I am a new player in WoW, started 1,5 years ago and in my opinion i feel like i always find myself leveling in old expansions such as legion, Wotlk, mop. and Im havent really understood why until now. When i started WoW in december 2022 one of the main things i loved and thought was so cool was the Horde Vs Alliance, The noble alliance with their big castle capital Stormwind in elwyn forest in the eastern kingdoms, and the ferocious horde and Orgrimmar on the lands of Kalimdor in the desert of durotar. I loved everything about it. I would always find myself wondering which faction i liked more. My first expansion i ever leveled in was MoP (dont ask how i got there xD). I love everything with MoP, from the zones, pandaren, music but i also loved how the horde and alliance were fighting and gathering allies on diffrent sides on the Jade forest to then meeting up in the jade serpent statue and charge at eachother. Thats when i realized how cool WoW was. Why did Blizzard remove the origins of WoW that brought a lot of players in to play the game, The game was practially based of the Horde and Alliance and now it has no meaning. Considering the fact that blizzard said there will never be a horde and alliance conflict again or a war. I dont think i have seen a single horde base or alliance base on the dragon isles. As much as i love DF and i understand what theyre trying to do. It is weird to remove the whole meaning of the factions.
They didnāt remove it. You are just missing almost 20 years of context.
The game is almost 20 years old. Thereās a lot of players who have been playing this game for many, many years. With your 1.5 years, you might not understand, but many people are sick of seeing the same horde vs alliance schtick being played out.
More so because the story introduced WAY bigger threats than āthe other factionā. Theyād be completely stupid to continue bashing each other over the head when thereās stuff out there thatās threatening the whole world, or in some cases even all of existence.
The whole meaning is not removed at all.
But them changing and evolving according to events ingame is not weird. Itās logical.
They will remove it eventually as it has no meaning anymore, especially since we fight against someone else for Azeroth. There was a cycle through the expansions actually like:
Vanilla - Alliance vs Horde (except the AhnāQiraj in Silithus)
TBC - Azeroth vs KT and Illidan (except maybe Hellfire)
WotLK - Azeroth vs the other KT and LK (thereās a conflict though because of Sylvanas, but not overwhelmingly)
Cata - Azeroth vs Deathwing (yes, thereās the Theramore stuff with Janina and Garrosh, again, not the core of the expansion)
MoP - Alliance vs Horde then Azeroth vs Garrosh
WoD - Azeroth vs Iron Horde then Azeroth vs Legion
Legion - Azeroth vs Legion
BfA - Alliance vs Horde then Azeroth vs Old Gods (kinda in one patch I think)
Shadowlands - Azeroth vs Sylvanas vs Nipple King
Dragonflight - Azeroth vs Thunderchicken vs Primals
I know there are conflicts between factions ALL the time in previous expansions, but itās not overwhelmingly present. Most of the expansions we are fighting against someone else together and basically that is the reason why Azeroth is still the way she is: because we fight for her together. Imo factions will be merged together except in PvP, otherwise we already do lfr together.
TL;DR: There is no point of war if we fight against a greater enemy and the whole point of our worldās existence is based on our willingness to work together and protect her.
You donāt need to be nostalgic since you can play Classic where people either go 99 % Alliance or 99 % Horde. And then they had the audacity to expect 5 minutes battlegrounds queues so Blizzard gave them same faction bgs to avoid losing subscribers.
Many people want the old game, but for some reason they expect the other players to act like simple NPCs while they min-max everything ruining the fun for themselves and others, turning the Classic experience into a corporation where all the employees follow the same good practices.
The problem was that the Horde had become the popular side and more and more would migrate. So changes had to be made. I never wanted them to remove the divide either but you canāt have one faction dying out and becoming unplayable.
So theyāve made steps to make parts of the game cross faction. I think they will go the whole hog sooner or later so that we can fully play with our friends in all content regardless of their faction choice.
At present only pug content benefits from cross faction play. This means that any if you want to do stuff that requires you to queue up then you canāt do it with your friends if they play different factions. My m plus friends are a mix and we canāt do the weekly timewalking quest together for example. We canāt do LFR, or queue up for a random battleground. Guilds can have members of both factions but canāt invite unless you are friends. At this point it just feels like a silly limitation.
Yeah, but itās kinda a worn out topic now + cross faction is needed to keep the game alive.
I agree with you, I personally started playing seriously during Battle for Azeroth to which I was attracted by the brilliant cinematic.
Things like the burning of Teldrasill and the siege of Lordaeron were very fascinating to me in terms of atmosphere, and world history. (Iām leaving out the rest of the expac which had little to do with this.)
Since Shadowlands Iāve been missing such fascinating moments in the game, Dragonflight is a particularly boring expansion in this regard, literally no story captures my attention.
The only thing that keeps me playing is still the endgame, although itās a shame that I no longer feel that Warcraft orcs vs humans vibe.
I sat out MoP like an idiot. Going back through it on alts, I love the zones and suspect I would have enjoyed that expansion a lot. If there is ever a MoP classic, I may not be seen on retail for quite a long timeā¦
Though I donāt think thereās anything else with that level of allure for me. Didnāt bother with classic, TBC classic, nor Wrath classic. I liked them at the time, but they donāt call me back.
This is however quite valid. To the OP, it is a fresh(ish) story. For the seasoned players, itās been done to death. And pulled back from the grave a couple of times. Many of us are just a bit sick of it and would like to move on a bit.
Not to mention; far fewer players these days. Queue times demonstrate that WoW simply canāt afford to keep things like the faction divide being a player issue. A solid narrative and lore is one thing, but gameplay shouldnāt be compromised because of it.
Iām not sure I understand what it is that you miss specifically, Quelthefel?
The history of each faction is still there, even as they continue to evolve in more current times. And the stories and settings of past expansions are of course available as well.
Or do you mean that youāll miss not seeing more faction conflict in the future still to come?
Nostalgiaās quite somethingā¦ going through old zones doing the Free T-Shirets and Kalimdor Cup, really miss the days of those zones being populated with players and doing stuff with the old guilds.
Miss it, and weāll never get another MMO thatāll captivate that feeling again. 
Though Iām still waiting for deep dive VR to become a thing! 
Thereās still content that should be added back though.
Most of all the pre-patch stuff is not around, which takes a fair bit of context away between expansions. The story telling is messy because of content removal.
Also, if I do get your attention (as in: you read this)ā¦ Can you please make it clear to the overseas offices: that it is high time to communicate about low population servers and solutions. We have been ignored for years, meanwhile classic is getting free character transfers on a regular basis.
Yes it would be cool to see some faction conflict again. Thats what i mean because correct me if im wrong but blizz came out with and said no faction conflict again and yea
I do miss that.
The Alliance should not be forgiving two genocides so easily.
I also feel like weāve been robbed a conclusion to the Worgen/Forsaken storyline, and Genn vs. Sylvanas.
I donāt have any doubt that we will at some point.
However the PLAYER experience with factions will be different I think.
We should be getting a resolution to Gilneas being their home once again at the very least; it was said that things like that would be handled in the game and not in books and such.
Thanks, then I understand what you mean.
Iām not sure whatās been explicitly stated before, as opposed to whatās been inferred, but Iād be surprised if it is that there will never be any more faction conflict.
Yes and maybe the faction conflict doesnt have to be big, maybe in a questline when leveling in zones like eastern kingdoms and kalimdor that are natives to the faction, think that would be really cool as im love leveling, maybe something that stirs up between forsaken and something else since they reclaiming lordearon.
two ish with nazjatar not old god but old god aligned
The faction wars ultimately never amounted to anything. Blizzard tried to make radical changes in BFA but was met with heavy push back. And a lot of people was just sick of the faction wars.
But the real reason why they ultimately backed down from it was because one faction was on itās death bed, as far as high end content go anyways. I forget if it was BFA or Shadowlands, but the Horde had something like 10x-20x āharcoreā players. And more and more Alliance guilds were transfering to the Horde because recruiting was becoming nearly impossible on the Alliance side.
A lot of people declared the Alliance ādeadā. Even if that technically wasnāt true. It was a self fulfilling prophecy that would have ended up becoming true had Blizzard not taken drastic measurements. Like buffing their racials to high heaven. But they the problem with just repeat with the Horde instead.
You mean unlike the ever sameā¦
and-only-you-can-save-us shtick?
It got a bit nonsensical over time. We are enemies! Oh no, big threat, weāre allies! Over and over and over again. I think especially with Legion, with the Class Halls, itād have been a good point to pursue a tentative genuine peace (with some local conflicts rising here and there to strain the relations), but instead we got BfA. I still despise how that story went tbh, I usually played horde first but playing through that fiasco once was enough to just stick with alliance after. And it was another Enemies! Oh no, uhā¦ allies! all over again.
Iām tired of that format. If they can think of another way to keep the factions relevant thatād be great tho.