I remember long ago posting the idea of a third faction. Once where players may choose to leave their faction to join this third one. Everyone laughed and ridiculed it.
Who’s laughing now?
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I’ve been championing the idea of The Scourge being a playable 3rd faction since Wrath.
- Hillsbrad and Darkshore/Teldrassil Genocide
- Unresolved disputes: Gilneas Plaguebombed
- Stormwind set on fire (somehow)
- Enslavement of Night Elves risen into Forsaken Ranks, Same for South Shore
Those are the few I can think of off the top of my head.
There are still plenty of unresolved issues such as Horde war crimes. The Ray-Getz-Kalaba Monstrosity is a huge one a direct result of the Horde killing and turning Hillsbrad civilians into zombies.
There’s numerous reasons why the two factions aren’t and shouldn’t ally. Plenty of game elements can be adjusted without destroying things that some people don’t care about.
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Yes, Blizzard caved in to a bunch of liars who kept screaming about how they “couldn’t get anything done” unless the other faction’s playerbase rode in like the cavalry to rescue them (even though that wasn’t true).
Doesn’t mean we need to be happy about it.
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And OP expects us to just forget all of it and move on. Lol.
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Aggressive server mergers should have been the first step. A lot of the “there’s nobody to play with” was dead server issues, not faction issues.
Alliance players on Sargeras have no shortage of people to team with, and won’t benefit from cross-faction at all. Meanwhile, people of both factions on dead servers are still up the creek without a paddle.
Cross-faction play was a non-solution to the wrong problem.
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My guess for next xpac is some type of war where we “choose” a faction or allegiance to belong to. Like New World or whatever…and we’ll get our discourse that way. I think we go back to Azeroth too
Players like OP is how we ended up with stories like BfA/SL. They demand more in one area at the expense of something else.
They wonder why subs/population is dropping and new player retention is awful when Blizz focuses solely on, say, raiding and just wing everything else. Wild.
Just make the player character their own entity. Separate them from the horde and alliance and let people choose a Horde quest line or an Alliance quest line. No different than Bloodsail Bucc/Steamwheedle Cartel rep.
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You sure don’t. Won’t change anything though
You never know, ten years ago who would have thought that enough whining and crying would have led to Blizzard removing the franchise’s entire foundation? Time to do the same in reverse 
Or that old talent trees would come back.
Or that blue-eyed elves would be playable.
Never say never.
That might work, but people do like being part of a team to root for so I doubt they’d go for the total free agent thing.
The better solution would have been to make allied races be true cross-faction counterparts. Defias Humans for Horde, Grimtotem Tauren for Alliance, Dark Iron Dwarves for Horde, High Elves for Alliance, etc.
If all races were playable on both factions, the whole “I’m stuck on this faction because I want to play this” thing would have been eliminated.
In fact, “traitor” race options were heavily requested for a long time, and what a bunch of people initially assumed allied races were going to be.
Such a missed opportunity.
I do understand OP’s goal to allow all players to play together without restriction. I respect that. Providing all races to both factions doesn’t solve that issue unfortunately. In fact, I would imagine it would make the faction issues worse. Or, worse yet, diminish the ‘lines in the dirt’.
Mercenaries are normal, but creating a whole faction for each side is a bit much especially when they’ve never been on the same page before.
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And there should be no racial restrictions on any classes. And there should be no class restrictions on gear.
Good luck to you
Unilateral existential threats have a tendency to undermine factions. While the game was built upon the foundation of faction war, it’s evolved into something more unified, so I have to agree. Factions no longer have much meaning.
Personally, I enjoyed the rivalry more than fighting celestial beings. But, it is what it is.
Allowing players of any race to act as mercenaries for either faction is one of those elements that can be adjusted. That’s effectively what we’ve been since Legion, minus that one brief period where we got stupid again in the first part of BfA, then immediately forgot again when Azshara showed up…
The factions don’t have to come together as friends forever, but players need to not be restricted by it. Players being inseparably tied to the factions is the reason why they can never have any actually interesting faction war stories and why all of those war crimes get ignored. Putting aside how terrible all of BfA’s writing was and should be chucked out the window like everything else written after Legion, players will incessantly cry “favoritism” over any minor victory one faction has over the other and demand it be paid back immediately.
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At this point in the story, and the games age, I think they should begin the process of phasing out factions. We’re already starting to see it, but I would like to see more advancements beyond just cross faction guilds.
We need random dungeon queues to go cross faction, we need open world communication and grouping to go cross faction. There should no longer be ‘faction’ hubs. Anyone can go to any city they want.
I think, as always, we should allow people to opt out of such things if they so choose. That is fine. But by default we should start phasing out the faction divide entirely.
Indeed. It’s frankly engrained in just about every single faction we encounter. Humans in the Twilight Hammer, Orcs and Forsaken in the Argent Dawn/Crusade, Night Elves and Tauren in the Cenarion Circle… etc etc…
Just open it up that way. There’s no need to ruin the Horde Vs Alliance war/rivalry. All players would be able to play together and support the faction they like the most.
I just don’t think based on events in game they should ever be allies. There are just so many examples.
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Why do people care about peace in a video game, the whole point of the game is to go to War, I hate the storyline right now beause the Horde is weak and lame, I hope the alliance can be the one to cause the next war if the LameHorde wont, I hope the Alliance will kill all the current Horde council members so the strong can rise up from the ashes and rebuild the Strong Horde we all know and love.
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All of the elements of a good story is sitting there. Now if the writers put it all together and we don’t end up with some Dr. Evil Zovaal nonsense then there is some bit of hope.
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While war doesn’t actually need only those 2 faction to be present such as the war we had against n’zoth or any old gods in occurrences. I kinda like the idea of a warmongering clan/faction . Couple of years ago ,I talked about that with my bro on how to maintain pvp while having no real faction in pve . We talked about something similar. A mercenary group or faction that cannot be actually chosen during character creations.
More like a underground pvp faction that are hiring anyone who wants to fight for a certain territory to be maintained or assaulted . Lets say its a horde/alliance group vs the mercenary that want control of lets say Alterac valley .
As for arenas … no need for faction at all , its a coliseum where people fight for fame and glory aka ratings and loots .
World pvp thats tricky but hey even amongst ourselves in real life there is still criminality and people who likes to hurt others and steal their stuff cuz its fun for them . So switching to world pvp would be like being a criminal thus tagging yourselves as enemy of everyone else.
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