Life was more fun when Horde and Alliance had leaders

Community General Discussion
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When Alliance and Horde had strong character leaders, they had plans, stories for the factions, interesting twists and turns, heroic moments, plot twists.

Now its all homogenised its kind of meaningless, and the story of whatever patch we are in, is not strong enough to carry anything. Its ripped the heart out of the game with nothing to replace it.

The vision of a big story arc of multiple expansions to tell a bigger story has just not happened, its hard to care about the story when we are really just watching it, and doesn’t effect anything, it will be quickly forgotten.

Its not really about the horde and alliance merger its more about the long term enduring story and identity to latch onto.

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I agree, they have stepped back from factions in a big way in recent years.

We didn’t notice it in the Shadowlands, because that was set in an alternate reality. We didn’t notice in Dragonflight till the very end, because we were exploring a new land. We began noticing it in the War Within, particularly when we went to Undermine and found out half the Bilgewater Cartel had no idea they had joined the Horde and then we REALLY noticed it in Midnight when Blizzard went with the Elven unification plotline and the Blood Elves went to the Night Elves rather than the nearby Forsaken and the rest of the Horde.

This is not accidental or sloppy writing.

This is intentional. They have made a conscious effort to step back and while folks have been slowly figuring this out, it has really become obvious now.

The Horde lacks a Warchief and has a Horde council instead. Councils are TERRIBLE for telling stories, they are just committees after all. And the Alliance is doing no better, Anduin was never an effective replacement for Varian (whom, lest we forget, was introduced in WOTLK with the hype that the Alliance was getting a central leader to complement Thrall in the Horde) and the Night Elves seem to be off doing their own thing. The two factions don’t really seem to function if they aren’t at odds with each other.

Furthermore, the lack of faction specific levelling paths has contributed to the homogenisation.

Again, this feels intentional. But it has had a negative impact on the ‘feel’ of the game world. You remember folks complaining about how Warcraft has changed in recent months and citing the new housing focused cinematics to show why but they couldn’t figure out what was missing?

It’s the faction conflict. The sense that half the playerbase are your opponents. The housing stuff promotes a homely, cosy tone. That isn’t wrong in and of itself, but it now lacks the balance we had with the sense that Azeroth was a powder keg where one wrong move could have Alliance and Horde at each other’s throats and where we were intimately familiar with the major leaders of our respective factions.

I am hopeful that the backlash that followed once people twigged what had happened has caused them to re-evaluate and that after the Worldsould Saga we may see a return to some friction between the two sides.

They need to re-establish the leaderships of both factions and give each faction a single leader who can drive the story and with whom players can identify with. They need to return to faction unique levelling paths. They need to place the two sides in enough conflict that friction returns to the world (although not enough that it makes no sense for Alliance and Horde players to group together, though given we are the great heroes of Azeroth, us being a special case should be a given).

They need to put the War back into Warcraft…even if that is low level skirmishes and mutual dislike rather than an all out conflict as in BFA.

I am still hoping it turns out this faction love in is the product of the radiant song making everyone a lot more co-operative and that when 14.0 comes around everyone will remember they actually dislike the other side.

A bar brawl in the Arcantina would actually be entertaining.

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I lost interest in the Horde Leadership when they made everything councils.

I’m not really interested in returning to faction conflict though but they could certainly do more.

As much as I have loved being in Silvermoon it’s been very odd that the Horde and Alliance didn’t rally to actually help. It’s not like it wouldn’t have affected the rest of Azeroth.

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For some expansions now .they are trying to give more spotlight to nobody’s npc . Which is clearly showing that it’s not working .

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It is infact slopy writing and may I dare say ai slop of Microsoft at work.

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Lets star by re-heating that thousand years old conflict between the Troll’s and Elves
But the Highborne (in this case, Nightborne as a stand in) vs. Lowborne, sorry, Kaldorei enmity would be nice to revisit too
The Lightforged doing a little Orc-cleansing, ignoring the fact they were not the ones who suffered and aside a dozen or so Orcs all of the “bad ones” are dead already; justice never eypires, sins of the fathers yadda yadda yadda
Long living races tend to holde a grudge for a loooooooooong time
But I’m sure Gilneas would gladly call a crusade to erradicate the Undead from the face of Azeroth and still a bit sour about losing Liam

As long as at least two people alive, peace is always in risk…

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Thing is. We don’t even need to go that in-depth or involve any kind of politics or racial tension if we want fitting opposition stories.

It could just as easily come from highlighting very real and more intense concerns like resources and making excuses for them. Even with the nuances behind it, the simple core detail of Orcs vs. Night Elves over Ashenvale’s well being and lumber is just about all you need to make something sympathetic and viable for both sides as an example.

If not resources, then there are other things to make conflict logical and viable on both sides.

Territory? everyone needs bigger and better lands.

Heritage? elves and trolls are great for this.

Strategic value? big battles have been fought over little pinprick checkpoints just so the victor can look over the mountain better.

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My problem with that the fact we regularly travel to other worlds, like now we will visit a frozen one and a fungual one soon
Seting up a lumberyard and mine and making them into coloines would be logical…
But the sheere facts we are so good with interplanar travel be it ship, gates, portals, etc, makes the “For the resources!” or expansion and need more land a bit oboslete imho

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I see your point, and honestly I was more adding to your list rather than conflicting them!

However I feel there is more potential when done right. A big mistake modern faction war had done is that they are often seen as one-sided and biased from a meta standpoint, which is what annoys a lot of the playerbase who enjoy the story. It is unfortunately what leads to the audience disliking faction conflict overall and often calling for its end of relevance.

Ultimately, whichever reasoning they do use, it should be told in a way that benefits the playerbase and audience entirely whilst remaining in its own medium. Which is what led to my thinking that worldly reasoning beyond emotional statutes (Gilnean revenge, Orcish cleansing etc.) would actually be better and more immersive.

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Faction conflict can be done well.

Faction conflict can be done badly.

It was done well in Mists of Pandaria. We had a fantastic villain in Garrosh with believable, relatable motivations (remember when Taran Zhu pushed his berserk button by referencing his Dad?) who caused the Horde to fracture as he embraced Orc supremacism. The culmination of that raid was watched by so many people as everyone was eager to see who the next Warchief was.

It was done badly in Battle for Azeroth. They rehashed the basic plot of opening with an atrocity (Theramore/Darnassus) inflicted by one of the factions (Horde/Horde) led by a morally deficient Warchief (Garrosh/Sylvanas) leading to the Horde fracturing and a civil war led by a ‘honourable’ Horde leader (Vol’Jin/Saurfang). They also pivoted midway during the expansion to Azshara and N’zoth rather than sticking with the faction war to the bitter end.

There were better ways of doing a new faction war in BFA. But they took the lesson that people don’t like faction conflict, when in reality people don’t like faction conflict being done as badly as it was in BFA.

Having said that, I think you are on the right track. My ideal for 14.0 is the long asked for old world revamp. Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms refreshed for the 2030s. Revamped cities, new levelling experiences for all races, and zone plots driven by the clash between Horde and Alliance forces on a low level.

We don’t need all out war.

We need the factions to remember they dislike each other and are trying to outdo each other.

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The problem with bfa was primarily it was at the wrong time, thw timing right after Legion where all races work together in the class order hall to fight the legion together, uniting azeroth more.

Only then do a competent turnaround and so ita absurd with a new artificial conflict out of nowhere, again sonw by hieee with atrocities.

Ans secondly it was a rest of the garrosh story.

People where hype ro see who triggers it, since and it’s not how it’s seems Only to see, oft, it’s horde agin who did it ans is done by sylvanas who ordert it because #morallyGrey

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replace every vulpera in game and you will have peace achieved in no time.

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The reason they do so is because they believe that those enjoying cross-faction play can only do so when the factions don’t matter.

Yet they forget that people got tired of faction war and faction rivalry because they simply wrote it very badly.

If the quality would have been good right from the start, with Alliance and Horde being not some “single minded nation” but having regularly disputes and arguments among each other politically, while writing conflict both logically and emotionally with giving players the option to NOT partake in War Crimes (aka Burning of Teldrassil - most of the Horde didn’t like to be forced to commit a War Crime there), then it would have worked.

But since Blizzard (management, not the devs, devs are mostly fine!) has basically failed all of those points, they opt for removing all the teeth this franchise had as a dangerous wolf to replace it with soft, squishy teeth that can’t even harm a child.

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I have to agree. The obvious middle ground is a cold war with bleeding borders and antagonistic leaderships.

In other words, the Horde and Alliance do not need full on war. There should be local rivalries and conflicts with low level skirmishes. The leaders should not like each other, but should see the value in maintaining an overall peace. Players should be treated as exceptions, trusted by our factions to do what is best for Azeroth (grouping and guilding with the other faction) but that should really be just to allow players in the underdog faction to be able to do advanced content.

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Thing is, crossfaction can easily work by stop treating the player character as a “champion” and instead some Sellsword that is being enlisted for aid.

Means for example that the Alliance treats me like a Champion of their side, but when I work for the Horde, I am not a Champion, I am some hired guy with a big stick.

Because let’s be real, why should anyone on the opposing faction really know who I am when I am not living and working in their faction borders? At best they have heard stories of my deeds but nothing more.

And that way, they can completely dissolve faction barriers in gamepaly for players while retaining the faction conflicts/tensions in narrative

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alliance still has all their leaders since they never die. Meanwhile the Horde is nowhere to be seen in Midnight so far. Like it is set in Quel’thalas but all non elf allies are mysteriously absent.

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Whilst I would prefer the alternate approach that we, as the heroes of Azeroth, can group and guild with who we like, I do agree that they can maintain faction differentiation and conflict whilst removing effective barriers that inhibit cross-faction play.

I think they have gone way too far in trying to move past the factions.

I think they’ve lost something as well, it is what a lot of people are struggling to articulate when they look at those cinematics promoting cosiness from housing.

I do hope 14.0 is in some ways a return to first principles regarding the factions but we shall have to see.

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I mean i would enjoy full out cooperative projects, rebuild cities and places
Exchange of culture and philosophy.

The grand alliance and the horde founded by thrall both aim for peace. There goals harmonize and doesn’t stand in Opposition to each other.
Hence the faction conflict always felt very silly to me and poorly thought out from the beginning.

I do agree with the sentiment that the player characters place in it would work better as neutral sell sword than as faction bound soldier… Which we almsot never are as we are free travelling folk or champions of a greater course.

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Could be a server-wide effort
Gathering and pooling gatherables and so on, defeat saboteurs ,etc, literally rebuild a town (and the world) together

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That’s not even remotely true.

Thralls Horde was founded to find a place for his people somewhere on Azeroth to thrive in peace. There was never something said about “being at peace with others” as far as I know.

As for the Alliance. The Alliance was founded to defeat the 2nd Orcish Horde after the 1st Orcish Horde destroyed the Kingdom of Stormwind and killed King Llane.

If at all, the Alliance was founded purely out of the necessity for War.

I mean, there are people that will always find a war idiotic (and approaching it from a pure logical PoV, wars ARE idiotic, see this video). But this universe is called “Warcraft”. Ain’t much War in these days in it, eh?

Fighting off the Void or some other cosmical threat isn’t a War in the sense of different races fighting with each other over resources. It’s a conflict of survival and we have done that for like the last 3 expansions… It gets boring too.

We need faction war/conflict from time to time so that the fatigue for cosmic threats can reset. It’s basically a Ying-Yang kind of situation, but sadly Yang has been absent since the end of BfA.