So by now, with all the hints in-game we can throw an hypothesis that Undead;
Do NOT belong to Life (obviously, ask Malfurion).
NOT to Death (not so obvious, but hints are there in-game, ask Bwomsandi, she actually steals souls from the realm of death and denied her own).
NOT the Void ; That’s right (Void even goes as far as call Sylv the true enemy, ask Alleria. The only thing void can’t corrupt is undead, ask the Lich King).
*NOT the Light; a tricky one just like Void, Light already kinda associated with Undead but maybe just to get ahead of Void.
SO if Sylvanas is working for non other than Herself, she might as well create her own faction (wait wait, its crazy but…)
This faction is made of Undead of ANY race, that’s right,rotten Tauren, Nelves, Leperous Gnomes, corrupted orcs and what not.
New classes unique to them;
Necromancer (someone needs to fix all that rottening people)
San’layn (they are already working with her)
Dark Ranger …
DK (come one we all know its a trick to pretend they are truthfully Horde/Alliance , in the end they all still report to the Acherus first and foremost).
Witch Doctors or any non natural forms of magic you can think.
(because of course they do not have druids, paladins, etc).
Would you join this independent, enemy of all, full of misfits that listen to Heavy metal all day, faction?
If they were an enemy of the Horde and Alliance? No. I wouldn’t enjoy being KOS in 95% of the playable world nor being excluded from the majority of leveling / questing content…And I can only imagine what the queues on pug dungeons would be like if I couldn’t get friends to level w/ me.
That said, I already play Forsaken as my main Horde-side character. If they just expanded that race into its own sub-faction that could interact with the Horde content or–better–the content of both factions, then yeah. Totally.
Honestly I think getting rid of the faction divide when it comes to content might be a logical extension of that. God knows I’m sick of Blizz mucking up something as simple as “my cool team VS your cool team”.
When the gameplay sucks as much as the story maybe it’s time to let the story actually stretch its wings and try leading for once.
Sylvanas can’t survive this expansion without making the ending incoherent or unsatisfying.
The only situation I can think of as unsatisfying is if they trash half the “open” storylines they have accumulated through the years, and give us a simple and rushed GoTs style ending. Sylvanas alive or not, if it leads to an amazing conflict or storyline I don’t mind. I am open to all routs.
Though I admit they can polish the storytelling details and add more of it into the game by quests instead of spreading it in all types of media (talking about main lore).
I played a bit on other MMOs and the 3 faction pvp was hell as fun, it called for a bit of strat. And in no way it affected pve , hell not even guild recruitment, ofc they have different systems to WoW.
"I am Sylvanas Windrunner, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is an undead not entitled to his own soul?
“No,” says the druid in Moonglade, “it belongs to the Cycle.” “No,” says the priest in Stormwind, “it belongs to the Light.” “No,” say the things in the Void, “it belongs to nothingness.”
I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose… Undercity. A city where the sadist would not fear the meek; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Undercity can become your city as well."
In a fantasy story unbound by the two faction gameplay mechanic, we would probably see something like this, or even a complete dissolution of the line between Alliance and Horde. Perhaps the Kaldorei would recede and stand on their somewhere down the line, or the Bloodhoof and Darkspear would simply leave when Garrosh rose to power. Perhaps we would see members from all races and walks picking sides as individuals rather than overarching ethnic groups.
However, WoW does not have that luxury, and I doubt it ever will so long as it remains an MMO, so I doubt we’ll see any kind of third faction or dissolution anytime soon.
IF they were to go this route it would have to be a faction you cannot join until you reach a critical story arc moment in BfA to avoid the mess created in every bit of content preceding it which was expressly written for a two faction setup.
That means it would effectively be a ‘heroic faction’ in the vein of the heroic classes starting at an elevated level. TO further avoid issues you would likely have to be a “double agent” to allow you access to Horde/Alliance content as I do not see them writing for three factions.
So, aside from the fact from an RP perspective no sane Kaldorei (let alone druid) would ever accept such an outcome I think the OOC level logistics would really put a damper on the fantasy of that sort of ‘Scourge 2.0’ thing.
I still feel robbed of my loin-cloth wearing, axe-swinging Horde human berserkers, or like…the Lightbound Mag’har joining the Alliance and being this cool, edgy, morally dubious force.
We could have Druids who use Drust type magic akin to soul displacement and death type stuff. If the Kul Tiran model of Druidism can be tapped into by other races.
The Light has made a bargain with the enemy of all. Maybe we get Death Pallys.
We would need an excuse for Shaman though. I wonder if there is a nascent World Soul we can recruit to our purposes…
It may not even be Undead exclusive. It may include Undead Allies.
It is entirely unclear the reason the void said that. The most logical reason was because that was what, deep down, Alleria believed and was thus a weak point the void could use to push her towards losing control.
This is also rather unclear. I have seen the theory floated, but I have yet to see any concrete evidence. Essentially, the evidence is the scourge was not corruptible. With the Lich King, it is likely he did not let the void get its hooks in him (there are lots who never let the void get a hold on them, so that is not odd). As for the rest of the scourge, they were already bound to someone else’s will. So, they could not exactly loss their will to the void. So, ultimately I don’t think there is enough evidence to say that undead are immune. And there are problems. For one, there are undead among the servants of the void (in the Twighlights hammer for example). This makes it somewhat questionable that they are immune to the void’s influence. Additionally, the void has created and used undead. It is hard to imagine the void would want to create beings that are immune to its influence.
Not working for the pinnacle of power in a certain area does not mean not working for someone. There is a lot of overlap toward the center of the chart. A lot of entities that are not fully aligned with a single core aspect of the world.
Also, who knows what deals with any group she may have made in order to gain power.
Yes, and Acherus in general is not a fan of Sylvanas. The Ebon Blade tends to think of themselves as monsters serving good. That does not align well with Sylvanas actions. Not to mention Sylvanas actions being so close to a mirror of Arthas, I don’t see the Ebon Blade getting along with her, ever. And that is before you even consider what she has done to one of their members. And from the other side, Sylvanas is not likely to want that powerful of a group who has shown they will do what they feel is right regardless of what she says around her.
I am not sure they use non-natural magic. In fact, in warcraft I really doubt they do. They seem to have a lot of similarity to shaman. Perhaps more of a variant of shamanism. A little less elemental power, but a little bit of connection to loa in there.
In short: No.
If you have a faction whose goal is to wipe everyone else out, they automatically have to lose. Not only that, for it to be believable, they have to be completely non-threat. They would not be able to play much part in any larger story. And that is not to mention the player base that kind of faction would attract. Think about all the ‘look at me and how edgy I am’ players. And the griefers and such. No, that would not end up a pleasant place to play.
As was shown during the Death Knight starter zone questline, my character had a past before she became risen as a Death Knight. In my personal lore, she was a sentinel until she was killed during a battle in Sholazar Basin. But, anyways…
Now that she’s free of the Lich King’s grasp and has free will again, she does as she wants to. I would not join Sylvanas simply on the basis that she’s not trustworthy and pretty spontaneous with who she keeps around.
I don’t like the Horde but I respect a lot of their leaders who are trying to bring peace between the factions. I was a heartless Death Knight after being risen as Scourge, but the free will thing and the assistance of the Alliance cleared a lot of my mind and has caused me to want to stick around with this faction.
For faction mechanics, my vote will always be for the EQ system: Everyone starts out with a starting reputation with each faction. Dwarves are KOS in the Dark Elf city, Dark Elves are KOS in the Dwarven city.
In addition, classes and religions play a role. For example, Gnome necromancers have to be careful, since they start borderline with paladins etc and it’s easy to get on their kill list if you do enough evil w/o balancing it out with work to build reputation with good-aligned npcs. People who follow an evil religion, similarly, are viewed poorly by, for example, good-aligned clerics.
However, you can change your reputation depending on the mobs you kill, the quests you complete, etc. Although it was very difficult, you could get your Dark Elf necromancer who secretly worships satan on chummy terms with the human paladins, and vice versa.
All player characters could interact with all player characters.
I know that doesn’t play into WoW mechanics. But I don’t like WoW mechanics for factions \o/ if they did something new, could be fun to incorporate a bit more choice and a bit less simple “combine them all.”
![:woman_shrugging:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/woman_shrugging.png?v=6" ":woman_shrugging:")