This is something I’ve been chewing on for a bit, and how the “Renewal vs Vengeance” line that’s irritating so many people is basically just the cycle of hatred moral that Blizzard has been throwing out since Cata/MoP.
My thought was that the moral rings hollow when the devs continuously twist characters’ motivations into pretzels to start the next faction war, but then I realized that that, barring another villain batting of the Horde, that it’s the best time to aim for a permanent peace, since there’s literally only one horde leader who is anything other than a diplomatic peace lover at this point. On the Alliance side you still have warmongers like Genn, but if Tyrande comes out of this being focused entirely on restoring the night elves, then there’s a good base for an actual peace assuming he gets Gilneas to keep him from acting out.
I just feel like at this point the faction war has run it’s course. Cataclysm at least had the excuse of resource wars to cause it. From Stormheim to BFA to Shadowlands, the faction war has been one huge unsatisfying game of who gets to hold the idiot ball.
I think the pros of such an approach for future expansions are:
Making Heroes less “morally grey”, so that we don’t have to justify/ignore bad things our side has done to root for them. Also makes questing with opposing faction heroes less irritating.
Reduce Faction Tribalism: Any thread (not just lore threads) that involves the factions gets insanely toxic very fast. Reducing a source of tribalism shouldn’t be bad.
Produces an excuse for cross faction grouping that some people want
An excuse to update zones to match the new status quo. Basicaly do Cataclysm but without storylines about one side beating down the other. Night elves get a new home, Worgen get Gilneas…etc.
The only cons I can see are:
Taking the “War” out of warcraft. Not something I’m worried about, but some people might not like it. There are people who liked BFA after all.
Ticking off people who feel they’re owed revenge on the other faction. Again, not something I’m worried about personally.
Forcing Blizzard to make the story 100% about the villain of the day rather than allowing Horde/Alliance slapfighting to be story filler.
Worries about Blizzard sticking the landing and making the story beat that ends the war be satisfying.
Anyway, that’s just my thoughts and I wanted to get this out before my sub ran out.
There is so much unresolved issues and bad blood between both factions that killing faction war at this point is crazy to me. No the armistice should break and the fourth war continue in my opinion until both sides reach a satisfying conclusion.
Yeah, I got 6 days left on mine, and I won’t be renewing. That’s not saying much as I end up stopping play every expansion, and didn’t even bother buying Shadowlands. Only been around for a couple of months to play around in old content and collect appearances and mounts while exploring places I like.
I think we should kill the faction war. We’ve literally had decades of faction war, I think it has been played out when you can’t have one side definitively win or have a satisfying conclusion. It’s a dead horse, beating it won’t help.
But Activision-Blizzard is unlikely to have anything good going forward either. I have very little faith going forward.
The correct answer to this question is always “no”. But, they can go right ahead and see what happens. Don’t care anymore.
I used to think I had a problem with the faction war, but the reality was that I just didn’t like the way they were writing it and presenting it in the game. Which is still a problem. So, maybe they just can’t do it… maybe they should stick with what they do best, which is… uhm… uh, what was I saying? They’ll probably just continue to burn down the original WoW until nothing from it is relevant anymore, except they’ll randomly have people mention Arthas.
All of those fall into the category of one of the two things I listed. The fact that we don’t actually know the political status of the lands that were most hotly contested is a huge problem but not one that can’t be easily addressed with common sense.
What makes Blackrock and Khaz Modan some faction-contested thing, anyway? I can get why the other places might be concerned, but they seem like strange points to bring up.
I think that realistically doing a border shuffle that gives the Night elves a bit more room to set up fortifications without tearing up Ashenvale, gives Gilneas/Stromgarde to the Alliance (along with the parts of Silverpine and Hillsbrad between them) should be enough.
As for Reparations, I think at this point the border shuffle should be enough. There’s not really much the Horde has besides metals at this point that the Alliance needs. As for Material wealth, they extracted a crapload from the Zandalari anyway.
Going to the main question, I’d say that we can clearly see the limitation to the resource usage:
tried to have order halls, but had to converge for Legionfall.
tried to have 4 covenant stories, but about half of renown did not have story chapters, and they collide in 9.1
[maybe should add BfA story, which also ended up the same, and both factions had the same Anduin-Saurfang story in the center since halfway through]
So, this to me means, that whatever the devs want to do, they can afford only focus on a single thing. Which means they will have to ask themselves:
“is it the game about the factions, or not about factions”
Now, being faction centered does not mean “conflict”, just that in the story being “pro-unity” for one reason or the other is a worse option. It’s possible to describe in walls of text ways to “positively” say why being separate is good, and removing all border limits could cause more harm than good, but for now let’s leave it aside.
Same goes with abandoning faction narrative: just focus on the “only together” and big bads or something.
Either way is fine as long as it’s explicit. But without fully comitting to one of those paths, what we can see is so thingly spread resources that neither story is even remotely satisfying.
tl;dr: conceptually either way (faction-centered narrative or abolishing them) would work, but either of them needs full commitment.
Of course, doing any of this would mean that Blizzard would have to come out and at minimum, tacitly acknowledge that one faction won and the other lost, and then detail how that affected the balance of power.
Even though I think that 99% of the story forums is in agreement that the Horde clearly lost in military terms Blizzard does not want to do this.
We wouldn’t really know what’s reasonable diplomatically until we actually saw what the military situation looked like at the end of the war, and Blizzard doesn’t know. They pivot to whatever is convenient for any given scene.
Alliance wins. The Horde is destroyed as a faction and Alliance soon collapses with no Horde to keep it unified against it.
Now its just races and racial reputations determining player alliegences.
They even introduced a peace treaty as a diplomatic macguffin but have given no details whatsoever as to what it actually says. We’re only given as much information as is necessary to move the plot forward, even in novels.
If the faction story ends with Thrall/Anduin/Jaina/Baine leaving the shadowlands and immediately working to forge a permanent peace so that nothing like Teldrassil can happen again, is there even a loser? Some people might not be happy with it, but holy crap, I’d hate to try to write a story that makes everyone happy.
My ideal ending to the faction war is to just cut it loose without a huge payoff. Anduin and Baine sign a treaty, the neutral factions like the CC/Earthen ring/etc swear to help keep the peace and we come back to a new expansion with a slightly different world.
I guess all we know is that the horde rebels plus what was left of the Alliance’s army gave themselves 50/50 odds to take Orgrimmar. Considering Org is fortified to hell I basically call it a draw in that neither side would be able to do much force projection at that point.
The trouble is that while there are only a handful of overt geopolitical tensions remaining, they still exist, and expecting a reversion to the pre-war status quo with some minor boundary adjustments is unrealistic, especially if one faction has the means to physically act on its geopolitical interests while the other doesn’t.
As it stands the best we have is “The Alliance Navy and like 3 dozen divisions died on the way back to their home planet” between the Azshara and N’zoth patches.
The Alliance army in Tirisfal apparently either vanished into thin air or just left because the BG was over, for instance
I thought the only reason why the alliance dissolved was because the kingdoms largely didn’t like each other and quickly broke down over political whining. The alliance is a “family” now, their populations are so integrated at this point, and the individual horde races still existing all seem like enough incentives for them to stick together despite the lack of an actual unified horde. And why would any of those races start seeking out approval from the horde races, after what they’ve done?
Depending on how long we are “actually” going to be in the Shadowlands for, I don’t think either side really has the ability to project power against the other side at this point. Both sides were on literal fumes at the end of the showdown at Org’s gates.
Especially since the only powers/groups that are really untouched at this point didn’t get involved in BFA and certainly wouldn’t get involved now, or are groups like the Cenarians/Earthen ring who for the most part didn’t get involved and are still a bit preoccupied with the whole sword situation.
The Horde also isn’t the only reason that the Alliance exists. Even if the Horde got Thanos-snapped out of existence overnight there are a dozen other PvE factions that justify the Alliance’s existence. In fact, post Warcraft 3 it’s been rare for the Horde to even really register on the Alliance’s radar as a meaningful threat compared to other forces like the Scourge and Legion.