I don’t agree that the setting is tired necessarily, there is a lot of fertile ground in it’s original world that isn’t being utilised because we always need to be developing some new area at the expense of leaving everywhere we have been previously in limbo.
I’m not saying we need a new Cataclysm, although perhaps we are due for an Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor refresh, but new stories taking place in those areas rather than inventing an entire continent out of an obscure line from an old source book is preferable to keep the setting fresh.
This. WoW, like Star Wars, had shown it tends to do better when it explores the ‘lower stakes’ or at least Not Cosmic Threat stories. Make the WORLD feel alive again.
P.S. The Faction War isn’t sacrosanct and after it was royally flubbed in BFA it would be kinda daft to bring it back without some very extended storytelling to justify it.
Thanks for confirming all my biases about the advocates of dragonflight, if I am on a high horse, then you are riding a giraffe. Completely missing the entire point of my short novel, “don’t take out the bad writing on your fellow players” but I guess it is too much to ask for understanding from a toxic peacecraft player, I am glad that my first ever use of that term stuck with you so much.
This is the difference between people who like factions, they admit that the setting shouldn’t revolve only aroud war all the time and then there are people like you who loose their mind when people dare to disagree with the current homogenized setting and instead prefer the old diverse one. I don’t care how long anyone has played the WoW or Warcraft, but the fact is if they started at any point before Shadowlands, the faction conflict was core part of the setting and they knew what they were getting into, tuning it up and down was always being done, everybody got something to enjoy. Now half the people have nothing to enjoy and people like you seem to be enjoying this.
I don’t like to contribute to any debate with a post with a tone like this, but I will gladly match your tone if you are going to come out of the gate like that.
…Okay, it’s just not worth to address someone who thinks there is some qualitative difference between people who faction wars and who don’t in a freaking videogame.
Kinda strange us versus them mentality. I have seen plenty - and I mean plenty - of people who are very “pro” the faction war talk about how it’s the only compelling narrative in the game and that the rest is basically superfluous.
The ‘lose their minds over something they dislike’ response is by no means the sole province of either side. Gamers will be gamers will be gamers. Not that I think Katylinne is losing their mind over it – given the narrative tone of the previous faction war themed expansion, I think they’re on the money.
faction war means that blizzard has to develop more content for their expansions because each faction needs it’s own towns and quests rather than just sharing them with the opposing faction.
bfa was the gold standard for this and i doubt we’ll see it’s like again anytime soon. not that i’m saying bfa was a good expansion, but it’s initial questing experience was great for making your faction choice feel as distinct as it did in classic
The problem with BfA is that it escalated so crazily that, in the aftermath, it just wouldn’t make sense for the factions to immediately be at loggerheads again. I know a lot of people would favour a return to something more like Classic, where it was minor factions within the Alliance/Horde that were scrapping.
Going full you people about a disagreement about the narrative direction of a fairly popular MMO is kinda terminally online, true.
Basically yeah. Individual factions within the Alliance/Horde have good reason to still be in conflict, but that doesn’t necessitate a NATO-esque an attack on one is an attack on all approach. The Night Elves are perfectly valid in their continued aggression against the Horde, but that doesn’t mean that the Gnomes are in any way inclined or interested in comiting resources to that fight.
War, and conflict is vastly different as far as I can tell in a storytelling aspect and narrative, and it would be interesting if - and the if is huge, and based entirerly on good hopes, dreams and wants - we could see some varied levels of conflict.
Sure, swinging my axe makes me feel powerful and I like being the ruuuargh loktar ogar grrrrunts zug zug orc and I love the Horde, being partial to it over the Alliance as far as faction pride goes, but any level of conflict, disagreements and narratives that make it seem as if the world, and the characters that inhabit it, both small and big, have actual thoughts and lives and emotions regarding the world around them; Instead of morphing into what writer X feels about Y.
It’s hard. Writing characters is -super- hard, and writing compelling, and interesting for a broader and larger audience is even more hard. There are benefits to both the current situation of the World of Warcraft™, and the olden days - The issue IMO, and again this is my opinion, is that there are too many narratives going on in different parts of the world, simultainously.
We have Cataclysm era of panicked, the elements are destroying everything and Deathwing is fart reverbing all over the world; We have MoP levels of conflicts in Pandaria, we have Legion-assualts happening multiple times a day in the Isles and we have a permanent time-freeze frame status for the world outside of the current expansion focus. Which is SAD! I want to keep enjoying this world of which I, like you, are a part of and want to see the best come out of it without falling victim to pits of uncertainty or openly conflicting lore points.
ted talk (thats what the young folks call it right?) welcome to it.
If there was a promise that the faction war would disrupt the status quo it could be interesting, but since it seems that’s unlikely to happen, what it amounts to is generally a bunch of RPers emoting at each other in combat stance and then going home at the end of the night, except now it’s blizzard content instead.