In reply to this - your first two paragraphs, I am going to incorporate the ideas from this post - particularly the Orc/Warsong segments. The thing I want to put my finger on is that doing such moves the focus of defense from responding to a tragedy to that old M.O. that I don’t think either BFA or Cataclysm actually fulfilled: of the Horde fighting for survival - and its intent is to cast that fight in a heroic light. This doesn’t, however, require the exchanging of zones, because the idea is to set players up for participation in the tie-in battleground.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/writing-a-pvp-narrative-post-shadowlands/801368
As for a retcon, we don’t live in a world where that would work. You can’t unring the bell here - you do have to move forward. Retconning BFA will not undo the perception in people’s minds that Night Elves suck every time their faction counterparts come knocking, or that the Horde is evil again. You need new content to refute those views. That new content cannot simply be burying the faction war. However, again, I think you can end things in a better place if you use a following stalemate to deliver those refutory moments - content to balance the scales - and then have the rivalry expressed in actual competitive play.
I understand that you still might not be thrilled about this - but from my perspective, this is like you coming into my home stadium, shutting me out 70-0 (hyperbole, and yes, presentation focused. We’ve all discussed that the underlying lore is much better), and then saying “I’m closing down this sport now - have fun living with the shame forever”. I know that’s not what you want to say, but that’s what I’m staring down when you say that we should put the story to bed and not rouse it again.
Regarding your comment about corporations - I agree that WoW is in danger of being shelved. I however disagree that marginalizing PVP or trying to retire the 27-year old rivalry that’s tied heavily into the franchise’s brand equity is the right move to prevent that. Such would be continuing to needlessly chase vital consumer segments away from the property, which would leave it in the increasingly precarious position of a high-cost operating model trying to chase a shrinking core consumer base in an area where strong competition now exists. Instead, I feel that we need to strategically align PVP-centered aspects of the narrative with competitive gameplay elements in order to deliver an experience that compliments, rather than contradicts, motivating factors to engage in such gameplay elements.
As an aside - I’ve looked at some of your posts before and have picked up on this sort of corporate infallibility argument. Corporations are absolutely fallible. I work in internal audit for one - I see the mental breakdowns every single day. With Blizzard, I think the problem is that they’re being held captive by their marketing department, who want flashy visuals and are trying to import “best practices” from competitors without asking whether it makes sense to rip out the beating heart of an existing property, and shove in some transplanted one. I’ve said this before, but I think these people have lost sight of how to write an MMO in the first place - and instead brought on high-powered “resources” so that they can say that they’re focused on the lore and the story. They’re not appreciating that the story has to start with the understanding that the player is our protagonist - that we have to choose who that protagonist is - that we won’t like it if the game world dictates that our protagonist is a tragic victim or an evil bad guy without our consent - and that the nature of these problems favors scattered and emergent narratives, rather than the one involving all of the obnoxious characters and world-spanning arcs that they love so much.
That’s not a tactical error, it’s a strategic one.