Hello forums. Been a while. Posting this on Kyalin’s behalf per her request. This is a mirror of her post on Scrolls of Lore but she also wants the thoughts and feedback of SF Posters.
I am continuing to react here to a claim that BFA’s story was the way it was in order to promote PVP. I’m on record already in stating that I think BFA largely took a PVP theme and shoved it into PVE content without actually creating a PVP-based narrative, but I haven’t answered what I think a PVP-based story would look like. I want to try to do that now, building off of where we are so far in the Shadowlands expansion.
Here’s what I’m trying for: rivalries work when both sides feel good about, and feel confident in taking their rivalry to the field, where their abilities and those of their team dictate their prowess. BFA has not left us in anything resembling that state, especially with the insistence to hand major faction victories out by fiat simply because that serves a larger narrative. The result has led to a number of serious issues, including:
- Humans being stuck as the generic “good guys” in a bad vs. evil narrative
- Forsaken having to sacrifice their core identity to that narrative
- The great honorable Orc bait and switch/groundhog day
- Night Elf incompetence, and general inability to be taken seriously
This is not an exhaustive list, and no solution will completely solve all of these problems. Those expecting anything but a messy, imperfect solution should find a door. Our solution however, will have to at least attempt to address all of these problems, at once, that’s going to require at least a partial world revamp.
Our solution must also address the disconnected nature of battlegrounds. For what I mean by this: Consider the leadup for Deadmines. Now consider the leadup for Warsong Gulch. They’re wildly different because the latter existed to support a tacked-on game mode, whereas the former was more integrated. Future and existing PVP content shouldn’t feel like something that only exists in an instance - there should be a point, and I would argue, a story to it.
With that out of the way - let’s dive in.
Stormwind: Seat of a Fractured Alliance
Starting here for worldbuilding purposes. I’m assuming that Shadowlands ends in a predictable way. The evil is defeated, Anduin returns to Stormwind. He finds that his peace treaty from BFA has in no way healed the scars from the previous war, and that the peace itself is slowly breaking apart. The Forsaken in the north are beginning to reassert themselves, and attempts to rally a front against them reveal that Anduin has lost legitimacy as the de-facto ruler of the Alliance. These problems aren’t limited to things like struggling to keep the Kaldorei in the Alliance - but emergent human nationalism along the lines of old, sometimes dead human kingdoms, and an emboldened nobility that continues to remind the young king that they have power too. As it enters its industrial revolution, Stormwind finds itself stretched to manage a dozen localized and often disconnected problems. Due to its lack of clout, it just can’t project power the way it used to.
This is a problem for them in the south, where the Zandalari have taken over the Gurubashi empire. I’ll get into this later, but the Zandalari are not keen on this peace idea, and begin to use that empire to prevent the Alliance from accessing Stranglethorn Vale and the critical resources that Stormwind needs to power its new factories, and settle its debts from the last war. The Bilgewater Cartel, being aware of this, is giving the Zandalari a lot of help. For Human players, this translates to a Stranglethorn military expedition, with the goal of capturing the critical Silvershard mine - and setting up that battleground.
Forsaken: The Defiance Campaign
No matter what happens in Shadowlands, the Forsaken do not accept the Alliance’s presence in their territory. Despite the best efforts of people like Calia, the Forsaken quickly backslide into the people that Sylvanas forged them into. They go from following Sylvanas as a leader to worshipping her as a God - and they quickly seek to slaughter anyone trying to take their territory away from them, reinvigorating the Royal Apothecary Society, and enlisting necromancers where necessary. The Alliance in this region find that help is largely not forthcoming. The Horde council can’t agree on a resolution, and the Sin’dorei, who are themselves uncomfortable with the Alliance being this close, are actively helping the Forsaken.
With Stromgarde emerging as the Alliance’s most powerful city in the north, the Forsaken return to challenge their power, and render useless their surrounding territories. We should be attempting to build a Forsaken character here - someone who the player follows through Tirisfal - where in addition to dealing with local problems, they encounter advance Alliance squads doing things like attacking Forsaken refugees, setting fire to their corpses afterwards. We should see that the Forsaken use blight and necromancy strictly because they are looking for any edge that they can get, and we should see quests that deal with the lingering Alliance presence more and more as the quests proceed towards Arathi Basin, ending with a battle to take and fortify Thoradin’s wall. The Defilers move their base of operations here - and the quests dovetail into their efforts for a while, presenting Arathi Basin as the way to continue their efforts.
As for the Undercity: rebuild it. Establish that the explosion actually tore a hole in the ruins of Capitol City, from which now rise new structures in the Forsaken style of architecture.
Ironforge: Holding down the center
With Stormwind’s paralysis and the growing situation in the North, Ironforge finds itself as the only power able to do anything significant to rescue the situation in Arathi. The clans by this point are, thankfully, on the same page. The gnomes have retaken Gnomeregan and are able to churn out weapons and devices. However, they don’t have a free hand. The shattered remains of the Frostmane have reformed into a smarter, more active resistance force with Zandalari backing. The Reliquary has been repurposed to find titanic artifacts for use against the Dwarves, and the Forsaken have sent saboteurs and infiltrators to persistently hobble the Dwarves to prevent them from helping in Arathi. Dwarven content usually consists of identifying some new threat - such as a Trogg uprising or a sudden elemental disturbance, usually to find that there’s a Horde directed agent behind it. The dwarves gradually unify before they defeat what turns into a concentrated attack on the Thandol Span. The Horde means to blow it up, the Alliance stops them, and manages to roll Dwarven Siege engines across the span and into the Arathi Highlands. What happens next mirrors the Forsaken experience, and is used to set up Arathi Basin.
Zandalar: Vengeance for Rastakhan
Talanji gets fed up quickly with the Horde council, and moves to show the world why one doesn’t mess with the Zandalari. Step 1 is to act as a sort of “CIA of Azeroth” - dispatching agents and advisors to prop up troll tribes everywhere they can be found. If they need weapons, the Zandalari find them. If they need training, the Zandalari teach them. They form a good relationship with the Bilgewater Cartel, which is happy to trade access to resources for weapons.
This wouldn’t involve changes to the just-put-together BFA questing. BFA is important prologue here, but it should translate into some extra and bonus questlines - including a campaign to control Stranglethorn vale that culminates in and sets up Silvershard Mines for the Horde. I think a naval rebuilding campaign leading to a more navy-focused battleground would also be in order, consisting of three to five sets of ships in the middle of boarding actions. This could be an AB-type of setup, or the enemy ship could sink after a certain period of time where its boarding action favors the enemy, with the BG winner being the first team that sinks the majority of ships.
Kul’Tiras: Shield of the Seas
Kul’Tiras finds itself under pressure from two separate groups. To their East, the Forsaken are growing more militant, and are enjoying support from the Sin’dorei and the Shal’dorei. On land, Kul’Tiras finds its interests in supporting Gilnean efforts to retake their homeland, therefore denying the Horde a vital series of ports that could otherwise be used to challenge them. This allows them to turn their attention west, and to the Zandalari who emerge as their greatest threat. Their participation is a mirror image of the Zandalari naval rebuilding campaign which pushes them into the battleground discussed previously.
The Horde: Warlords of Durotar
Following Sylvanas’s departure, Thrall and the Frostwolf clan find themselves in control of Orgrimmar, and of little else. The Orcs are beginning to backslide into their old clan affiliations, establishing themselves in different parts of the Barrens and Durotar, sometimes reconstructing traditions of long-dead clans, and forming allegiances with various Troll and Tauren tribes. Mag’har Blackrock Orcs for example find allies in the Grimtotem Tribe of Stonetalon, finding it an excellent spot to create their foundries. The Shadow Moon Clan, reverting to their old shamanistic ways, tend to occupy the Southern Barrens, working with the Tauren to rebuild the region. Orcs that choose to see themselves as successors to the Bleeding Hollow Clan work closely with the Darkspear trolls in Southern Durotar, while the Warsong Clan - the most powerful of the clans, maintains a strong, if failing grip on the Northern Barrens.
Orcish questing would start by introducing these clans. The Bleeding Hollow adherents have essentially been co-opted by the Darkspear Trolls, who themselves now act in concert with their Zandalari kin. They believe that the Horde should focus on wiping the humans from the seas, and appear to focus on sending supplies to Zandalar. The Frostwolves see the view from Orgrimmar - believing that the Horde cannot survive without striking a real peace deal with the Alliance, but being unable to convince anyone else of this. The Warsong and the Blackrocks believe that peace is impossible, evidenced by the now constant Night Elf raids that are often intentionally launched on unsuspecting and unarmed targets - with the sites of successful attacks being intentionally defaced to instill horror. The Warsong in particular view themselves as the Horde’s protectors - their questing concludes with them holding off a massive assault hurled at the Mor’shan Rampart, which is used to set up Warsong Gulch for the Horde.
The Shadow Moon clan and the Tauren are more or less removed from the conflicts taking place to the north, and are far more focused on reconstruction, and a desire to explore and settle the lands to the south and east of them.
Darnassus: Tyrande Wick
Before I get started - this section came about because of a video by Savage Books entitled “John Wick: Writing a Terrifying Protagonist”. I mention this because the narrative elements that make this sort of thing possible exist with Tyrande, and may even have been what the writers were going for. Kill Bill works off of similar building blocks. That makes our setup here pretty easy.
Night Elf content begins in a semi-regrown Teldrassil. There’s an opportunity here to make the zone a lot more vertical, reflecting areas of the tree that the fire hollowed out, and the zone itself should adopt a rather seething tone when it comes to the Horde. Darkshore is similar, except that it informs us that Velen’s leadership is waning and that the Draenei that would replace him do not believe that the Horde has changed from their Path of Glory days, having witnessed the War of the Thorns. The conflict indeed attracts everyone with a bone to pick with the Orcs, and Ashenvale questing becomes the roaring rampage of revenge that I feel by now has been more than set up. This is necessary to establish this part of the Alliance as threatening, and to motivate people to participate in Warsong Gulch, which again, is set up as the final part of this push.
Closing Thoughts
This was obviously broad, but there just wasn’t time to go in detail into every part of what I feel would make up a faction war situation that actually would serve PVP instead of wearing it like a coat of paint (each of those sections could be discussions all their own), and no, it doesn’t resolve everyone’s issues to their complete satisfaction, but I feel that it does attack the four problems that I listed before, and leaves the rivalry in a more balanced state.
Another note that I will make on PVE content - there should always be a PVE alternative to the content that I listed out. If your playable race is in a far more martial position, it may not be with your playable race, but you should have the option to say, help the humans deal with issues in Westfall if you don’t feel like joining the faction war on the side of the Night Elves. PVE content should have a separate story, with separate threats that people can address if that’s their preferred mode of gameplay. You should be able to check out from the faction war if it doesn’t appeal to you. I feel that the same should be true in the other direction. These should be options, not mandates.
As for the Battlegrounds themselves, it’s difficult to weave a story into what has to be a balanced arena for competitive play, but I could envision a sort of progression where you work for and follow a local commander and their rivalry with their counterpart. I always liked the dynamic that Taylor and Nazgrim had, and I could see those same elements being brought out in battlegrounds that were mentioned, and some that weren’t. The mechanics of this will require further discussion.
For now though, I think that’s all I have. I look forward to any meaningful feedback and further discussion.
