because horde rules and alliance drools
24 Likes
They botched it by not emphasising that the Alliance do ‘morally grey’ too. Instead anything and everything they did was overshadowed by just how much an (OOC for her) blunt trauma object Sylvanas was being.
BFA SHOULD have started, as per the cinematic, with both factions discovering Azerite and then Genn, out for vengeance as we know he still is, pushing Anduin to launch the attempted reclamation of Lordaeron. Using “They will attack us first if we sit by” wouldn’t have worked if Vol’Jin was still around. Sylv, though? They have no reason to trust her. And the immediate deep mining of the Wound in Silithus gives weight to Genn’s argument.
So we have the opening of BFA; Lordaeron under siege, Sylvanas realising that she has to galvanise a Horde that still doesn’t entirely trust her and bring out the Fighting Dirty book, and the Alliance being the aggressor for once.
If they had had a legitimate Horde fallback from Lordaeron, rather than the contrived events of Jaina arriving (as much as I do love that cinematic moment, ngl) and then Sylvanas still pulling an ‘Exactly as planned’ moment out of nothing, then that sense of being on the back foot makes the offensive into Darkshore all that more believable and also supported by the wider Horde; even the burning of Teldrassil then becomes an act of Retaliation not petty vindictiveness turned into genocide.
(Still think it would make more sense for the burning to happen not by Sylvanas’ orders, but something that happens and she has to roll with, all the while wondering who the hell is co-opting her command from the Vo- I mean shadows. Shadows. Ahem.)
The whole re-tread of MoPs Civil War, and they can claim that “It’s not that guys, honest!” as much as they want, it really truly is, is old and stale and tastes bad. Having a pragmatic and warlike Horde is not a bad thing. Having a Horde that gets split along ‘being written like an outright Villain’ and Honour being overused to the point of memeage is bad, and they should feel bad, imo.
9 Likes
As someone who positively grew up with WoW, this is the expansion that made me feel PROPERLY PATRIOTIC for the first time. People on Argent Dawn are, outside of RP, more in tune with a lot of the lore because of the RP aspect, and reading a lot about things you enjoy eventually makes you very passionate about them.
That said, I’m super bored by the frothing as well. Players are going to randomly ‘playfully’ hit you with faction smacktalk and it feels like they’re as good at conversations as people who respond to everything more personal with ‘oof’. Maybe it’ll calm down a little next expac.
3 Likes
OOF 
same reason Why people get Gung ho about sports teams?
Because people are stupid. The Roleplayer is no exception.
9 Likes
I’m more of an “equal opportunities scumbag” - both sides are fine so long as they’re paying!
3 Likes
Alliance bad, Horde good!
5 Likes
Orcs and Undead smell.
1 Like
Yes, but during basically all of WotLk and Cataclysm and MoP, we’re also being told just how stupid faction conflict is.
In Varian’s comic, most characters that desire a war against the Alliance are depicted as stupid (ie. Garrosh) or unable to grasp a bigger vision (Varian). This goes on and is depicted in many other books (all of Knaak’s books, most of Golden books, etc). The same occurs in WotLK and Cataclysm. At the time, when Garrosh became Warchief he received a massive backlash even from Horde players.
The crisis that makes the conflict escalate is partially due to the Twilight’s Hammer sabotage and the two factions falling for it. The cycle of hatred is seen as this awful thing which prevents economic growth from both factions and that makes these bigger threats prosper. The problem is that you can’t have the same narrative going on for 20-30 years and expect people not to keep count on things and expect a change. During WotLK and Cataclysm the conflict felt fresh and a driving force in the narrative.
But after showing and claiming that the conflict is caused by petty reasons and that every time a big bad arrives you also have to unite and face the threat together, something has to change in the faction dynamic. But if you alternate these two conflicting point of view during the narration as if it makes no difference, then you’re just doing it for the sake of a cliffhanger. Either you demonstrate that the cycle of hatred can be broken, or you mantain the faction conflict as an actual driving force of the narration. But then you also have to make it believable
9 Likes
The sad truth is that if we had peace, the writing would go into the ground even more.
Making up a “greater threat” each new expansion is just getting more and more stupid, and worse, we need faction conflict, or we’ll be out in space fighting Void Gods by the next expansion.
4 Likes
Think that’s already gonna happen in THIS expansion.
Definitely agree though, the faction conflict is the only way to keep Blizz off the cursed path that is Greater Threat Of The Week.
1 Like
But you just described how real world conflicts start. They start over petty reasons. It’s Guild Wars 2’s thing, the whole situation where the majority of the world has worked out how to live in harmony including the Charr who literally burnt an entire kingdom to ash. WoW should have this situation where there are constantly two factions slugging it out over various reasons that wiser people would consider petty as neutral factions stand in the middle finding it harder and harder to make these two factions work together even if it’s to save their own hides.
I think BfA’s conflict was refreshing, because throughout WoD and Legion the faction conflicts had taken a backseat, and that was about what, 4 years without much faction war aside from Ashran and the events of Stormheim? I think if the faction war was done properly and both factions were showing their worst colours there would be much less hatred for the faction war, but instead the writers seemed to stop themselves from representing the Alliance as anything other than a force for good, and created this whole kick back narrative where once again the Warchief is dragging an unwilling Horde through another war.
2 Likes
MoP’s story ended with the thesis statement that actually the faction war was good, and that Wrathion’s attempt to end it was negative.
The least they could do is make them fun like super sentai monsters.
4 Likes
This is a Horde vs Horde expansion what are you background characters talking about
13 Likes
Cant wait for Blizzard to announce that the next expac is BFA 2.0 just done better with Magni’s cult of pacifists swallowed by quicksand and every neutral faction joining the Alliance, les honorables Horde or Sylvanas’ Horde
You arent getting the end of the faction war, youre getting a threeway
3 Likes
Putting IC loyalty to the side, well I cant do that because I believe that roleplayers can potentially grow their loyalty to a faction because of the constant exposure, acting as a part of and the enjoyment of when your faction experiences something good. Kind of like…
This, basically people that are hardcore fans within certain fanbases. We get a good feeling and cheer when our favourite characters/athletes achieve something good and boo/get sad when something bad happens to them. Its probably why Ive seen many discussions about the faction war where players refer to the faction their character belongs to as their own faction, instead of saying “The Alliance did it!” they say “We did it!”, just like how one would say “FC Barcelona won the match!” you will hear “We won the match!”.
3 Likes
Many forum user have played since vanilla, where there was no “common enemy common city” thing that started with tbc. Faction war was a lot of the game back then and who started in vanilla still feels it.
1 Like
I mean, sure, but also the last two raids of vanilla were explicitly about working together against the common threat (AQ and Naxx), so it started even back then.
2 Likes
Current events of the story cater to faction identity, and hating the other faction is an established part of that identity regardless of what faction you play. Alliance sees the Horde as monsters and freaks, the Horde sees the Alliance as rigid and a constant thorn in the side.
Taking all of that and more into RP is perfectly fine. Arguably the way “it should be done” this expansion, if you want to soak up the faction war to its fullest.
Taking it outside of the game, and beyond a casual level of fandom, I agree can be pretty jarring to witness. It’s a bit like being a fan of a sports team, but then meet someone fully decked out in that team’s colors and loudly cheering them on… in the local supermarket on an ordinary Wednesday.
Good for you, you boisterous weirdo. Do go home though.
1 Like
You can’t have a ‘Good vs Evil’ thing when there’s no ‘Evil’ faction; end of WC3, the Horde was decidedly not ‘lol evil’ anymore.
SWTOR, for all its many, many faults, at least did that right; the Empire were never nice, and most certainly never apologised for that. Because they were right. Clearly.
Republic scum…
2 Likes