I think the writing is on the wall that faction borders are about to be severely weakened at least. Ion has now repeatedly stated that it is very possible that cross-faction raiding is in the cards for the future, and they usually aren’t clear on such topics, if they aren’t sure about them. So… one of the easiest ways to allow for that is to get rid of the factions one way or another, at least outside of War Mode and instanced PvP. Now I am kind of interested in what way would be seen most positively here. I am not asking about what you think is likely, but about what you would personally like. So here are three ways it could, in theory, go:
Factions stay, but heroes rise above.
Really the easiest one. The factions can stay at war or not, and do their thing, or not, but the player hero isn’t concerned with these trifling squabbles anymote, thay have multiverses to save, or something like that. Neither Horde nor Alliance will stand in their way, just because of their race, so the factions are essentially neutral to them. War Mode will probably stay as a mechanic, but the story will never again acknowledge you as a soldier of your faction.
The United Nations
The factions make a real peace and now work together in all things. The factions merge to an even more global empire to do the most amount of good. Now the Alliance can feel included in the next Horde civil war, and the villain bat hits a few former Alliance characters as well, isn’t that nice?
Breaking up the factions
Yeah, not exactly likely anymore, but the factions have become monstrously big. They span absurd amounts of land, and the cultural differences between their members are way past being explained away. These constructs shouldn’t be stable. So let them fall apart, it shouldn’t be that hard to sell. We go back to nation-states that can and will act independently from one another, and can decide on war and peace with each other without involving the whole world. The player character doesn’t exactly rise above the factions, the factions fall below them. We’ll go back to an Azeroth where we have dozens of relevant nations, and the plot goes back to a story of their interactions instead of a story of main character interactions.
I am well aware that many people would never like any way of removing the factions. Let’s not talk about that here, though. Let’s take it as a given that they might go away, and choose the lesser evil, if you think it an evil. I might have missed some options to do it, and I’d be interested to see what those might be, but elsewise, I just want to get a picture of what might actually be popular with this crowd.
Had this to happen, I think 3 would be the best option by far. Races could actually benefit from it in terms of development, as they would be free of the contraints of the faction system… and would now get screen time as races rather than as soldiers. Returning to nation states could mean a lot of things. Would Tauren go back to being nomadic ? Would Orcs regain their lost clan identities (or maybe create new ones) ? What would happen to the Dwarven clans, who used to be united under the banner of the Alliance ?
My guess is that even with the Horde and Alliance down, relationships between races would echo what they were within the factions, for the most part. Kind of like what happened with the Roman Empire
If I recall correctly, in the comic “Anduin son of the wolf”, at the very end when we see Velen and Old Anduin about to fight the very last battle against the “shadows”, you can see Old Anduin is reading a document with the Alliance Lion sigil on it…(even if it looks a bit weird and not exactly the same of the sigil of Stormwind, but it could just be the drawing, it’s clearly is an Alliance symbol…) so it’s pretty much confirmation that the two factions will stick around in some shape and form until the very end, at least.
It isn’t. You’re expecting commitment to continuity again. In an interview Blizzard devs commented that this was a possible future they had thought of, not one that would necessarily happen. Also, they said that was Afrasiabi’s idea, so… yeah.
It’s not the end of factions that people want to happen. It’s being able to play with whoever we want to play with, regardless of faction, race and whatever, is what it’s all about.
And story wise? That already happened, a long, long, long time ago. NPCs always had the option to choose whether to put their differences aside or not. Any NPC. Not just our leaders, but two random soldiers in the MoP cinematic too. Or the Argent Crusade, the Earthen Ring, the Cenarion Circle, the Ebon Blade, or countless other organizations.
It’s not the story where they need to implement this, but game mechanics. The story’s already there.
Make it a gameplay only thing that works like mercenary mode or, to be more specific, BoD from BfA. If you join a group with a leader from the other faction you get flipped to that faction temporarily and see the version of that faction’s instances. World content and wpvp stays the same as now, it only works for instances.
Lore factions need to stay and we need to have another faction war as soon as possible.
Like Ancelyn said: it feels like the faction barriers were removed a long time ago. If you were to take a look at the narrative of Cataclysm or Legion and apply gameplay logic to such narratives I don’t think there’s any real “story reason” as to why an orc couldn’t team up with a human to fight for the greater good. In such a story the factions would be separate but allied.
It feels like world pvp has traditionally been in the hands of the players. In the first three expansions Blizzard attempted to create world pvp zones, but in my experience they never really got off the ground. On the contrary, on Tol Barad the players began to cooperate in order to maximize the honour gain from capturing Tol Barad (i.e. win trading). World pvp had a tendency to occur where Blizzard perhaps did not intend for it to occur, like the Isle of Quel’Danas (where the narrative was about cooperation but players did something completely different) and the Tol Barad Peninsula (not to be confused with the world pvp zone).
I have fond memories of world pvp but it has never felt like it was part of the overall story. In fact, it has often felt like a violation of the story, and even in the expansion where they put the faction conflict front and centre… well, the conflict was quickly ended and any hostilities in the world felt like non-canon. World pvp has long relied on suspension of disbelief.
So to answer the question of the original post: I think I like number 3 the most (see quote). An explanation for the dissolution of the Horde shouldn’t be hard. It’s trickier to explain why the Alliance would dissolve, but there have been many Alliances in the past that have formed and fallen for various reasons. Perhaps the factions that make up the Alliance will turn inward to more domestic struggles, prioritizing their own needs over the needs of the Alliance? That could cause the Alliance to become an Alliance in name only. When one faction calls on the aid of the others they’re met with silence?
This wouldn’t necessarily have to kill world pvp entirely. Maybe there are other factions the players can choose to join. Like with the Booty Bay Goblins and the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Siding with one will make you hostile not only to the NPCs of the opposite factions, but the players who have sided with that faction as well. It’s a small example, but hopefully you get the gist of the idea.
Dissolution of the factions is something i would personally consider a terrible idea, from the narrative standpoint and an ultimate victory of the Baine/Sadfang types everyone hates.
That said it would be perhaps more interesting if the PCs were simply free agents, who could choose the path they found most appealing or the highest bidder. At this point it’s gotten to a point, where literally anyone would be dumb not to seek the assistance of player characters, in their endavors.
If anything, rather than dissolving the factions, they should create a THIRD playable one…a faction for the Elves only would be good in my opinion , as Blood Elves and Night Elves are pretty dispassionate with the Alliance-Horde matters and quarrels like the faction wars, and they have nothing to gain from a faction war anyway, and everything to lose like it happened with the burning of Teldrassil for example…and in a new faction war the same could happen with Quel’thalas…
of course the Nightborne would likely join the new faction as well, maybe not the Void Elves though as I think Alleria would stick to the Alliance regardless of what happens, and the Void Elves would still be a threat to the Sunwell after all, and exiled from Quel’thalas
and maybe even a fourth playable faction only for playable undead as well (mainly the Forsaken but also other kinds of undead too…but that’s probably wishful thinking)
I think it would be interesting to divide the story into chunks. Blood Elves have two major connections diplomatically, which is the Nightborne, who will basically follow their lead to anything and the Forsaken, who they were tight knit with since they alone basically pulled them out of the gutter and provided major assistance in reclamation of Quel’thalas. (I really wouldn’t be a fan of them teaming up with the Darnassian Night Elves, because there is just a lot of contentious history between them. Outside maybe the token Shen’dranar.)
And stuff like that. Trolls trying to reforge the Empire of Zul, in order to avenge Rastakhan could be another example.
Yes but as usual with Sylvanas, she had a double (or even triple ) agenda about helping them in the Ghostlands…she did that not just because it was her old homeland and people, but also because she wanted them in the Horde AND she wanted to blackmail them later to join them in the fight in Northrend against the Lich King.
Indeed in my opinion after the Sunwell came back and Sylvanas blackmails the Blood Elves into joining the Horde efforts against the Scourge in Northrend (despite they just had suffered a civil war against Kael’thas and his troops), saying she would withdraw the Forsaken in the Ghostlands if they didn’t want to go, relations between Blood Elves and Forsaken feel pretty deteriorated after that point.
Probably even colder now that the Forsaken have lost Undercity, because the Forsaken refugees actually ran away and lived in Orgrimmar after that, despite Silvermoon was closer, and the climate of Quel’thalas was actually better than the one of Durotar for the Undead as they dislike the sun and heat…but the Forsaken refugees went to Orgrimmar anyway, which makes me suspect the Blood Elves- Forsaken relationship aren’t exactly positive nowadays anymore…
If she didn’t tell Lor’themar that Thrall would have. Simply put as a member of the Horde, who had enjoyed ample assistance upon joining it was expected of them to pull their own weight, when it came to joint operations like the Northrend offensive.
The Forsaken going to Durotar thing could be explained by their wanting to be close to Sylvanas. (Alternative cynical explanation is that Blizz was too lazy to put any focus on the EK Horde situation outside the flashi Warfront flop)
As long as people of different factions can play together, they can make as many factions as they like. The entire goal of merging factions, or letting them play together is to, well, let people play the races they like, and still be able to play with their friends, no matter the race or faction.
Right now, there’s hard barrier between the Horde and the Alliance, and even with an 50%-50% balance between the factions at every level, in every kind of content (an impossible feat), it would still result in half the players not being able to play with the other. That sucks.
So keep the factions, merge them, create more, doesn’t matter. Just let us do what every single NPC in the game could do from day one: choose to team up with whomever the heck they want to.
It’s the endpoint of that frankly ill conceived sentiment that the Horde’s history is something that should be distanced from basically. It’s really on full display in that Saurfang meeting Anduin before confronting Sylvanas cinematic. Options 1 and 2 are both basically about the factions becoming inconsequential, in favor of a grander agenda.
Not really, no. Option 1 is about divorcing the player character’s fate from that of the factions. Your character would become neutral. Your character is just one character. It would change the perspective from which they tell the story, not the story itself. The factions wouldn’t necessarily be any more peaceful than before.
I had enough of mad Warchiefs and the current writers.
I just wish I had the choice to only follow Magni during BFA. I would had gladly throw Sylvanas, Nathanos and the entire war campaign to the bin.
As much as I would prefer the option 3, I personally believe that the option 1 would please the majority of players. Factions can remain, but we, the heroes, are first and foremost champions of Azeroth, and protecting our world is our main priority, and any ties to our faction makes that incredibly difficult and the story extremely sketchy, as seen in BfA.
So yes, option 1 would be the easiest way to solve this issue in my opinion.
Now, if it were up to me, I would take the option 3. I too believe that the factions have gotten far too big to be realistically sustainable at this point, given the enormous racial, cultural and religious diversity of the races in both. Abolishing the factions would open up new and interesting opportunities, and would relieve the writers of burden of having to twist each race to fit their respective faction’s current ideology.
We shouldn’t gte rid of the factions anytime soon. Jaina is still alive and Talanji wasn’t allowed to claim her revenge yet. We need another faction war where the Horde wins. Before that the factions need to stay.
But if the factions are removed Talanji has actually more chances to get her revenge…Kul Tiras will be isolated again, same for Genn and the Worgen. So the Zandalari might have more possibilities to get them
) agenda about helping them in the Ghostlands…she did that not just because it was her old homeland and people, but also because she wanted them in the Horde AND she wanted to blackmail them later to join them in the fight in Northrend against the Lich King.