Factions were a mistake, i swear to god.
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âbUt ItâS wOrLd Of WaRcRaFt, NoT pEaCeCrAfT!!1â
The Eternal ScreechâŚ
I dont think so, but I would agree that we should have done away with the faction divide by now. Write a story where factions make peace and we can play with each other, both increasing the player pool and removing the need to juggle the faction conflict with big bad threat. Add a subplot where despite the peace, there are still insurgents and extremists causing trouble to justify pvp and appeasing those that still want factions. Could be a story of itâs own.
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I dunno, i seem to be eternally at war with the Ascians in FF14 and thats an NPC faction.
I disagree, not to mention that the devs ramp up the tribalism this MMO has one of the worst playerbases where its us vs. them.
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My soon to be improved Nightborne mage laughs at their tears
Iâm mostly joking around at the expanse of the super tribal people on either side
The logic behind the entire thing is the same as the logic behind people beating each other up over their favourite sports teams.
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Forum-wise I donât really think the Horde has historically been that bad, but it certainly had its cretins at Blizzcon. The âProud orcish shaman from the Thunderhorn Serverâ shouting abuse at kids because they had alliance paraphernalia etc.
Edit: also that band did it one time too
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Iâd say as far as paid competitors go the World First race is pretty civil, at least when it comes down to the people who are actually involved.
Itâs just one of those things where non-competitors are presented with a red versus blue scenario and they decide to argue/stir the pot to maintain/drum up an interest in their chosen side.
Unless youâre talking about the fact that everybody is Horde, in which case, eh. Itâs a byproduct of balance in years gone by and the sheer mass of information that the game has associated with it now.
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maybe not on the official forums but the general playerbase is very much so That Bad (if not worse) with the tribalistic âyeaaa for the horde f-* the alliance!!!â
* they donât say fk they usually use far worse expletives too
i get that helf posters are very obnoxious and stuff but man is it funny to watch people get angry over helf/alliance posters finally actually wanting something for themselves
factions were a mistake indeed
âfinallyâ hmmmmm
Cannibal Corpse or something?
I remember watching that blizzcon and feeling perplexed and embarrassed at the same time, especially when he came out on stage for power of the horde song to just⌠essentially belch a few times during chorus and thatâs it.
Meanwhile, weâre supposed to team up against a greater evil every expansion while also having the narratively significant tilt focused on the Horde, Horde political issues and Horde leaders doing bad while the Alliance is in constant react mode, serving as an appendage.
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yep, pretty much.
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The tribalism did a lot for marketing, but the toxicity it generated has definately been an own goal. I do wish they went with the original idea for WoW with the factions being a narrative and not part of the actual gameplay.
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Think that wouldâve been great, yeah.
It works for FF. the three Grand Companies do fight over areas (that is the lore for the Frontline PvP) but it doesnât effect who you can team up with etc.
The chippy thatâs closest to me has turned into an indian place, which means if I do want to get fish and chips I have to walk an extra five minutes to the one thatâs slightly further away.
Truly a tragedy.
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They absolutely were. I wrote about this in the thread before.
Lore-wise, they meant Blizzard had to bend the lore in knots to maintain faction parity, explain why theyâre roughly evenly matched despite very uneven starting conditions, why neither faction has won yet, shoehorn every race into a faction whether it belongs there or not, and in some cases create meh races nobody asked for, just to maintain faction balance. And since neither faction can destroy the other, for gameplay reasons, theyâre doomed to this bipolar cycle of alternating between war and peace, warping the rest of the lore around it.
Gameplay-wise, it means players are locked out of playing or joining guilds with their friends who chose a different faction, dungeon queues are longer than they have to be because theyâre faction-spe ific, and players of the other faction are an annoyance rather than a welcome sight, because they steal your mobs and you cannot form parties with them.* It also created the problem with faction imbalance in player numbers that isnât going anywhere by design and has actually affected lore. (Turns out players gravitate towards conventionally attractive races, who knew! Quick, add a conventionally attractive race to the Horde in TBC, reasoning be damned!)
And community-wise, it resulted in some of the worst tribalism and toxicity the MMO genre has known, not helped by Blizzard intentionally fanning the flames.
Dear future MMO developers: if youâre thinking of implementing factions just because WoW did, donât. In the end, there are no elves and orcs, only human players trying to enjoy a game as a social, bonding activity, and factions get in the way of that.
* It used to be even worse when mobs were tap-to-player. WoW was uniquely an MMO where other players in the world were pretty much always an annoyance, until Legion finally implemented what competing MMOs were doing long before WoW: sharing kill credit between all players, whether theyâre grouped or not.
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This. The whole thing with races/allied races having to be âbalancedâ across the pair makes for some really frustrating scenarios.
Mechagnomes, Iâm looking at you in particularâŚ
Also the unwillingness to do things like, I dunno⌠they could have added Goblin and Gnome cybernetics options for completing Mechagon instead?
Tangentally, thatâs one area where SWTOR still does fall down; they still have player tagging, not faction tagging. Itâs mostly not a bother, given questing areas are quite large and stuff respawns at a sensible rate, but stillâŚ
They even did this from the very beginning of WoW as well. Warcraft 3 literally ends on that the big non-evil factions of the time(Horde without undead, Alliance & Nelves) have banded together in peace, for the most part.
Frozen Throneâs factions are more small splinter groups(Maievâs force, blood elves/Lordaeron remnants etc), but the major faction conflicts of the past are in the lore atleast done.
WoW even acknowledges this by stating that they simply broke down again and war is once more a thing. But they donât elaborate on it further beyond âit just happenedâ.
The faction divide was a mistake.
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The hangup on âWorld of WARcraftâ always irks me. Like, you can make war outside of just factions, right?
Fighting monsters and aggressive âneutralâ factions, brigands and pirates etc.
Fighting the Scourge remnants.
Fighting the demonic remnants and the Legion etc.
I know itâs asking for Big Brain⢠thinking for people to look beyond âMuh Warâ but good griefâŚ
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Iâd argue Vanilla (and to an extent TBC) was more nuanced than Cataclysm, Mists or BFA. Because the factions as a whole werenât really at war, they were at peace. You still had Thrall and Jaina doing their best to maintain that precious peace earned at Hyjal.
But rather you had factions within the factions causing friction between the factions and inside of them; imperious dwarves wiping out tauren to uncover their heritage, Defilers fighting the League of Arathor, Stormwind rubbing shoulders with the Scarlet Crusade and so on. There was a whole lot more to it than the recycled Warcraft 2 faction war narrative theyâve churned out twice since.
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