I love how people want full blown faction war but what they want is just healthy faction conflict.
Then we have the revisionists on the other side that claim the factions were always friendly and working together.
They were! When they had to.
The same way America and the Russians worked together to beat Germany.
Does this mean they were friends? No, they were in a cold war and had conflicts with eachother.
The same thing is the Horde and the Alliance.
The Horde and the Alliance have been hostile to eachother since the first day World of Warcraft launched. Even if you played on a PvE server you probably participated in quests involving faction-aligned NPCs being murdered.
As an example, the Kul’tiran troops present in Durotar are hostile to the Horde but friendly to the Alliance.
Not really though. You can have conflict, i.e. bickering, insults, underhanded means of robbing the other faction of their goals, without resorting to actual warfare. Turalyon and Geya’rah are seen loudly bickering about whose soldiers are the finest, which is in itself a degree of verbal conflict, but they didn’t draw steel on one another.
That scene was cool, while the time for all-out faction war has passed (Both in lore and practically for the game), i do believe Horde and Alliance work too well together, too quickly (When DF hit, we were suddenly best friends), give me faction friction, disagreements about methods, and generally more Horde NPCs, the faction is highly under-represented in TWW so far.
People from the opposite side don’t forget or forgive said war crimes 2 years later when a new expansion drops, like it never happened, just because some new threat has appeared
Now that would make for a compelling story to follow.
It’s not going to happen though.
Blizzard hired a bunch of softies in their writing team, the game is now all about friendship, overcoming differences, working together, and all that boring stuff that nobody cares about.
The conflict will always be there but yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna wage full blown war against eachother anymore which is cool. Being a Druid main for such a long time made me think anti-warlike. I’m not talking about going against my Druid brothers and sisters in battleground conditions but lore-wise I personally am against war.
No, this has nothing to do with softies, and we’ve already discussed the topic umpteen times why it won’t come back and why it doesn’t make sense, and I don’t want to keep repeating myself like a broken record.
And Blizzard will not destroy a capital again, because it was sooooo well received by Darnasus (and untercity) in Bfa…
That’s because of Blizzard’s bad storytelling.
There was a timeskip, but we as players didn’t experience any such thing. So it felt ‘too quick’ but it was actually several years later.
Tje faction war after Legion havent make sense, right after the biggest demon incursions in azeroth since the 3th. War, which hut bith faction hard…and then after wok together…yeah again war it is
With which Ressourcen and manpower do they fight since ita completely depleted with bfa.
Don’t you belive people git war tired because the leadership wage war for some lines on a map, thro generation of generation in the meat grinder.
Legion was pathetic as far a making us feel like the threat was real.
“Biggest Legion incursion”? Lmao, they didn’t succeed at invading the Broken Isles, an isolated patch of islands with barely any military power to defend it. The Legion achieved nothing after the initial assault where Varian and Vol’jin died, which was the only point in the entire expansion where they truly felt like a threat.
These Void and Light storyline should be dropped honestly. One dimensional vilains aren’t interesting.
Wouldn’t mind a story where some people from the Alliance/Horde are not being fully okay with the truce (businessmen, warmongers, veterans, glory hounds) and form a group to subtly undermine and sabotage the fragile peace - Either through manipulation, speeches and agitating the other side through deliberate miscommunication in their own ranks.
But one cannot just grab and throw those into jail, as they are of influence and power, so one has to delicately put up some detective work (over the course of a few patches so that setting settles in on the player) and carefully peel the conspiracy open like a onion to see the whole plot of it and what truly motivated those people to turn like this.
I liked the idea of being able to choose your allegiance during the Varok Surkål/elf- BBQ quest chain. Too bad it didn’t really go anywhere and they dropped the concept like a hot potato after that.
But it would be a really neat way to do faction conflict. The main story could still be the everyone is bestest of buddies saving the world against the big baddies. But have optional arcs in the story that unlocks covert/scheming faction rival quests and lore arcs for player characters that might not blindly follow whatever the main lore characters believe.
Could even have (if the writers are clever enough for it) story lines where you actively side with the big baddies and do their bidding in secret. Say for example from the perspective of a player picking the “good path” evil cultists summon forth a big bad boss that wants to destroy azeroth and you go fight it but if you picked the “evil path” you side with the evil cultist that infiltrate the horde/alliance and your quests revolve around summoning the big baddie to azeroth.
It would allow the writers to explore more nuanced and interesting plots while giving players a more interesting choice in who their characters are.
I did enjoy the Guild Wars 2 approach on that, because they added story instances for such kind of things - Completely detached from anything else, so that story gets its own environment and all to interact with. And nothing breaks due to silly phasing.
And catching them would be the ideal solution. However, I believe having some escape or even die would intensify the plot, as those could further show how far those are willing (or desperate enough) to go in order to push for war again and even considering their deaths as a ‘Plan C’ to let you have to deal with the massive fallout that comes with this.
Of course, that requires Blizzard not to Disney-fy these moments ‘with the power of friendship and family’, and instead come as serious issues that need thoroughly checked out and talked about.
The thing is when you want those all out war where the factions actually achiev something like taking over a city or destroying a city you need to cut us players from tha factions.
Ask the alliance how it feels to loose a city cause the story needed you to loose.
When it’s just npcs it doesn’t matter but when there are players involved it ofcourse will make them feel bad.
Make us mercs that work for both sides and then pump the conflict up.
That can also explain how we fight the big bad evils. The factions aren’t working together against them but both are funding the adventurers that defeat the evil.
Its us that do the work anyway. It’s not like jaina showers up and uses her incredible might for anything
The game needs to reflect how we play IMO. So as my guild is full of Horde and Alliance, it makes zero sense for us to be at war with each other. We do M plus together, we raid together etc. The game needs to move forward, not backwards into faction conflict.
I’d rather see them fully embrace the cross faction system and allow us to do auto queue content together without needing a full premade group.