You all say you want to once again go back to centering the “Horde vs. Alliance” jingoistic nationalist war narrative with a never-ending cycle of hatred and vengeance and then spend nearly 400 posts arguing with each other about how awful it feels to play on whichever faction you’ve decided to personally identify with about how stupid and/or ineffective they ultimately have to be to make that story continue ad nauseum.
Personally, I’ve loved the past couple weeks of being able to play a story set in the world of Warcraft where everyone one either side has finally gotten tired of 40 in-universe years of misery and bloodshed and is working to build toward something better for once. It’s the first time anyone on either faction has truly been written well since, what? WC3?
I think that’s mostly because the Faction War, as a concept, isn’t all that unpopular.
After all, HvA is built into WoW’s bones. Even back in WC3, where the story was about unification in the face of adversity, it was ultimately a game where you choose a faction and tried to kill the other player.
I think there’s a not-so-small group of players that earnestly want the experience and tribalism that comes with the Faction Conflict.
I remember seeing the BfA cinematic and feeling such a swell of excitement. And it was about nothing but Faction Conflict. And I was utterly crushed to see it when the expansion finally arrived, because it had nothing the cinematic seemed to promise.
An ideal faction conflict would keep both sides invested. Would give both sides a valid reason to want to fight.
It’s why a common “fix” for BfA from Horde players is to prune the War of Thorns and just have the Alliance attack first.
People want to fight each other, but also want to feel good fighting each other.
Some players have rightfully given up that dream after Blizz failed to provide time and time again.
But there are still some players who hate the Faction Conflicts we’ve had, but still earnestly want one that “works”.
I always found it sort of funny that people actually thought Anduin would ever be the instigator in a fight. Mr. Shiny-Magic-Bones-of-Righteousness, start a fight. The guy who since MoP has been calling for peace between both sides and went on to call off the attack on Zandalar because he didn’t expect their king to die and thought it be too… mean? to actually push the advantage they had created.
The first step to making the Alliance have teeth is to give its military forces a leader who has the will to use them in such a way. Right now with Anduin MIA is the best chance people have for the Alliance of doing such a thing.
You think they’d ever commit to that? They’d just strip any antagonism and aggression from whoever they replaced Anduin with. Just like they did with Varian. Just like they’ve done with Genn. Like, do I genuinely think that Turalyon could be goaded into being the aggressor in a Faction Conflict? As an individual character? Perhaps. As a leader of the Alliance Faction? NEVER! The first thing they started doing when setting him up a seat holder for Anduin is start stripping him of any traits that might have contributed to him getting goaded. Anduin isn’t the root source of the Alliance being a completely reactive entity, and restrained by some absurd moral purity test. He, just like Baine is for the Horde, merely has been turned into the Laziest method for Blizz to write the Factions they way they want to.
Its as Small said. The easiest way to inject back even a little nuance into ANY Faction Conflict narrative is to simply allow the Horde to be allowed “Justifications” again. For the first time since WotLK. And as a consequence of committing to those justifications, Blizz would have to commit the Alliance into doing things against the Horde that weren’t just immediately whitewashed into sterility; or buried under so many justifications and excuse events that it made them right in doing them. Even from the Horde’s perspective. But, as things currently sit. The Alliance has ALL the justifications in the world to want to smack the Horde around, but “Can’t”. While the Horde is allowed zero reasons to have to start each conflict. However, you are right, the Alliance would probably “have to” be the one’s to “Start Things” next time. Not that Blizz is likely to ever toy with the Faction conflict again. Or even the Factions themselves by all indications. Hence how heavy handed DF is about “We’re Moving On!”
The only way to really GIVE the horde a reason to do anything is if team blue actually starts the conflict. That is the worst part of BFA. Azerite was the perfect vehicle for a balanced faction conflict, as resource conflicts are neutral of inherent moral bias and both sides were using it to produce superweapons. They just… dropped it like a bag of lead weights and never did anything with it, instead focusing on how eeevil Sylvanas actually was because she signed on to kill the multiverse with WoW Satan.
I think it is likely for the best they do not do a hot conflict again. They have not shown themselves as able to pull it off in a way that people actually want to engage with.
The BfA trailer came out before the book that revealed his magic bones.
And he was newly crowned king at the time. We didn’t know how that might change things for him. For example, we knew he was not feeling entirely confident about his abilities, based on that cinematic that they forced as all to watch, “whether Alliance or Horde.” That could have led to others (probably Genn) convincing him that the war was regrettable but necessary.
I think they think they’ve found the perfect formula with the Taurajo/Brennadam situation: make it look bad for the side that’s hit in order to rile them up, and then either justify it or ignore it on the side doing the hitting.
I think they’ll do it again in a few years, if WoW lasts that long. The “war in Warcraft” fans will ask for it. New writers will come on board who are convinced they can do a better job than last time. And the cycle will begin again.
Yes, actually.
BfA was the perfect opportunity to do it.
Anduin was still freshly crowned and unaccustomed to the role. Not just as King of Stormwind, but also High King (bleh) of the Alliance.
Before the Storm ended with Anduin deciding that Sylvanas wasn’t someone he could diplomacy his way through.
And now she was Warchief of the Horde. The same Horde that was earnestly mining a super powerful substance. A substance so strong that just holding a piece of it was enough to make someone feel like anything was possible.
I remember, before BfA was fully announced, they even teased that Anduin might not be in Lordaeron purely for justice. That he was also there to prove himself.
Because Anduin’s main dynamic was always with his father, and trying to live up to his standards.
It’s an internal conflict for Anduin that essentially wrote itself.
Anduin tries to be the sort of king his dad was. And in doing so, loses himself.
All exacerbated by Azerite, Sylvanas, and even his adopted family (Genn and Jaina).
Hell, the BfA cinematic even contained that conflict in miniature.
Anduin is first shown wearing a mask. A mask that makes him look formidable. But it also looks off. Anduin doesn’t look like Anduin wearing the lion mask.
Then the mask gets knocked off and we see Anduin as he really is. A young man who’s clearly out of his element. He’s not stoic. He’s kinda freaking out.
He kills soldiers, and the fact seems to shock him. His people are dying around him.
And it’s then that he drops his sword and calls upon the Light. Not to smite, but to heal.
Anduin stopped trying to be the Warrior King, and the tide turned.
So yea.
It would have been stoopid easy to justify an Anduin-led Alliance to pre-emptively strike the Horde.
Did they? Because as far as I can tell, they put a HELL of a lot more work into absolving the one responsible for the tragedy, over the victims of it. I appreciated the nuance on the Alliance side, didn’t particularly care for the deliberate lack of effort on the Horde side. In fact, they didn’t focus on the victims hardly at all. The same can not be said for Theramore, which is every bit (if not far more) of a “Valid Military Target” than Taraujo was. Or it would have been if not for ANOTHER convenient peace treaty signed in between Cata & MoP, just in time for Garrosh to once again break it. Just like the Peace Treaty in between WotLK and Cata invalidated Varian’s literal decleration of war, in time for Garrosh to break it. Both in in between expansion books I might add.
In fact, tonally, you’ll notice that difference in framing since Cata. The Alliance losses are always framed more heavily as tragedies, no matter how much they were also valid military targets. The Horde losses are always framed more as valid military targets, no matter how much they were also tragedies. And while Blizz has slowly sifted away more and more away from the need for luxuries of “Justifications” and “Motives” for Horde aggression, their first instinct seems to be with what few aggressive acts the Alliance are allowed “how can we bury this under so many justifications that its even absolved and whitewashed from the Horde as well?”.
Good Race, Bad Race writing is always just SO much easier/lazier. Why did the evul race do the evul thing? Because they’re evul! Why did the good race do the evil thing? Because they’re good, and it was actually a good thing they did it. Never mind how questionable that style has become after the specific methods chosen by Blizz to humanize the Horde races in and after WC3. Methods they still use even now outside the meta narrative.
Hell, they got so bad at this during BfA, they actually used the “Evul Race, its wut they do” to invalidate SI:7’s attack on the Bilgewater in Silithus. An Alliance military group attacking Civilian targets in that event. And they were so bad at doing it, they created TWO invalidating events for it lol! Resulting in the Bilgewater attacking the Explorers League for no real reason, not once … but TWICE. First, with the initial planned excuse for SI:7’s attack … Wix’s abduction of Sapphretta. But then someone must have realized late that the timetable didn’t work for that, as SI:7 would have had to attack prior to the abduction, so they went back and retconned in an initial Bilgewater attack on the Explorers League before SI:7’s assault. For no reason, just “cuz Goblins LOL!”
I agree with all of this. I kinda think you may have read my post too quickly—I didn’t say they’d found the perfect solution, and it seems like that’s what you’re refuting. What I said is that they think they’ve found the perfect solution, so that’s what they going to stick with.
But I also subscribe to the theory that BfA was originally fairly different before they made it the entire expansion the setup for Shadowlands and the Jailer.
Yeah, I probably did misunderstand. And I do think you’re right that Blizz has convinced itself that its found an ideal solution. The one that takes the least amount of effort. Yeeting all that garbage they made for themselves under a rug. Frankly, given Blizz’s history of hyper reactive writing, and missing the core issues of their mistake … I’d be shocked if we see anything even Faction Related for a long time. Faction Conflict or not.
Which is why our character roster, even those we go to the Islands with, are brand new or extremely underdeveloped supporting characters. Yes, I saw you Quizla. I did enjoy you during the Mechagon intro quest, its a shame you’re just a background NPC. I would have loved to see you and Shuga get more development.
But there’s plenty of ways to do that without having to tell the same tired story about how some human insulted some orc’s honor so the orc burned down the human’s house so the human put the orc into a camp and so on and so forth.
I guess they really are tying up a lot of loose ends concerning faction conflict. Disappointing, however, that they’d double down on Aethas’s please-love-me-again arc when the last word on the purge was Jaina conceding the validity of the Sunreavers’ quarrel.
