Faction tagging mobs should be war mode only. At least then there’s a solution…
Real talk though I feel it should be player choice as to whether or not to engage with the opposite faction. The two factions have “put their differences aside” so often it’s become a meme, to me the game hasn’t been properly about AvH for years. It’s sorta there… in the background when the Lich King/Death Wing/Etc is wrecking the planet. BfA attempted to put a focus on the war but just like MoP which had the exact same premise, it lasted maybe two patches before they went back to ol’ reliable.
If people want to snap orc necks, they’re welcome to. That’s what PvP (and RP) content is there for imo. My biggest beef with BfA is it made it non-optional, and it sucked in all my RP characters like a black hole where I simply can’t rationalise my Alliance characters not joining the war and why my good-aligned Horde characters would be in favour of it. Biggest part of why I unsubbed after 8.1 until 8.3.
OT: Ye I’d say the potion is a good thing. We demanded it after all. It only came about because Blizzard broke Cross RP and we literally rioted in the EU QnA thread which basically forced them to acknowledge it. It’s not the dropping of the language barrier I wanted exactly but it’s the next best thing.
Awh come on, as early as Warcraft 3 the finale followed a theme of “Together we are stronger”, and every expansion since besides maybe MoP has ended on that note. BFA was the “war expansion”, but the war was very much portrayed as a bad thing that most characters didn’t want any involvement in. And post-BFA, the faction lines are so blurred that I have to wonder what being a member means anymore, in a political sense.
As an Alliance-main, I go to Oribos, and every Horde faction leader there is green (friendly); and the leaders all refer to each other as “friends”. Unless this is a commentary on friendly higher-up leaders pitting their citizens against one another for profit, I doubt the faction system will be anything but a dated game mechanic post-BFA, especially when we consider Shadowlands is the first expansion maybe ever to have an identical levelling experience regardless of faction.
Faction pride was a thing, but nowadays most faction conversations rely on how imbalanced the two are, either in terms of racials or population. No MMO released tomorrow would get away with “half the game’s population is entirely locked away from your interaction, and that’s a feature”.
Less Horde, Less Alliance, more independent racial narratives and conflicts. Hell, as early as vanilla and BC, races that joined either faction were heavily homogenized to fit the Red or Blue blend (Night Elves, Undead, Blood Elves). It’s been silly since 2004, and by 2021, I don’t think this game has the population to keep having every server split in two. ESO released One Tamriel five years ago, and ESO got a lot better for it. The death of faction doesn’t need to be the death of PvP, not when this would allow battlegrounds with far more interesting dynamics than an old grudge.
I want them to double down on faction war, not dillute it. Give me a grimdsrk warcraft 40k- esque narrative where both sides genocide one another left and right and all hope of pure, good souls and people are trumped aside by characters whose intentions are good but they use it to justify a whole lot of questionable stuff.
Back in early BFA, when it was clearly the Horde was going to be split in two again (and I was still maining Mogi), I considered having Mogi be a Sylvanas loyalist; for the sake of the fact he’d already lived through one revolution already and lost so much.
But, Blizzard hit home to us repeatedly that the loyalist were objectively wrong and potentially comprised solely of orcs and undead, and that to play one meant you were playing against the narrative rather than alongside it.
I wouldn’t be anti-factions if Blizzard weren’t anti-factions. The story team and game design team are seemingly at odds, because the storyline has been broadly “anti-war” since, what, maybe MoP? Earlier? BFA wasn’t a faction pride expansion; the war was portrayed as an embarrassment and a mortal low-point of everyone involved. It was like an anti-Vietnam film in its storybeats.
honestly most of the war was fine, it’s also a rare war in WoW that actually got results. Problem was that 90% of the war was actually just spend cleaning up domestic issues or sailing over to the supposedly enemy neighbours to clean up their domestic issues, and then beating up some squid and fish people and an old god
A logical step from the constant world-wracking calamities that should affect the soil, crops and the livelihoods of veryone on Azeroth, where resources become scarce at one point. A state of Azeroth where there simply isn’t enough arable land, oil or minerals to sustain both factions. Where the Alliance and Horde are forced to fight or otherwise face starvation and a slow downfall and not for yet another dumb mcguffin or because the Big Bad is playing 400iq chess to pit both sides against each other.
Just give us a proper war Blizzard. Not what BFA was, a proper grimdark war of attrition where even the good folks have to resort to fighting to survive.
they could even involve their favourite crutch by having it be because a united Azeroth failed to stop a big bad in time, leaving the world heavily damaged! Everyone wins.
still wish one faction would’ve definitely crushed the other in BfA.
Alliance or Horde, doesn’t really matter which to me, but I wanted a clear absolute domination victory, with enemy capitals occupied by invading armies who establish brutal martial law, and those who aren’t imprisoned or subjugated are left to flee into the wilderness to eke out an existence and dream of overthrowing the victors.
let me think nice thoughts mogi