Let's have a faction merge in 10.0!

Community General Discussion
1

The Shadowland Campaign have maintained a development where Alliance NPCs are aiding Horde NPCs - and vice versa. The faction leaders and important story characters are pals hanging out in Oribos, and all Alliance players have aided in finding a new axe to Thrall as well as aiding Anduin in healing Baine.

The Horde and the Alliance is at a merging point where the only gameplay obstacle is the ridiculous forced language barrier. Come on…

  • The Orcs including Thrall from the encampment in Hillsbrad Foothills had no issues communicating with the humans sympathetic to their situation.
  • The High Elves had no issues communication with the Alliance and teaching a few selected humans the use of Magic. When the story went on and 90+% of them identified themselves as Blood Elves, they joined the Horde and suddenly are unable to speak with their previous Alliance allies? And yet the Blood Elves who became Void Elves have no issues with the language?
  • Alliance Human gets killed and raised as Undead by the Lich King - and suddenly forgot how to speak their language but instantly know how to speak Orcish?
  • Yet Neutral NPCs of all races have no issues being bilingual???

It is time to drop this abomination of nonsense, get the faction merged, and add a new secondary all-race faction. I will for now call the merged Horde&Alliance faction “New Alliance”, but that is simply because I have no better naming suggestion right now.

New Alliance versus…
My hope for 10.0 is a Cataclysm 2.0 with preservation of the past zone phases, which also opens up for a new villain faction consisting of our beloved Twilight Hammer-movement. We kicked their butts in Cataclysm, and we haven’t been on either Kalimdor nor Eastern Kingsom since then. So surely they must have grown in to a something worth of being a playable faction by now.

The Twilight Hammer as we already know consists of people from all races, which have infiltrated both the Horde and the Alliance for recruiting more members. And they happens to reach out to you and you get the options:

  • Slay the recruiter and confirm your loyalty to the New Alliance
  • Accept the invitation and undergo a quest line introducing you to the Twilight Hammer faction.

The Twilight Hammer’s new bases will become available, some smaller, some bigger, and even a couple well hidden cities. And the main objective is to infiltrate and do as much destruction to the New Alliance as possible, using the traditional means of the Twilight Hammer.

New characters will not “pick” their new faction at the character creation screen, instead only race and class will be pickable among with the usual customisation. And they get the usual choice of starting at their racial starting area, or at Exile’s reach. It is upon completion of either areas the players gets approached by a Twilight Hammer recruiter, and the choice is made then.

Now about faction switch - which could become available in a “free” version:

From the merged faction to Twilight Hammer: You speak with an recruiter in Stormwind/Orgrimmar and turn in the recruit quest at another NPC outside New Alliance territory. Doing so will make you hated with every reputation subfaction within the New Alliance, and you start at Hated with the Twilights. Better standing and acceptance within your new faction is build up during a lengthy quest line.

From the Twilight to New Alliance: You submit yourself to a specific New Alliance guardian which will imprison you in the Stockades/Tol Dagor/Orgrimmar/somewhere. Doing do will make you Hated with the Twilights and you start at Hated with the New Alliance. As a prisoner you start on a lengthy quest chain proving yourself worthy of being rehabilitated and later released once a certain reputation is reached.

Changing faction back to the former one wont restore the former subfaction reputations, all have to be earned anew.

PvP
Since the Horde already have mercenary mode and we in Legion had areas for All versus All, we can have many options and modes to go forth with for the new two factions
For World PvP, players should be able to enable either:

  • “Horde vs Aliance PvP” and be able to attack and be attacked by players of the opposite of the old factions with this mode or All vs All enabled.
  • “Faction PvP” - like current PvP toggle mode but only for New Alliance versus Twilight Hammer. You can attack and get attacked by players of opposite faction with this mode or All vs All enabled.
  • “All vs All” makes you attack and be attacked by any other players with this mode enabled, or any other PvP modes that makes you attackable enemies for each other.

For instanced PvP, BGs and Arenas all should be able to queue up for any of these modes, and “All vs All” would surely be as fast-track as if not faster than mercenary mode is for Horde today.

Guilds and social interactions
With the new factions there should be no language barrier between players.
Horde and Alliance guilds should be able to choose to either:

  • Stick with New Alliance as a faction guild
  • Opt for becoming a cross-faction guild
  • Be recruited to the Twillight Hammer and become a Twillight Hammer faction guild.

The possibilities are endless, but we need to head this way in 10.0 to have a slight hope of maintaining the slightest sense that already is well understood and presented in the story development. Horde versus Alliance makes no sense any longer, and is at this point only a forced faction construction for catering to players who do not want the game to evolve with the lore.

Edit: Typos

89 Likes
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A lore youtuber called Accolonn said something interesting. Something happens with the factions, I don’t know what perhaps a civil war or something, and the factions become ideological instead of racial. I pick my faction based on ideology, that would mean I could finally be a human in the horde :slight_smile:

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hmm no i believe it was something more like… it wont be Horde and Alliance but rather… Light or Void.

I believe.

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Always wanted do play a night elf.

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It will happen sooner rather than later, but that kind of move would mean Blizzard will loose people for whom factions matter.

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Absolutely, the new second faction do not have to be a plain villain Twilight Hammers as we knew them from Cataclysm. It can be someone else we which we aren’t familiar with yet.

When thinking about it, Twilight Hammer could still work. Same people, but an idelogical shift since Cataclysm and they aren’t the destructive fanatics we knew then as back in Cata. Perhaps they even got help from and merged with other neutral factions like Cenarion Circle or others who haven’t been active in the later expansions.

The possibilities are endless, all we need is decent writing.

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Will happen when there is no more money to be had from faction changes, aka when there is no alliance left :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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I’d rather we were all effectively one faction for gameplay purposes (e.g. guilds, raids, dungeons) but the factions could remain (or change to different factions) as a cosmetic and identity thing only (e.g. no humans running around in Orgrimmar).

Do we need a second faction? Could PvP not just be team 1 Vs team 2, like it already is in rated PvP? World PvP could be all free for all, or could dynamically put you into team 1 or team 2 when you entered a contested zone for any zones with world PvP objectives (e.g. like Outland, or Battle for Nazjatar).

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Which might happen sooner than later.

But don’t you understand that frictions are good and meaningful choices are core parts of the MMORPG genre ?

On a more serious tone, that’s the best middle ground solution between completely scrapping factions and keeping such broken system. That would make sense since Blizzard created cross factions communities.

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No thanks. It’s one of the few things that makes this game unique.

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You only read the thread title and then scrolled down to type this post, didn’t you? :stuck_out_tongue:

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The title tells me enough.

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13

So you assume that this topic is about abolishing the two faction system?

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World of Warcraft without factions is just World of Craft and its not like the professions are in a good state.

Storywise the removal of factions would just hurt the game, gameplay wise Blizzard allowing faction transfers has already hurt the game
Premade crossfaction groups for PvE should be fine, but not for PvP (mercenary mode =/= premade) imo

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One big aspect of this game should be about the conflict, battles and war between the factions. Instead we already have this permanent cuddling with the other faction, helping them, freeing their people and alway this stupid “fighting a bigger evil”.

The moment we get one big Hordliance or Alliorde or whatever they would call it is the moment I quit WoW instantly.

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Yes. Sylvanas void Anduin Light.

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I don’t disagree with the principle or large parts of your well reasoned post.

However - I played alliance for part of this patch post progression and well… I don’t think large swathes of the alliance player base want to mix with horde players. They will be traumatised.

Let me give you an example - I played a heroic lfd as a tank - when I dropped into mists it was the middle of a pull in the maze (warning sign that the previous tank left) so I scoop up the mobs get them all in and we down them. Then I proceed to a pillar to solve the riddle thingy… and watch the other 4 members of the group just stand there - this is nearly word for a word an exchange with a dps.

“Anyone going to help?”
“I’m not helping a tank who doesn’t say hi”
“Ermmm sorry was a bit busy dropping into the dungeon in the middle of a pull”

By this point other players have started to help

“Well you should have said hi you pesticide”

This is just on anecdote of many i have from about two months as ally which made me facepalm.

Players should think very very carefully before they wish for a faction merge because I can assure you if someone not saying hi is your biggest worry you really don’t want to meet large parts of the horde player base who give no thought to anything other than single minded progression regardless of the cost

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Same, however Blizz have now recognised there is an imbalance in the high end, and more go Horde. I think they may try to see if they can address this in any way but it is a social issue rather than any game play advantage. Even where Alliance are stronger people still go for Horde. A bit like the whole meta problem, even those not playing at the high end are sometimes switching but it’s not like the Alliance is actually dead.

Worst case scenario it sounds like they are going to consider a kind of mercing mode but I don’t think we’ll see anything this expansion. But who knows :slight_smile:

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Look, I don’t want any merging of factions, no matter what segment of the game it is, nor am I interested in why and in what way it should be done. Plain and simple.

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Merging faction would suck , maybe making news one would be ok , like team void vs team light :smile:

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