Factions need to go, kinda

Community General Discussion
87

But compare the two games, the systems.

I RP green dragon, that is part of Cenarion Circle, but I have no means to show it.

While you can play as Dark Jedi from like fifth quest with the padawans? You have the build up. And then I joined the Empire, it was not really a surprise, was it? Given all my past decisions, but you have it in the game, in WoW you do not.

Add it to WoW, but do not dimish/ignore/delete past actions, the whole story, it is here to stay.

Usinf real history, ok, but I still have to ask you, if it is even slightly believable, that I use real life example (sorry for any people this might upset), but it is like Germany would still stay the same as in WWII (the Na** word is not allowed) and Jewish would like to join them. There are still the same races in the Horde and the same members and leaders, who just let this all happen.

I am atually really sorry for this example :confused:

Yes, ofc, multiple I have said I’d like this, but you cannot ignore the past, well if the next exp is one millenium away from the last one, maybe you could X)

Yet, you fail, you live in your own small universe, I do not criticise you, but the game shows something different.

This thread is about dissolving the differences/barriers between factions.

If you (your char) want to fight for peace, do not want another faction war, that it is all I was asking for and I do not understand why we have this conversation.

But most of the players want e.g. Night elves/Darves on the Horde side, BE/Tauren on the Alliance’s. Maybe it is a misunderstanding between us then?

The most common thing let my X race join A/B faction…

Haven’t I made enough posts about how I would not mind additional faction/s? Even the post you are answering to is clearly this way (English is clearly not my first language, so maybe it is my fault)

This I can agree on! Although I am still waiting for some green dragon toy X)

89

Look things aren’t really that complicated.
If it came down to coming up with an in-game excuse for why a traditional alliance race went to the horde or became neutral, blizzard could write it. And make it convincing in the mean time. Give me a storyline with a character like Garithos. Show me a horde good guy and a neutral guy. Give me a climax to the storyline and a choice to pick a side at the end. Big bam boom you have your pretty damn convincing excuse in game.
Times change after all. People change. The Blood elves left the alliance once and they were a whole race. Individuals making the choice to pick different sides should be waaaaay easier to pull off.

The bottom line is that even if you cut out the lore out of this. The game has too few choices to save its life. Never mind picking sides. As an RPG it lacks immensely. But again. Suppose I could see that in some extent pulling off the lore part is hard(it’s not). There is still no excuse why the faction barrier is such a restrictive system.

90

You take it from the wrong end, I want this to be added, but whenever I try to have this conversation, players tell me how would they change XY, how their char would do etc.

I am pretty sure I did not miss anything in your posts, but we are going in circles, maybe it is my fault, if that is the case I am sorry, lecture me, I do not mind.

I want many things to be added, just tell me how to deal with the WoW story so far.

If this was Vanilla WoW, yeah we could do so much, alter, but you cannot ignore what has happened, well, you can, if there is a good, believable way to do it.

I know I am repetitive, but you can RP almost anything, if you want this to be added, yeah, but do you want all the past actions to be altered, to have more choices etc.
You can clearly feel, that most of RP choices are just in the mind of the players, what is the way how to make all these choices to go naturally with the story so far?

You are just mad, sorry, there are key things that happened, if you choose to ignore them, fine, but how it could wotk for anyone else?

I was always a supporter for more factions, NE - based, something like The Guard (stupid, I know)

No, you are taking it from the wrong end, I do not know how else I should write this, honestly. I want you to prove me wrong. Do it, will apologize if I made a mistake or if I did not understand you correctly.

91

The thing is how would that work? Yes, Garithos was insanely racist but only against Blood elves.

Yeah, Ne attacking Blood elves was not really convincing to be honest, if it were humans, then yeah.

We are still going in circles, what do you actually want? More factions? All races to pick any faction they want, any that gives sense?

I have been dealing with this so much that I can’t really be sure what’s the deal.

92

It was an opinion.
Gameplay-wise makes sense to merge factions? No.
Blizzard will abandon the successful idea of Faction War and take a risk of making someone choose a faction? I doubt it.

It doesn’t mean I cannot like the idea of neutral characters or choosing a side freely.

That’s what good writers should do, they should keep things dynamic and interesting. I’m not a writer, I cannot give you a fascinating answer.

I dislike Bfa plot and all this faction nonsense, feels inconsistent and incredibly tedious, characters actions feel force and misleading just to justify a Faction War.

To be honest and clear here, I think Bfa was made around marketing rather than good writing and keeping things lorewise.

Bfa at launch was an enormous success with 3.4 millions copies sold first day; it wasn’t because lorewise would make sense, it was because they wanted to increase their income after a successful expansion and bump sales.
It’s all “just because reasons”. I’ll not defend that kind of writing, and no that’s not good nor believable story (again that’s my opinion).

I think at this point factions don’t make much sense. For example the vast majority of players think that Horde is “Blood and Thunder, although I’m a Blood elf”, that’s not how it works.
For me factions have the purpose of making allies with other races to defend their territory, it’s just a political convenience.

Why a Night elf would still Alliance if Anduin refuses to help Night elves? It’s not a good political decision if you ask me.
Why would a Night elf join the Horde after seeing that Orcs didn’t respect their territory? They wouldn’t.
That’s when your character should be able to choose a faction, your characters should decides if he/she wants to ignore things that happened in the past or ignore things that are happening now.

PS: Sorry for my English. Edit: typo.

4 Likes
93

Caylia summed it up neatly. But I’ll try to do it too. We want options basically.
From a gameplay stand point we want the option to play the race we like on content like dungeons raids and the like with our friends. No matter the faction we play .
We also want characters that aren’t simple spectators. I can’t expect large narrative arcs like other games. But we need more choices in who we are and what we do.

From a story stand point we want a less constrained form of writing. Being forced to tell stories from two very specific narrative windows limits what blizzard can do and the deeper the lore gets the messier such stories end up being.
To highlight this I’ll bring you an example. Take the whole legion expansion who was faction blind for the most part. Imagine how that storyline would have ended up if blizzard tried to make two variants.
Imagine how much lower the quality would be in a questline like suramar if they had to justify the same story for the two factions.
They didn’t do it ofcourse and that’s why that zone is one of their best.
Compare that to Narjatar that split the questline between two factions and effectively mirrored them. Now lament the potential of a story with great potential that got sacrificed on the altar of the faction narrative

3 Likes
94

And if you have read any of my post, I’d love to have more choices!. You were nearly attacking me (not you Taîc, but some did)

Where exactly have I ever said that?

I want more options, but you cannot delete the lore of an expansion or the whole WoW lore because of that.

PvE content could be done regardless of your faction i most of the cases.

And now tell me me, when exactly I am trying to sabotage that? I want more choices, but without altering already established lore.

This is not hard to get.

And now, answer me friend, who is trying to argue with you?

Faction wars should never been the case, but they were, are you going to ignore that just because you hate it?

I’d love to ignore whole War of the Thorns, but that happened, acting like it did won’t help anyone.

You know what, the whole BfA is pretty much bad, I would love to ignore it, but what is done is done. We can only hope for better tomorrows.

95

None of us advocated for deleting the lore mate. That’s why you got aggressive responses. You keep missing that point.
We want the lore and our characters to evolve and grow.
The way things are now the lore is going in circles. Characters don’t evolve or grow. Some times they regress. But they do so unnaturally too. Out of character. Because they need to fill the roles the overarching, stagnant story needs them to fulfill.
I brought up Turalion as such an example on my OP

96

Nobody is attacking you.
Everyone here is discussing and expressing their -own- opinions.

When a writer writes something it’ll always affect the story, stories should have consequences.

As I said, stagnation is the nightmare of a writer. It limits creativity, new points of views and interesting progression.
I’m not saying it shouldn’t be any bound but they should implement something in order to keep the story alive.
When a character forgives past experiences and tragedies there’s a development of the story.

3 Likes
97

Yeah I know that, but that isn’t a hint or a solid point lol

98

I didn’t mean I want to separate the story and world, I meant that in my vision the story and in the world the faction are still distinct and at odds but they are still ways to play wiith the opposite.

So in my perfect world the factions would still exist and be separated in the story and world because people Don’t want to be part of one faction for the most part while you will still able to group with players from the other faction and guilds will be cross factions but if you enter Orgrimmar as a Night Elf you are getting smacked.

1 Like
99

How exactly being in a bg or raid with alliance players appearing as hordes on your screen mish mash the factions exactly ? Look at merc mode, you probably killed felow hordes in bgs and you didn’t even knew they were hordes mercing.

2 Likes
100

No thx. I am all for factions i play horde. I do not wish to play Alliance or play whit Alliance. Mercenary should have a big sign above there head so we can single them out if thy go from horde to Alliance. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: not that i do alot of pvp these days.
If thy would make a neutral faction it would be verry hard to implement imo. Where you gone start ? What questlines are you gone do? A neutral faction would be a third faction i can hardly see a neutral faction ingame because it would be imposible todo all the quests and questlines from both sides. What are you going todo whit the incursions from BFA, will you att the horde or the Alliance or both ? Would you be neutral if you choose 1 over the other ? would you be able todo both ? etc etc the problems will go on and on.

101

Just get straight to the point and roll Horde already. We all know that’s what this is really about :smile_cat:

Vulpera are here, there’s never been a better time!

102

I have an ultimate solution for this.
Lets Ask Blizzard to do teh same thing what ZOS did with ESO. Faction wars will remain in PVP while in pve you can both team up and play together. Done.

6 Likes
103

I think factions should still be a thing, races should be locked to factions, but that’s about it. Once you’ve made an orc or a human, to set an example, you could just take the neccesary travelling methods and go to just about any major settlement, whether it be Horde or Alliance, and start questing.
Needless to say though, this would require yet another world-wide overhaul of quests to emphasize that the two factions are no longer warring.

2 Likes
104

yes sir, more PUG grps

105

In BFA:
Player A: works for his faction. He is engaged in conflict.

Player B: works for Magni.
He doesn’t support conflict, tries to heal Azeroth.

Player A: is hostile to the opposing faction.
Can participate in Warmode.
Can’t queue as mercenary.
Player B: doesn’t take part in any kind of world PVP, as he doesn’t stand for faction conflict.
Can queue as mercenary if he wants, as he believes balance is important, for Azeroth.
He will join the faction that is in worst situation.
Can queue for arena.

Player A: faction quests.

Player B: Magni quests.

Just access to his faction city, he’s still treated as hostile to the opposite faction.

Basically player A likes faction system, loves conflict, doesn’t give two cents for Azeroth, Khadgar or Magni.

Player B: doesn’t agree on faction conflict.
Puts Azeroth above his faction, interests.
Works for Magni or Khadgar.

In BFA could had been translated in:
While some players try to win the faction war, others try to save Azeroth and stay away from conflict.

Also when player B queues for LFR, LFD he joins the side that has less players.
If his friend wishes to player B to join for his Mithic + group, he gets a disguise and none in the party knows he is a opposing faction player.
That option is not available for player A.

Honestly as Horde player I never understood why someone who works with Magni serves Sylvanas and her Azerite war machine.

Do I believe this will ever be possible ?
Honestly: no.

Why ?
Activision Blizzard is obsessed with their PVP game.
Here’s a prime example:
When Warmode was introduced, I thought we would have either PVP mode or PVE mode.
I was wrong.

In reality you have three modes.

  • Warmode off.
  • Warmode on.
  • PVP flagged.

They still kept PVP flagged even with Warmode off.
If you do your war campaign and not be careful you can hit a PVP flagged NPC and become PVP enabled.

First taste I got from this third mode, was when I was questing a year ago in Nazmir with my BE paladin, from my other account.
Got hit by a arrow coming out of no where, got PVP enabled, got trapped surrounded by 4-5 Alliance NPC’S and a Alliance player with PVP enabled and got killed.

Lesson learned:

  • Even though you are in Zandalar territory, you have to keep attention to Alliance presence even with Warmode off.
  • Put the hearthstone next to your blessing of protection and HS out as soon as you are in trouble.

Needless to say, the War campaign remained on the shelf, since that day.
For two reasons:

  • Nathanos Blightcaller (can’t stand him).
  • PVP enabled. (Didn’t join a PVE server for this crap).

That’s my opinion.
Cheers.

106

Agree completely.

Faction imbalance problem becomes worse and worse with time. People already complain of worse pvp experience on Alliance, they complain for a few years. If the issue is not addressed, one day it will affect PVE.

There simply will be less and less people to play with. While cross realm by now solves the issue and now we want to play with horde friends, later on it will stop solving it and we will not have people even to PUG with. This might sound too extreme, but if faction imbalance continues to be ignored, at certain hours there might not be enough Alliance players to join pugs. Not even talking about tanks and healers - players in general.

If Blizzard are planning to continue with overal more appealing Horde story and better allied races, then they should act on faction imbalance and give a cross faction option for PVE. Now, not when it’s too late.

1 Like
107

I’m more than happy for Mercing to be removed but it’s equivalent in PvE would be LFR and LFD. Not any PUG content.