The Absence of Faction Lore - How're you handling it?

Wyrmrest Accord
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So one of the things that has been challenging about Midnight for me personally has been the complete absence of the factions as any functioning political entity in the current story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for a faction war here, genuinely I’m not. But the Alliance and Horde are still a part of the universe. They remain the two most dominant political forces on Azeroth, and they have played an important role in expansions from the get-go. They spearheaded the missions to Outland and Northrend, actually waging war in the Cataclysm and MoP, again jointly spearheading the assault on Alternate Draenor and the Broken Shore, waging war again in BFA. After a brief break in Shadowlands (other than kidnapped faction leaders), they were again present in force in Dragonflight arguably through the Dragonscale Expedition which was a joint faction effort, and in actual force during the battle for Amirdrassil, and again they both sent significant forces to the Isle of Dorn to combat Xal’atath.

Then Midnight hits. And I’m struck by the fact that the factions seem, for the first time ever really, genuinely forgotten. Aside from a Horde specific district and the Horde emblem on certain banners and ships, the Horde isn’t mentioned at all as a political entity. The Sin’dorei, a member state of the Horde, are obviously present in full, but seem to be operating in utter isolation from their Horde allies, sans the Nightborne. What gets me is that there’s no acknowledgement of the Horde at all, in what are theoretically Horde lands. When the Vanguard of the Light is, seemingly, destroyed… there’s almost no acknowledgement other than needing allies, and the allies that they think to gather are elves, across both factions. At no point does anyone think to call upon the Horde. At no point does anyone think to call upon the Alliance for that matter. The factions, as functioning political entities, seem conspicuously absent. A simple acknowledgement that “the fleet is delayed” from the orcs or “our forces are bogged down fighting the Scarlet Crusade” from the Forsaken would seem, to me, to at least keep the Horde as a functioning part of the world.

And what about the Alliance? There’s been no acknowledgement so far about what THEY have lost. The vast majority of the Lightforged and Silver Hand were apparently arrayed in the Voidstorm, and now they are simply absent. Is there no reinforcements on the way? No acknowledgement of the fact that, if the Argent Crusade is anything to judge by, with most of its forces snapped up by the Sunwell, the Cathedral of Stormwind is all but empty? That the Regent Lord of Stormwind himself is, by all accounts, dead or at least missing? Are any blaming this on the Horde - a duplicitous attempt to remove their rivals?

No. Instead we have… nothing. No mention. No focus. Nothing.

This absence seems all the more glaring with void assaults, wherein the walls of Silvermoon City are seemingly assaulted by forces of the void on a biweekly basis. And there’s as yet no indication that the factions are showing up in any future patches either.

So. From an RP standpoint, I guess I’m wondering what your characters think of this? I’m struggling on Sarestha to see it as anything less than a snub - the Horde appears to be ignoring one of its most steadfast allies for no apparent reason whatsoever. The Alliance, per book lore, hasn’t been on great terms with the Night Elves since they refused to help at Darkshore, and the Silver Covenant have seemingly abandoned their position as anti-Horde agitators and rejoined, in some form, mainstream Thalassian society. Even the Void Elves are at least welcome again. So they also seem to be ignoring the situation.

Idk guys, I have actually been enjoying this expansion but this seems a narrative hole I’m not sure how to address IC. If the Horde and Alliance can dispatch forces to Dornogal, why not Silvermoon? Where’s the political presence of not just the specific races, but the factions themselves?

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Many years ago, my characters began to see how poorly planned the Horde and Alliance conflict was from the narrative perspective and it only got worse as the years went along.

Instead of land-locked singular catastrophes happening simultaneously on both Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms which would force the Alliance and Horde to each deal with that catastrophe in their own way and from their own perspectives, we were given a single catastrophe which funneled both factions to an eventual single point, inevitably and repeatedly forcing the two factions to make a choice; mutual self-destruction, or cooperation.

Each time, the logical choice (narratively) and developmental choice (simply), was cooperation. This process eventually developed into automacity for how the faction divide was handled.

On the positive side, this approach was much easier for teams because they could introduce a neutral third party to act as an intermediary between the Horde and Alliance, keeping them both focused on main world-level threat.

On the negative side, this repeated process ultimately became harder and harder to ignore. The more interaction you have with someone you seemingly hate out of habit, the more that hate begins to lose traction when you both now have something in common and are forced to not only communicate and work together but also watch each other’s backs. At some point you begin questioning why you’re even still enemies after all this is over.

There were plenty of times when Blizzard could have definitively kept the faction war going but chose not to because there was always some greater threat that no one faction could seemingly defeat without assistance from the other.

Getting back to what you mentioned about the lack of factions being a thing in Midnight; yeah, I noticed that too, but from what I’ve seen of the writing over the past few expansions, I’ve gone a bit numb to it.

Even if the Light was the antithesis to the Void and made sense overall why the Light’s champions arrived, one would think the other Horde members would have all mobilized to assist the Sin’dorei. The Shal’dorei were mostly already there because of Thalyssra, so there’s this huge gap in the political logic structure of how faction alliance works.

In the end, my characters are all members of the same guild, so we didn’t bat an eye. This was the logical progression along the trajectory in which WoW has been unfolding for years now.

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I’m coasting and hoping new updates will include something that interests me.

What drew me to this setting was the diversity of viewpoints - I loved having the two factions with their own bases and own motivations to be there, plus the individual flavor of each race within that. Any faction clashes were fun to me only in the sense of how well it showed those different worldviews colliding, how different assumptions, different goals, and different fears interacted into what an outside observer saw as a tragedy but the characters involved could not see in any other way.

I do love seeing how these differing viewpoints could find common ground for big events. Bolvar and Varok at the Wrathgate were good examples of this, I think - there for their own reasons, not friends, but perfectly happy to fight side-by-side. Jaina and Anduin were fun when they were the exception who could cast aside past events and be willing to build a new future.

But now, the ‘good’ characters all feel too much the same to me. They want to help everyone, they want to save everything, they’re happy to work with anyone - and those who disagree must atone until they too become one of the good collective again. Conflicts are based on general morals rather than on individual experiences - Turalyon snaps and tries to execute Zul’jan because he’s zealous, not because he has any past with the Amani or Lightwood or Zul’jan personally. (The recent short story, that I’ve seen snippets of but haven’t fully read yet, feels like it shows conflicting viewpoints quite well without villainbatting either side - but it’s a single out-of-game story and thus barely a drop in the overall experience.) It just feels too simplified, too generalized and not so character-specific.

I do wish more expacs had single race/culture-based outposts, like the Westfall Brigade (human) versus Star’s Rest (night elf) in WotLK, or TBC’s Honor Hold (human) versus Sylvanaar (night elf) versus Zabra’jin (troll) - just something small that would give us each nation’s individualized perspective on deploying to face current events, rather than the averaged-out ‘hero’s’ perspective.

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I don’t really have any major characters closely tied to the major factions (though some are minorly or moderately associated) so I can’t say as I care much about their lack of development in general. I can’t say I’ve ever really cared much for the development of the faction’s themselves despite enjoying the idea of them fighting each other. As far as world building is concerned, it’s a shame nothing has been said about either the Alliance (other than the Vanguard of the Light, which doesn’t at all feel like an Alliance force despite apparently being portrayed as one) or Horde (whose constant reminder of their continued absence in the narrative by other forum goers annoys me), but it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened.

I will say that I think the main narrative would be far better if more attention was placed on faction tensions and the associated difficulties of the conflict. I’ve come to the conclusion the games narrative is always better when focused on the world at large rather than a particular cast of characters. My favorite part of Midnight’s narrative was the side quest where you’re diffusing tension within Silvermoon. It made me think of the untapped potential of faction conflict narratives; the trials of cities under siege, an enemy occupied state, the actual side effects and consequences of war beyond who wins which battle or skirmish. I want more of that. I wish I could’ve had it more when Alliance v Horde was still significant instead of 50 Shades of Villain Batting and cycle of hatred nonsense for like a decade.

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I think this touches on the depths of my frustration tbh.

I’m not frustrated that the Horde hasn’t arrived because I’m Horde and therefore want my team to show up like it’s the World Cup. What a lot of people don’t know when they see my red avatar is that I’m an Alliance fan too. I explicitly mained Alliance from Cata-Legion, and had very few Horde characters. If anything I enjoy fantasy politics in general - it gives the world, as Aviala said, a:

Which I find much more grounded, nuanced and interesting than big cosmic villains, the majority of the time. Sometimes its even better when there’s both at once. A grounded political world confronting a big cosmic villain within the context of its own deficiencies, hypocrisies and experiential rather than objective view of the world.

So sincerely I’m not upset because me like Horde and Horde must be in every narrative. I’m frustrated with the lack of worldbuilding in general.

The Alliance have lost their Lord Commander (Turalyon), and yet that’s not even been mentioned. Even by the semi-absent “King” himself. Like. What’s even going on with that faction?

The Sin’dorei are a part of the Horde narratively. A Horde that has responded, as I mentioned in my post, by explicitly sending forces to be involved in every expansion except Shadowlands, even if it’s not the narrative front and centre. And yet, the moment when one of their capitals is attacked we don’t even get a “Sorry I slept in” letter from Thrall xD

I guess I feel like the narrative goals of Midnight from Blizzard’s POV; focusing on the development of Arator, Lor’themar, Rommath, Umbric, etc, and focusing on the unification of the long divided elven sub-groups of Azeroth, could have been achieved in a far more satisfying way with a simple nod to the rest of the world, especially elements as intimately tied to this conflict as the factions are (I’d argue the factions have more reason to be involved here than the Isle of Dorn). All it would have taken would have been a simple explanation. The Horde struggling to mobilize. The Alliance dealing, as the Argents are, with the absence of most of its light wielders. Idk, just… something. Then it would be more apparent to me that elf unity was the only viable option, as presented, and it may well have been a truly satisfying ending. Genuinely.

Instead we’re left with this gaping hole of non-explanation that make it look like the broader political context of Azeroth is just… non existent at best, actively apathetic at worst. And that seems like bad worldbuilding to me.

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Chris Metzen forgot.

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I think it’s an over correction to how poorly they blundered Battle for Azeroth.

I don’t particularly mind the current direction the setting has gone in but I think if we had a more neutral cast of characters that represented the different faction personalities that came along with us starting in DF would have helped a lot.

Specifically, what I have in mind is a younger cast of characters to represent the overall change in the setting starting in DF. All the old heads have retired and now take more quieter background roles. The narrative is now lead with the younger, wide eyed scooby doo gang made up of different individuals from the two factions that don’t have all that baggage weighing them down. We get it, BfA sucked can we move on from that already? Lets get some young characters who weren’t around for all that so we don’t have to hear about my honor or this or that.

Arator is kinda what I imagine a younger cast could be but he’s also an example of a character dragged down by his bad major lore character parents. I can’t believe his quest line was healing his Dad’s trauma vs just letting him be fun guy adventure dude. That’s why I feel a whole new cast would be the best choice because anything else would just end up inserting the same handful Warcraft 2-3 characters into everything and dealing with their problems that I’m so sick and tired of.

It would also make those special Warcraft 2-3 characters feel more special when they do show up for a moment in the story. Imagine our scooby doo gang is hot on the trail of Xal, she’s absorbing the energy from Beledar and at the last minute Aleria assists the gang in stopping her. That would feel more fun and exciting because oh wow it’s the lady on the box art y’know? I remember when I first played WoW, it was super cool to go run up to faction leaders and be like, oh wow it’s the guy from that other game I played! And then when they did do something in the game, it was super cool and special! Now I’m constantly on adventures with the same Warcraft 2 and 3 characters causing then all to sorta lose that wowzers feel to them.

Anyway, I feel like I’m getting way off topic but I don’t dislike the current direction, I think it’s just all a big over correction for BfA that we are still feeling four expansions later. Tension and rivalries is fun for the narrative.

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You’re probably not wrong. I’ll freely admit that I’m one of BFA’s three fans lol. Story wise I actually had a lot of fun, especially with the faction specific leveling zones. There was something cool about being able to play an alt and have a completely different experience, that’s the factions at their best imo, when the quests differ in some sense by political POV. I don’t believe we need a war for that.

Anyway. I’ve definitely felt that BFA was two expansions they tried to shove into one, and ironically the worldsoul saga, I think, is basically BFA part 2, but specifically the soul of azeroth/void forces part. I’m not arguing. I’ve even had fun. Beats the hell out of Shadowlands and Dragonflight in my opinion.

So in some sense it looks like they’re trying to do BFA “right” in this whole arc. And dropping the faction war from the Old Gods expansion would have been wise I suspect. But the factions seeming completely apathetic to an expansion that actually hit them both quite hard, when they were quite happy to show up in force in Dragonflight and TWW, seems on the nose to me.

I’m not wanting them to come slap each other. But I am curious how the Horde is reacting to the second biggest existential crisis their Blood Elven allies have ever faced. I’m curious how the Alliance feels about their Lord Commander and an implied majority of its Light wielders falling into a void hole. It’s this complete non explanation that bothers me.

I’m feeling like, Blizzard, either give us a line of dialogue somewhere explaining wtf is going on, or dismantle the factions in game if you can’t bear to write them. Not explaining at all is bad and frustrating, especially for an RPer trying to make sense of it IC

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I thoroughly enjoyed BFA, but not because of any part of the faction conflict. I love how beautiful the zones were. It felt like they were painstakingly fleshed out in great detail, with all kinds of hidden away little nooks and crannies to explore.

I also really liked the multiple plots not related to the faction conflict for each zone. The Order of Embers storyline was my favorite! I loved, loved, LOVED the Boralus capital!!! A lot of the armor appearances for the Alliance were so cool looking too! I spent so many countless hours exploring all of the zones. I mapped out Boralus and some of the surrounding areas on a separate map, then marked where each of my safehouses, bases, meeting places, and business fronts were located.

I also started designing custom quests regarding monster parts, smuggling, subterfuge, and Old Gods magic. Unfortunately, the GM in the guild I was in decided one day to completely 180 the entire theme of the guild and a bunch of us left, so it kinda ruined the momentum there.

Anyway, I saw BFA mentioned and was like, Oooh! Oooh! I Loved BFA too!

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I feel the same - but I feel like they ran so far away from it that they’ve created a new problem. Like they’ve gotten so afraid of causing problems by showing red versus blue that they decided to do away with color entirely, and the current stories since SL have been this committee-voted shade of inoffensive greige.

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Yeah this tbh. We didn’t gently steer this thing around the obstacle, we swerved hard the other way.

After the war in Cata and MoP, there was not war but there were still major major tensions between the factions in WoD and Legion, even as they largely cooperated against the bigger threats. Ashran and Stormheim were the exception not the rule. But they were believable. The tensions of a world war don’t disappear 5 minutes later.

But after BFA it was kinda jarring. We went straight from war to besties. The story seems to perpetually show us how much we love each other now. The Dragonscale Expedition, made up of two once opposing forces, love and trust each other explicitly. Voss and Shandris are besties, Eitrigg is a Son of Lothar, and btw the Sons of Lothar have always been dedicated to peace love and tolerance (like that one time they were founded to avenge the death of Anduin Lothar :clown_face:), the Arcantina seems determined to remind us that we’re all friends now with every second conversation and so on and so forth.

We didn’t go war to uneasy peace. We went from war to almost a strange need from blizz for the factions to kiss on camera every 5 minutes lol

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I feel like part of it is that many players, and I suspect many writers, just don’t see why the factions would ever fight other than hatred.

The factions are portrayed and treated as comfortable world superpowers, homeland zones under control after us adventurers solved their problems. There’s no resource shortages, no singular maguffin that only one faction could possibly possess at one time, no risks or constraints that would drive otherwise peaceful people in conflict with each other.

So that just leaves faction hatred as a reason to fight… which, with how the game is structured around race-divided factions, means they’re just racists. And who wants their team to be that? What writer wants to be the guy seen as ‘justifying’ racism by making those characters?

So instead, we’re all reasonable people. And that means friends - because why fight when there’s no reason to, and while there’s a big world-ending monster wreaking havoc? At worst, a character can grumble while working together, but anything more is just asking for the villain bat.

BfA tried to give a reason for conflict between superpowers, by making Azerite into basically the nuclear arms race, but that plot petered out almost immediately (And Azerite wasn’t even used/needed for the capitol city destructions, which undermined its importance in the war plot.) BfA also introduced the word ‘genocide’ into the official material describing the war, which really erases any possible air of nuance.

I don’t really see a way around that - it’s like the PC as the Champion topic, where there’s no good way to lower our PC’s and/or faction’s power/prestige without something as dramatic as an in-universe apocalypse that shatters every faction and zone.

Still, I just wish there was a bit more Alliance and Horde personality, a few more faction-specific viewpoints, even if we keep working together in a shared player campaign. Give us some Nazgrim and Taylor -type squads, who can compete with each other even if they don’t actively fight each other. Characters who can tell and/or show us what the factions are doing, so they don’t seem to be so blatantly absent.

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I’m gonna do this for both Mega-Factions separately.

Horde:

This was the moment to prove that the Horde truly appreciated and gel’d with the Sin’dorei, that all the blood, sweat and sacrifices both sides had made had truly made an unbreakable bond.

Instead, the Sin’dorei stand alone with untrustworthy allies and religious zealots, and now, they’ve had to reconnect with the other Elven ‘Tribes’, which makes their allegiance to the Horde all the more flimsy and unreliable.

An absolute :donkey: -pull from Blizzard that could have been resolved with a few lines of dialogue from Thrall and the other Horde leaders speaking via magical projection that, without Dalaran, there’s no Portal Network large enough for them to send a relieving force through in enough numbers to make a difference and the bulk of the Horde’s forces are stuck in Dornogal still and are having to be physically shipped to the Eastern Kingdoms, on the literal other side of the map, and the Naga are beating on their back door every step of the way.

I get that they were trying to make Silvermoon a Faction-neutral story-line, but this was just wretchedly unsatisfying for the Horde players.

For the Alliance players, this is even worse. Not only are we having to swoop in and save these traitors, but they’re insisting we aid their people and rebuild their infrastructure, and then help them make peace with the very enemy we united against in the first place all those centuries ago.

And then we get to watch the spiritual backbone of the majority faith of the Alliance get sucked into the Lore Hole and nobody bats an eyelid or takes any great strides to either recover the bodies or find survivors?

:headstone: :bouquet:

RIPPERARONIES to the Humans, Elves and Draenei I guess, and even more separation between the Elves and everybody else.

Blizzard, where is my table-flipping Emoji?

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Oh I totally agree here, I really enjoyed a lot of BfA. The zones, questing, helping two Brutosaurs find love. I really loved all the Horde zones, I know people complain about Zuldazar as a city hub being awkward and annoying but I loved it! Such a cool and unique city and the music for it was my favourite.

I totally agree, this is why I think they should just retire the old cast of characters after the DF time skip and insert new guys to be best buds.

Vess and Shandris being pals is an example of that BfA over correction. Sure the undead plagued the heck out of Darkshore but look see, Voss and Shandris got over it and are now pals, everything is fine!!! It doesn’t feel authentic or natural to have these two characters with minimal interaction suddenly be chummy, it’s so weird. A new Kaldorei dark ranger could have been a better character to bridge that divide between the Kaldorei and Undead but instead it’s blank slate Voss serving whatever the plot needs now.

I also want to add I think part of the over correction was caused by how the player base reacted. As you mentioned, the faction war escalated to a level that cause lot of arguments turning into, if you play X faction you support X IRL. I mained undead at the time and I really just didn’t enjoy some of the heat I got for playing a silly little dead guy in the silly little cartoon game. Had some individuals imply some wildly inappropriate things about me despite myself being an IRL queer person all because I played a specific race/faction. It’s like oof this isn’t fun anymore playing my guy or partaking in the larger story.

So I’m not surprised if the way people took the faction conflict in BfA scared Blizz a bit after that and that’s why the stories are so safe these days.

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Legion was peak Warcraft for me, for several reasons. One of them was Class Order Halls.

The writers gave us the main plot, as well as what, a dozen sub-plots to make sure each and every character/class had a way they could contribute meaningfully to the main story.

Sure, I never liked the idea of becoming the actual leader of that Order, but the idea was great: class identity, a home to call you own, and gathering with the others in the end?

Gorgeous.

I wish they’d use that approach for expansions: give us a Main plot, and then parallel plots to explore what the nations are going through. These could start at XPAC launch and then be the focus of the in-between patches.

Imagine, if you will:

  • 12.0: Quel’Danas invaded, Eversong, Zul’aman, Voidstorm Campaigns, Voidstorm Raid
  • 12.0.5: Horde (Orgrimmar) and Alliance (Stormwind) stories: why can’t they respond immediately? What are they dealing with at home? Void Rituals around Azeroth? Make it make sense!
  • 12.1: Harannar Campaign and Lightbloom Raid
  • 12.1.5: Horde and Alliance stories revisited, Void Rituals
  • 12.2: Horde and Alliance finally prepare their fleets and arrive in Quel’Thalas. Campaigns merge. March on Quel’Danas Raid.
  • 12.3: Epilogue/Prologue stuff happens to set up the next expansion…
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I like those proposed “parallel plots” a lot!

There could have been legitimate reasons that the Horde and Alliance could not come in force, which they could explore in early quests. In the prepatch quests the Twilight Cultists were shown to be infiltrating Orgrimmar and Stormwind, so they could absolutely have sabotaged their forces and logistical networks, and forced the Horde and Alliance to focus on rooting them out.

Now that I think about it, the fact that the Horde and Alliance canonically discovered Twilight’s Blade infiltrating their capitol cities in those prepatch quests should make it even more imperative that they Do Something About It, unless a very clear reason is given why they can’t!

And also I would have loved for these Void Incursion Rituals to start taking place all over the old world.

Axiann, do you remember the Legion Prepatch? The Legion invasions all over a bunch of old world zones was so much fun, they had so many memorable characters from questing showing up again to help fight off the unending waves of demons, it felt like Warcraft 3 all over again!!

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HELL YEAH WE GOT BINGO!!! :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

The forums were a wild place at the time, hey? Sometimes felt in RL trouble for having a red avatar.

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I like the idea of parallel plots a lot too and loved what we had in Legion, Mists and even BfA. However, I don’t feel optimistic about getting something like that again because that doesn’t bring value to shareholders aka it’s more expensive to develop multiple parallel storylines as opposed to one big one. Then that one big one needs to appeal to everyone, can’t have anything that’s challenging or cause friction and we always have to have good endings because not everyone likes bad endings etc etc. Y’know what I mean?

I think there’s an interview somewhere with Ion or somebody saying the effort to develop Legion took a lot, so much so, they had to abandon Warlords halfway through but DANG it was worth it right???

I do think the pacing with TWW and Midnight is rushed a lot like BfA. I feel y’all about how 12.0 feels almost anti-climatic. Obviously Midnight was going to have the unification of all the elves but I think if it was dragged out across all three Midnight patches, the tension, the anxiety, the potential for really fun character development would have been a better experience. Now it’s all poof because we threw some stuff into the soup.

I know people have their issues with DF but I think DF was better paced. Each patch made sense and connected well together, the expansion plot progressed and we had smaller but satisfying resolutions. Even SL had better(ish) patch pacing! Imagine if DF’s or SL’s first patch was everything crammed into one and then the 0.2 patch has us going to the moon for some reason to fight space raptors.

Anyway speaking of parallel plots wouldn’t be cool for the Last Titan expansion and return to Northrend they have two starting zones like OG Lich King. Players can choose between starting in Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra, lead by a respective commander characters from one of the factions.

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Nay. You pick 2 different starting zones: Icecrown or Storm Peaks

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I’ve literally felt like the only BFA fan for ages. It’s not my favorite expac, but I liked it a lot more than several other expacs. More than Cata, WoD, SL, TWW and Midnight. Probably more than BC and DF, if I’m honest.

I’d probably rank it behind LK, Vanilla, Legion and Pandaria, so 5th.

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