This war seems so distant and pointless

Community General Discussion
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IMO the story of this expansion has been a complete dud in general, and part of the reason is that the war between the factions feels so utterly inconsequential.

Case in point, the incursions.
Say I’m a Horde character and participate in an incursion in Stormsong Valley. Lore wise, this is the Horde making a push to take the zone, but what happens when I clear it? Nothing. I get a box of loot and that’s it. Not a single thing about the zone changes after the incursion happens. This feels like a piece of content they forgot to develop the 2nd half of.
Why not make it so that, say, completing an incursion spawns an outpost in the besieged zone? The WQs in the zone would then change for a day or two, reflecting the attacking faction’s efforts to keep the outpost and the defending faction’s efforts to retake it.
That way, it would actually feel kind of like, you know, a war.

The 2nd problem are the war campaigns
I can’t speak for the Alliance side of this, but as a Horde character, I have been an unstoppable one-orc army completely dominating each and every battle I’ve had with the Alliance forces. For example, one of the Horde missions involved attacking a mansion in (IIRC) Tiragarde Sound to steal Azerite. The whole area was swarming with soldiers, but I could simply charge in and solo the entire army the Alliance had stationed there, up to and including punching one of their Azerite tanks to pieces.
Granted, the “champion” who mere months ago took down space satan probably shouldn’t have much to fear from a bunch of regular foot soldiers, but it goes completely counter to the idea of this being a war.

And finally, there are the other plot lines in the expansion. Frankly, the war is the least impactful, least “grand” thing that has happened in BfA so far. These are the story lines that have happened or are still happening in BfA:

  • Azeroth is bleeding to death
  • an Old God has escaped from its prison
  • Azshara and N’zoth are looming on the horizon
  • the faction war

That means we’ve got 3 world-ending threats on our plate, yet the story that’s been given the most attention is an ultimately meaningless faction conflict that is destined to end in an anti-climax anyways.
We get world quests each day where we assist Magni in killing NPCs who “put their own greed before Azeroth’s health” by mining Azerite, only to then turn around and help Sylvanas get her hands on more Azerite.

The whole expansion is a jumbled mess both in terms of systems and story, and as a result the center of BfA, the faction war, falls completely flat

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This is because the Alliance pushed the Horde out of the zone, the same happens when we invade Zandalar.

As for the rest of your post, the story telling has definitely taken a nose dive recently.

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Yeah, because this faction war is just a plot device to tie into what is clearly an Old God expansion (is there anyone who is still convinced that this expansion is about Alliance vs. Horde?) and redeem Sylvanas because she is way too hot and popular to be given the Garrosh treatment.

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I dislike Faction conflict that ends up with neither side losing and both sides winning.

Assaults have both sides beating the other without any consequences.

Warfronts are just an afk-fest with each side taking it in turns to win.

You can’t have a war and have both sides winning non-stop.

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I do agree with all points, however the faction war is a main element of WoW and despite us saying it makes no sense anymore they are determined to continue with it. Then again, what war is ever logical? It’s always born from somebody’s greed. I think the book explains the reasons quite well but the fact we are overlooking this with our world dying is ridiculous.

I really enjoyed the storylines for the zones (except maybe the farmer part of Stormsong) but the war campaign not so much. Not a patch on class campaign.

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I agree with op from that point of view , but u need to understand a key thing about the way they do things . Replayability is a key factor and paying monthly sub does get them money .

The replay value of a game is also be based entirely on the individual’s tastes.
The stories are made like this so they can just leave u a long trail of crumbs till the ultimate conclusions .

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Redeem her and cleanse Arthases corruption. She joins her sister in alliance purified. No, i don’t think it would make any sense lorewise nor that it would actually happen, but i can still imagine that horrified cry of millions of horde echoing around the globe :smiling_imp: :grimacing::rofl:

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I’m just liking your use of the term “Space Satan”. :laughing:

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The thing with the faction war is that it COULD have worked just fine, but it would have required better writing and the stones to see it through to the end.
The reason I said the war is destined to end in an anti-climax is that we already know Azshara is on her way. We know this war is going to conclude the same way it it has concluded every single time so far - a bigger bad shows up and forces us to grudgingly work together again.

In order to make a faction war expansion work, said war has to be the proper center of the story, not just a hold-over until the next villain-of-the-week is ready to be served up.
This also means that the war has to end conclusively, with one side being victorious over the other. BfA was a great opportunity to end the faction divide by having the Alliance defeat the Horde or vice versa and thereby unify the world against the threat of the void. But unfortunately Blizzard didn’t have the stones to do this. The need for eternal status quo won out.

Just as importantly than that would have been better writing, set-up and development, though. This war needed a proper reason, and that drivel about “how long would peace last?” Sylvanas excreted from her face in the short-story isn’t cutting it.
The expansion was supposed to have “shades of gray”, but what we got is the most black-and-white a faction war has ever been. We have Anduin, the righteous but inexperienced “little lion”, fight against the Lich King with boobs.

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And there can be more if it turns out N’zoth isn’t our true enemy or won’t be the “true” enemy when in 9.0 we will start fighting death vs life or we + n’zoth vs naaru, titans and alike.

Also Battle for Dazal’alor isn’t well written. You rush into enemy territory to kill an enemy leader (that isn’t top notch quality anyway) and expect the enemy faction to just fear and surrender? There will be a large portion of the nation seeking vengeance, even on your civilians while a new leader will be elected that is more likely to be perfectly suited to lead her nation forces in the war. So not only do you make your enemy stronger, you loose a lot of your army and resources in the process (as Horde counterattack was to quick and to successful than expected).

And the post-battle comments, “Alliance gaining ground” and Baine talking about “negotiations” - WTF? What ground, what negotiations? Alliance got a Pyrrhic victory at best just to end up in both factions strangled in their faction zones/island. Zandalari got a better leader, we don’t know what Gnomes will do or what Jaina will do after being defeated even on her own battlefield.

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