Considering that a full third to almost half was all Zandalar? Even the faction war played second string to Sylvanas. Worst part was we all knew it was going that way despite insurances that Sylvanas wasn’t going to be a Garrosh 2.0
That said to each their own. I just found the whole expansion seriously disappointing. Not only were we lied to about the whole thing but that it worked out pretty much the way many people speculated it was going to be (in broad strokes) made it even worse.
Really wish one of the theories about the burning being the cause of remaining N’Zoth cultists was the coarse taken. It would not have caused the divide in the player base, still resulted in a faction war and still ticked off the NE super-fans. Almost everything would be the same except you wouldn’t have people in the real world out for blood against other living people.
sigh I mean the people who felt/feel like that are nuttier than a fruit cake to get that up in arms over a flipping video game. It’s fiction and poorly written at that.
I know I don’t need to say it but as always this is in my opinion and certainly not dunking on those with a different one.
I’m not going to say that I wouldn’t be upset. Having the Night Elves take another hit like that would be pretty obnoxious after Cataclysm, which also seemed in particular to hit them especially hard and to put a ton of focus on the tragic angle.
But for as annoying as it was to say, have the Night Elf district in Stormwind be singled out for destruction, it’s about seven layers of magnitude worse when the other faction does it. A big bad doesn’t normally have a collection of boosters on the other side of the playerbase. The big bad can’t trash talk you and have it matter. Everyone is on your side against the big bad, and everyone knows that eventually they’ll be defeated.
When it comes to factions, that’s not the case, especially when Blizzard has this habit of letting the Horde get off devastating and highly visible strikes on the Night Elves, when we know that they would never allow the reverse. You want to hit back, but Blizzard prevents you - while the thing that you wanted to play gets torn to shreds, mocked, and sanded down for what looks like someone else’s benefit.
Then, as this thread indicates - Blizzard piles on what they did into evident perpetuity.
To be entirely fair, the Alliance player base is just as much to blame for this. Any time Blizz tried to put a harder, darker tinge to the Alliance the A. player base explodes with rage at the thought that they aren’t the good guys. “Good” guys are reactionary, “Bad” guys are the cause.
So while I can sympathize to a certain extent the problem is both the writers and the players. The writers want to do broader stories. More than a small minority of the Alliance get angry at the prospect of possibly being less shiny. Literally had an ongoing discussion with an A. player about how s/he doesn’t think the Alliance needs to be “gritty” nor do they want the more realistic human view to come to the Alliance. So long as attitudes like that are the majority you’ll never get to strike back.
Worst part is when I say darker I’m not meaning Emperor Palpatine or other over the top evil. I’m usually referring to mundane stuff. But that is my point. Any amount of “mud” is too much for some A. players.
I think there’s a divide here, and it’s one that has been resolved in favor of the Human-led side of the Alliance.
Night Elf players were initially sold a race that wasn’t morally white - that wasn’t afraid to hit below the belt, and that was intended to act #savage. All of that appears to have been thrown under the bus of human potential - where humans act out the heroic part of the “Stuffed in the Fridge” trope, their leadership is regarded as morally correct, and hints of realpolitik or moral greyness are sanded down so as to preserve the image of noble European knights.
I’m not sure who among the Night Elf playerbase can be said to have called for this. I don’t see how we asked for this, or deserved this - but it’s happening anyway.
As for commentary on the majority - Blizzard’s tactic of burning sizeable minorities I do feel has unnecessarily burned them. An MMO can and should accommodate multiple racial and class fantasies, and respect them - rather than needlessly casting interests as necessarily in conflict and then burning the supposed minority population. If you keep saying “well, 70% of the population likes this and 30% likes this”, and making peace with having the 30% go away - after a few rounds of that, you’ve driven away a lot of revenues unnecessarily.
The Night Elves were many things, Matrilineal is first that comes to mind. Much that seems to have been edited out in favor of more rl standard. Now a days Tyrande just seems outright belligerent.
As for who called for it? No one on the player side. The results of writing-by-committee. Chances are a bunch of people couldn’t wrap their head around the idea of humans not being front and centre. Amusing considering how many of them used to play table top rpgs. Then again I imagine all the old RPers left Blizz years ago. Of course the damage was done by then too.
Can’t really agree on the multiple species options. There is plenty of good fantasy fiction that doesn’t have the Tolkien tropes attached to it. As much as I don’t like humans there is room for a pure human with sorcery option. As for the driving away player population…
Simply put you are not wrong. The problem is the faction war concept requires you to include some kind of persistent cause for continued hostility… Hungry going to leave the post here for now.
I mean, that cause at this point exists, but I also think that a faction war in an MMO requires more than that.
You’re playing with the psychology of a rivalry, and no one wants to lose. It gets especially worse when the rival teams don’t just have the capacity to beat you, but destroy what you liked about what you were rooting for in the first place. In an actual sports league you don’t have this problem. The rules are fair, defeat or victory comes down to the team, and there’s always next year. If you build your game systems and the supporting narrative as it pertains to the faction war around these principles, you can construct a feeling that victory and defeat is based on your skill and that of your team, and that defeats are not so permanent that you lose all will to play. Battlegrounds and contested areas on the peripheries are well suited for this.
Making one faction destroy a playable race’s capital (and by so doing, destroying the base of any cultural expression - as they have no civilian territories left) via a campaign decided entirely by writer fiat is not. I’m contributing to the PVP imbalance between the factions in this regard because while I would like to play again and PVP, I don’t feel motivated to do so because my efforts have been cast as meaningless and doomed to failure outside of any effort that I personally may put in.
That’s why I get confused at the people who blame PVP for the course of the faction war - this model doesn’t work for PVP. It only works if you’re trying to ramrod what should be a perpetual, low stakes, back and forth struggle into an “epic” narrative - at which point you’re only really catering to the PVE crowd, and even then, only small parts of it.
We discussed our differences on this matter previously.
My idea of a war game is one where my abilities and those of my team matter in competition with the other team - not the arbitrary decisions of writers as they’re brought in to overwrite and make meaningless everything else I do. You’re free to enjoy your welfare win of course, but the existence of such a thing is antithetical to what a war game should be.
I can tell it’s something that you’re happy about and want to defend, but you didn’t earn the feeling of victory. Blizzard gave it to you, and you didn’t have to do anything to get it. It was a gift, given to you at my expense.
It’s not the experience of say, winning a battleground, where you could reliably pin that on personal and team effort - something you actually did and had to work for.
Which we obviously didn’t get because Blizzard has some issue with letting us hit back - and those of us who have observed this sort of thing since Cataclysm could have told you that (and did tell you that).
So you’re not really answering the question of “why should we pay”? Or more appropriately “why should we subsidize your welfare wins?” - which is a question you might want to pay mind to as MAUs continue to drop.
Blizzard has established that I can’t fight back. Don’t get me wrong, I think you have your finger on a real problem - but the playerbase didn’t cause it.
Blizzard did.
You say there’s no pride left? What is there to have pride in exactly? What has Blizzard built up and maintained for us to really BE proud of? I’m with you in a sense that I don’t want the factions to be merged, but it’s no secret that one’s seen as badass and the other one is well, not.
Why should I support such a system? Why should anyone? Pure spite for the developers? Mere stoicism when right over there I could be playing another game that doesn’t do this? Insanity? What?
