Well, as I said, it would work with a perpetual “Cold war” state that never tackled a massive faction war.
Micro aggressions such as having stories about border conflicts, incursions, and things like that, would actually work.
And if the time came, for an actual full scale war, Blizzard could invoke some story about certain groups working together to bring down others (and not necessarily blue and red teams).
Regarding pvp stories…let’s face it, even with the current system, there are certain races that are consistently punished by the plot more than others. How many relevant humans can you name? How many trolls or Tauren? How many blood elves? Or how many gnomes?.
As I said Warhammer works in a similar fashion. And they are doing kind of fine.
Yeah, it would shake WoWs foundations to the core. Maybe it’s like Veorra said, and this should be left for WoW 2.0 or something like that.
But it would be a daring move, that would freshen the story, and fix tons of problems about portrayal, story, and player agency.
It would require a lot of work from Blizzard, and that’s probably the biggest drawback this idea would have, but still, I find it very appealing.
That could definitively work.
But how would you balance the massive imbalance of players between these groups? I mean let’s face it: If there is a faction of Trolls, Orcs and Tauren, they will be at a disadvantage to a faction of pretty Elves.
That would be the second elephant in the room. If every race had their own story or faction, yes, the gnome, goblin, and Draenei ones (to name a few) would be left a bit hanging and empty regarding players.
To fix this, Blizzard would need to start focusing on making them interesting and appealing enough.
Or, make them more dependant on other more popular races. This alternative would suck more, but they could keep the Dwarf/Gnome parity (ensuring both get their shared and individual stories), the ‘Greenskins’ Orc/Goblins, etc.
While the most popular races, would be left as standalone agents.
Sticking to the Warhammer comparison, you find disparities there too. And still, the story has engaging plots for all its players.
Theirs is an easier example as it’s not tied to the MMO open world game restrictions, but still, it kind of applies here.
But, we should also consider how much of this player disparity comes as a direct consequence of this faction system we have at the moment.
Given a more open world, maybe people would start feeling different about it.
For certain players, blood elves came as a solution because they wanted to play pretty for the Horde.
People who want all factions to be “even” at all time are not to be listened to.
Having narrative imbalance going back and forth is beneficial. Having factions taking hits is good plot fuel and allow more flexibility. Having it done well and not always the same is what is lacking at the moment. When the “leadership” of the Alliance is 5 humans and 1 worgen (in human form most of the time), there’s an issue.
I’d suggest heavily improving customization (animation, voice and model). If you were able to create a hot looking Troll or Orc, the problem wouldn’t really exist, since the Horde is interesting enough as a faction, but lacks the beauty standard.
True, but player disparity isn’t really a problem in a single-player or normal multiplayer setting.
agreed
I too don’t get why people are so mad if they lose something… I couldn’t care less about my faction’s cities getting destroyed as a plot device. (not sarcasm btw)
It really isn’t.
The problem is that players care way too much about “faction leaders” instead of the overall story.
Also: The leadership of the Alliance consists out of a Gilnean Human, a gnome, 3 dwarves, a void elf, a high elf, a draenei, 2 Night Elves, 1 Stormwind Human, 1 Kul’tiran Human, 1 Lightforged Draenei and a Lightforged Human.
It’s a reference to a quest with a scene with Anduin, Genn, Jaina, Mathias Shaw, and Halford Wyrmbane.
i.imgur .com/ijrooG0.jpg
It wouldn’t have hurt to see one NPC that is not human/in human form.
Edit: New forum disallow links for whatever reason, so I added a space.
I do.
I understand being neutral about places, as any faction can start any sort of land grab afterwards.
But losing characters…thats an entirely different thing. Run out of prominent characters and the faction story just ceases to exist.
Yeah but that’s more of a Blizzard problem.
I would honestly not need Anduin and all these other faceless boring characters to have an amazing Stormwind experience. I mean… When I quested through redridge mountains in TBC (don’t like the rambo version), I actually had a lot of fun there and I was pretty immersed into all the problems and theme of redridge. But where there really any important lore characters there? Not really…
I remember Blackrock Orcs and an evil wizard in his tower…
That’s all I need to have a great time. I don’t need a drama show with overemotional anduin and irrational aggressive Saurfang.
Could it not be possible, that the current story relies way too much on single characters instead of an interconnected adventure in a zone?
In my opinion people focus way too much on these characters… If Anduin appears somewhere, it automatically means that Stormwind Humans are getting lore, even when it’s literally only a freaking character that says absolutely nothing about Stormwind as a whole…
I prefered the times when these leaders were simply standing in the major cities doing absolutely nothing and the only time you interacted with them was at major moments like epic quests.
