The neutrality of the Worgen and Night Elves definitely feels more than forced. Especially when considering that they suffered the most under the Horde. At the same time, despite the repeated aid from the Alliance, nothing neutral has been done on the side of the Horde.
It’s just extremely poor storytelling, coupled with possible biases of the devs towards a certain faction. But precisely that is also one of the many reasons why the faction system in this game doesn’t work even remotely.
They just can’t depict it credibly. They never really could. It has only gotten exponentially worse since the end of Legion.
It’s been said over and over and over and over but people like you refuse to listen to the actual real answer. Here it is:
Follow me:
Wow has had a dwindling playerbase for years now. Being able to group up with the opposite faction is a gameplay answer to a gameplay problem. This should have happened years ago but better late than never I guess. That’s the reason. Gameplay > story.
Legion was the perfect time for all races to become neutral plus cross faction raids, dungeons etc… sigh But here we are, still being limited in so many ways.
Absolutely! They should have leaned hard into the class halls and pushed neutrality at that point. We could have had something SO MUCH BETTER than the BFA and SL we actually got…
I’ve played since the RTS and have been an avid enjoyer of the Alliance/Horde faction conflict wherever it was found, especially during Mists and early BFA.
Still, I feel the current faction conflict has been played out. How many permutations of the same thing can you do? We’ve checked all the boxes. Skirmishes, battles, sieges, resource extractions, mass killings, bombings, etc… What else is left that would be interesting? Can’t think of anything.
Also, it doesn’t even make sense anymore. There are no more warmongering leaders. The sketchiest leader atm is Turalyon and he’s only regent while Anduin is finding himself. Even then I don’t see Turalyon starting a war with the Horde while the Void/Light conflict looms.
The Horde are the rebel alliance of misfits and outcasts while the Alliance is the evil galactic empire, but because this is an MMO there’s never really a “death star” moment. So one of the good guys gets hit with the villain bad, does a genocide, has to be put down and the status quo restored.
its become boring at this point, we basically have to deal with what GoT did to Daenerys every other expansion.
first, i am invested in the story. or atleast, i was, before bfa (war of thorns was interesting, till they revealed who burned the tree… that’s when i lost hope in WoW’s writers for the first time).
second, i’m just calling it as i see it. the only people i’ve seen against us going neutral, are folks who wanna fight (and i don’t blame’em) and people stuck on one-side of the war.
personally, i want a third, opt-in opt-out faction that lets us be neutral with the other faction, led by khadgar or someone else respected by both sides.
not so that we’re friendly, just so we can do cross-faction crap, and have it make sense. like that pvp thing that lets you fight for the other side in bgs, cross-faction dungeons/raids, or heck, roleplay with the opposite faction in their city.
a ‘don’t kill me, i’m working for khadgar’ type of thing, rather than ‘look! i’m neutral, i’m your best friend now!’ situation. just make so players in this third faction can’t attack, or be attacked by the other faction, done.
There are plenty of things that tanked this game, but the story implications of factions are not among them.
The gameplay function? Yeah, but that’s more of Blizzard’s unwillingness to dedicate resources to updating the game than it is the faction conflict being mentioned in this thread.
Frankly, I think faction conflict is important, if all we’re doing is fighting a new race/magical force/giant monster each week, ____ gets boring. The world feels fake. We need real character conflict. And faction conflict helps with that.
It needs to be more nuanced, and gameplay should evolve to allow cross-faction because the lack of is hurting the game, but as far as narrative, interspecies / interfaction (not just Alliance v Horde) conflict is important.
The lack of skirmishes and subfactions is frankly terrible for story. There needs to be more nuance, absolutely. But saying “All the races totally get along and faction conflict is done” is silly.
Hell, we’re all the same species irl and tribalism is still alive and strong. It’s a powerful motivating force and it can make for compelling narrative if done right.
We just need better writing. And gameplay updates that overcome the negatives of faction limitations.
Lol okay, disagree. But if the entire story narrative revolves around a new faction that magically appeared out of nowhere each expansion and is somehow more dangerous than the last, the story becomes flat. It’s bad writing.
Properly done, tribalism adds nuance to the narrative.
Europe has had a couple thousand year war. It’s just that they divided into pieces and gave each piece a name.
Take the Ukraine war for example, that dates back to the Vikings.
As for the 100 years war? That melded into the War of the Roses. Both were Edward III’s fault.
But this doesn’t spur the faction conflict at all, these are just internal problems that actually would call for reaching across the aisle to solve.
‘The Scarlets are attacking Gilneans and attempting to cripple the recently reclaimed nation! Get some SI:7 agents in here and we’ll be able to root them out and secure Gilneas. If it comes down to it, we may want to contact the Desolate Council for advice and aid; they’ve been dealing with the Scarlets for a long time now.’
‘The Desolate Council’s being challenged by Sylvanas hardliners, we need to bring in Horde leadership to convince the people that those interests are not theirs and that the old ways are no longer viable. Worst case scenario; reach out to Gilneas and try to secure their aid in isolating and capturing these separatists.’
But your take that “all factions are getting along” isn’t even true.
The only instances we have of Horde and Alliance cooperating are the recent Forsaken-related quests involving them making amends for all their genocidal nonsense since the MMO began. And it was mostly relegated to people they directly hurt with their actions, namely the Night Elves (burned them alive) and the Gilneans (sacked their city). One can even argue that it less about helping Night Elves and more about helping the whole world (and dragons) with the Night Elves benefiting from it directly.
There are no other examples for you to make that assertion. Tauren have always worked with the Alliance. Thrall, Saurfang, and Baine have personal relationships with Anduin and Jaina specifically. There are no other examples.
^^^^ This is what I was saying earlier. Thank you fellow superior worgen.
Gameplay =/= narrative. We need cross faction to save the game. That doesn’t mean faction conflict shouldn’t exist.
It just needs more nuance. Worgen and Night Elves have ample reason to hate the Forsaken. Build on that for narrative. While some members of each faction have grown tired of conflict and want peace (Earthen Ring, the Druids, etc), others actively revile each other.
You can have cross faction and faction conflict be represented.
