Expansions, patterns and repetitions

[Amazoner-kul-tiras]

A few months ago, I made this thread:

Can lore dictate faction balance ?

Hello Everyone. I apologize, for the third thread I am creating today. But I am very interested in creating another topic, after a discussion in another thread. In your opinion: Does lore, dictate player balance ? I mean does the fact, the lore dictates a faction to be chaotic and other to be lawfull, has any influence on peoples choice ? I mean not only our case, but the player population in general. Or is PVE and PvP aspects of the game, more important ? Consider A faction as chaotic, B fac…

@Zarao-colinas-pardas

Gameplay trumps lore almost every time.

The majority of players will gravitate towards what they consider cool, OP regarding pvp and/or pve, or a combination of both.

And:

@Arctur-argent-dawn

Generally the Alliance and Horde have roughly the same population, but in the 120 level tier (which is the only one that matters, let’s be real), the Horde has much more players than the Alliance. That’s because it is clear by now that the Horde has much better racials, hence why most players gravitate towards the Horde for the end-game content, and indeed only the Mythic scene is dominated by Horde guilds right now. So if you play this game with the mindset of “I want to clear raids and succeed in PvP”, then obviously you will most likely go Horde, since its racials are vastly superior. it is therefore not a surprise that Horde queues for Battlegrounds are also generally much longer than Alliance, and that Alliance players in War Mode are usually as rare as Gnomish presence in the lore. Lore plays no role here.

From this analysis, why would Activision Blizzard, change the lore setup ?
When gameplay, trumps the lore ?

• BfA was marked as the fastest selling expansion.
• Legion, was considered to not have surpassed WoD in terms of profits.
• WoD was considered a selling success.

So there you go.
If lore was important, I think they would had already done something about it, like changing their pattern setup, but they don’t.
Because it isn’t, they just stick to their patterns.

I always suspected, why a prized New York writter as Christie Golden, would come with such a unoriginal writing.
I mean we already had the villain Warchief narrative in Cataclysm …

Now it makes sense if she is being given a set of rules she can’t move away from.
And this has already been suggested by other players.
When they said she can’t be responsible for the entire BfA story.
Surely she can be responsible for writing Anduin as being wiser than his years and the saviour of Azeroth,but that’s about it.
That is pattern 3:

@Amazoner-kul-tiras

Pattern 3 Cataclysm and BfA.

• Villain Warchief coming actually in power.
• Historically the Alliance and the Horde were in conflict during the first and second war for Azeroth control.
  I see this type of expansions as a celebration to that theme.
  “Bringing Warcraft to it’s roots.” said one of the developers.
• War on the Alliance.
• Azeroth as the scenario, for the war.
• Use of weapons to massively turn the battle in Horde favour during a battle, but considered dishonourable.
• War crimes: no respect for civilians.
• The growing disrespect for the Warchiefs actions leading to open rebellion.
  Introduction of new races that usually have bad blood with the opposite faction:
  Cataclysm: Goblins and Worgen.
  BfA: Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren, Zandalari, Void Elves, Lightforgef Draenei and Kul-Tyrans (For now).

For me this what I wanted:

@Aepher-azjolnerub

I don’t know if Blizzard has the balls to do it, but I would love it if they made an anti-hero faction. I’m pretty sure many of us would love to be able to join the actual dark side.
That way there will be no more complaints that the Horde should be less like this and more like that. No need to mix incompatible races anymore. I’m pretty sure that, objectively speaking, the Tauren have more things in common with the Night Elves than they do with the Goblins or the Forsaken(Cenarion Circle, anyone?).

But considering the 4 patterns they use in the expansions, I don’t see that happening.

There is hope, for me at least.

It is being discussed in General Forum that Warmode is revealing to be unbalanced, because of faction population.

Horde and Alliance may come together as one faction.
So that PVP works not as in Battlegrounds, where you have Horde Vs Alliance.
But like Arenas, where you can fight your own faction.
This would allow dungeon time queues to be lowered, with crossfaction queues as well.

Also regarding the four patterns it would allow a civil war in pattern 3 to happen more easily and to pattern 1 and 2 to happen even more easily, Horde and Alliance working together.
Pattern 1, going through the dark portal, with Kadgar, WoD cinematic anyone ?
Pattern 2, fighting together Legion forces which ultimately results in military disaster.
Wrathgrate and Broke shore anyone ?

Why ?
Image the new United Nations of Azeroth having to deal with internal conflicts all the time.
It always ends Alliance and Horde rebels Vs villain Warchief.

And:
Now the Alliance faction can be portrayed in more cinematics as they are now part of the Horde.

That’s just my thoughts.

Cheers.