The Faction War: Should it be Continued?

[Deleted]

MoP was the AvH expansion. We don't need another one any time soon

Actually we do, we on the Horde are out of important lore characters on a few races so we need some focus on the Horde faction soon.
Also we should get a break of a big bad now, just to replace fel green with purple is not really that great for the near future.

[Captain Kennedy]

It should continue after the next big threat, but Blizzard need to get better at writing reasons why another war would break out. They need to not keep relying on great incidents like The Wrath Gate and Broken Shore. It'd be far more interesting to see the warmongers on both sides push them into a conflict. Forcing the more peaceful leaders to take action. The events start out small and then gradually spiral into open war.

Blizzard should really own the idea of peacekeepers and warmongers on both sides.

[Krabb]

A couple a weeks ago there was a poll on being able to go neutral if you wanted. I think this is the most interesting option. Lots of people still really love the idea of the alliance and horde going at each other. But for many it seems silly and pointless. So I think the player should be able to say you know what I don't want to be a part of these silly politics and join a neutral mercenary type faction this way you can interact with either side you want in PvP and it makes sense being these legendary adventures helping save the world from a pve point of view.

[Traveler Voltin]

we still need payback for SoO

who is this "we"?

[Deleted]

It can continue in novels or whatever, but it only hurts the game.

[Maljinwo]

The Horde couldn't possibly survive another war against the Alliance
It took them almost 2 full years to recover after the Siege. And once they recovered, they lost even more people on the Broken Shore.

[Selah]

Yes and no. It's a bit of a complex issue. The Horde and the Alliance are comprised of groups and individuals who would not do well with the opposing faction. A perfect example is the Undead, it'll be a cold day in hell before they successfully integrate into any Alliance capital they can barely maintain their own standing within the Horde. The Alliance and Horde are similar enough to each other to not want to kill each other outright all the time but disputes are going to erupt between the two factions for sure. Problem is, there is a lot of half-witted writing going on. I think the solution here is to just have better writing for the game.

[Wyrt]

The Horde couldn't possibly survive another war against the Alliance
It took them almost 2 full years to recover after the Siege. And once they recovered, they lost even more people on the Broken Shore.

Population numbers never mean anything to Blizzard. Especially when it comes to orcs and humans.

[Zulkhan]

The Forsaken live on what seems like the most fertile part of Azeroth

If anything is probably the less fertile of all, only the Eastern Plaguelands are much worse. People forget that all of Lordaeron has been affected by the Plague of Undeath so most of its territory is basically dead. Hillsbrad seems to be the only safe haven as it seems completely unaffected. There's also Alterac but the place climate is rather rigid up there.

and not only do they not utilize it's capacity to generate food, they actively destroy it.

"Actively" is quite the strong word. Yes, they caused some damage but very much collateral for the most part, let alone always around land belonging to someone else and "denaturalized" to begin with.

Meanwhile in the Plaguelands the Argent Dawn should by now have a stable population and will continue to purge the blight. It is only natural that at some point they will come to clash.

They didn't purge the blight, they purged the plague of undeath. Forsaken has no canisters of that, nor made a widespread usage of it. The Argent Crusade/Cenarion Circle efforts are not going to affect or spark the interests of the Forsaken and viceversa, as the Forsaken shown no interest to corrupt the land on purpose (unlike the Cult of the Damned).

I also doubt that the Council of Three Hammers can last. The noble clans that serve the Bronzebeards will likely never be happy about sharing power (and trade partners) with the Dark Irons who are equally industrious. There is too much bad blood for the clans to remain united if there is no clear outside threat (and a rogue Nathrezim or two should be enough to tier Ironforge apart imo).

Guess much will depend from Moira's future development. She's clearly the focal point that currently maintain stability or will ruin it completely in the future.

I mean if population numbers did matter, would the Darkspear even exist at this point? Not to mention the Bilgewater

If numbers did matter 3/4 of Warcraft's races and organizations would be either extinct or at least unable to grant any military support for years to come. Then again, numbers are vague and losses even more. The only time we got a specific number was in The Shattering, where Golden had the audacity to mention 50.000 losses on the Alliance side alone during the Northrend campaign of WotLK (no mention of the Horde's own losses but is easy to assume a very similar number). The fact that right from that event the two factions started a global conflict against each other and were able to sustain it until the end is utterly astonishing (let alone how they kept fighting common threats even after that).

[Pickynerd]

Maybe it should just to preserve was it was for some people, but maybe a 3rd faction where differences were put aside.

[Combatbutler]

The Forsaken live on what seems like the most fertile part of Azeroth and not only do they not utilize it's capacity to generate food, they actively destroy it.

Lordaeron and its surrounding territories were quite plagued, the land and forests are rather sick, the only territory unaffected by it lies to the south. Why humans try to recover such tainted land instead of trying to colonize different lands is rather odd to say the least.

[Combatbutler]

Lordaeron is not just the Plaguelands. The Tirisfal Glades were full of farms in vanilla, with humans allied with the Scarlets most of which were killed and their land poisoned. Hillsbrad Foothills were entirely green and full of farms, many of them now destroyed by blight. Forsaken have one type of war strategy and that's scorching the earth or in their case, blighting it.

I'd disagree just because there were farms does not mean they were healthy. The entirety of Lordaeron looked quite sickly even in classic. The forsaken made things worse, but Lordaeron really wasn't a good spot to live in anymore.

[Tripzzz]

I'd disagree just because there were farms does not mean they were healthy. The entirety of Lordaeron looked quite sickly even in classic. The forsaken made things worse, but Lordaeron really wasn't a good spot to live in anymore.

Good thing they have allies(tauren) that are strong in healing and nature magic that would be more than happy to heal the land.

[MikeBogina]

I'd actually like for the Horde and Alliance both go at it, but because of Old God manipulation. Have the Alliance's main focus be Sylvanas and the Horde's be Jaina. Have Thrall and Anduin get kidnapped by Twilight assassin's in disguise and have Jaina/Greymane and Sylvanas/Nethanos go to war.

Have some casualties on both sides and have both Sylvanas and Jaina ending the expansion in an attempt to claim some ancient power on some newly risen island that house a Titan facility underground(N'zoth's prison)

They can both live, but Nethanos and Greymane have to die.

[Vulgrym]

The more I play other games, the more I think the faction divide is just a senseless, resource wasting, restricting dynamic that you don't really need. You can still have great stories aligned by races (and even factions) without having actual game-play limitations.

[Maljinwo]

Have Thrall and Anduin get kidnapped by Twilight assassin's in disguise and have Jaina/Greymane and Sylvanas/Nethanos go to war.

Oh god, just let Thrall die. He should've died in the Broken Shore already

[MikeBogina]

Realistically speaking, yes.

The orcs cannot survive on Durotar. The goblins may be able to claim lumber from Azshara for the Horde but the orcs are a fecund race and their population growth will always be constrained by resources. Unless they invest in irrigation for Durotar and the Barrens to make them more fertile and increase their number of farmers, the orcs will face starvation in the future and historically their response to that has always been to raid the resources of others.

I believe it was said somewhere's that the Orcs are heavily dependent on fishing now, but a lot of what we also know is Vanilla conditions. Since then, the orcs have taken a lot of territory and just have to wait for the yearly doom events to stop, to finally colonize those areas to start farming. It's also probably safe to say that all the territory once belonging to the Alliance south of Orgrimmar is now Horde territory, which has abundant in food. There's also Azshara and now there can be trade with Pandaria for their amazing crops.

I mean if population numbers did matter, would the Darkspear even exist at this point? Not to mention the Bilgewater

Or gnomes! From Warcraft 3 to Vanilla WoW, almost all the populations of the world took drastic hits, from threats that are nothing compared to what we face in WoW. The gnomes lost most of their population to that Leper stuff, Humans lost almost all of their northern population to the plague, Blood Elves only make up 9% of their former population, while highelves make up 1%. Orcs in the Horde are all from interment camps and the small warsong, and even lost more on the trip to Kalimdor. Night Elves lost so much in the Legion's push up mount hyjal. The Draenei are only a fraction of the survivors who were able to survive because there was so few left... so yeah.

And that's when they're all introduced. Then there's been shit tons of wars, the worst probably being against the Lich King, then cata had people recruiting large numbers from each city, Orgrimmar had a siege which should have brought their population to almost nothing(but they then said only a fraction joined Garrosh) and now the Legion attacking all over.

The populations of the world mattered in the beginning, especially in the books and RTS, but in wow there's no population drops unless a race is being introduced, but from there on, nothing. But it probably wouldn't be fun to see all the races of the world dwindle and migrate to one major city per faction to stay alive, with all these world ending wars each year against Demons, Old Gods, Undead, Elementals and the occasional outcast who goes to Draenor/outland to build an army and oppress some draeneis(Illidan/Garrosh)

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Oh god, just let Thrall die. He should've died in the Broken Shore already

i would have, but I don't think Anduin is allowed to die. I was gonna say like kidnap or kill Thrall's kid, but that would put him in the spotlight again.

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The more I play other games, the more I think the faction divide is just a senseless, resource wasting, restricting dynamic that you don't really need. You can still have great stories aligned by races (and even factions) without having actual game-play limitations.

We'd have a nation similar to America with the Left and Right. Everyone of the alliance would call all the horde races "Forsaken" or "Neo-Scourge" and everyone of the Horde would call the Alliance "Gnomeflakes". Would be horrible! xD

[Aeula]

Yes, for the love of god I'm sick of WoW boring line of villains. Let's start blurring the lines and murdering each other again.

At this point the only 'threat' that is actually a threat to the Horde and the Alliance are each other.

[Zulkhan]

Good thing they have allies(tauren) that are strong in healing and nature magic that would be more than happy to heal the land.

Tauren =/= Cenarion Circle. There was just one Tauren who was interested enough in trying to heal Silverpine and as Orc/Tauren/Troll noob you received a breadcrumb quest in Kalimdor leading you to the Forsaken questing areas and specifically to that druid to give her the mutated turtle shells from the Barrens' oasis, hoping it would help her research. It didn't lead to any further follow up and nothing came out of that to this day.

If the combined efforts of Argent Crusade and Cenarion Circle were focused on Tirisfal/Silverpine they would have surely healed the land easily but the sole Tauren as "Horde allies" seem to not really care enough about.

[rowaasr13]

Horde vs Alliance is the core of Warcraft.

It would be like removing the Jedi and Sith from Star Wars.

KotOR says "hi!". It is among greatest stories of SW:EU exactly because you're not locked to jedi/sith binary idiocy.