I wrote a post a while ago discussing the factions and their complete lack of presence in Midnight, which is confusing in a world where they are still major political forces, and one of the Horde’s major capitals is under attack, and it got me thinking about a more recent worldbuilding issue that I wish Blizzard would rectify.
New Races, how they join the factions, and the implications on worldbuilding.
I feel this is an issue that has gone slowly, slowly downhill the longer that WoW has existed.
I won’t get into the base game races too much, as the story of the humans, dwarves and gnomes is more or less covered in Warcraft 2, the story of the orcs, darkspear and tauren is covered in Warcraft 3, and the setup for why the night elves and forsaken chose their respective sides was well-explained in-universe.
But as new races have been added we’ve seen a gradual decline in actual lore, especially with regard to how they relate to the factions themselves.
The Blood Elves and Draenei, as well as the Goblins and Worgen, are the gold standard in my view. Their starting experiences clearly tell the story of where their culture is at, what they’re going through, and fundamentally why they chose to join their respective factions (your character even has a role to play in that, which is kind of fun). The Blood Elves were struggling to hold against the Scourge, the Draenei were shipwrecked on a strange world and found like-minded allies, the Goblins faced a cataclysmic event and ultimately found refuge with the Horde, and the Worgen realised their need for allies as their kingdom collapsed under the weight of both the worgen curse and a Forsaken invasion. It was all well done, well told, and ultimately it felt very believable.
The Pandaren were a bit of a shift, but still fundamentally well done I believe. In your travels as the Pandaren Adventurer you encounter both factions and ultimately come to a choice if you wish to continue your life of adventure. Both factions have believable reasons to join, and the philosophies of the Tushui and Huojin provide an identity for the Pandaren of each faction to lean into. Furthermore, in the context of a war, it’s made very clear to you the consequences of what side you’ve chosen; that some of your kin may yet become your enemy. I think it was more rushed than the others, but at the end of the day still good and believable worldbuilding.
Then we come to the first round of allied races in BFA. In my view, still interesting, but a significant step down. I’ll give them this. The context was believable. I understand why the Nightborne would ultimately choose to align with the elven people who were most culturally similar, rather than the ones who kinda kept threatening them lol. The story of the void elves was explained well, exiled from Quel’thalas and thus from the Horde at large, they found refuge with an Alliance hero who offered them both safety and training. The Lightforged? It makes sense that they would join the other Draenei, as well as their High Exarch, in their own faction, though it wasn’t explained particularly well, I’m mostly forced to infer their motives, which are believable but abstract in the actual storytelling. The Mag’har story left us with more questions than answers but again, I don’t think anyone expected the orcs to join the Alliance. The Dark Irons were already kind of a part of the Alliance in Cata and MoP, and so it makes sense that they landed where they did, and the Highmountain Tauren made cultural-alignment sense in the way that the Nightborne did… But many of these weren’t spelled out as clearly as they were with the actual races. Your character of that race plays no role in the decision, which is fine, but feels more detached. It’s never clearly explained why many of these factions, having been neutral in Legion (or not yet around in the case of the void elves) were so eager to enter a full scale war, or even what they think of the opposite faction in general. It was weaker storytelling overall. Even the Vulpera and Mechagnome additions were quite weak in terms of actual motive, though they DID exist (burning of the vulpera caravans and gnomish kinship respectively) I’ll make an exception here only for the Kul Tirans and Zandalari whose stories were actually very well told across their zones in BFA itself, and their motivations for joining the factions were equally well explained. But as a general rule, I found the allied races interesting but almost rushed in their faction alignment - it certainly lacked the depths of their BC and Cata counterparts.
Then we come to the Dracthyr, which are a weaker standard again. Their starting zone was dracthyr and dragon lore all the way until some dracthyr decided to follow Wrathion and Ebyssian to Stormwind and Orgrimmar respectively, and kind of just… join? Like the Pandaren, the choice is presented, but it seems last minute, involves literally no prior encounters with the factions, and really just happens to fit the mechanics of the game, not the story itself. Like the Pandaren, there are two different groups, but the Obsidian Warders and the Dark Talons are not massively philosophically different in the way that the Tushui and Huojin are. The Warders are defensive and the Talons are more about guerrilla warfare, but that’s only mentioned briefly and isn’t really entrenched into the zone’s storytelling in the way that the juxtaposition of Tushui and Huojin philosophy is among the Pandaren. In short, the Dracthyr leave us with an in universe reason to join the Alliance or Horde, but it’s weak.
Then we come to the Worldsoul Saga “Allied” Races, and personally I’m not even fond of the term as they’re not really “allied” to the factions in the way that the BFA races were. No in universe reason, none, is really given to explain why Earthen and Haranir would join the factions. The Alliance and Horde are seemingly not considered as political entities in a fantasy universe but only annoying gameplay hurdles, and so the story justification for their presence in the factions is pathetic and nonexistent.
As long as I’m ranting I’d say I don’t even think the Haranir have a good cultural justification for it - at least the Earthen we play are fresh slates, awoken once more thanks to Magni’s sacrifice and Azeroth’s grace. Free of their tethers I guess they seek to explore the world. But the Haranir are a deliberately and vehemently reclusive culture that have given me whiplash by how quickly they’ve gone from “Outsiders are not welcome here” to “Whoopsie we’ve been discovered, cat’s out of the bag boys guess we’re adventurers now” after apparently watching the cultures of Azeroth all this time through the roots. I dunno, guys. It seems weak.
Anyway my specific disdain for Haranir aside (they could have given us naga 
), the point I’m making is that it’s really hard to justify why the Worldsoul Saga’s allied races have joined the Alliance and Horde at all. Imagine if a faction war reignited tomorrow. Playing a Blood Elf, I can think of a myriad of reasons to fight the Alliance. Playing a worgen, I can think of several to fight the Horde. Even playing a Pandaren I know that all those years ago in the MoP storyline I made an oath to my faction and I’ll fight for it. While weaker, the BFA allied races are the same, they have believable reasons to want to be a part of their faction.
But the latest stuff? I guess a Dracthyr might want to prove their weyrn has better soldiers than the other weryn, but that’s about it. With the Earthen and Haranir? There’s nothing. No good reason at all. Why would they fight their own kind? What possible motive could they have?
Now I’m not saying a faction war is inevitable or required but I hope you get what I’m laying down with this illustration. Once, the factions had identity. Now it seems the identity is being ignored entirely. Which brings me back to the idea of the main character of world of warcraft being the world, as articulated by Metzen many, many years ago. If the main character is the world, we need to understand the complex interplay of the world. We should not just deep dive into a culture and ignore its impact everywhere else, we should do what the early game did, and not only examine the culture, by why the people within it were forced to, or chose to, engage with the world’s politics in the way that they did.
Either dismantle the factions, or develop them. I would prefer the second. But either would be preferable to this continued practice of ignoring them, which just makes the worldbuilding weak and inconsistent.