Only if you make it ONLY about race and not about wider concepts like ideology, resources, territory, spirituality, etc.
Half the reason the faction conflict hss been bad is because they havent done enough to differentiate the factions beyond JUST race.
This is my exact point. I want that to change and grow into something more interesting and well integrated into the world.
The best part about this is that the Alliance isnât a Nation State the same way the Horde used to be. Alterac and Lorederon were at one point members of an Alliance that included Khaz Modan but not anymore. That doesnât give them a claim to former allies territory. It 100% was an imperialist land grab but a case could be made and thatâs what makes it more fun than more recent conflicts.
EXACTLY. Almost like its not that hard to write a basic political/war story where both factions can villify the other while defending their own.
I think you are right as well on that part, and its like a kind of cycle of self destructioion here, playes want the faction conflict, they hyped for it, but then they will eventually put their expecations too hard, and then blame blizzard for giving the faction conflict the moment their team will start to eat the dust.
As Poised stated about the players being volatile, its a thing i notice in a lot of different topics concerning wow, the playerbaase want something but, put their expecations too high and then get disappointed because their expecations was not met =/
Blizzard is on a tough spot on that, but also in a way âdeserve itâ as they like to over-hype/over-sell their things haha
I wonder whats mine would be then! 
I remember, when Cata started, in the trailer, they said that âHorde and Alliance must fight for the ressources of the world that are slowly getting thinâ and i felt it was cool idea,âŚbut then i did not really felt this plot in game =/
In my head, I keep reading your name and thinking âLinguine.â
So either Linguine or Spaghetti Draino.
I shall let you pick.
Going to disagree with you because you said 100%. 
There is an argument that the Alliance was protecting itâs territory. Yes, Alterac was basically wiped out. But its survivors took refuge in the Alliance. So you could argue that Alterac was actually part of the Alliance since it surviving members were clearly attached to the Alliance.
There is also an argument that Alterac was defunct. That its territories were no unclaimed. And where is better for refugees to settle than in the left over territories of a destroyed nation. And they did have a civilian population. And it appears they got their first.
Then of course, if you say the lands were unclaimed as Alterac was a defunct nation than both the Horde and Alliance had equal claim to the land. An argument could be made both powers were just making a land grab.
So, Alliance did have an argument that it was Alliance lands. They did have a claim. Horde also had an argument that the lands were open and the Alliance was just being an imperialist nation. And of course both could claim they were just taking unclaimed land. Regardless of which claim you feel had more merit, there were reasonable arguments on both sides. Both sides could claim the other was in the wrong. Which, I would say isâŚ
the faction war has almost never been interesting im sorry. they are incapable of writing it well and it just never makes sense because at the end of the day, the horde and alliance come together to defeat a greater evil. after a while, factions donât make sense when itâs clear they can work together, and forcing conflict doesnât work because it doesnât feel natural.
Theyâve made two passes at faction war and both times that greater evil was just the Horde. I refuse to believe thatâs the best that can be done, but it might, unfortunately, be the best they can do.
A lot of these problems are solved by having another big tournament with a story.
Itâs still a race war because itâs race vs. race. That implies that Horde races and Alliance races cannot have similar ideologies or spiritualities as individuals across factional divides. Making it about resources isnât compelling either, because this story has never treated logistics as if they matter, why should anyone get invested in a story over resources when there is absolutely zero grounding for any of it?
There can be conflict, but it doesnât need to be between Horde and Alliance to be nuanced.
Every time the Horde decides they stand a chance against the Alliance they die in large numbers and throw a racial leader under the bus to be a raid boss while we pretend the entire rest of the Horde wasnât chomping at the bit to slaughter civilians.
The current Horde is out of racial leaders with personalities and thus has no one to sacrifice to the Alliance when theyâre tired of dying.
The faction war canât start again untill the Horde has developed characters to pin the war on.
The point is its not only about race. You can and should make it more than that.
Thatâs my argument, full stop, based on nothing but basic writing concepts and real life history.
But that doesnt mean physical differences cant be a factor. Especially in a world where weâre dealing with different SPECIES aa opposed to literal races. Different species interacting with each other is a very different beast from two races in the same species. Weâre potentially talking about completely different psyches, perceptions, inherent needs and motivations, etc. This is a universe where some people can turn to stone and negate all their illnesses. Another race literally eats people to regenerate their bodies. A third species is literally, inherently charismatic and inspirational to everyone around them.
These factors alone can easily lead to radically different cultures with different needs, norm, and ways they may be out of touch with those outside their species.
These factors will inevitably lead to near-unavoidable conflict, hence why many high fantasy conflicts happen in the first place. In one fantasy setting, orcs might be more inclined to raid settlements because they were created by the gods to be eternal warriors. Meanwhile, this upsets the peace loving halflings.
Again, this is all just fantasy 101. None of this has to be overly complicated.
But seriously, just because race is a factor doesnât necessarily make it the ONLY factor.
If you think that simply having one race, nationality, or ethnic group fighting another means its JUST a war about race and nothing else, thenâŚwelcome to Earth? And human history? Around these parts, things are often more complicated than they appear on the surface.
I think youâre being reductionist and putting an artificial cap on the story potential here by fixating on an aspect that doesnt need to be focused on to the exclusion of everything else.
Elder Scrolls has faction conflict (though, in my limited time on it, I didnât see a faction war). They have three factions all of which are just trying come out on top. (No villain batting. No atrocities to paint characters as evil. Etc.). It works. Blizzard has failed to do any of this. And the way they handle the aftermath, shows the same mistakes as the war itself.
Conclusion. Fact conflict can add to a story. Blizzard has shown every sign of being unable to do anything like that.
So Iâm not at all familiar with the Elder Scrolls, so Iâll have to ask; are their factions divided exclusively along racial lines, the way WoWâs are? Like, are there humans on the three factions, or are all humans only on one?
Because that is the single greatest hurdle with WoWâs factions; no matter what you change, no matter how you develop them, they are still as much a racial divide as a political one. No matter how much you develop the factions, one will be the monster-race-having faction, the other will be the largely-human-looking faction. Short of breaking down racial distribution between the factions, of course. But at that point, you might as well simply disband the two factions and whole sale create two new ones.
Elder scrolls is along racial lines. âHumansâ are on two the three (Viking like humans and âmagical & intrigue lovingâ humans considered different races, the later are said to have a âbitâ of Elven heritage).
They also stay away from having one side assume the right to kill members of another race because that race is evil. So it mostly comes off as political and maybe something that could have happened even if they were the same race. (âWe want that artifact of power for our kingdomâ, âIf we take the ancient capital city, we can claim the right to rule the whole continentâ). And nobody is villain batted.
Political divisions can be fraught when they are along the same lines as racial divisions, so your mileage may vary. The âHigh Elvesâ do have the classic sense of superiority, though mostly it means they think they should win. You donât see scenes where someone tries to destroy a city while justifying killing orphans. So, at a minimum, the avoid they things the Blizzard thinks they should feature.
ttps://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Races
Ok, thank you for clarifying.
I think (and I think you agree?) that at this point, short of a full shredding of the current factions as they have existed since Vanilla and building two brand new ones in their place, Blizzard really canât create that level of nuance to the faction conflict (I actually hate that phrase, and will explain why in a bit) with the current framework. The Horde and Alliance exist almost exclusively as groups of affliated races, and the identity of those races are part and parcel of the factions.
Alliance settlements are largely human in structure and architecture. Horde ones are largely based on orcs. Even the factionsâ symbols are intimately tied to those races, and trying to remove the racial ties to focus on political ones is almost an effort in futility.
Almost.
Because the reason I hate the term âfaction conflictâ is that conflict is used as a euphemism for armed conflict in some form, specifically within the context of Warcraft. And thatâs why itâs hard to make faction âconflictâ not feel like racial âconflictâ. If every conflict is about fighting over a spot of land, and that conflict is mostly orcs against humans (or fill in two races of your choice) because those are the two races geographically closest to the spot of land, itâs going to be hard to highlight how this is about different ideologies instead of different races.
If Blizzard could show faction conflict as, say, about trade routes and water rights and so on and so forth? Then weâre looking at a very different situation. Then you could have trolls and dwarves arguing and scheming because the trolls want to sail their ships through dwarven waters to be better capable of trading with their frostmane troll cousins.
But⌠They canât. And not because of a lack of talent (I know some will say it is, but itâs really not). Itâs more because the game engine itself doesnât support that style of gameplay.
Because for that more intrigue-based gameplay, players have to be able to interact. We need to be able to get involved in the negotiations. And forget the whole bit where we players canât make meaningful impacts on the geopolitics of the game world; the game engine itself just isnât set up for that type of player-npc social interaction. And if the player canât interact with it, why bother to include it?
What purpose does social intrigue between two npc groups serve if weâre just passive observers, beyond being a fun cutscene between action sets? WoW isnât set up for that style of gameplay, so why focus time and resources on it?
Eh. Iâm rambling. I know Iâm rambling and lost the plot. Iâmâa just hit post now and hope that something in all of this makes sense to someone.
Anyway, again, thank you for clarifying!!
The faction war wasnât bad Blizzard just made the mistake of declaring the wrong side as the winner of it.
I know thereâs generally been a wall between PVP and the narrative, but would it be possible to use that as a way to reintegrate small-scale skirmishes and tensions into the narrative?
We donât need all out war, but we could go back to having the narrative acknowledge and flesh out the reasons behind PVP venues (BGs/world quests/etc) enough to say that, hey, weâre still occasionally having flare-ups at borders and sometimes a few mercenaries come to knock in a skull or two over contested mining rights?
Have them be not big enough deals that Turalyonâs jet-setting off to another continent to negotiate (and maybe we could clamp down a little more on how much world leaders are traveling on a whim), but still enough to make it clear that the factions still exist and protect their own interests. Because no matter how many times those of us at the top end have come together out of convenience for the world ending, that doesnât change the material situation and needs of regular folks.
Maybe even develop a few characters from PVP zones that come up on the narrative side more often? I know this runs into the problem of only current expansion zones mattering (and PVP development not necessarily being a high priority), but I think even leaning into this a little bit would help maintain the appearance of factions as relevant world superpowers with distinct and unique interests to protect without giving into outright war.
Again though, this is the result of it taking too much focus or being what the xpac revolved around.
Nobody complained about the faction war vanilla through wrath, or in wod or in legion. It needs to exist but take a back seat.
I have a feeling weâre thinking of different details. Iâm thinking of things like Sylvanasâs mental plan to invade Stormind (mentioned in BtS and then never referenced again), or Rexxarâs bizarre statement about how Jaina âwent too far, killed too many.â Those make the most sense to me as artefacts of previous drafts.