Couldn’t Activision Blizzard write a expansion that would have a different narrative for both factions.
Because it’s clear for me that factions wars and going to fight a big bad guy together, need to be given a break.
For the Alliance:
They go and explore a different place as they did in BfA with Kul-Tyras.
I loved when Katherine was hugging Jaina in the last cinematic moments.
For the Horde:
Civil war.
The three initial seconds of the cinematic made me love the Zandalari and wanting to find more about Zul and Rastakhan, conflict.
Because it seems the main problems so far is:
When both factions quest together, example: WoD and Legion, everyone complains who got the most representation.
Being WoD labeled as Horde expansion, while Legion a Alliance expansion.
When there’s a war expansion there’s even more complains, none wants to be on the losing side, everyone wants to dance on top of the opponent capital.
Which is impossible.
My first reaction was questioning why you would need to have two factions with costily created, different content at all, when you’re not going to pit them against each other. Just seems like a waste of ressources.
But I would actually prefer to have a story that unabashedly dealt with Alliance problems to a neutral or war story and I could imagine many would feel the same.
So in the short term? Yes, that doesn’t sound bad. But in the long term…, I’m not sure if the factions are still worth it, if you do it like that.
I am in the minority here but I feel like this needs to be said.
Winning and losing isn’t everything in the story, it isn’t about your side losing, about what you lose and vice-versa. It is about the journey of the story, not just the outcome.
I mean sure, it is nice to be the winner in just about anything and everyone has their own biases on who they want to see succeed and fail. But for me at least I just want it to be a good story first and foremost (altho’ I will admit I also have my biases and who I would like to see win and lose).
After shall we say a expansion like BfA the factions go back to their homes to rebuild what was destroyed.
It would serve as a rest period.
Exploring your own faction lore and learning more about your race.
In example there’s 7 Human kingdoms, which the Alliance currently holds 2.
The Alliance could go and rebuilt Gilneas, since none lives there.
For Horde, civil war between chaos and neutral.
Like Zul Vs Rastakhan.
As Horde is more prone to in fights than Alliance.
Based on Zandalari cinematic.
I certainly don’t care about winning or losing wars. Not even characters. But when they try to make damages recieved stick by taking territories or destroying cities, it’s not worth it to me. I have zero fun in seeing places I liked destroyed and unusable.
I think depends on the context they do it in, how it is done and the ramifications of them doing it is. I will admit doing this in a MMO can be pretty bad (and WoW’s examples of doing this have mostly ranged from meh to awful) but the premise of it can work.
I like seeing the world evolving, see places rise and fall and the devastation of the land after a battle/war has been waging on in that area. And from that what stories can be told, how certain characters would react and so on.
And my WoW-experience taught me… that I don’t. I might have agreed in principle once, but after living through it enough times… no, it was never ever worth it for me.
It’s a good idea in theory, but updating the world and new models and questchains to make the world appear dynamic and affected by the in-universe events is more work than it’s worth.
There should always be at least some faction content. Everything except about a quarter of Stormheim being neutral in Legion felt really boring to me. Of course it also depends on what the next expansion is.
If, for example, we get the Dragon Isles next, it would make sense that more content would be neutral-oriented. There’s no need to assign the dragonflights to our already bloated factions.
But if the next expansion will be Lich King 2.0, I’d say the story should be different for each faction, with Alliance’s charge being led by the Silver Hand/some other umbrella Lordaeron organization while the horde gets to explore what does it mean to be a post-Sylvanas forsaken.
And the central hubs should be different too. In an expansion with a more neutral approach, like the aforementioned Dragon Isles, something akin to the MoP shrines would work just fine, but in case of LK 2.0 I’d say Alliance should get an updated Dalaran, while the Horde can get updated flying Silvermoon, or a part of it.
I don’t think there needs to be a Victor personally and hostilities should remain both sides out for the others head, why would there be the need for a conclusion?
That’s my biggest headache with this War atm: the expectations of a sole winner, when there needs to be none.
Though as I’ve said before I do not mind losing, if it is told in a believeable manner Beyond Characters that makes you question: Why do we have Armies??
Now Blizzard is already givining different Stories and that is what makes it so, stupid.
Let us take Gron the giant white Ape.
He only exists for the Alliance and Story the Horde got was Hostile apes, made a treaty with the more peaceful ones after killing their King.
The Alliance goes there and bam, big white ape is here and he hates the Horde.
Let me draw another Example: the bloody Vampires oh and let us not forget the Ekstra Tide Sages which also do not exist for the Horde Story.
Thomas Zelling was the only Tide-sage raised and there was no Bloody Vampires from Ice Crown yet once more They exist for the Alliance.