The Faction Rivalry

Lore Story Forum
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Kyalin Raintree

Admittedly, I’m getting less and less motivated to do this. Back when BfA was in flight, there was hope that the team might do something to restore the lost confidence and pride in the Night Elves - pivotally against the Horde. I’ve said it before that the marketing team did get one thing right “It matters” - which is why I’m not as motivated. Shadowlands all but kills the possibility of a meaningful comeback, especially with Blizzard’s strange hesitance both to show the Night Elves in a victorious position, and to clarify the status of what might be the most important zone in Warcraft: Ashenvale.

This could blow up into a billion complaints though, so I would just like to focus on one: the state of Warcraft’s rivalry.

There are some who claim that the faction war is a universal evil, but I disagree. I think that a faction war can be engaging and enjoyable for both sides. Rivalries work in team sports and in fiction all of the time, so why doesn’t it work here? As usual, I tried to find my answer in third party research, but Google didn’t give up the goods. Instead, I found a couple of blog posts - hardly authoritative, but I’m going to present them for your consideration anyway. So first, let’s talk about rivalries in general:

https://www.thecut.com/2014/06/why-t...cer-rival.html
https://www.thecut.com/2014/06/why-the-us-needs-a-soccer-rival.html

The good:

  • Rivalry increases effort, performance, and group cohesion because it increases motivation.

The bad:

  • Rivalries increase unethical behavior.
  • People tend to accept worse outcomes for themselves if it means the rival will achieve an even worse outcome.
  • Rivalries can make us overlook non-rivals.

I wouldn’t say that we’re observing the pros in the Warcraft rivalry, but we’re absolutely seeing the cons. Alliance players want to burn down Orgrimmar, despite that this would destroy the game - and Horde players are out justifying genocide as a concept. World threats just don’t seem to matter anymore, and universal spite is the order of the day, and no one respects each other. #Notall of course, people are people and people are different, if you’re not doing this personally, then I’m not talking about you - and your results may vary. These are general trends, but they are observable trends, nonetheless.

What might be a reason for all of this? How did we get here? Well, why don’t we start with the Alliance?

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/...a-good-rivalry
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/97511-what-makes-a-good-rivalry

Quote:

Nor is it uncommon to hope your rival loses every game they play. Many times, fans will celebrate a rivals’ defeat against anyone as much as they will their own teams’ victory.

But think about this: What does it say about the strength of your own team if its’ main rival goes ‘0-fer’ every year? What if your adversary’s mascot is called the Cuddly Bunny?

A few years ago, as a joke at Blizzcon, Blizzard held up slogans for the Alliance including “Not the face”, and “We’ll keep trying”. They trotted out a metal frontman to berate the Alliance for not letting him farm motes of air, and they have in general failed to present a real alternative to the high-octane themes of the Horde. Lore heavy Horde fans may complain here, turning to quest text, developer statements, and other written materials that suggest that the Horde isn’t actually that powerful, but as we discussed last time, visuals are more memorable, and video more effective than audio and text by a factor of almost ten - with visuals alone being more memorable by a factor of five. Those visuals display the Horde as strong and powerful.

The Alliance by contrast isn’t. They do not look powerful, they are not menacing, and they’re not particularly memorable either. That’s why people thought those statements were funny - they were true. Few people are going to take a flower-laden Night Elf seriously, especially after the War of the Thorns. Anduin is a nonthreatening blonde kid who would make Neville Chamberlain and Mr. Rogers look like the Doom guy. What’s left then? Good boy Genn? Jaina? There isn’t anyone who is going to have the appeal of a Garrosh or a Sylvanas. That’s because Blizzard isn’t interested in giving the Alliance that kind of thing. As a result: the faction sucks - regardless of what they may say to the contrary in a developer tweet or on page 47 of some obscure book that no more than a twenty-fifth of the population is ever going to read. This isn’t enough - payback has be shown onscreen, and it has to be meaningful - but Blizzard has serially denied this, and will into the foreseeable future.

Two problems arise as a result of this. One: onscreen victories against the Alliance are expected, and therefore mean little. Two: the Alliance can’t trash talk, and otherwise has little motivation to even participate.

They’re not the only losers in this relationship of course. So let’s talk about the Horde.

Some of the problem I’ve discussed already. People play video games for reasons of competence, relatedness, and autonomy, and lying to the Horde about what they were signing up - selling the faction for years as more than a slavering pack of Lord of the Rings villains, only to pull the rug out from under those people because the writers now needed a villain for “the story they wanted to tell” attacks the latter two of those elements - hard, and Horde players have been right to complain about it. As far as it goes for the rivalry however, a quote from this passage stuck with me:

http://www.gregkroleski.com/2016/11/...great-rivalry/
http://www.gregkroleski.com/2016/11/14/what-makes-a-great-rivalry/

Quote:

The heart of any rivalry is a shared love for a common activity. Two forces of talent going after a common goal. Both finding their limits in each other.

When nurtured properly, these rivalries will develop into a deep respect. Two giants standing alone, who finally have perspective into their similarities to each other and differences from all others.

What two deadlocked generals, in a future time of peace, wouldn’t want to dine together, to converse with the only other person able to match their wit in their particular field of battle.

The friendships that develop are the wine made from the harvest of the rivalry.

Is deep respect even possible here?

Due to the nature of the narrative, the Horde doesn’t even earn any of its victories - they’re handed to them by fiat, and the lack of motivation that comes in as a result on the part of their normative rivals fills in the rest. Many in the Horde don’t even want what’s happening while others bend over backwards to justify and defend increasingly evil acts to either accept this new role, or to deny that the role has been handed to them - all the while denying that the other faction should get a thing to resolve their longstanding issues. Which is fair enough. They’re often treated the same way.

In short, there’s a reason why this rivalry so toxic. One side didn’t choose to be evil for the most part, but was made into that anyway. The other meanwhile is not allowed to have any sort of recourse that matters, and no one takes them seriously.

So where do we go from here?

We don’t. The writers are moving on to Shadowlands and leaving all of these problems to rot. Sylvanas is no longer part of the Horde and therefore, she only has so much relevance to the rivalry - the only thing that matters, and even that only matters in a Schadenfreude sort of way - against the Forsaken playerbase in particular who just had most of their lore hallowed out for this mess. It won’t resolve this issue - and it seems that Blizzard’s current leadership doesn’t care. The writers are too high on their own egos to consider that they’re writing a story for a video game with living players who want to have fun , the developers are short staffed and are rushing product out the door without regard to quality, Ion’s on some really good drugs, and Activision is probably wondering if it’s time to Guitar-Hero this franchise. I’m not motivated to write these anymore because every tea leaf in front of me says that this isn’t getting better, and that it’s never going to.

I guess I just had some free time and wanted to take my frustrations out on the last major topic that was buzzing around in my head.

Source:

https://forums.scrollsoflore.com/showpost.php?p=1626547&postcount=309
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i think that the only way to repair the lore is by having the horde suffer a devastating defeat at the hands of the alliance.

We are told that the alliance is more powerful, and yet they refuse to show it.
Hell it feels like blizzard is scared to actually having the horde losing to the alliance.

and then i am told that i am wrong and i should not be desiring the destruction of half the playerbase.

Then what about The other half?.
The horde needs to lose.
the horde needs to pay.

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The way to repair it is to move on, sadly. There is never going to be any sort of recompense to match, and honestly to ask for it is silly. I’m a fan of night elves, most people who see my posts on here know that, and I absolutely do not want any Horde race to have what happened to nelves happen to them.

An equitable event was never on the table, it was never going to happen, and I predicted it aaaall the way back in 8.1. I do not want Tyrande being framed as a villain because she did something insane like attack a tauren orphanage. I do not want them to try ‘morally grey’ with the Alliance because they very clearly cannot write it properly.

The lore can only be repaired by moving on and having the races affected actually get some wins in against a new threat. That’s it, let something positive happen to those most affected by the lore of late, without bringing down the other faction in any way that involves the Alliance.

It sucks, it’s dumb, but that’s the only way, and it was always going to be the only way.

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Your attitude Etheldald is entirely unworkable and for it to work it would need to make Alliance players not only look bad but feel crappy for doing it and erode the qualities of the Alliance that make it something Alliance players like.

Anything less is you arguing that WoW should be World of Alliancecraft instead because it would be a completely one sided story just painting the Alliance as the great heroes and the Horde as the evil villians being righteously vanquished.

You want to get what the Horde gets then you need to get ALL of what the Horde gets.

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I got a idea, why dont we break the cycle

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lol I like how kyalin wants more genocide in the game

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i don’t want to sound rude but you think that i don’t know what the alliance is supposed to be?
what most of their players like?
what story they would like?.

i do not care anymore about being the villan or the hero.

One thing is for sure is that we cannot let the horde get away with it.
if they do gain ashenvale from this war and anduin signed the treaty then how i would be able to respect the faction or any of their characters?
and is not something that i want to do.

What? destroying the other faction? mocking their losses?
get away unpunished?

while the other can’t even rebuild because they are dead?
i am all in.

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no one thinks like you, least not the majority on here

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What are you on about? Scared to make the horde lose to alliance, have you not payed attention to this expansion? The 4 battles that happened this expansion lordearon, darkshore, dazar and highnountain are all won by the alliance

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is totally fair not agree with me.

but lets not pretend that you haven’t seen all the people who do wants blood.

it is a case of “show don’t tell”.

All their loses was either on their terms, they managed to make some counterattack or to display that the horde is stronger than the nelfs IN THEIR OWN TERRAIN. that is how blizzard portrayed it.

Lordaeron was blow up by sylvanas herself, and she turned it into a death trap.
“you won nothing”.
Dazarlazor was not really a victory on the horde, it was on the zandalari because remember what the alliance had to do when the horde came? Run
And even managed to defeat 2 of our leaders in combat. when the alliance had that chance apart from saurfang that decided to face the entire alliance alone ?.

darkshore? when tyrande went back for revenge and only got laughed and spit on why nathanos? only killing 1 valkyr something that doesn’t even matter because sylvanas got what she wanted and has more?.

highmontain? nani kore.

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yes but lets not pretend you know they are the majority

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I’d love to finally get a victory against the genocidal monster horde that hasn’t changed a single bit instead of forgiving them for no reason at all.

Funnily enough, not only can the night elves not have justice/revenge, blizz is also refusing to build them back up without involving the Horde. They just pretend that Teldrassil never happened.

How can the writing be this atrocious? And it will be so much worse when Sylvanas gets officially redeemed.

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Because Blizzard thinks the faction divide is iconic, and will find another reason to theme an expansion behind it.

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You can’t fool me, nelf. I see through your Panda mask.

This is another Horde hate thread.

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Ma’am, you should put some clothes on cause it seems you’re freezin’.

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This has long been an issue. After the Cannibal Corpse blizzcon bit, I lost all faith in Blizzard ever showing fairness or compassion towards Alliance players and a large subset of their player-base. There is a mountain of evidence to draw from when analyzing the inherent bias displayed towards the Horde, both in the lore/game and in the meta/real world, but it’s a moot point at the end of the day; players choose which faction they want, knowing well what the depiction/tropes/trends are. If you aren’t aware of those before you sign up, you’ve done played yourself.

That notion of “walk softly and carry a big stick”, in theory, applies to the Alliance. We’ve always been told that the Alliance could, with the snap of their fingers, finish off the Horde. They don’t, however, because gameplay mechanics. The Alliance has the OP, god tier characters, but can never fully use them because “it would not be fair”.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have the theoretical ability.

This is accurate. Furthermore, the inability, or unwillingness on behalf of Blizzard to curb or blunt the vitriolic hatred and behavior towards one faction or another further stokes resentment, and fosters genuine hatred between the two which is not good for the community, even if it does fuel their concept of “immersive investment” for PVP/Faction engagement.

I grew tired of this community long before I grew tired of the story; it’s just exhausting.

I think this is a really well made point. To be fair though, the Horde from WC1/2 set up clear expectations for the nature and capability of the Horde and their races. WC3 was an exception to the rule: we were seeing a select few of these ‘evil monsters’ rising above their nature as has been depicted since the get go. WoW is the genuine beginning of where we see the Orcs (in particular) having a “noble” origins that isn’t bathed in bloodlust and warmongering - it’s a retcon/extension that OG players didn’t have going in.

That said, you can’t ignore the wide reaching impact of Tolkienesque fantasy tropes; Orcs and Trolls are the bad guys - they are always painted as such. Trying to flip that fantasy, while yes - bold and exciting for Blizzard, works against typical conventions. Folks coming from a tabletop RPG setting may have more experience with a diverse cast of races filling non-traditional roles, but they’re not going to be the bulk of the playerbase.

We can say “Horde players were lied to about the direction the Horde would take”, but so were the Alliance. Alliance players were told they were noble and just and stand up to evil and yada yada, but history in game shows us the Alliance taking a boot to the teeth a few expansions in a row - with absolutely no meaningful victories coming out of it.

The important part of this being… the Horde at least gets a few fist pumping moments. They lose the long term battle, but it’s those moments of instant gratification that really pay off. When played in reverse, when a player suffers constant humiliations and defeats and then wins the long term battle, but only off screen, it honestly just sucks. There is nothing engaging or fulfilling about that experience.

Retweet. It’s why I haven’t bothered to buy the new xpac, and likely won’t. Tired of Sylvanas, tired of the story not going anywhere meaningful, tired of the cut corners and garbage writing. That’s where I went, and I’ve never been happier in game.

I do RP, I really enjoy the stories I roll out with friends, and I don’t need Blizzard to shovel dirt into my mouth to make my $15 a month worth it.

To be fair, you don’t. On the forums all the time you constantly advocate for the Horde players to suffer for the terrible writing of Blizzard - that’s not going to help anything. Most of the time when I see your posts, they seem to only antagonize and incite even more vitriolic behavior from both sides.

Unfortunately however, this is what we have already to some degree. The Alliance is painted as the morally justified faction when the Horde keeps burning down whole cities. We have this modern concept of proportional responses, E.G. not nuking a whole city in retribution for a few soldiers being killed in a battle. The Horde does not abide by that modern principle, obviously.

The Horde has committed unspeakable, irredeemable acts, and while I won’t ever say that Horde players should be punished, it simply should not go unanswered; anything less is outright insulting and humiliating to Alliance players - which is something they’ve suffered enough of over the years.

The reality of WoW’s garbage tier writing is that the Horde will suffer the character losses and ultimate defeats that are poorly illustrated in game, and the Alliance will suffer the humiliating lawful stupid decisions of their leaders, and have their innocent civilians suffer unconscionable atrocities at the hands of the Horde for the sake of stoking conflict.

It has been this way since the beginning, and Blizzard has the creative abilities of a walnut that’s already been cracked - so it’s not going to get better. BFA isn’t the end of the faction war, it’s just MoP 2.0 with a weightless non-resolution as its capstone that will inevitably crumble so we can go back to rehash this story again.

Again, we will never see these in game.

Lordaeron was a draw - no winners since the Alliance only suffered soldier losses in the end; Sylvanas denied the Alliance a valuable target in the end, after all.

Darkshore will never be phased and the Night Elves will have to suffer in a blight infested zone that won’t be updated.

Dazar was meaningless. The Alliance killed a king who did nothing against them, they didn’t capture the city, and ultimately drove a potential neutral force into the arms of their enemies.

Highmountain? What ever happened in Highmountain? In Highmountain and Suramar the Alliance put the lives of their soldiers on the line only to be stabbed in the back by both who join the Horde and aid in the savage assault upon Teldrassil.

This is in no way reflective of enough of the population Alliance side to make generalizations.

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I think it could be… We haven’t really done any surveys to know for certain, but the degree of people who want to see the Alliance in a darker light is pretty high I feel.

I think your camp, people who like BFA and liked the faction conflict and how it ended, is the vast, VAST minority. The Majority I think are the people who desperately want a good, morally grey faction conflict story but doesn’t trust Blizzard enough to tell it.

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I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the faction rivalry. Even as someone who never played WCIII, the game felt like it was setting up the conflict as “survivors of destroyed nations trying to survive and recover while fighting what they see as the remnants of those who destroyed them and still occasionally try to do so” vs “descendants of a monstrous history trying to turn over a new leaf, despite the stymieing actions of the Alliance and their own people occasionally falling off the wagon”.

It was a sort of conflict that had sensible people on both sides, wrong people on both sides, and while I lean Alliance because I always lean towards the side I think is more defensive in nature (and treehouses are cool), neither side was clearly right or wrong.

But I feel the writing has slipped back towards ‘ugly monsters = evil’ too often. For a long time, I’d ignore it or explain it away, because I liked the idea of two roughly morally equal sides fighting too much to let it go - and surely Blizz would write them better next time! Right? …but BfA broke the camel’s back.

And that’s what really frustrates me.

I agree with both sides: The Horde player has been beaten with the villain bat enough, they don’t need any more - but also, the Alliance needs some concrete ‘epic’ or ‘-legitimately- frightening to the Horde’ event because I just can’t even -pretend- to respect them anymore. (And even if not true, it definitely feels like Blizzard and the fans don’t respect them either, which just adds to the downward spiral.)

BfA raised the stakes to stupid overblown reasons… and then left it there. Either the Alliance does something and Horde players can feel punished again for picking the evil side, or the Alliance does nothing (just like they’ve always done) and the Alliance player feels punished again for picking the weak contemptible side.
Edit: And either way, this is going to fester: one side with growing resentment at being punished by the story this way, the other side at listening to their rival faction complaining or agitating for the other result.

I don’t see a good way out, and I think it was utterly irresponsible to write a faction war into this kind of corner.

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Yeah, because Horde players need to be punished for picking the wrong team! Am I doing it right?

Your claims are absurd.

We are NOT told that the Alliance is more powerful than the Horde. In fact, the lore consistently emphasizes how evenly matched the two sides are.

Blizzard has often had the Horde losing to the Alliance. In this last expansion alone, the Alliance fought through the combined Horde defence at Undercity, won both warfronts, and successfully raided the expansion capitol, destroying the Zandalari navy and killing their king.

The Alliance just isn’t winning hard enough for you. But that’s because you seem to have zero empathy for players who didn’t click on the blue screen when they picked a character. At least if this post is anything to go by.

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I just wish that if they were looking to put the faction rivalry to bed they would have done it at the end of Legion. We could have united together to defeat Ghuun and Nzoth and then be betrayed by Sylvanas leading into Shadolwands still.

But to advertise “It matters” and to build up the rivalry, then to frame it as bad to feel that way and make it shameful leaves a bad taste in many peoples’ mouths. It even makes it feel a bit awkward for me to go back and play the earlier Warcraft games.

If this is the way they wanted to go I wish the ads leading up to it showed Horde and Alliance players working together to do things and “It Matters” was about teaming up to do good rather than being about which faction you were on.

Its a weird place now. They are killing the faction rivalry in game story, while enforcing it in grouping restrictions. They are saying they are done with it for now but the players are not done with it in a positive sense where they are happy where things are at and have closure but rather it has been made so distasteful that they are for a good part just over it.

However since in game we still are not able to talk to each other or group together it is still shoved into our face. We cannot seek closure , there is nothing positive to unite us and because of hard coded gaming rules we cannot play it out in game or move forwards. We are in a limbo of frustration and disatisfaction.

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