problematic for the story if it was any kind of armed conflict.
So, it would likely have to be some kind of diplomatic or economic conflict. Perhaps competing for trade deals or the like.
I do think there is a way to get back to a rivals state. Most of the paths are blocked by what they have done, but I don’t think all of them.
And again, a faction war should be completely off the table.
Was it?
There is a big difference between the state in WoW from Vanilla through Wrath that is different than the cold war in RL. That is the leadership. In RL cold war was the US and Russian governments were actively trying to weaken the other (through economics, diplomacy, and proxies). They wanted the other to collapse and were trying to make it happen without any direct military conflict. In WoW the top leadership (the governments) of both the Horde and Alliance wanted peace and cooperation. It was not an ongoing struggle to collapse the other. The tensions really came from flash points where the sides bumped into each other and felt they both had claim to something there.
In WoW that time could be best described as tensions causing flare ups of conflict. It was not an active effort by the leadership of either side. The factions themselves, the government, were not at war (cold or hot).
Players often call it a cold war because it makes for relatively quick short hand. But, it isn’t really accurate.
Nooow we’re on the same page.
Good ideas, by the way. I agree if they’re going to fix this it needs to be slow gradual, but that isnt really Blizzard’s thing. Ugh.
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I am not saying any different than what I have said before. 
To be clear:
It is a faction war that I am arguing cannot be done in a good way.
Conflict/rivalry can be.
Well, to be fair to them, they had it reasonably well done in Vanilla through Wrath.
The problem is they took it a step to far and decided ‘hey, a war is a good idea.’ That kind of torpedoed everything. Getting back to a rivalry state would be VERY hard, though possible, given the wars. The faction wars nuked almost all the paths they had.
I doubt it will ever happen.
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I think if we’re both content with the status quo returning to a cold war (or whatever you wanna call the state of things from vanilla to wrath) as opposed to a full on expansion-sized war? Then yes we agree.
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And even that, i perfectly remember Thrall back in Vanilla syaing that “its peace with the alliance, even if there is some little skimishes there and there”
its why he ask you to save Moira as a Horde member.
People claim to want moral complexity but there isn’t any moral complexity in race wars. It is not complex that “Orcs are in the Horde; Every Orc thinks like this”. We desperately need to drop the pretense that fantasy racism is inherently deep or something. It’s not. It’s not always bad to include but it is not a shortcut to ‘moral complexity’. It only is if you’re willing to explore what that mindset is really like instead of “heehoo elf knife ears greenskins heehoo”.
You can have moral complexity and tension without the faction war. Blizzard is doing safe big stories because that’s what they always do. It’s always a world ending threat and everyone has to get on board and the reason why we’ve stopped faction tension is because it makes no sense in the context of those threats. Intra-factional tensions make more sense.
You’re not playing this game for moral complexity, stop the cap. Even in BFA, the best parts of that expac were not dealing with the other faction, i.e the base island quests. Island expeditions and Warfronts were not made better because they put up a bunch of NPCs of the opposite faction to fight.
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I think, and thats what i remember with bfa, when it was announced and seeing all the hype aroudn the faction conflict.
It had nothing much to do with the “morality” in the conflict, all that peoples kept being on about was bascially binary down right simplistic view of : RED VS BLUE!!! its aas simpple as that, they just want to yell “for the horde” and “for the alliance” (it was exactly what the characters did in the cgi)
Thats all people really care about with faction conflict, and i dont mean the “lore peoples” i mean the majority of players base, because : yes majority dont really care about the lore its why when majority like an expac they certainly wont claim the lore was good for real as they dont care about it.
The whole point and what people wanted with faction wars was to go with the “red is dead” mindset and dont care the reasons.
So i think you are completly right. Peole here can keep argueing in their little circle of 10-20 peoples who read the lore that " they want a moral complexity" but in the eyes of the comunity as a whole they are just irrelevant.
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You and the other blood elf could always meet me in warmode and I could give you both some faction conflict.
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And i kid you not, you could continue to argue about having or not a “faciton conflict being well handled”
For the “majority” of players, it dont matter, as long as you will have people yelling “FOR THE HORDE/ALLIANCE” you will have your faction conflict one day.
Will it be handled right? High chances that it wont.
But you perfectly know one thing and thats a facts : BFA made people hyped, and sold very well, like its one of the expacs that sold the most and people were just hyped because FOR THE HORDE and FOR THE ALLIANCE!!!
“Faction conflict is gone. Also everyone must be best friends with Anduin, Alleria, and Brann!!!”
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And screams of No, not THAT faction conflict is heard all around 
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Then the Horde will just lose yet again…accurate lore!
They are kinda like our team rocket 
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You are not wrong in this.
Problem is all those people just shouting for ‘their team’ want their team to win. Which can’t happen because MMO. They may get excited at the start, but it has to end at some point with neither side winning. So, ultimately all another war could do is disappoint everyone.
I hope you are wrong in this…though you are probably not.
While I do not agree with the amount of hostility you have been getting Glow Gnome, I must correct you on this.
Players often call it a cold war because Blizzard described it as a cold war, and while it does not match with the US-USSR Cold War, it does fit the general vibe.
While Thrall and the missing Alliance leadership were trying to not go to all-out war, they often turned a blind eye to their subfactions causing flair-ups (the story behind the BG factions), would hire mercenaries (PCs) to assault the other side in various locations, and generally did everything they could to ensure that whatever peace Thrall and (Varian Proxy) worked towards would be untenable.
This is why it so quickly spiraled in Wrath from the Wrathgate; both sides had every reason to think the other was actively heating the cold war up.
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Thats true, but i think BFA is the perfect example, people already had that experience of “not wining” in MoP but that did not have the effect of having peoples not being hyped for the bfa.
And thing is, people knew about Teldrasil, people knew about the “non sense” it made that “we just defeated the legion but…we are on conflict again” they knew all that but despite this, they still were ultra hyped! And Blizzard in the end still “won” by selling the expac pretty good.
Its what i want to explain that, its a lot of marketing around the simple “buy your horde or alliance t-shirt” and all that jazz for the players.
I personnaly hope i am wrong too to be totally honest with you, but when you think about it…since a while now, when the Blizzcon start what is the frist thing they do? Make people yell the “For the Horde/For the Alliance” thing…
Maybe one day, they will ask everyone to yell “For Azeroth” or something in that style, and that day it will have a shift in my opinion.
Now thats a good nickname 
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I mean, I can see why they’re wary of even cold war. Faction war narratives essentially destroyed most of the WC3 roster’s characterization and their popularity among the playerbase, WC3 being the game that really put Warcraft on the map.
There are other factors, of course, but as it stands now the writing team must regard faction war as poison, particularly given the playerbase is much more volatile and somewhat less media literate than 15 years ago.
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Ouh, well, I think why Blizzard was able to sell BFA so well, why even MOP sold relatively well back then, and there was even an increase in players towards patch 5. 4 (only because the patch didn’t bring any more content for so long the player count dropped again), and even WOD caused a strong hype, with the same “Horde vs Alliance” premise, that a large number of players are quite interested in this scenario, but are only dissatisfied with the handling, and I think the culprit lies in Blizzard’s storytelling and worldbuilding.
Why does it work in other settings? Localization is the key point. The map is “bigger” the world is bigger, there can be battlefields that cover a whole country without destroying the whole nation, but wow’s map is too small to support that.
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Oh, I like that. I might have to keep my current sword transmog for a long time. 
Even if Blizzard called it that, I remain unconvinced it does fit.
But honestly, any more and we risk being pedantic about it. I think it is safe to say that anyone paying attention to the conversation knows our meaning at this point.
That is correct. But I choke that up to people not thinking it through. And I think it is safe to say that when it ended pretty much everyone was disappointed.
Oh, I agree there was a lot of manipulative marketing. And people bought into it.
I am not saying Blizzard couldn’t get people hyped at the start. I am completely confident you are correct in suggesting they would. I just know the end will always be a disappointment.
I think it is more than that. The ‘For the Horde/For the Alliance’ portion of the player base that get hyped for the faction wars will only be satisfied if their team wins. Which can’t happen. Those of us that care about the lore are frustrated from the start because it makes no sense. So, in the end, nobody will ever be satisfied with a war narrative.
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It is a known fact I give the best nicknames!!
Agreed. I think we all understand what the whole Horde v Alliance situation was from Vanilla to Wrath. Whether you want to call it a cold war or not isn’t exactly important. What matters is that tensions were high, but not yet into outright open warfare.
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