I wish I could upvote your post more. It’s the thing I’ve been screaming as I am reading this entire thread–over and over. It isn’t called World of Horde vs. Alliance. And sure, maybe there are factional wars in there from time to time, but most of the time we’re fighting existential threats to both sides’ continued existences. But sure…let’s narrow “war” to just “Horde vs. Alliance.” Clearly that is what “war” means.
headdesk
As for letting people being “loyalists” to their factions, I think this would actually be a lot of fun to do, if there were quests and writing that went along with it. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of work for something that is likely to be marginal. It would be interesting to have both sides turn on their respective own “loyalists” at some point, though, for ruining some aspect of the budding friendships that are forming. More fun, still, might be that an expansion of “red vs. blue” conflict does get to happen because of these machinations only for us to uncover those responsible for it–and then having to try and repair relationships–and seeing if people can be as forgiving as Tyrande was with Sylvannas, or if this spawns a new age of conflicts–where the PvP factions become three-fold–Horde “loyalists” vs. Alliance “loyalists” vs. World Peace Bros.
That’s asking a lot, though–a lot of time, thought, and writing and development effort. I -might- consider doing that if the investment was worth that time and effort, but man-hours vs. ROI doesn’t seem plausible right now. It is a shame, because I think many people might have liked the “Forsaken Forever” faction as a third faction rather than just making them part of the Horde. (In the WoW Beta, at one point, the Forsaken were a third faction–for a while. Undoubtedly this would prove to be far more complicated to develop, and so we got the two factions. C’est la vie).
Point being–we haven’t reached the point where developing stories for “off-shoot” factions is a viable investment, and the development costs for continuing to have two different faction stories has proven more costly to develop. Ergo, neutrality saves on development costs and creates more profit. It’s certainly not sexy, but from an investment stand-point, it makes sense.
One day, though…I hope games can offer us those other choices–factions and groups to become a part of that actually change and shift the dynamics of the way the game works. Where plots and storylines change based on what the player-base manages to accomplish (or fails to–rather like those times when we had to turn in supplies for the Ahn’Qiraj storyline, for instance). It would be interesting to see the changes that spawn because of such things, and those old die-hard spirits that choose to cling to their dying ideologies as the world moves beyond them (though one day, perhaps we may see them again–keepers of some long-lost knowledge or weapon or power…).
