Right - which is when there were a hundred million threads about what entitled crybaby carebears Alliance players were.
Which, granted, it is the mainstream boards, where middle-school-level tribalism is basically a national pastime, but the mainstream boards are still a large part of the conversation. The different in tone from when the circumstances were reversed is noticeable.
My completely unfounded conspiracy theory is that the developers actually desperately want to get rid of sharding, but the financial strain of reorganizing their entire server structure combined with the increased load it would cause makes their accountants give the idea a hard no.
Yeah, I’ve never really understood the “need” for the faction rivalry beyond it probably selling more merch in the long run. Demographically, PvPers are probably the least likely to care about the game’s story anyway.
If it meant not having to read semi-veiled homophobic insults every time the game is unfair in my favor, I’d kill the factions in a heartbeat.
Some of my gripes for war-mode and it’s rewards could be satisfied with small adjustments I think. Assassin buff shouldn’t be attainable in a raid group, nor should it be gained from honorable kills of someone below your level, for one. You shouldn’t be able to LFG/group finder a whole off-server raid in order to accomplish the CTA or WPvP things.
In fact, this is a pipedream of course, but why not just let warmode fall off and unflag you if you’re in a raid larger than like 10 or 15 people. Who needs huge 40 man raids WPvPing? WoW’s servers can’t handle it anyway and likely never will again.
Also, what I think most people might miss, particularly those that LIKE to WPvP, is familiarity. It’s the same feeling you’d get in the past running into other players from the same battlegroup in instanced PvP. It’s a bit more fun running into a player out in the world from your server than it is a dozen off-server people just phasing in to finish a quest, honestly. There’s also more of a chance you’ll run into them again, instead of being ganked by 5 horde and being like ‘whatever who cares, I’ll never see them again so I can’t even get a rematch’.
I’m just going to repost what I wrote in another thread. My issue is with the sharding, it’s a freaking mess.
Sharding will kill wow
I was doing an incursion in WM last night, at one point joined a Horde raid to push Alliance so I could do my quests. Drop the raid since they were gone and I could do my quests now but got phased out into a shard with an Alliance raid???
So essentially what happened is the Alliance raid was in one shard and Horde raid in another and PVP didn’t happen lmao.
Also from a MAH IMMERSION it is pretty dumb to get killed in the Zanda port with a whole army just standing there.
As far as guards/NPCs not attacking the opposite faction sufficiently in the Port of Zandalar, I honestly don’t know why they don’t because they SHOULD. Half the fun when WPvPing in small groups or solo was dodging guards and creatively getting around them in order to snipe kills.
This is what I keep getting hung up on. After so many coincidences that somehow benefited the Horde (their getting an extra week of farming rares, getting to run alts through Arathi before the iLvl restriction was added for Alliance) and being told to stop whining, I’m not sure why I should protest this.
Considering the fact that it’s one (1) piece of gear that will not heavily alter the play or progression of most people unless you’re actually going to participate in World First in raiding maybe, it feels really minimal.
I agree, I honestly don’t care about the gear thing especially with the way ilvl scale anyway. The only thing that bums me out about it is that I don’t have the opportunity at getting a new mog piece on my Horde characters.
Horde players also didn’t ask for or cause any of those errors, so saying they deserve punishment for them, or because some Horde players are obnoxious, seems really unfair and callous.
I mean that’s REALLY taking faction conflict out of the game, to a pretty extreme degree.
While theoretically true, I don’t think it’s a fair portrayal to suggest anyone’s doing that.
It’s more like, after the majority of the Horde didn’t lift a finger to help the Alliance during their protests, they can’t rightly expect the Alliance to lift a finger to help them during theirs, especially when the Alliance is securing an advantage amidst so many disadvantages.
I would urge the Horde to do what the Alliance did and boycott warmode until things are more favorable.
I’m not sure we can really say the majority of Horde did or didn’t do anything, because we simply do not have that data.
But also, what should Horde players have done, that they didn’t? And is it truly severe enough to turn on your fellow players, rather than holding Blizzard accountable? Keep in mind very VERY few people only play one faction.
I just don’t think it’s fair to punish or condemn an entire faction based on the actions of their worst players. I said that about the Alliance in a thread last week, and the same goes for Horde.
It’s true that we don’t have the data to back that up. But it’s also true that observably, most threads where the Alliance protests their poor treatment sees far more Horde player detractors than supporters.
Ideally, Horde players would push back against shabby treatment of their fellow players, boycott out of solidarity, push back against abusive players in their own faction, criticize Blizzard constantly for their poor treatment and poor decision-making.
And sometimes that happens. But not enough.
And I don’t think anyone’s advocating for condemnation or punishment. People are merely observing that, after years of abuse and detractment, there’s not much motivation to show up for people who traditionally have not shown up for them.
I feel something that’s often lost in conversations of this nature is when someone who plays mainly Alliance comments about what Blizzard has done in regards to Horde as a faction/game mechanics/etc some Horde players will take that as a personal attack to them as individuals. Which is not the intent when one criticizes imbalance caused by Blizzard themselves.
Making a point of saying you don’t care that others are getting punished, is advocating that punishment. It wouldn’t be if simply nothing is said, but speaking up only to say “you deserve this” is condoning Blizzard’s actions, and condemning thousands of people who did nothing wrong, over the actions of the most vocal, toxic handful of players.
It doesn’t seem fair, and I don’t agree with it morally.
being a tad overly verbose and philosophical when we’re just talking about a mishandled carrot-on-a-stick situation.
It’s the situation that people are incentivized to camp and be disruptive in war mode.
and they’re rewarded for it.
Edit: Logged in today around 12:15-12:40(?) eastern and I was met with the same group I was running from constantly while doing mythic+'s last night. If I had the patience to do so, I’d make a time lapse about how unbearable the Port of Zandalar and the Great Seal is. 14 hours of not being able to move in your own city. The Mugambala isn’t safe either.
Hypothetically, would you expect Horde players not to participate in the Saurfang quests until the Alliance got a similar quest that allowed them to make a decision?
![:clap:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/clap.png?v=6" ":clap:")
will