Why? This is me asking a legitimate question as I cant seem to wrap my head around your stance. Horde vs Alliance was the core of the game is the main argument I hear but its hard to take that argument seriously when every expansion, including MoP and BfA (the two faction war expansions) we teamed to up at some point in the expansion to stop some big bad.
Classic - C’thun
TBC - Illidan and Kil’jaden
WoTLK - Yogg and Arthas
Cata - Deathwing
MoP - Garrosh and the Sha
WoD - Garrosh and Archimonde
Legion - The Burning Legion
BfA - N’zoth and Sylvanas
Shadowlands - Sylvanas and the Jailer
We continue to team up, in lore, to stop threats to existence so I dont see how lore can be used to justifty it.
As for a gameplay perspective splitting your playerbase just seems like a horrible idea as it leads to one faction/side with a larger playerbase than the other leading to bitterness. It makes absolutely zero sense to split the playerbase from a gameplay perspective and seems like it would do more harm than good.
Because it doesn’t make sense that every two years we have some horrific cosmic horror coming after us to kill us. It makes no sense that mortal men and women with mortal needs have to continue to push them aside for no reason other than another horrible squid monster or cosmic terror took a number at the DMV and came to destroy Azeroth again.
The story was way more grounded when it was mortal men and women fighting for mortal things like resources and needs, and we get nothing out of destroying something. The faction divide should be made important and people should have a reason to go through both experiences and stories and play both sides. Destroying it does nothing productive, in my opinion.
But in that sense wouldnt keeping the playerbase split also end up hurting tje game? If they want to use it as a backdrop for story I dont see why they couldn’t do that while removing the split for gameplay reasons.
In lore forsaken are hurt by holy magic but we have them using holy magic for gameplay. Surely an exception could be made for gameplay reasons.
working together doesn’t mean you are friends. Look at the real world and the many places we are clearly not friends with, yet we still team up for important occasions.
Having common enemy from time to time doesn’t magically fix issues between factions. We can’t live in same world by same rules (even though modern writers are desperately trying to make horde and alliance exactly the same, like we’re all IRL american humans with same politic views)
We have same reasons to kill each other we had 20 years ago, nothing changed.
A lot of us want MORE barriers between the factions. For years, “faction cooperation” has largely meant “Horde players have to follow the orders of Alliance characters”. Legion was ESPECIALLY bad in this regard, since the Horde was written out of the game for 2 years during that one.
Wrath: Did Alliance players get off the boat to Howling Fjord and report to Sylvanas? No, that would have been stupid.
Burning Crusade: Did Horde players go through the Dark Portal and report to Danath? No, that would also have been stupid.
Shadowlands: Horde players enter the Shadowlands and Jaina’s in charge. Jaina. Who tried to kill us all a short time ago. That was stupid.
They need to go back to having separate experiences for Horde and Alliance players. Instead of this cost-cutting “one size fits all” approach (i.e. “we’ll write an Alliance-centric story and Horde players will just have to deal with it”).
Lots of Horde players want LESS Alliance in our WoW gameplay. Not more.
It would make the game a better experience, that is the only reason they need to make it happen. Keeping a dwindle population divided in 2 might not be the best course of action going forward.
I think that removing the Alliance vs Horde dynamic would be a huuuuuuuuge mistake.
This divide can be used to create a lot of content, just like BfA did with the story, despite it being good or bad. Also, most BG’s are created around the faction war: Warsong is about Orc lumbering in Ashenvale and Night Elves being mad about it and all the other’s are kinda the same thing.
In the future could be raids with the same concept that Dazar’alor had with the 3 first 3 bosses being the same fight but with different NPC’s and setting. This could be expanded a lot.
Other upper side of the factions is the overall experience of the game. You to different places, your building are different, your lore is different and all that. All this gives personality and character to the game.
Abandoning this just to make Horda and Alliance players play together, seems like a very very tiny win and a huge lose in the other side.
