Why Battle for Azeroth will fail

[Khaza-R]

This thread is stupid. Very obvious the Old Gods planned the faction war. I swear the people who complain are the ones who don’t even pay attention to the lore in game.

[Leean]

and later on stuff in the story will lead us to the argus of the expansion (Azshara) and then we do something to Nzoth.

So this expansion is somehow related to old gods and azshara.

I hope so much you are right on this..

[Exilian]

Brainlet detected.

Read up on the simple lore of BFA.

Its very simple:

we START with a horde vs alliance war, because sylvanas uses a shard from sargeras weapon from silithus to destroy teldrassil.

Simple.

(tyrande dies probably)

and later on stuff in the story will lead us to the argus of the expansion (Azshara) and then we do something to Nzoth.

So this expansion is somehow related to old gods and azshara.

Yes mate but the problem is this means azshara will get a PATCH of content, not an EXPANSION of content, as she rightly deserves. She will essentially be the ulduar of BFA - a cool raid with an interesting concept thats got little to do with what came before and after in that same xpac, with relatively little story devoted to her and an unsatisfactory, unimportant ending.

[whyabadi]

There is no shortage of villains in the WoW universe. Calm down.

[Gaidax]

Lotta people are prematurely spazzing out and claiming it’s the worst expac/has nothing even though the reveal isn’t a day old and we’ve never played it.

Business as usual.

Here is a suggestion for some people - prepare some usual QQ/Doomgloom thread for expansion, but keep the naming blank, like: " WoW: ______ will fail. It looks like Blizzard is taking WoW back on a very, very bad path again. Yada yada."

Would save time and effort, very efficient because content of such threads does not change for years.

[Cute Chen]

Business as usual.

Here is a suggestion for some people - prepare some usual QQ/Doomgloom thread for expansion, but keep the naming blank, like: " WoW: ______ will fail. It looks like Blizzard is taking WoW back on a very, very bad path again. Yada yada."

Would save time and effort, very efficient because content of such threads does not change for years.

at least other expansion cinematics had a mission statement, this new one makes no sense. it's just a generic H vs A battle.

[wrynil]

Worked just fine for MoP

[Donald Hellscream]

Why don't you try and use some critical thinking? Of course the story isn't gonna revolve solely around AvH, the first raid is a titan quarantine lab and there is gonna be 10 dungeons at launch if I understood correctly so obviously there is gonna be content for both pvp and pve.

[Stormspellz]

While the announcement information was rather lackluster and no mention of how they are addressing the numerous problems with legion, we already know old gods have a presence in the expansion, and making Nzoth to be the puppet master of the current conflict is an easy foreshadow to spot

[Djem]

I love the expansion's setting. It might be my favorite setting of any expansion actually. Faction war is the coolest part of WoW and it's about time we got an expansion focused on it rather than "unite against the greater threat" boring nonsense.

In that way, the expansion is already succeeding. Stop being so pessimistic.

[Demithio]

so everyone saw the reveal yesterday, and it looks like Blizzard is taking WoW back on a very, very bad path again.

An expansion without a major enemy that is only about Alliance vs. Horde? How is that going to work in a mainly PvE focused game? It's not gonna. Island hopping sounds boring and will get old really fast. Looks like MoP scenarios, which were horrible.

And this whole one continent for Alliance, one for Horde? Then where are the dungeons and raids are going to be? Which enemies are we going to fight?

Basically we got an expansion with subraces (oh, great, what an incredible feature!), boring island scenarios and no major enemy to fight but lots of bad PvP. Wow! Great job Blizzard! Sub numbers are gonna tank hard once the excitement for vanilla servers diminishes

But but... its early! No really, the announcement is kind of lame. I wasnt really expecting much, haven't expected much from WoW for a while now. But geez, it is a pretty lack luster announcement.

[Marcellus1986]

Opinion piece:

Why 'the Horde Vs. Alliance plot 'never work:
It boils down to design-choice. Blizzard aims to catch-all and please as many as possible regardless of faction choice (equal opportunities). There is an inherent problem with this design philosophy; because the two factions are so similar in end-goals and philosophy you end up having a shallow conflict where the plot and tension feels forced to the point where the real issue is a matter of a simple power-struggle.

Then on occasion you have this big villain/threat where both Alliance and Horde seem to be functioning fine alongside each other - even co-operating at times - to defeat said enemy. This works well because of the aforementioned similarities between the two factions. I'm aware there are still occasional conflicts between the factions but they always end up banding together to fight this over-arching threat.

Your choice largely doesn't matter.
Blizzard manages to create symmetrical game-play where the only real incentive to play one faction over the other is if you have a preferred race/city or if your friends play a specific faction. You get an almost identical questing/game-play experience and there are no restricted classes to factions any longer. The are an abundance of neutral factions that doesn't care if you're Horde or Alliance. This last part may be different with Battle for Azeroth, although they already revealed you'll be able to visit the other island once you're done with your own.


Both factions have the same fundamental goal/philosophy.
To survive and have the upper hand. There are no fundamental political differences or interesting philosophical divergences (utilitarianism vs deontology, for instance) to separate the two factions.

So why not remove factions all-together?
Well, because there are differences between the two factions. They do things differently, speak different languages and have different cultures. This doesn't mean that war is inevitable. Think of your own country - just because there are other countries and cultures doesn't mean that war is unavoidable.

How do you solve the issue?
In my opinion you have to create unequal conditions and/or contrast philosophies to spark the flame of conflict. The one time where Blizzard actually managed to get close to a real conflict was when the Horde was under Garroshs' rule. It was then that the Horde began to drastically diverge from the Alliance in terms of philosophy and goals, this of course due to Garroshs' violent/extremists view. It was also back then when the Horde was villainized and Blizzard forced Horde players to side with Alliance (again...) to dethrone Garrosh thereby reverting things back to status quo.

I'm personally also in favor of factions-restricted classes. This creates more incentive to choose one faction over the other and also provides the player an additional affiliation to the faction.

Will you stop copy/pasta'ing this in every thread you post in about BfA?

[Hotsforyou]

Meh, i for one will be unsubbing for the first time ever after we clear Antorus.

They are including more of what i consider cancer in the game. LFG/LFR/Xrealm. More AP (Azerite) and Titanforging is coming back. I know a few people who have the same ideas and are leaving as well. I will return when the classic servers open.

[Fleckens]

I wouldn't be so sure about that. The gameplay systems clearly show that they intend to keep this artifical conflict going for as long as possible, their new deal with all the pvp/ai battle thing will certainly not be a one-off for the first couple of weeks. That they mentioned ashara in the second panel was probably to not lose everyone who doesn't give a rats ass about the fake faction conflict entirely within the first 3 hours of the announcement. Did they even have a slide for her?

They were clearly trying not to spoil the story for those who don't read datamined stuff by not going into details about the raids but simply mentioning what they were, and considering the limited time it makes much more sense to focus on new aspects rather than new raids and dungeons as while they obviously are exciting it's not something we didn't already know about, we know there will be new raids and dungeons, just mentioning quickly what they are about is enough for now.

[Toogoodman]

I agree. Bfa looks shitty and boring. I had wod and Legion vibes when I was watching announcement.
But idc about this trashy exp because we will get classic wow

Okay, bye, you have your own subforum now

[Fleckens]

Yes mate but the problem is this means azshara will get a PATCH of content, not an EXPANSION of content, as she rightly deserves. She will essentially be the ulduar of BFA - a cool raid with an interesting concept thats got little to do with what came before and after in that same xpac, with relatively little story devoted to her and an unsatisfactory, unimportant ending.

Can I borrow your time machine please?

[Fahrenheit]

Unconfirmed.
Implied, but unconfirmed.

It wasn’t even implied. They just said before the Battle for Azeroth is over we’ll have to deal with her. There was nothing said about her being a boss in the first raid tier. I doubt an ancient naga sea witch is going to be the end boss of a titan complex.

[Deleted]

WoW story need to slow down a bit and go back to reality. FFS we will defeat biggest threat to universe ever soon (Sargeras), and what next attack Void Lords?? something so powerful that even Titans feared them? It's fucking ridiculous imo, we are just humanoids with swords fighting gods, lol.

[McFrotton]

so everyone saw the reveal yesterday, and it looks like Blizzard is taking WoW back on a very, very bad path again.

An expansion without a major enemy that is only about Alliance vs. Horde? How is that going to work in a mainly PvE focused game? It's not gonna. Island hopping sounds boring and will get old really fast. Looks like MoP scenarios, which were horrible.

And this whole one continent for Alliance, one for Horde? Then where are the dungeons and raids are going to be? Which enemies are we going to fight?

Basically we got an expansion with subraces (oh, great, what an incredible feature!), boring island scenarios and no major enemy to fight but lots of bad PvP. Wow! Great job Blizzard! Sub numbers are gonna tank hard once the excitement for vanilla servers diminishes

we get azshara in the second tier, and it will probably lead to old gods in the third patch leading to void stuff in 9.0

Battle for Azeroth will make sense by the end of the xpac, the faction war is just setting up some events in motion!

[skannerz22]

so everyone saw the reveal yesterday, and it looks like Blizzard is taking WoW back on a very, very bad path again.

An expansion without a major enemy that is only about Alliance vs. Horde? How is that going to work in a mainly PvE focused game? It's not gonna. Island hopping sounds boring and will get old really fast. Looks like MoP scenarios, which were horrible.

And this whole one continent for Alliance, one for Horde? Then where are the dungeons and raids are going to be? Which enemies are we going to fight?

Basically we got an expansion with subraces (oh, great, what an incredible feature!), boring island scenarios and no major enemy to fight but lots of bad PvP. Wow! Great job Blizzard! Sub numbers are gonna tank hard once the excitement for vanilla servers diminishes

dungeons and raids obviously require you to travel to the other island at max level DERP