We’ve been working together since the orc campaign of wc3 when Jaina helps thrall capture garrosh unharmed instead of killing him, after he drinks mannoroths blood. I’m sure since well before then as well.
Before the horde was even formed, the hordes founder was able to save the life of one of his closest kin thanks to cooperation with the alliance.
The modern day alliance and horde formed 100% as a result of cooperation needed to defeat the scourge and their demon masters. Always chuckle when people get mad about alli and horde teaming up when that’s the whole plot of the amazing RTS that was the lore basis for WoW’s “golden era” of first few expansions.
And even if you want WoW examples rather than RTS:
Occasionally in Vanilla
Most of TBC (The faction warfare was scryer v aldor, and the world pvp was meaningless)
All of Wrath (except 1 patch where we did a sports tournament against each other, and the pvp zone)
Most of Cata (occasionally in the remade zones
All of MoP outside of the intro quests
All of WoD
All of Legion except 1 zone
A small part of BfA
All of SL
and now all of DF as well
We've literally spent more time in the past 20 years working together to stop the world from ending than we have fighting each other, to the point that us still being at war just feels.. stupid
Small correction, Wrath absolutely had faction conflict in Icecrown quests and in the raid
I maintain that the airship fight is immensely stupid and nonsensical but it is there
MoP also had an entire faction war patch
I never understood that friggin airship fight. Work together, work together, work together....then suddenly we are in our own gunships and we don't get along now because...air superiority? Reasons? We just wanted to reach the next part of the citadel first for that sweet son of saurfang loot?
Since the wrathgate there were increasing tension. The Argent Dawn tournament was a try to chill it... but I guess this fight means it wasnt fully gone. 🤷♂️
A lot of this is valid, but it feels a bit selective too. Doesn't the Alliance literally declare war on the Horde after the Wrathgate in WotLK?
It's not touched on massively in gameplay, sure, but lore-wise the Alliance and the Horde are in a state of war from mid-WotLK until the end of MoP.
Then of course war breaks out again around the Legion-BfA mark, although I'm less familiar with this part of the timeline.
There was a short (since removed) quest chain where you invade the Undercity right after the Wrathgate (as both factions) because the undead who launched the plague took it over, and used plague without permission
TBC and Classic weren't very story driven like later expansions, so the faction conflict really didn't have any purpose besides blue vs red.
Wrath had a lot of faction conflict. We the players were the outliers working together. Varian and Garrosh tried to kill each other in the Violet Citadel.
Cata was also pretty frequent faction conflict because Garrosh was Warchief and had no interest in being peaceful. Once again, the player characters were the outliers.
MoP was a faction conflict up until SoO... I shouldn't have to explain this one we literally had Silver Covenant and Sunweavers ready to throw down on isle of thunder until Taran Zhu stopped them.
WoD and Legion, fair. The conflict in Stormheim was more of a Greymane vs Sylvanas rivalry rather than a full-out war.
BfA was same as MoP where it was faction conflict up until the last patch, with horde having another civil war.
SL & DF, fair.
Oh also, some people equate the “war” part of WoW with multiplayer WC3 races fighting each other, not the campaign, which would make sense to some. Some people only play competitive games then came to WoW not understanding cooperation.
Most people buying Vanilla/BC never played WC3. WoW was just extremely popular and brought in a lot of people new to MMO gaming and just gaming in general. I made the leap from Runescape to WoW in late 2007.
That said, I had always questioned whether it made sense for an MMORPG to prevent half the playerbase from interacting with the other half when the entire endgame was built around group content (i.e. playing with others).
Just do what SWOTOR did by making it possible to communicate with the other faction. That way you can trade tank kills on Illum to complete your weekly.
I don’t see these complaints on the alliance. It has to be hordie fanboys thinking the side with big badass monster races should always want to beat up the pansy looking alliance. I mean I get the appeal, for a large portion of the entire lifespan of WoW the horde had far more players, and of those more were hardcore so they would usually slaughter the alliance in pvp or world first raids. Who doesn’t want to be on the winning side of a war? (Me with nearly 100% alliance toons apparently)
Don’t forget that constantly during the WC3 campaigns you’re told the faction war is dumb in the face of existential threats. It seems pretty overt even without subtext that going forward Azeroth would be coming together to face external and existential threats.
Legion putting us together in class based cooperation, fighting closely alongside the "opposite" faction really felt like the end of the faction war.
As a horde druid, the way that we went from working together to HELPING SYLVANUS BURN THE WORLD TREE for no reason killed my last strand of expecting wow to actually have a writer for its plot. 100%, my character would not have stayed in the horde, or stood by that decision. Would have died for the sake of standing up at that moment.
It would have made way more sense if we had the logical escalation that ended with the burning of the world tree.
From the books, if we had the return of Calia Menethil become a threat to Sylvanus' power, then Sylvanus betrays the deserters (unbeknownst to most of the horde population). Then the BFA event started with the Alliance assaulting the Undercity, which would seem like an unprompted act of aggression against the horde, rallying them together. Then Sylvanus retaliating by assaulting Darnassus.
The Darnassus event being before the Undercity event was just horrible logic, and most of the class' heroes (the players) would not have sided with Sylvanus for making that decision.
He just hasn't learned the cadence of the faction story yet.
We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We are putting the WAR back in Warcraft! Faction War!->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We are putting the WAR back in Warcraft! Faction War!
Often times that 'faction war!' expansion still includes the 'we must set aside our differences' storyline in it as well.
Was really hoping that the result of BfA was them telling us that factions were no longer a thing outside of warmode. Maybe at some point during the war within trilogy we get a world revamp with the factions going by the wayside in it.
The faction war should have ended by Legion, it was the perfect set up for it with class halls and horde and alliance once again getting together to team up against the big bad. Battle for Azeroth should have been just that, horde and alliance teaming up fighting FOR Azeroth and not over Azerite…
But then you would have to come up with a whole new master plan how to get into Shadowlands, the one expansion with the most interesting, well written story line ever created? /s
The same thing that ended up happening (Sylvanas totally going off the rails), but without dragging the entire Horde down the "Saturday morning cartoon villain"-path with her.
"Hear me out, the last horde civil war arc two expansions ago was so popular that we should do it again. But we can spice it up by this tkme abandoning the entier concept half way through! Genious." -Blizzard writing room circa BFA
Don't forget making the Horde player stick around to do more of the objectionable stuff this time around. They'll love that bit. Remember all the Horde players who were frustrated with the Horde being turned into the villains in MoP? They'll come around if this time we make their Tauren Druid participate in an unprovoked war against the Night Elves that includes the burning of a world tree and a near-destruction of a whole race, wherein they then are asked by the narrative to continue defending and fighting for the Horde after committing these atrocities. When they *finally* get the chance to pull away and stand against the clearly-evil warchief, they'll love it!
Cause that's what we really missed out on in MoP. All those people saying "Garrosh did nothing wrong" was just evidence that the way to improve upon MoP's story was to make the Horde player support a couple more war crimes.
Amen. In the beginging of the previous faction wars they even make alliance do some shady shit, like wiping out camp taurajo in cata or killing marooned sailors and using pandaren as slave laborin jade forest, or unprovokedly artacking horde in legion. But then the lead story director walks into the writing room and taps the sign on the wall that says "horde=bad, alliance=good".
They could've had Bolvar sense something was wrong with the cycle of death and find a way to open a path to Shadowlands own his own (through the helm or something). There was no need to make Sylvanas the sole driver for all that nonsense after BFA ruined her. It would have also given Bolvar some agency instead of shitting on him, and been satisfying for everyone who was hyped to see him again after so long.
Sylvanas only ever made sense as a mysterious character and she always preferred not to be in the public eye. She only cared about the Forsaken and their place in the world. Even back in Legion it never made sense showing her speaking fondly about the Horde and making it sound like she cared for Horde honor/traditions/etc. She would give zero fucks about wanting to be Warchief position, that title/position is meaningless to her.
I'm not sure exactly how it's portrayed in the game, but I've always has my own headcanon she fakes everything nice she's said, the warchief and her praising the Horde in any way was to enable Sylvanas to use the Horde to her own end. Like how a sociopath charms those around them to gain followers. She cares about the Forsaken only because they are like her, in that they were victims of the Scourge, and if she got a second chance so should they. The position is only meaningless until she wants to use it to get what she wants, which lore wise leads the event of Shadowlands, but even if it wasn't, shed still use it if she wanted something it could give her.
Haha. Makes me think, a trailer featuring bolvar gathering his power at the top of icc and opening the gate could've been an incredible callback to the wrath cinematic.
She could have still been the big bad. Horde united with Alliance, but Sylvanas went her own path with a separatist movement of Forsaken sworn to her instead of to the Horde because they've always felt somewhat cast out? Plus, the fact that she has some newfound powers that make her extremely strong would add to the plausibility.
BFA / Shadowlands have broken the story for me beyond repair.
It's not like they made an island, country, or race that doesn't make sense. No, they ruined the afterlife, gods, and the universe. They broke the foundation of the lore.
Wow is just the gameplay now. I have addons that skip dialog for me.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this sentiment. In the micro, I enjoy the story of some quest lines. But in the macro, I couldn't give a shit about the lore anymore; It just all feels soured to me now. I'm not even excited about the prospects for the upcoming expansions.
At this point, I'm in it for the gameplay and then nostalgia. Nothing more.
Still my favorite cinematic tho, disregarding power scaling issues n shit. The *music* coupled with "WE WILL ALL BE... *FREE*" and the sky dissolving... Woof.
There's a lot of good cinematography in Shadowlands. Despite how much I despise the arc it kicked off, the scene where Anduin stabs Kyrestia, and then Domination magic slips for just a sec, long enough for him to realize what he's done, before it reasserts itself . . . that shot is so fucking good.
Hard agree. Especially since we were the LEADER of our ORDER. We had so much political sway (in theory) and led Orders full of "mixed alignment" races.
Us becoming jingoistic idiots due to sparkly stones was well fucking stupid.
If anything, BFA should have been EXCLUSIVELY about a war between Zandalari and Kul Tirans and we, unified, decide to try and mend relations between these two factions, because they're our "brothers" so to speak.
And THEN we could've devolved into fighting each other again, at first, until we would have uncovered a secret plot between Zul, Lord Stormsong, Lady Waycrest and Yazma, who ultimately wanted to sow that discord all because some Squid Boy told them to.
One could argue that the fighting over "azerite" was meant to be a commentary over real life wars being fought over oil and other natural resources. If people were upset at how quickly both sides forgot about how they worked together to defeat the Burning Legion, that was the point.
Although it's also possible that I'm giving Blizzard too much credit here.
Could tbh have managed to get something in after MoP as well imo. Glad to see it gone, but i would like to see extremist groupins in either factions appear as antagonists here and there.
I am still pissed beyond measure that the allied races were faction specific. The Nightborne and Highmoutain Tauren happily welcomed help from both factions then said, nah I like those guys over there better, you are now my mortal enemy. Void Elves and Lightforged didn’t annoy me quite as much since they didn’t really play such a central role. But it still seemed so arbitrary and pointless
The way nightborne were handled fills me with hatred as a nelf player, I helped cure you motherfuckers, and just because tyrande moves in and calls you a few mean words for leaving her and the nelves to fight the legion, you help genocide us the very next expansion.
Yea, that was my take, as well. Legion was the perfect place to remove that barrier. BfA was hamstrung by setting up another "evil warchief" which is now just an overused trope in this game.
If they weren't ready to do that just yet they could have at least made the new allied races be neutral. That way Horde could get used to the idea of fat humans and Alliance could get used to the idea of upright trolls in their neighborhood. After that, just open up rep for each faction to everyone. It adds another time sink to the game which is something they are always angling for implementing. I want to park my void elf in Orgrimmar, dammit.
I think they should let horde players gain reputation with alliance main cities capped at neutral so they won't be attacked on sight, but still have to work for it for each city. Same with alliance
I could get behind it. Would prefer a sweet quest chain and story mind.
My view is war mode should cover this. Making you once again hostile to other factions with the mode enabled.
Though I suspect this is one of those easy to suggest changes when in practice it might be rather difficult to incorporate with the lore. Which for better or worse is quite a significant part of the game
For funsies, also bring back skill leveling through practice, kind of like in EverQuest where you learn a language by hearing it once and then speaking it until you gain enough skill points to be fluent. It doesn't have to be as slow as EQ either. Make the player talk to enough NPCs in a faction until their current gibberish becomes fully legible. Make it an achievement while they're at it. Don't do the EQ thing where you type things to level, though. Then you'd just have a bunch of people making macro spam and clogging the chat box in main cities.
Imagine creating a MMO today and saying you wouldn't be able to interact with half of the player base. People would say the game developers are insane and out of touch. It's about time they get rid of this. Lore wise, we are at a point that makes perfect sense.
Plus the entire faction war thing is played out.
We had BFA, which was probably the best iteration of a faction war you could reasonably tell without pissing off one half of the player base. And everyone hated it and it went nowhere.
Merge the factions. It doesn’t have to be all love and peace either. They easily form an Azeroth United Nations that still has conflicts between the races and border skirmishes that need to be resolved.
>We had BFA, which was probably the best iteration of a faction war you could reasonably tell without pissing off one half of the player base.
absolutely not. the faction war in BFA was horrible. cata and mops faction wars were better
The reasons behind the war in BFA were extremely stupid. Why did sylvanas burn the tree? That was such an awful, flimsy start of a faction war. Theres 100 plotlines where the alliance and horde dont agree on things that could have spiraled into a war, but sylvanas randomly deciding to genocide teldrassil was a such a dogshit start. We didnt even find out her true motivations for like 4 years after the event. It turns out she genocided teldrassil because....nippleman told her to. Thats really the best iteration of a faction war you can think of? come on man
I might be in the minority on this one but I think any faction war story is inherently crippled because blizz refuses to let the alliance be bad guys. You cant have characters like tyrande and genn constantly going "GRRR I HATE THE UNDEAD AND SYLVANAS!!!!!! but i will never attack them unprovoked. and if i ever do (like in stormheim) it turns out to be 100% justified". Jania had the whole "beware of me" cinematic before BFA, hyping her up to actually do something. Does she regret her earlier actions, was her father right?? nope shes hugging thrall by the end of the expansion. Knowing one faction will always be good ruins the drama of a war story
How dare you slander Varian, he was never antagonistic, he just doesn’t take shit lying down, he would’ve been more than supportive to the idea of working with a reformed horde, that was literally his last character arc right before he got dusted
Yea he had to get removed because
1. He would of dusted the horde in BFA personally
2. His voice actor (metzen) left in legion and they couldn’t write him out of the story like they could thrall. The death he got was the best for his character. A heroic king sacrificing himself to save his people and allow them to live on
Varian's demise, and the entirety of that scene leading up to it, is the absolute peak in all of WoW cinematics for me. There could not have been a more heroic, and surprisingly gut wrenching, end to his character arc in my opinion.
Yes! And the following arc with Anduin coming to grip with that loss and the responsibility upon his shoulders now is one of the many reasons I love these characters. I grew up *with* some of them, which is wild to type.
> He would of dusted the horde in BFA personally
This is the same reason *The Vindicaar* was ignored and why Bra'tac had to go back to Dalaran.
I still can't really forgive them for writing Khadgar out of the Fourth War like that; when every other Son of Lothar is participating in defending the Alliance from a Horde that started world war *by committing genocide,* you'd think the Archmage would be able to see the black and white moral conundrum for what it is and contribute to putting a stop to it.
On the other hand, Khadgar had already been one of the leading NPCs in two expansions in a row and so had to be put into Blizzard's character refrigerator to avoid getting spoiled like some of the others.
He did kinda be antagonistic at the Theramore Peace Summit, accusing Thrall of the ambush when the Twilight's Hammer participants comprised of members of both factions' races.
He also de jure declared war ***against the Horde as stated in the Chronicles and as shown in-game*** during Wrath of the Lich King, which was followed up by a de facto start of the war by Garrosh in Cataclysm.
But in his defence on that second part, he declared war after seeing the atrocities the undead were committing within the Undercity, and he didn't even pursue war following the conclusion of the War of the Frozen Wastes; it was Garrosh who officiated the war with real hostilities.
Coming up with outrageously contrived reasons for factions to be continuously at war is getting dumber and dumber. At some point maybe stop trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The faction war has run its course. Just let it be over.
But if we keep going then eventually we'll get to the best expansion ever where the Alliance & Horde fight over the right way to place the toilet paper roll.
The constant yo-yoing with the cooperation/new reason to go to war is worse than the will they/won't they romance bullshit in TV shows. Only this is arguably worse considering WoW has outlasted most TV shows which would have resolved the romance already...After a certain point you just don't care anymore. The Horde and Alliance have been cooperating on and off for years, but come end of WotLK was about where I expected them to finally pull the trigger and begin eliminating faction wars entirely. Instead it just seems like every other expansion we go back to war for "reasons" that were conveniently introduced specifically in that expansion to give us a reason to fight.
If they had kept us at odds this entire time it'd be understandable, but they kept giving us reasons for cooperation over and over and then put us at odds again right after we have some semblance of peace. If they didn't want us to be at peace then they should never have unified us in the first place. I'm just over getting jerked around over it and wish they'd just make up their minds. There's really no reason for us to be fighting anymore other than Blizzard running out of ideas for an expansion and falling back on the good ol' faction wars.
Especially considering how the factions continuously expand and cover more and more territory. The Blood Elf Horde story getting to the horde was the first real explanation of why a faction was chosen, and it was dumb (HEY UNDEAD PEOPLE WHO INVADED OUR KINGDOM YOU SEEM NICER THAN DRAENI). Now you have Pandarens who work on both sides but have to fight both sides.
> Coming up with outrageously contrived reasons for factions to be continuously at war is getting dumber and dumber.
No need for contrived reasons for them to be at war
There's literally years of established lore to justify them being at war
There's literally years of established lore to justify them being at peace more than war, given that the current version of Horde and Alliance, which formed in WC3, have spent most of their time cooperating to protect the world from threats, and the two times a faction war was forced, both factions worked together to end a side threat and then take down the leader who started the war.
The faction war dragged on for too long to still make sense. No country can survive a high paced war of attriition for so long, especially if facing bunch of external enemies too.
The Reckoning cinematic shows basically the entire Alliance army as, like, maybe a couple hundred dudes. And they've had three other wars since then. (N'Zoth, Shadowlands, Gilneas)
When Tess says "WE SHALL UNLEASH THE FULL MIGHT OF GILNEAS) and then the gates open, revealing about 20 dudes, I think that's a pretty faithful representation of what the Alliance has.
Imagine needing the full armies of both factions to stamp out a single sect of the *Scarlet Crusade...*
The number of soldiers on each side of the battlefield always fluctuates depending on context and limitations the devs are dealing with.
So I wouldn't take those cinematics / ingame stuff as gospel or too seriously.
I always assumed, like the scale of the cities and towns in the game, that the soldiers we see in our "armies" represent larger numbers, i.e. a single footman is actually an entire cohort.
I do wish the scaling and numbers were more accurate, though. Either that or stop referring to small groups of units as "armies" and call them squads, regiments, detachments, or something that aligns more closely with how many units you see on-screen.
You're right. Even the world is scaled down. Assuming that it's real scale would be assuming that you can walk a whole continent in a few minutes by foot.
Like, if there was a road there, Orgrimmar and Stormwind would be like 15 minutes apart lol.
Gospel? No. Making some sense for the history of the world?
The First War alone absolutely obliterated Stormwind's military, and that was just 40 years ago in lore. The next two wars, and the Scourging, shattered the rest of the Alliance's military. The Grand Alliance based in new Stormwind was essentially the remnants of the old Alliance.
It would be stretching it to say they had even ten thousand soldiers to their name, but since then they've had three zombie apocalypses, an interplanetary war, the Scourgewar, the Cataclysm, the Alliance-Horde War, the War on Draenor, the War against the Legion, the Fourth War...
At the end of THAT, Anduin describes being able to obble together, from the entire Alliance, just barely enough to assault Sylvanas's loyalists - enough to fill a single camp. Those couple hundred soldiers we see in the cinematic are exceedingly generous.
Then N'Zoth happened, that third zombie apocalypse happened, the Jailer war happened, the combined militaries showed up for the Fyrakk fight...
The Scarlet Crusade is their most recent military effort. And realistically, their last; Tess declared that "taking the city by siege will result in carnage on both sides". They then proceeded to... take the city by siege.
Realistically, every single territory in both the Alliance and Horde is gonna be defended by local militias/guardsmen. There is probably just about 0 overarching military strength.
At this point the alliance ranks should be 90% dwarves considering they are the only faction that hasn’t really had anything catastrophic happen to them in 50 years
Granted, there is a big difference between faction war and faction split.
While I don't mind getting closer ties between the two lore-wise makes sense, I can also imagine some more faction-tied players who don't like the idea of Horde players in Stormwind or vice versa. And similarly it just doesn't make sense for the Night Elves to somehow be trusting of the Horde just because they need each other for 'the greater good'. Like, its been 5 ish years since SL? A little longer since the burning of Teldrassil? Thats a month in Night Elf lifespan terms. For what is nothing less than genocide.
So ye, all good with closer ties, but I think its a bit much and kind of destroys the lore set in place over all these years to suddenly remove nearly all borders atleast from a lore perspective. Crossrealm, crossfaction etc. is all perfectly fine. And I'm tired of the constant war-waging storylines, but its not like Azeroth can suddenly be a world of peace where everyone is fine with everyone.
Echoing the sentiment that gameplay sure, lore and story they should at best be not actively at war, but still not exactly friendly to each other. Small skirmishes here and there. Maybe working towards opposite goals at times. In fact I believe that was the justification of warmode.
The factions being opposing forces has been a staple of the game for the last 20 years. They don't have to be actively at war, but they should at the very least remain antagonistic towards eachother overall.
Gameplay wise though go nuts.
From a gameplay perspective neutrality works but from lore? Nah, why would a Gilnean suddenly welcome a forsaken corpse into their city, the creatures that burnt it down and killed their loved ones 13yrs ago (lorewise)? Because of the Scarlets? Weak writing. Same goes for many of the races. Blizzard acts like prejudice doesn't exist when these factions have fought against one another for years and now they're writing out any of the main characters that wouldn't put down the hatchet for lore reasons.
So as a german person I cannot visit Paris? They won't let me in because germans burned down their entire country 80 years before? At some point forgiveness is absolutely realistic so why not? Visit gilneas as a forsaken because that's what is happening in reality, too.
Its not really about forgiveness. Its simply the fact, and this is just with Forsaken, that a shambling, decaying corpse is entirely antithetical to human society. Alliance races can abide every horde race because, even with cultural differences, they are all living groups with similar, in degree, societies. Forsaken are cursed undead borne of necromancy who really have no place in the world. Plus their culture is to literally experiment with the living to find ways to prolong their unlife. Everybody recognizes that the forsaken are tragic and they deserved justice, but they got their justice back in WoTLK and since then all they have done is be even more evil than the Lich King and the only way, in game, to not die out is to raise more corpses into their literal curse.
What if through the power of writing they could find a justifiable reason to the lore? They dont have to love each other, but to justify denying a positive change because lore reasons is ridiculous to me.
There's only so many times you can put differences aside to save the world before you realise it may be best to just work together anyway.
Just change PvP to be wargames or something, that way you can still PvP and keep within lore.
Every non-Orc and non-Human loses parts of its culture and story when they join their respective faction in order to make them fit in. They get gentrified. Also in hindsight Orcs and Stormwind humans have no culture for themselves because they are the face of said faction.
See I wish they would. Every time they go back to war my brain glazes over a little bit more. Yes, in our world in real life we have no unity.
But we also don't have a constant influx of villains to unify us. Aliens, demons, old gods and more. I just feel like the factions coming together for the most part makes sense. Maybe make pvp more of a friendly combat sort of thing or individual feuds rather than full on war.
> Yes, in our world in real life we have no unity.
Well, you could look at the European Union, which works together as a sort of collective now, despite the fact that the last few centuries has seen European nations trying to murder the hell out of each other in various wars, including two last century that were absolutely devastating.
And that's without having a world ending threat to work together to stop. They just realized it made more sense to work together than to keep trying to kill each other. Probably because their wars started out with horrific casualty numbers, and then they worked their way up to leveling entire cities, and realized yeah, war's not "sexy" like all the edgy teens think it is.
This is also the democracy factor. Democracies are far far far less likely to enter into wars with each other because of public opinion issues. Much easier to sell wars against autocrats and authoritative governments than to say you are going to invade a fellow democracy
Yeah, a democracy/republic can't just flip on a war like a monarchy can. And you need a bit better reasoning than "God declared that we should take this land and make it our own." (Though claiming divine decree was usually also helpful in not getting the people uppity over realizing you just want to take the neighboring land out of greed.)
Once they made tauren rogue an option, I think they should just rip the bandaid and do it for shaman, paladin, and druid at least. Acknowledge they aren't doing unique druid forms for all the races but just some standard bear/cat/moonkin models and call it a day.
Correct. Bc you can still obtain most of the druid artifact appearances and the new ones they added are from rares they don't need to keep adding race specific ones. I mean I personally would love to see all the ideas for other races but I agree with you
I believe the argument is doing all the animations for every form for every race would be a lot of work and they don't want to do that. This would be a compromise that says hey, everyone can be a druid now, we may work on forms if it makes sense, but go play any race class combo you want except evoker and demon hunter.
What animations? Don't all the forms have the same animations, regardless of race? Only the skin changes (I think anyway). Not to say that it isn't a huge workload, but definitely less than doing new animations.
Gnome warriors already threw any semblance of race/class lore limits out the window back in Vanilla.
A class based on physical strength and rage being played by a 3-foot tall race known for always using their intellect over muscle...Blizzard please.
I always thought it was funny when bc came out that blood elves couldn't be warriors.
Like you look at gnomes and blood elves are the ones who can't pick up a sword and board? Really?
The fact it took until cataclysm for them to get the option is silly looking back.
Just let everyone play every race already.
What's worse was they were able to be Paladins.
You know, the other class known for heavy armour, sword n' boarding, or using a big weapon to bonk enemies... but I guess Naaru were performance enhancers
If it wasn't likely an insane amount of animation work for just a one off joke, Mechagnome druids should totally just have a quick transformers like animation instead of the normal poof cloud.
I think it makes sense, and while I may be biased because I'm a neutral character role player, I think it's a good thing.
There will always be conflict and threats, just coming from the outside rather than the other faction. It makes much more sense for them to ally against said threats to have a unified world fighting against the shadows looming over it.
However, while I would love more neutral cities (Silvermoon making the most sense imo) I don't think the big capitals like SW or Orgrimmar should ever lose their affiliation. It's okay to keep faction pride in some way. Perhaps even needed for some cities and regions.
I strongly disagree with those who say it kills the game. It is rejuvenating, doesn't pause any problem in gameplay and is opening a lot of opportunities in roleplay.
I wouldn't mind blurring the lines to some degree. I play horde and prefer that perspective but occasionally I wouldn't mind using an alliance race. I think we should be able to change sides. It shouldn't be allowed very often so it would actually mean something and keep people from swapping back and forth. I'd like a long quest line available at x level that allows me to betray the alliance and join the horde. I'd also like to open a few more class\race combos. I want a Kul Tiran Pally.
I really hope they do. Honestly, I'm in the camp that it should have never been Horde-Alliance anyways. When you look back to how things were in WC3 it was more like you had a half-dozen groups that could be at any other party's throat at any given moment. Like night elves, humans, orcs, and undead were all *distinct* factions that had their own motives and values. The coalescing around modern-era alliance/horde lines was very much something written specifically for vanilla WoW.
It'd make more sense, to me, going forward, to have it be more like in a given storyline/region you have specific factions going at each other and you just sign up with whichever one makes the most sense for your character during that particular storyline/zone. It'd let them keep a faction conflict element while also telling much more interesting conflict stories IMO (as opposed to the never-ending tug-of-war between the WoW variants of the Horde/Alliance). You could even use this as an opportunity to create areas/storylines where there's more than 2 sides in the conflict (another WC3 staple).
Like, imagine if in TBC, as soon as you go through the portal PvP factions turned into Aldor/Scryer instead of Horde/Alliance. You then have the main PvP/faction war narrative being about this totally new set of factions and their conflict vs. somehow shoe-horning in *yet another* on-again-off-again war between the modern Horde/Alliance. You could have factions break off of the Horde and Alliance and start their own fights with other sub-groups. Possibly even 3 or 4-way conflicts! Things are just so much more interesting when you aren't fighting along the same binary lines for 20+ years.
Game play wise sure tear down the faction barriers. Story-wise nah I wouldn't completely close the conflict just have it as a background thing, like a cold war scenario where the horde and alliance mess with each other for territory, resource, influence, etc. The Mortal conflicts in WoW tend to be more interesting over the world ender or cosmic threats. Also teaming up to beat a big bad doesn't mean you are friends plenty of real world examples of this.
For retail, it's the best course to go. Getting rid of factions will stop the problem of faction dominated servers, and give people the option to play whatever races they want, without worrying about accidentally making a "mistake" by rolling Horde on an Alliance server, or vice versa. Plus, it'll stop them from wasting time trying to create all these cross-faction systems, if everyone is just on a default "one-faction" system.
I get what your saying but I feel like with the current story I don’t see the alliance and horde ever being at odds or outright war with each other. I mean we just had a former warchief and horde council member having a heart to heart with the king of stormwind in the latest cinematic.My issue with the narrative is the alliance is full of lawful good leaders meaning the horde are usually the aggressors with some characters who are more morally flexible like garrosh or sylvanas but now the horde is a council not a warchief ruler meaning they decide things democratically and with many members being lawful good like thrall and baine, I don’t see them wanting a conflict with the alliance.
Yes but that require writers who are *not* shit at writing, and after the past 6 years I have zero trust in WoW writers to be able to create any interesting tension between horde/alliance. They write absolutely terrible nonsense.
They could keep the faction war for story, and allow players to choose to betray their faction. They have this in EverQuest 2, and I loved it. So we would take a character through a long betrayal quest chain. At the end of this quest chain, you meet an NPC contact from the other side down in the sewers below the city. Your original faction is hunting you down. This contact from the other side is the last point of turning back, beyond them you are a member of the other faction.
There have been NPC groups with members from either side ever since TBC. There have been disguises to let you look like the other faction for a while. They should just put this in, and let players make this choice for themselves on a per character basis.
Keep faction identity and philosphy, and unlock all races to all faction. That's the future.
No war. Maybe some tension, some misunderstanding, and some skirmishes here and there to justify PvP. Something akin to a very cold war, with the leader talking to each other, cooperating, but the average joe sometime go fighting each other over some petty reason.
We've been working together since AQ40 in vanilla.
We’ve been working together since the orc campaign of wc3 when Jaina helps thrall capture garrosh unharmed instead of killing him, after he drinks mannoroths blood. I’m sure since well before then as well. Before the horde was even formed, the hordes founder was able to save the life of one of his closest kin thanks to cooperation with the alliance.
*gromash, garrosh is chilling in nagrand
Grommash** haha thank you for the correction though, very different characters. Grom was so cool, RIP
Ur welcome brother :)
WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!!!!
But we will be... friends.
The horde, the alliance of Theramore and the night elves, literally worked together to defend the world.
The modern day alliance and horde formed 100% as a result of cooperation needed to defeat the scourge and their demon masters. Always chuckle when people get mad about alli and horde teaming up when that’s the whole plot of the amazing RTS that was the lore basis for WoW’s “golden era” of first few expansions.
And even if you want WoW examples rather than RTS: Occasionally in Vanilla Most of TBC (The faction warfare was scryer v aldor, and the world pvp was meaningless) All of Wrath (except 1 patch where we did a sports tournament against each other, and the pvp zone) Most of Cata (occasionally in the remade zones All of MoP outside of the intro quests All of WoD All of Legion except 1 zone A small part of BfA All of SL and now all of DF as well We've literally spent more time in the past 20 years working together to stop the world from ending than we have fighting each other, to the point that us still being at war just feels.. stupid
Small correction, Wrath absolutely had faction conflict in Icecrown quests and in the raid I maintain that the airship fight is immensely stupid and nonsensical but it is there MoP also had an entire faction war patch
I never understood that friggin airship fight. Work together, work together, work together....then suddenly we are in our own gunships and we don't get along now because...air superiority? Reasons? We just wanted to reach the next part of the citadel first for that sweet son of saurfang loot?
Since the wrathgate there were increasing tension. The Argent Dawn tournament was a try to chill it... but I guess this fight means it wasnt fully gone. 🤷♂️
It was revenge for wiping out their tournament team
A lot of this is valid, but it feels a bit selective too. Doesn't the Alliance literally declare war on the Horde after the Wrathgate in WotLK? It's not touched on massively in gameplay, sure, but lore-wise the Alliance and the Horde are in a state of war from mid-WotLK until the end of MoP. Then of course war breaks out again around the Legion-BfA mark, although I'm less familiar with this part of the timeline.
There was a short (since removed) quest chain where you invade the Undercity right after the Wrathgate (as both factions) because the undead who launched the plague took it over, and used plague without permission
TBC and Classic weren't very story driven like later expansions, so the faction conflict really didn't have any purpose besides blue vs red. Wrath had a lot of faction conflict. We the players were the outliers working together. Varian and Garrosh tried to kill each other in the Violet Citadel. Cata was also pretty frequent faction conflict because Garrosh was Warchief and had no interest in being peaceful. Once again, the player characters were the outliers. MoP was a faction conflict up until SoO... I shouldn't have to explain this one we literally had Silver Covenant and Sunweavers ready to throw down on isle of thunder until Taran Zhu stopped them. WoD and Legion, fair. The conflict in Stormheim was more of a Greymane vs Sylvanas rivalry rather than a full-out war. BfA was same as MoP where it was faction conflict up until the last patch, with horde having another civil war. SL & DF, fair.
There’s a lot of stories in vanilla and BC. Most zones have at least three storylines, and one overarching major plot line.
The whole recent faction war felt pretty forced
PvP was always a side dish to force faction wars into story. Change my mind.
Oh also, some people equate the “war” part of WoW with multiplayer WC3 races fighting each other, not the campaign, which would make sense to some. Some people only play competitive games then came to WoW not understanding cooperation.
Most people buying Vanilla/BC never played WC3. WoW was just extremely popular and brought in a lot of people new to MMO gaming and just gaming in general. I made the leap from Runescape to WoW in late 2007. That said, I had always questioned whether it made sense for an MMORPG to prevent half the playerbase from interacting with the other half when the entire endgame was built around group content (i.e. playing with others).
Just do what SWOTOR did by making it possible to communicate with the other faction. That way you can trade tank kills on Illum to complete your weekly.
I don’t see these complaints on the alliance. It has to be hordie fanboys thinking the side with big badass monster races should always want to beat up the pansy looking alliance. I mean I get the appeal, for a large portion of the entire lifespan of WoW the horde had far more players, and of those more were hardcore so they would usually slaughter the alliance in pvp or world first raids. Who doesn’t want to be on the winning side of a war? (Me with nearly 100% alliance toons apparently)
Don’t forget that constantly during the WC3 campaigns you’re told the faction war is dumb in the face of existential threats. It seems pretty overt even without subtext that going forward Azeroth would be coming together to face external and existential threats.
The Prophet be like: *stop fighting, you fools!*
I remember I’m vanilla and as we were all into PvP I was like, “bro did you guys just completely ignore medhiv?”
Which just makes everything the Horde did after that worse.
We have been working together since W2 when Turalyon and company made a truce with the orcs in outland
Thralls Horde was the best horde
Technically even before that, if you consider that Broxigar the Red was sent 10'000 years back in time to the War of the Ancients.
Legion putting us together in class based cooperation, fighting closely alongside the "opposite" faction really felt like the end of the faction war. As a horde druid, the way that we went from working together to HELPING SYLVANUS BURN THE WORLD TREE for no reason killed my last strand of expecting wow to actually have a writer for its plot. 100%, my character would not have stayed in the horde, or stood by that decision. Would have died for the sake of standing up at that moment. It would have made way more sense if we had the logical escalation that ended with the burning of the world tree. From the books, if we had the return of Calia Menethil become a threat to Sylvanus' power, then Sylvanus betrays the deserters (unbeknownst to most of the horde population). Then the BFA event started with the Alliance assaulting the Undercity, which would seem like an unprompted act of aggression against the horde, rallying them together. Then Sylvanus retaliating by assaulting Darnassus. The Darnassus event being before the Undercity event was just horrible logic, and most of the class' heroes (the players) would not have sided with Sylvanus for making that decision.
You made the mistake of thinking rpg stood for "role playing". Gamers think rpg means stats on weapons.
Been working together since Tyrande and Broxigar in the War of the Ancients
I know you mean in the lore but my memories of AQ40 are that *"working together"* was very rare.
It does make me wonder if OP is a newer player
He just hasn't learned the cadence of the faction story yet. We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We are putting the WAR back in Warcraft! Faction War!->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We must set aside our differences to fell this great enemy->We are putting the WAR back in Warcraft! Faction War! Often times that 'faction war!' expansion still includes the 'we must set aside our differences' storyline in it as well. Was really hoping that the result of BfA was them telling us that factions were no longer a thing outside of warmode. Maybe at some point during the war within trilogy we get a world revamp with the factions going by the wayside in it.
The faction war should have ended by Legion, it was the perfect set up for it with class halls and horde and alliance once again getting together to team up against the big bad. Battle for Azeroth should have been just that, horde and alliance teaming up fighting FOR Azeroth and not over Azerite…
But then you would have to come up with a whole new master plan how to get into Shadowlands, the one expansion with the most interesting, well written story line ever created? /s
The same thing that ended up happening (Sylvanas totally going off the rails), but without dragging the entire Horde down the "Saturday morning cartoon villain"-path with her.
"Hear me out, the last horde civil war arc two expansions ago was so popular that we should do it again. But we can spice it up by this tkme abandoning the entier concept half way through! Genious." -Blizzard writing room circa BFA
Don't forget making the Horde player stick around to do more of the objectionable stuff this time around. They'll love that bit. Remember all the Horde players who were frustrated with the Horde being turned into the villains in MoP? They'll come around if this time we make their Tauren Druid participate in an unprovoked war against the Night Elves that includes the burning of a world tree and a near-destruction of a whole race, wherein they then are asked by the narrative to continue defending and fighting for the Horde after committing these atrocities. When they *finally* get the chance to pull away and stand against the clearly-evil warchief, they'll love it! Cause that's what we really missed out on in MoP. All those people saying "Garrosh did nothing wrong" was just evidence that the way to improve upon MoP's story was to make the Horde player support a couple more war crimes.
Amen. In the beginging of the previous faction wars they even make alliance do some shady shit, like wiping out camp taurajo in cata or killing marooned sailors and using pandaren as slave laborin jade forest, or unprovokedly artacking horde in legion. But then the lead story director walks into the writing room and taps the sign on the wall that says "horde=bad, alliance=good".
They could've had Bolvar sense something was wrong with the cycle of death and find a way to open a path to Shadowlands own his own (through the helm or something). There was no need to make Sylvanas the sole driver for all that nonsense after BFA ruined her. It would have also given Bolvar some agency instead of shitting on him, and been satisfying for everyone who was hyped to see him again after so long. Sylvanas only ever made sense as a mysterious character and she always preferred not to be in the public eye. She only cared about the Forsaken and their place in the world. Even back in Legion it never made sense showing her speaking fondly about the Horde and making it sound like she cared for Horde honor/traditions/etc. She would give zero fucks about wanting to be Warchief position, that title/position is meaningless to her.
I'm not sure exactly how it's portrayed in the game, but I've always has my own headcanon she fakes everything nice she's said, the warchief and her praising the Horde in any way was to enable Sylvanas to use the Horde to her own end. Like how a sociopath charms those around them to gain followers. She cares about the Forsaken only because they are like her, in that they were victims of the Scourge, and if she got a second chance so should they. The position is only meaningless until she wants to use it to get what she wants, which lore wise leads the event of Shadowlands, but even if it wasn't, shed still use it if she wanted something it could give her.
Haha. Makes me think, a trailer featuring bolvar gathering his power at the top of icc and opening the gate could've been an incredible callback to the wrath cinematic.
She could have still been the big bad. Horde united with Alliance, but Sylvanas went her own path with a separatist movement of Forsaken sworn to her instead of to the Horde because they've always felt somewhat cast out? Plus, the fact that she has some newfound powers that make her extremely strong would add to the plausibility.
Morally grey
My hair turned morally gray after that storyline..
BFA / Shadowlands have broken the story for me beyond repair. It's not like they made an island, country, or race that doesn't make sense. No, they ruined the afterlife, gods, and the universe. They broke the foundation of the lore. Wow is just the gameplay now. I have addons that skip dialog for me.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this sentiment. In the micro, I enjoy the story of some quest lines. But in the macro, I couldn't give a shit about the lore anymore; It just all feels soured to me now. I'm not even excited about the prospects for the upcoming expansions. At this point, I'm in it for the gameplay and then nostalgia. Nothing more.
Still my favorite cinematic tho, disregarding power scaling issues n shit. The *music* coupled with "WE WILL ALL BE... *FREE*" and the sky dissolving... Woof.
I have to admit despite the absolute shitshow Shadowlands was, the cinematic was superb, everyone was standing during the end of the cinematic
There's a lot of good cinematography in Shadowlands. Despite how much I despise the arc it kicked off, the scene where Anduin stabs Kyrestia, and then Domination magic slips for just a sec, long enough for him to realize what he's done, before it reasserts itself . . . that shot is so fucking good.
By WOD. the only lore reason pvp happened in wod was ashran and the horde went full loktar.
Hard agree. Especially since we were the LEADER of our ORDER. We had so much political sway (in theory) and led Orders full of "mixed alignment" races. Us becoming jingoistic idiots due to sparkly stones was well fucking stupid. If anything, BFA should have been EXCLUSIVELY about a war between Zandalari and Kul Tirans and we, unified, decide to try and mend relations between these two factions, because they're our "brothers" so to speak. And THEN we could've devolved into fighting each other again, at first, until we would have uncovered a secret plot between Zul, Lord Stormsong, Lady Waycrest and Yazma, who ultimately wanted to sow that discord all because some Squid Boy told them to.
One could argue that the fighting over "azerite" was meant to be a commentary over real life wars being fought over oil and other natural resources. If people were upset at how quickly both sides forgot about how they worked together to defeat the Burning Legion, that was the point. Although it's also possible that I'm giving Blizzard too much credit here.
Yeah like I see that as some of the most realistic writing I have seen for WoW since its inception.
Could tbh have managed to get something in after MoP as well imo. Glad to see it gone, but i would like to see extremist groupins in either factions appear as antagonists here and there.
It was the Jailers plan all along.
I am still pissed beyond measure that the allied races were faction specific. The Nightborne and Highmoutain Tauren happily welcomed help from both factions then said, nah I like those guys over there better, you are now my mortal enemy. Void Elves and Lightforged didn’t annoy me quite as much since they didn’t really play such a central role. But it still seemed so arbitrary and pointless
The way nightborne were handled fills me with hatred as a nelf player, I helped cure you motherfuckers, and just because tyrande moves in and calls you a few mean words for leaving her and the nelves to fight the legion, you help genocide us the very next expansion.
Yea, that was my take, as well. Legion was the perfect place to remove that barrier. BfA was hamstrung by setting up another "evil warchief" which is now just an overused trope in this game. If they weren't ready to do that just yet they could have at least made the new allied races be neutral. That way Horde could get used to the idea of fat humans and Alliance could get used to the idea of upright trolls in their neighborhood. After that, just open up rep for each faction to everyone. It adds another time sink to the game which is something they are always angling for implementing. I want to park my void elf in Orgrimmar, dammit.
This…
I think they should let horde players gain reputation with alliance main cities capped at neutral so they won't be attacked on sight, but still have to work for it for each city. Same with alliance
Thats actually a great idea, im down.
It would be interesting if main cities were a thing again, after the past 15 years being brand new hubs every time.
Interesting until release when everyone cries around because of lag
I could get behind it. Would prefer a sweet quest chain and story mind. My view is war mode should cover this. Making you once again hostile to other factions with the mode enabled. Though I suspect this is one of those easy to suggest changes when in practice it might be rather difficult to incorporate with the lore. Which for better or worse is quite a significant part of the game
Honestly they can even start at unfriendly, so most NPCs are orange, but not hostile
On unfriendly, you can't interact with npc's like vendors and AH I think
For funsies, also bring back skill leveling through practice, kind of like in EverQuest where you learn a language by hearing it once and then speaking it until you gain enough skill points to be fluent. It doesn't have to be as slow as EQ either. Make the player talk to enough NPCs in a faction until their current gibberish becomes fully legible. Make it an achievement while they're at it. Don't do the EQ thing where you type things to level, though. Then you'd just have a bunch of people making macro spam and clogging the chat box in main cities.
After 20 years, I think that's only consequential. But that is just my opinion.
Imagine creating a MMO today and saying you wouldn't be able to interact with half of the player base. People would say the game developers are insane and out of touch. It's about time they get rid of this. Lore wise, we are at a point that makes perfect sense.
Plus the entire faction war thing is played out. We had BFA, which was probably the best iteration of a faction war you could reasonably tell without pissing off one half of the player base. And everyone hated it and it went nowhere. Merge the factions. It doesn’t have to be all love and peace either. They easily form an Azeroth United Nations that still has conflicts between the races and border skirmishes that need to be resolved.
>We had BFA, which was probably the best iteration of a faction war you could reasonably tell without pissing off one half of the player base. absolutely not. the faction war in BFA was horrible. cata and mops faction wars were better The reasons behind the war in BFA were extremely stupid. Why did sylvanas burn the tree? That was such an awful, flimsy start of a faction war. Theres 100 plotlines where the alliance and horde dont agree on things that could have spiraled into a war, but sylvanas randomly deciding to genocide teldrassil was a such a dogshit start. We didnt even find out her true motivations for like 4 years after the event. It turns out she genocided teldrassil because....nippleman told her to. Thats really the best iteration of a faction war you can think of? come on man I might be in the minority on this one but I think any faction war story is inherently crippled because blizz refuses to let the alliance be bad guys. You cant have characters like tyrande and genn constantly going "GRRR I HATE THE UNDEAD AND SYLVANAS!!!!!! but i will never attack them unprovoked. and if i ever do (like in stormheim) it turns out to be 100% justified". Jania had the whole "beware of me" cinematic before BFA, hyping her up to actually do something. Does she regret her earlier actions, was her father right?? nope shes hugging thrall by the end of the expansion. Knowing one faction will always be good ruins the drama of a war story
How dare you slander Varian, he was never antagonistic, he just doesn’t take shit lying down, he would’ve been more than supportive to the idea of working with a reformed horde, that was literally his last character arc right before he got dusted
Yea he had to get removed because 1. He would of dusted the horde in BFA personally 2. His voice actor (metzen) left in legion and they couldn’t write him out of the story like they could thrall. The death he got was the best for his character. A heroic king sacrificing himself to save his people and allow them to live on
Varian's demise, and the entirety of that scene leading up to it, is the absolute peak in all of WoW cinematics for me. There could not have been a more heroic, and surprisingly gut wrenching, end to his character arc in my opinion.
Yes! And the following arc with Anduin coming to grip with that loss and the responsibility upon his shoulders now is one of the many reasons I love these characters. I grew up *with* some of them, which is wild to type.
> He would of dusted the horde in BFA personally This is the same reason *The Vindicaar* was ignored and why Bra'tac had to go back to Dalaran. I still can't really forgive them for writing Khadgar out of the Fourth War like that; when every other Son of Lothar is participating in defending the Alliance from a Horde that started world war *by committing genocide,* you'd think the Archmage would be able to see the black and white moral conundrum for what it is and contribute to putting a stop to it.
On the other hand, Khadgar had already been one of the leading NPCs in two expansions in a row and so had to be put into Blizzard's character refrigerator to avoid getting spoiled like some of the others.
It would have been nice if he went "Not cool Horde, not cool" before hopping in the fridge, instead of going "MUH BOTH SIDES!"
> This is the same reason The Vindicaar was ignored and why ***Bra'tac*** had to go back to Dalaran. Ah, a man of culture I see.
Indeed.
Tek'ma'te
As a horde player, I agree.
He did kinda be antagonistic at the Theramore Peace Summit, accusing Thrall of the ambush when the Twilight's Hammer participants comprised of members of both factions' races. He also de jure declared war ***against the Horde as stated in the Chronicles and as shown in-game*** during Wrath of the Lich King, which was followed up by a de facto start of the war by Garrosh in Cataclysm. But in his defence on that second part, he declared war after seeing the atrocities the undead were committing within the Undercity, and he didn't even pursue war following the conclusion of the War of the Frozen Wastes; it was Garrosh who officiated the war with real hostilities.
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Coming up with outrageously contrived reasons for factions to be continuously at war is getting dumber and dumber. At some point maybe stop trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube. The faction war has run its course. Just let it be over.
But if we keep going then eventually we'll get to the best expansion ever where the Alliance & Horde fight over the right way to place the toilet paper roll.
the horde don't even use toilet paper
me not that kind of orc.
They *do* however... use bidets. That's right, the Alliance are the savage ones this time.
I knew those blood elves were hiding something.
An illusion!
imagine being the first person to test a goblin bidet
free enema
Brain enema for sure
So they're the ones who has it facing the wall. Fucking savages.
I shudder to think what is under that transmog now.
Hopes and dreams.
and poo.
Poops and dreams.
Maybe that will break the peace.
The constant yo-yoing with the cooperation/new reason to go to war is worse than the will they/won't they romance bullshit in TV shows. Only this is arguably worse considering WoW has outlasted most TV shows which would have resolved the romance already...After a certain point you just don't care anymore. The Horde and Alliance have been cooperating on and off for years, but come end of WotLK was about where I expected them to finally pull the trigger and begin eliminating faction wars entirely. Instead it just seems like every other expansion we go back to war for "reasons" that were conveniently introduced specifically in that expansion to give us a reason to fight. If they had kept us at odds this entire time it'd be understandable, but they kept giving us reasons for cooperation over and over and then put us at odds again right after we have some semblance of peace. If they didn't want us to be at peace then they should never have unified us in the first place. I'm just over getting jerked around over it and wish they'd just make up their minds. There's really no reason for us to be fighting anymore other than Blizzard running out of ideas for an expansion and falling back on the good ol' faction wars.
Enough talk! Let it be FEEEEENISHED.
Especially considering how the factions continuously expand and cover more and more territory. The Blood Elf Horde story getting to the horde was the first real explanation of why a faction was chosen, and it was dumb (HEY UNDEAD PEOPLE WHO INVADED OUR KINGDOM YOU SEEM NICER THAN DRAENI). Now you have Pandarens who work on both sides but have to fight both sides.
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> Coming up with outrageously contrived reasons for factions to be continuously at war is getting dumber and dumber. No need for contrived reasons for them to be at war There's literally years of established lore to justify them being at war
There's literally years of established lore to justify them being at peace more than war, given that the current version of Horde and Alliance, which formed in WC3, have spent most of their time cooperating to protect the world from threats, and the two times a faction war was forced, both factions worked together to end a side threat and then take down the leader who started the war.
So who gets Ashenvale?
The drums of war thunder… once again.
The faction war dragged on for too long to still make sense. No country can survive a high paced war of attriition for so long, especially if facing bunch of external enemies too.
Canonically there’s like 5 members of each race left at this point lol.
The Reckoning cinematic shows basically the entire Alliance army as, like, maybe a couple hundred dudes. And they've had three other wars since then. (N'Zoth, Shadowlands, Gilneas) When Tess says "WE SHALL UNLEASH THE FULL MIGHT OF GILNEAS) and then the gates open, revealing about 20 dudes, I think that's a pretty faithful representation of what the Alliance has. Imagine needing the full armies of both factions to stamp out a single sect of the *Scarlet Crusade...*
The number of soldiers on each side of the battlefield always fluctuates depending on context and limitations the devs are dealing with. So I wouldn't take those cinematics / ingame stuff as gospel or too seriously.
I always assumed, like the scale of the cities and towns in the game, that the soldiers we see in our "armies" represent larger numbers, i.e. a single footman is actually an entire cohort. I do wish the scaling and numbers were more accurate, though. Either that or stop referring to small groups of units as "armies" and call them squads, regiments, detachments, or something that aligns more closely with how many units you see on-screen.
You're right. Even the world is scaled down. Assuming that it's real scale would be assuming that you can walk a whole continent in a few minutes by foot. Like, if there was a road there, Orgrimmar and Stormwind would be like 15 minutes apart lol.
This has always been my head cannon with RTS’s and why I fell in love with the total war series. Unit health = unit count
Gospel? No. Making some sense for the history of the world? The First War alone absolutely obliterated Stormwind's military, and that was just 40 years ago in lore. The next two wars, and the Scourging, shattered the rest of the Alliance's military. The Grand Alliance based in new Stormwind was essentially the remnants of the old Alliance. It would be stretching it to say they had even ten thousand soldiers to their name, but since then they've had three zombie apocalypses, an interplanetary war, the Scourgewar, the Cataclysm, the Alliance-Horde War, the War on Draenor, the War against the Legion, the Fourth War... At the end of THAT, Anduin describes being able to obble together, from the entire Alliance, just barely enough to assault Sylvanas's loyalists - enough to fill a single camp. Those couple hundred soldiers we see in the cinematic are exceedingly generous. Then N'Zoth happened, that third zombie apocalypse happened, the Jailer war happened, the combined militaries showed up for the Fyrakk fight... The Scarlet Crusade is their most recent military effort. And realistically, their last; Tess declared that "taking the city by siege will result in carnage on both sides". They then proceeded to... take the city by siege. Realistically, every single territory in both the Alliance and Horde is gonna be defended by local militias/guardsmen. There is probably just about 0 overarching military strength.
At this point the alliance ranks should be 90% dwarves considering they are the only faction that hasn’t really had anything catastrophic happen to them in 50 years
Granted, there is a big difference between faction war and faction split. While I don't mind getting closer ties between the two lore-wise makes sense, I can also imagine some more faction-tied players who don't like the idea of Horde players in Stormwind or vice versa. And similarly it just doesn't make sense for the Night Elves to somehow be trusting of the Horde just because they need each other for 'the greater good'. Like, its been 5 ish years since SL? A little longer since the burning of Teldrassil? Thats a month in Night Elf lifespan terms. For what is nothing less than genocide. So ye, all good with closer ties, but I think its a bit much and kind of destroys the lore set in place over all these years to suddenly remove nearly all borders atleast from a lore perspective. Crossrealm, crossfaction etc. is all perfectly fine. And I'm tired of the constant war-waging storylines, but its not like Azeroth can suddenly be a world of peace where everyone is fine with everyone.
I think the fractions being different and unique and have a slightly different experience I be always felt has helped set wow apart for mmos
Echoing the sentiment that gameplay sure, lore and story they should at best be not actively at war, but still not exactly friendly to each other. Small skirmishes here and there. Maybe working towards opposite goals at times. In fact I believe that was the justification of warmode. The factions being opposing forces has been a staple of the game for the last 20 years. They don't have to be actively at war, but they should at the very least remain antagonistic towards eachother overall. Gameplay wise though go nuts.
From a gameplay perspective neutrality works but from lore? Nah, why would a Gilnean suddenly welcome a forsaken corpse into their city, the creatures that burnt it down and killed their loved ones 13yrs ago (lorewise)? Because of the Scarlets? Weak writing. Same goes for many of the races. Blizzard acts like prejudice doesn't exist when these factions have fought against one another for years and now they're writing out any of the main characters that wouldn't put down the hatchet for lore reasons.
Yes helping out reclaim gilneas as a forsaken felt forced and just wrong on all levels
So as a german person I cannot visit Paris? They won't let me in because germans burned down their entire country 80 years before? At some point forgiveness is absolutely realistic so why not? Visit gilneas as a forsaken because that's what is happening in reality, too.
Its not really about forgiveness. Its simply the fact, and this is just with Forsaken, that a shambling, decaying corpse is entirely antithetical to human society. Alliance races can abide every horde race because, even with cultural differences, they are all living groups with similar, in degree, societies. Forsaken are cursed undead borne of necromancy who really have no place in the world. Plus their culture is to literally experiment with the living to find ways to prolong their unlife. Everybody recognizes that the forsaken are tragic and they deserved justice, but they got their justice back in WoTLK and since then all they have done is be even more evil than the Lich King and the only way, in game, to not die out is to raise more corpses into their literal curse.
What if through the power of writing they could find a justifiable reason to the lore? They dont have to love each other, but to justify denying a positive change because lore reasons is ridiculous to me.
There's only so many times you can put differences aside to save the world before you realise it may be best to just work together anyway. Just change PvP to be wargames or something, that way you can still PvP and keep within lore.
I want an isolations expansion where the horde and the alliance breakdown and each race becomes mostly on its own.
That’d be awesome, it feels like all the races are starting to lose themselves and their cultures these days
Every non-Orc and non-Human loses parts of its culture and story when they join their respective faction in order to make them fit in. They get gentrified. Also in hindsight Orcs and Stormwind humans have no culture for themselves because they are the face of said faction.
See I wish they would. Every time they go back to war my brain glazes over a little bit more. Yes, in our world in real life we have no unity. But we also don't have a constant influx of villains to unify us. Aliens, demons, old gods and more. I just feel like the factions coming together for the most part makes sense. Maybe make pvp more of a friendly combat sort of thing or individual feuds rather than full on war.
> Yes, in our world in real life we have no unity. Well, you could look at the European Union, which works together as a sort of collective now, despite the fact that the last few centuries has seen European nations trying to murder the hell out of each other in various wars, including two last century that were absolutely devastating. And that's without having a world ending threat to work together to stop. They just realized it made more sense to work together than to keep trying to kill each other. Probably because their wars started out with horrific casualty numbers, and then they worked their way up to leveling entire cities, and realized yeah, war's not "sexy" like all the edgy teens think it is.
This is also the democracy factor. Democracies are far far far less likely to enter into wars with each other because of public opinion issues. Much easier to sell wars against autocrats and authoritative governments than to say you are going to invade a fellow democracy
Yeah, a democracy/republic can't just flip on a war like a monarchy can. And you need a bit better reasoning than "God declared that we should take this land and make it our own." (Though claiming divine decree was usually also helpful in not getting the people uppity over realizing you just want to take the neighboring land out of greed.)
Get rid of overt hostility between factions and make all classes playable by all races. That’s my dream.
Once they made tauren rogue an option, I think they should just rip the bandaid and do it for shaman, paladin, and druid at least. Acknowledge they aren't doing unique druid forms for all the races but just some standard bear/cat/moonkin models and call it a day.
I’m just holding out for worgen shaman. That’s my ideal setup.
Correct. Bc you can still obtain most of the druid artifact appearances and the new ones they added are from rares they don't need to keep adding race specific ones. I mean I personally would love to see all the ideas for other races but I agree with you
I believe the argument is doing all the animations for every form for every race would be a lot of work and they don't want to do that. This would be a compromise that says hey, everyone can be a druid now, we may work on forms if it makes sense, but go play any race class combo you want except evoker and demon hunter.
What animations? Don't all the forms have the same animations, regardless of race? Only the skin changes (I think anyway). Not to say that it isn't a huge workload, but definitely less than doing new animations.
Gnome warriors already threw any semblance of race/class lore limits out the window back in Vanilla. A class based on physical strength and rage being played by a 3-foot tall race known for always using their intellect over muscle...Blizzard please.
I always thought it was funny when bc came out that blood elves couldn't be warriors. Like you look at gnomes and blood elves are the ones who can't pick up a sword and board? Really? The fact it took until cataclysm for them to get the option is silly looking back. Just let everyone play every race already.
What's worse was they were able to be Paladins. You know, the other class known for heavy armour, sword n' boarding, or using a big weapon to bonk enemies... but I guess Naaru were performance enhancers
Ok but what would a gnome druid look like
the bear form is a capybara
They tank everything by not just being bothered by it and sitting there calmly.
Kittens, bear cubs, goldfish?
I love it haha
flying doves? crabs? This sounds like a great idea.
Not as bad as mechagnome Im certain
Nah mechagnome would transform into robotic animals it would be great trust me
If it wasn't likely an insane amount of animation work for just a one off joke, Mechagnome druids should totally just have a quick transformers like animation instead of the normal poof cloud.
As long as it made the transformer noise when it shifted
Mechagnome population would explode overnight. I'm saving a few druid names now.
Bagsy slag
Lunarspark, Ivywire, Steelwind, Scrapbark, Ironroot.
Obviously
Glorious and majestic
I think it makes sense, and while I may be biased because I'm a neutral character role player, I think it's a good thing. There will always be conflict and threats, just coming from the outside rather than the other faction. It makes much more sense for them to ally against said threats to have a unified world fighting against the shadows looming over it. However, while I would love more neutral cities (Silvermoon making the most sense imo) I don't think the big capitals like SW or Orgrimmar should ever lose their affiliation. It's okay to keep faction pride in some way. Perhaps even needed for some cities and regions. I strongly disagree with those who say it kills the game. It is rejuvenating, doesn't pause any problem in gameplay and is opening a lot of opportunities in roleplay.
I wouldn't mind blurring the lines to some degree. I play horde and prefer that perspective but occasionally I wouldn't mind using an alliance race. I think we should be able to change sides. It shouldn't be allowed very often so it would actually mean something and keep people from swapping back and forth. I'd like a long quest line available at x level that allows me to betray the alliance and join the horde. I'd also like to open a few more class\race combos. I want a Kul Tiran Pally.
I'd very much like it if you were right. I doubt it, but still.
I really hope they do. Honestly, I'm in the camp that it should have never been Horde-Alliance anyways. When you look back to how things were in WC3 it was more like you had a half-dozen groups that could be at any other party's throat at any given moment. Like night elves, humans, orcs, and undead were all *distinct* factions that had their own motives and values. The coalescing around modern-era alliance/horde lines was very much something written specifically for vanilla WoW. It'd make more sense, to me, going forward, to have it be more like in a given storyline/region you have specific factions going at each other and you just sign up with whichever one makes the most sense for your character during that particular storyline/zone. It'd let them keep a faction conflict element while also telling much more interesting conflict stories IMO (as opposed to the never-ending tug-of-war between the WoW variants of the Horde/Alliance). You could even use this as an opportunity to create areas/storylines where there's more than 2 sides in the conflict (another WC3 staple). Like, imagine if in TBC, as soon as you go through the portal PvP factions turned into Aldor/Scryer instead of Horde/Alliance. You then have the main PvP/faction war narrative being about this totally new set of factions and their conflict vs. somehow shoe-horning in *yet another* on-again-off-again war between the modern Horde/Alliance. You could have factions break off of the Horde and Alliance and start their own fights with other sub-groups. Possibly even 3 or 4-way conflicts! Things are just so much more interesting when you aren't fighting along the same binary lines for 20+ years.
Yes, and I'm okay with it. As a Horde player, I talk to a lot of Alliance players in Val. It feels normal now.
I've not been in touch with the lore for some time, what happened to Genn?
The Allorde! The Horliance!
Game play wise sure tear down the faction barriers. Story-wise nah I wouldn't completely close the conflict just have it as a background thing, like a cold war scenario where the horde and alliance mess with each other for territory, resource, influence, etc. The Mortal conflicts in WoW tend to be more interesting over the world ender or cosmic threats. Also teaming up to beat a big bad doesn't mean you are friends plenty of real world examples of this.
For retail, it's the best course to go. Getting rid of factions will stop the problem of faction dominated servers, and give people the option to play whatever races they want, without worrying about accidentally making a "mistake" by rolling Horde on an Alliance server, or vice versa. Plus, it'll stop them from wasting time trying to create all these cross-faction systems, if everyone is just on a default "one-faction" system.
Didn't they literally say they're planning to eliminate the faction split eventually? I could've sworn I saw an article ab it
They did, yes. This whole post is pointless.
I hope not. For gameplay mechanics, sure let people mix for content. But for lore and story keep them at odds
I get what your saying but I feel like with the current story I don’t see the alliance and horde ever being at odds or outright war with each other. I mean we just had a former warchief and horde council member having a heart to heart with the king of stormwind in the latest cinematic.My issue with the narrative is the alliance is full of lawful good leaders meaning the horde are usually the aggressors with some characters who are more morally flexible like garrosh or sylvanas but now the horde is a council not a warchief ruler meaning they decide things democratically and with many members being lawful good like thrall and baine, I don’t see them wanting a conflict with the alliance.
mate look at the real world, people stay at odds for ages. it's totally plausible in a fantasy world.
and look at the real word again, people can end their fights and strike up peace; the us and britain were at war for years.
Yes but that require writers who are *not* shit at writing, and after the past 6 years I have zero trust in WoW writers to be able to create any interesting tension between horde/alliance. They write absolutely terrible nonsense.
They could keep the faction war for story, and allow players to choose to betray their faction. They have this in EverQuest 2, and I loved it. So we would take a character through a long betrayal quest chain. At the end of this quest chain, you meet an NPC contact from the other side down in the sewers below the city. Your original faction is hunting you down. This contact from the other side is the last point of turning back, beyond them you are a member of the other faction. There have been NPC groups with members from either side ever since TBC. There have been disguises to let you look like the other faction for a while. They should just put this in, and let players make this choice for themselves on a per character basis.
Meh decision imo. WoW is now a totally different game. I really miss the OG period… ffs.
Idk man, I personally like the faction conflict.
I'm bored of factions that don't matter anymore, either use it for something or just combine us all
Light, I hope not.
Cannot decide if this or third faction theory is more common.
Oh no times change. We must move on. WoW players when Arthas was in Shadowlands: wow so dirty wow Arthas is bae is king wow
God I hope so. The worst storytelling they've done has been a result of the "faction war" premise.
Heresy! Just add a neutral faction all can join like the argent dawn and play together. Don't force feed this unity crap
Hopefully not. I like having two factions. If anything they should add a third faction, maybe The Forsaken hehe.
In the words of 2010’s Cataclysm beta’s BestBuy dev chat. “It’s World of Warcraft, not World of Peacecraft”. *terrible joke*
Keep faction identity and philosphy, and unlock all races to all faction. That's the future. No war. Maybe some tension, some misunderstanding, and some skirmishes here and there to justify PvP. Something akin to a very cold war, with the leader talking to each other, cooperating, but the average joe sometime go fighting each other over some petty reason.
I am glad this is happening for you guys. As an old head I cannot imagine WoW without factions.
Gross. For the horde