Alliance players have been telling Blizzard how we feel for a very, very long time. Despite this we still get our content slashed (Cata, MoP), racials nerfed while Horde goes untouched, we get less quests, less zones, less story and now less players.
If communicating with Blizzard didn’t work more then 10 years ago (cough TBC racials cough) why the hell should we still try now?!
Ahem, he also voiced Varian Wrynn. Did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe, those that are “pro-alliance” are more “pro-WoW”? as in they like both factions? Truth is, there might not be a hard-line pro alliance dev (or at least one high in the company) but can we really say, aside from Ion, how any of them feel?
Of course they control that! If they decided your favorite class was to be turned into a walking apple and your racial was the ability to brown after being hit, you would have a reaction, wouldn’t you?
My reaction is to at least provide some suggestions to what I see as interfering with my enjoyment of their game, which resulted in my unsubbing a month ago.
I didn’t think it was possible, but now I hate him even more.
What? GASP! He wore an Alliance shirt? You mean while he was carrying Doomhammer? Which do you consider as being more cool?
Heck, which do you think took more thought and money?
The fact that you’re straining to fit Metzen in a box he doesn’t fit in tells me what I need to know. Wow’s been out fourteen years, shouldn’t there be a dozen pro-Alliance devs during that time? If so, we’ve just conveniently never heard of them???
I think Metzen tried his best to be objective between the factions. However, I do think his natural lean was Horde.
Careful what you wish for, they might kill off Anduin if you ask for more story
This seems silly. Why would a dev playing a certain side cause trust issues? I play both factions and I’ve never felt this way.
This puzzles me. The Alliance constantly toss around how they love not being the followers of a genocidal maniac. But if you guys were to instigate, then you would be the genocidal maniacs. This seems like there’s no way of pleasing you when you phrase it in this manner.
This doesn’t seem like something worth talking about. Blizz takes jabs at both sides. Hell, Watcher took a jab at everyone who plays every class by talking about how people make the memes about how they’re on suicide watch because they play an elemental shaman, and he showed that people don’t help themselves. This seems like another situation such as that.
This is a player problem, not a Blizz problem. They can’t guarantee where people go.
Metzen had a lot of problems, and was unabashedly pro-Horde, but at the very least he did love every side and every race. He created half of them, after all.
But he is fairly alone in that regard on the dev team, which has been primarily Horde centric and only gotten worse and worse as time has gone on.
And now that Metzen’s gone and the game is being run by Ion “the Horde is waiting for you” Hazzinopolus, there is no one left who is even neutral to the Alliance, let alone an advocate for us.
That’s just silly to compare devs who are clearly pro-horde (constant taunts at Blizzcon) with devs who like both factions.
Yeah, we can say how they feel because you had to strain logic to the point of snapping to try and shoe-horn the possibility that a pro-Alliance dev could be counted if they liked both factions, when you clearly wouldn’t count Ion in that camp. I can point to pretty much any Blizzcon (oh, and watch that Azeroth Choppers video if you don’t believe me) and show you how much the devs love the horde. They got in trouble with the Corpsegrinder, even after they viewed and approved of the video in question.
I mean, all else aside, having an Alliance rep and a Horde rep for things like the Q&As and stuff would be good optics for the sake of PR. If there’s a percieved bias (whether it’s a credible accusation or not), even just taking a few basic and small steps to rectify the image problem can be enough to satisfy most people tbh.
Yes, I would have a reaction, but that reaction is all ME, you are/were coming across as Blizzard controls everything their players do. That is my point, we are in control of what WE do, our reactions, our time on game, even if we stay subbed (hence why one common response to not liking things id to "vote with your wallet). Blizzard controls what they do, we react to them and sometimes they react to us,
Then stick to that, don’t try to read into what the devs like or ask for any “pro-alliance” to step forward. If you have ideas on how to improve the alliance experience, feel free to put them forward. Preferably without bringing the Horde side into it unless it is more story based or swapping mounts (I.E. I’d love that bee mount alliance get and would willingly give up a Horde mount in exchange).
I can agree an alliance and horde rep would be good for the pr side of things. I just can’t see how not having an all pro alliance dev is that big of an issue.
How does it puzzle you? You assume that being interesting would automatically make us genocidal maniacs because you’ve been forced bad writing for so long that you believe those are the only two options.
I’m a writer. There are a bajillion options. Wolverine is a good guy. He’s the best at what he does and what he does isn’t pretty. Genn is pretty much modeled after him but kept on a leash.
Blizz takes jabs at both sides? Have…have you even seen Blizzcon? Taking a jab at “everyone” isn’t the same as hiring a guy to tell the Alliance to literally die and call us homophobic names. They saw that video. They approved it and showed it.
Taking a jab at “everyone” isn’t the same as telling the Alliance our battlecry should be “have mercy” or “You’re Welcome, Alliance” in a misguided fix at something that is their fault (and btw, won’t work).
Blizz CAN guarantee where people go. Again, if they made all horde characters different colored apples with no racials, you’d see a migration to the Alliance. That’s an extreme example, but it demonstrates my point.
If you TRULY believe that individual players control anything in this game, then you don’t understand how games work.
So, by “guaranteeing where people go”, you want blizz to make Horde something that’s simply not playable and Alliance is the only option. That’s what this sounds like to me.
And I certainly do believe that individual players choose where they wish to play. I made the choice to be Horde 12 years ago. I’ve maintained that for 12 years. It’s not that big a deal, or that outlandish. That seems silly.
What does it hurt to ask for a pro-Alliance dev to step forward? What harm is there in asking that? Is it taboo or something?
In fact, telling me to “stick to that” is like me telling you to ignore my posts. Your attempt to limit my points to what YOU think are important are a waste of your time. Wow, literally telling me that I can’t bring up the horde side unless it is more story based…you must think a lot of yourself.
Besides, you obviously aren’t reading my posts. The main complaint I have isn’t story-based. It’s game play based.
Wouldn’t that be the best case scenario?
You guys want lore and conflict, that right there is the way to do it.
Last of the royal line of Stormwind dies with no heir, just imagine what could happen.
That has potential for Alliance Lore.
That’s not what I said. In fact, I said that was an extreme example made to prove my point, which is that Blizzard controls what faction you choose. It might be because of design, or story or game play, but even if your friends chose horde and you moved to be with them, THEY had to have a reason to originally choose and that choice was controlled by something Blizzard did.
The short answer is that since BfA is a weak expansion, people are looking to point fingers at reasons why that is. A lot of people are settling on inconsistent or unbalanced writing as a major factor.
In the greater scheme of things, it probably isn’t that big an issue. Or rather I should say, it wouldn’t have been that big of an issue if it hadn’t been allowed to fester. Once upon a time, Blizzard probably would have been able to address the issue by some token gestures and stunts at Blizzcons etc. but it’s kind of escalated slightly beyond that now.
I mean at the end of the day I think just changing the optics and making it look like Alliance are more evenly represented will go a long way towards addressing the playerbase’s concerns anyway, but it can still be a fairly token gesture at the end of the day. You just need to dress it up the right way.
EDIT: For the sake of transparency: I do think there is a narrative problem with the Alliance, and they could do with some TLC. That being said, I don’t think it’s half the issue a lot of people make it out to be, because I think the larger problem is that WoW’s writing has become woeful across the board.
If this was a political field instead of a game, would you want just one party being represented? And when asked about YOUR party, being told “They’re just fans of politics in general, which covers your party?”
Wouldn’t you think that your party wasn’t being fairly represented?