I’m not even really asking for them to do things differently on that large of a scale. For the most part, I would expect us Champions to work together every time a new soundboard of villain cliches pops up to “YOU ARE TOO LATE!” and “ENOUGH!” and “HOW CAN THIS BE!?” at us before yielding the loots.
Just some scenarios here and there, like Talanji maybe kinda sorta feeling some kinda way about her father’s killers being out there breathing, living, laughing, and loving like no one is watching. Stuff that sells the fact that the two factions are not, in fact, cozy, without allowing it to strangle the foremost narratives going on.
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These are two separate issues.
The gnome can wear an orc mask and do bg blitz with you.
You should still take quests from your faction.
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Agreed. But we also haven’t revisited Azeroth proper in awhile.
Like I’d love for say the Worgen and Forsaken to have formally buried the hatchet but have too vaguely affiliated groups like the Bloodfang and Defilers charging eachother over Alterac City or Fenris Isle for another excuse for an EBG.
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Yep. Basically, a lot of small fires for “The Council” (gag*) to put out and moan about having to put out.
(*) Horde Council. Desolate, you fine.
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Mate, I’m hanging out with a dwarf queen who I beat the little lights out of and killed her husband for fat loot. They will get over it or they are next.
Dark Irons kinda had it coming back then. They had the misfortune of choosing an attunement hub basement for a kingdom. Pathetic.
BFA was mostly void stuff with a faction war going on in the background. Like 1 of the 5 raids was actual faction conflict and the rest were old god stuff lmao
Honestly, faction war is the best medium to deliver the kind of stories they want to tell and we want to hear, if only they would stop screwing it up.
You already have (or should have) established that neither side is inherently good or bad. The motivations and circumstances are complicated and there’s historic bad blood.
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I’ve been underwhelmed by the story for a few expansions but weirdly enough found myself more engaged in War Within; not so much for the “main quest” but as it was said earlier, the smaller-scale things. Some of it’s just a lot of filler yadda yadda but I think it does a good job fleshing out the factions that live in the Isle of Dorn and beneath it, and some of the smaller sidequests are surprisingly good.
But the story for whatever it’s going to be seems pretty much set in stone for the next few expansions. Metzen’s back and that’s great but from an interview he gave, it seems like he stepped in to something that was already more or less done; iirc he said there was a place with the story he wanted to get to but it seems like it’s going to get there after or at the end of the World Soul Saga.
The good news is that thus far it seems the Disney-tier cartoon that was Dragonflight is over and the story, for now, feels more like World of Warcraft than it did in the last few expansions. Still has a ways to go but one of the good take-aways from DF was adding in smaller content that took place in the older zones like the heritage questlines, the retaking of Gilneas, etc. Some of those were bad (freaking Gilneas wtf) but the concept of doing that was a great idea, and I’m hoping if they continue that then you’ll see more of the story feel like WoW.
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i see what you did there…
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That’s one thing that I really liked in BfA - getting to show off faction characters as raid bosses without killing (all) of them. I did wish the non-faction-leader bosses (the paladin, the monk+mage duo, the tidesages, and the loa champions) had been active characters in the lead-up to the raid, though, rather than new characters made just for the raid - say, if they’d been the commanders of the faction zone invasions and/or notable members of the factions’ war campaign.
Perhaps it’s just my preference, but I do like having named NPCs be actively part of the fight mechanics and have a chance to show off their abilities, whether as bosses or as the source of player buffs/shields/etc.
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Yeah the absence of any kind of Alliance/Horde rivalry really puts too much of a burden on the main story and if it can’t cut the mustard then everything is shot.
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I’m glad the faction war is gone. It was never an interesting aspect of WoW in my opinion
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Meanwhile it’s exactly what drew me to the game back in Wrath.
Not for me, I just played it because it was better than EQ adventures on the PS2. The faction thing kinda got me mad because I wanted to play a forsaken warlock but my friend wanted to play human paladin. I relented and made a human warlock.
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Arthas and the Lich King is what I was interested in back than 
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I liked both. You can like more than one thing you know.
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This feels like a classic andy.
I didn’t say you couldn’t. I just pointed out what drew me into Wrath. That’s all.
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Is this sarcasm?
The two expansions where the faction war is almost non existant are so far the worst expansions (story wise) ever.
We can talk smack about BfA but it was definitely an interesting story even if you don’t like that they made the evil zombie dominatrix a villain (shocker!) and burned the world tree (emotionally crushing for some but still a wild spectacle and unquestionably a “call to action” moment). The moments that “suck” are the ones where they ask the horde to hate their faction leader and love Anduin. The moments that suck are where they force the Alliance to take a big loss without any sense of agency or autonomy. To be a spectator of your loss instead of letting you participate and possibly win in the faction war. As a railroading story, it had some unsatisfying moments, but as a narrative at face value it’s not bad. Even the ironic wordplay of “Battle for Azeroth” suggesting the faction conflict but actually talking about saving the world soul from N’zoth is good writing. It’s interesting and wouldn’t be without the faction conflict.
Never seems like a hot take. It may be your opinion, but I find it incredulous. That, when the game was little more than an opportunity to play as units in the world of an RTS, and most zones were effectively scaled up RTS maps, and the story of every area that wasn’t a starting zone was “fight with the enemy for control of this zone”, you didn’t find practically the whole game interesting-- is quite hard to believe.