Kosak bombarded with "World of PeaceCraft" on Twitter. Thoughts?

[Eats Compost]

How am I going to gank people then ?
Anyway, it makes perfect sense that relations between Horde and Alliance fluctuates between friendly and hostile, I mean, that's just like in real life, whenever two countries have the same interests they're going to ally but whenever it's no longer the case they're going to be ennemies. Why would you expect the Horde and Alliance to be friend for ever ?

What makes it weird is that they're eachother's first go-to. In a real-world context, it's less like Russia and the US and more like some hypothetical bizarre relationship where the UK and France repeatedly declare war on eachother but then help eachother invade other countries.

It's make some degree of sense if the Alliance and Horde were in a constant state of strife but toned down their conflicts when a greater threat appeared. What doesn't make sense is how they constantly collaborate and then immediately go back to hating eachother. They're acting as if they're simultaneously eachother's biggest and smallest threat. In a real world situation, they'd either do the cold war thing and avoiding committing to aconflict, or actually commit to one.

[owbu]

The problem is that we dont get to decide wether we want to work together against ultimate evil no. 16 or have an all out faction war.
The question is, if we want to fight evil together and also a tacked on lukewarm cold war, that will change nothing whatsoever, because we already defeated evil number 1-15 together and will defeat evil no.18 together. Its been ten years of them trying to integrate the faction war into WoWs game structure. It doesnt work.

An all out war would be fun. But the game isnt built around us burning down stormwind or reconquering Undercity. (Neither are players brains apparently considering how the forum combusts into tears every time blizzard trys to change anything in favor of the "wrong" side)
That stuff would be fun. Empty threats, some minor skirmish, and then going back to the main story is just boring and gets less and less believable.
Just like when they ask if we want shorter final patches in World of Warcraft. Sure..and we also would like a unicorn to ride us to the moon.

[SDMF]

I hate to say it but the guy has a point. The Alliance and Horde has been working together so many times to stop a "greater evil" that it has stopped making sense for both factions to be at war with one another. The conflict in WoW has turned into guerrilla warfare.

[Jokerfiend]

Having a faction war is fine, if your game has an interesting, evolving story to back it up that makes sense within the game world. WoW hasn't had that for ages. As many of those tweets reflect, it's largely just an old gameplay mechanic that, if anything, is in opposition to the vast majority of the narrative we've been shown over the years. It makes both factions come across as ignorant, idiotic xenophobes when there's no substance to back their conflict up.

If there's going to be a perpetual Alliance/Horde conflict, then write a good story to justify it. Otherwise it just feels arbitrary and forced. "Because Warcraft" is not a sound justification for stilted storytelling.

I agree, but that's Blizzard's fault. We have let them get away with it for far to long, and now they even see it as contrived. Which I think is lazy developing, lazy story writing and overall under performance, but what do I know. It isn't like this wasn't foretold... it's wasn't like this was complained about 6-7 years ago. When most people said, it's fine, quit complaining. Oh, it will get better. Nah, none of this was seen an Age ago, nope.

[Eats Compost]

It doesn't make sense now, but that is Blizzard's fault.

If you guys get this Peacecraft.

PvP will be removed from the game. Battlegrounds will no longer be relevant, and will not make sense to continue to develop.

Have you given any thought to how easy it is to engineer a new reason for players to kill eachother without a faction conflict?

Rival mercenary groups pop up. They each recruit players. They're conveniently vying for control of the BG-described areas and some places in the open world. Bam. Problem solved. BGs would work exactly as they do now except placing you with one of the merc groups, and world PvP can do a Scryers/Aldor situation. Easy.

It can be complex or simple, with a highly involved story or a light story. Either way, it frees up the Alliance and Horde for a story that actually makes sense and even provides new gameplay opportunities. The only problem is that it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in non-BG past zones, but I think it's fairly safe to say that no-one gives an honest crap about PvP in obsolete areas.

[apples]

Q times for literally everything would fall through the floor if you could Q cross faction

the entire game would be so much better

who cares though, contrived lore reason that no one is actually going to even attempt to explain means we need to be at "war"

even though half the NPCs are all BUT MUH TREATY WHY DEY ATTACK US?!

[Jokerfiend]

Have you given any thought to how easy it is to engineer a new reason for players to kill eachother without a faction conflict?

Rival mercenary groups pop up. They each recruit players. They're conveniently vying for control of the BG-described areas and some places in the open world. Bam. Problem solved. BGs would work exactly as they do now except placing you with one of the merc groups, and world PvP can do a Scryers/Aldor situation. Easy.

It can be complex or simple, with a highly involved story or a light story. Either way, it frees up the Alliance and Horde for a story that actually makes sense and even provides new gameplay opportunities. The only problem is that it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in non-BG past zones, but I think it's fairly safe to say that no-one gives an honest crap about PvP in obsolete areas.

Why are you saying it doesn't make sense, and not holding Blizzard to a higher standard and make the conflict the driving force?

Why are you so willing to give up the conflict for lazy programming and developing?

[Deleted]

Have you given any thought to how easy it is to engineer a new reason for players to kill eachother without a faction conflict?

Rival mercenary groups pop up. They each recruit players. They're conveniently vying for control of the BG-described areas and some places in the open world. Bam. Problem solved. BGs would work exactly as they do now except placing you with one of the merc groups, and world PvP can do a Scryers/Aldor situation. Easy.

It can be complex or simple, with a highly involved story or a light story. Either way, it frees up the Alliance and Horde for a story that actually makes sense and even provides new gameplay opportunities. The only problem is that it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense in non-BG past zones, but I think it's fairly safe to say that no-one gives an honest crap about PvP in obsolete areas.

and why create a random retarded reason when there is a perfectly servicable one already implemented? It's world of WARCRAFT, and it is never going to change, independent of whatever little RP-PVE heroes want to have.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

It's kind of funny how Varian, of all people, can set aside his hatred of the Horde and salute Sylvanas with respect as they face down the Broken Isles in the cinematic.... and in the very first zone you're basically fucking up the opposing faction's shit like it was the First War.

The least Blizzard could do is allow a single account-level 'traitor' quest chain to jump factions with your race if they're not up to uniting the factions against the constant greater evils we encounter now that Garrosh is gone.

[Thage]

It's the ever running arms race that drives the story and the progression. If that is not the case anymore, then I really don't see the point of the Lore.

The problem is, WC3 had constantly made a point through the end of the campaign (when the Alliance, Horde, and Sentinels banded together) that the mortal races don't need things like Guardians to fend off the Legion anymore, because when they work together they're unstoppable. Even leading into TFT the Sentinels didn't really show any beef with the Horde and the Alliance seemed content to live and let live outside Daelin (who was a whole other bag of ferrets).

Even in WoW, in Vanilla things were uneasy and there were constant border clashes (which is the justification for the classic BGs and world PvP), but they still banded together to get shit done when the Quiraji stopped by to say 'hey.' In BC, there's questgivers who out and state the Alliance and Horde are allies, and you get sent out to help the other faction out early in Hellfire Peninsula. Blizzard didn't get a hardon for the faction war until WotLK, and handled it extremely badly, letting an out-of-universe decision force the plot to twist in on itself, and many characters to behave contrary to their previous characterization, exclusively for the sake of continuing the faction war long after it should have settled into an uneasy, tense, but effective ceasefire interrupted by clashes between adventurers and on the borders like the story was building up to prior to Blizzard's sudden about-face on the notion.

[Eats Compost]

Why are you saying it doesn't make sense, and not holding Blizzard to a higher standard and make the conflict the driving force?

Why are you so willing to give up the conflict for lazy programming and developing?

Why is the conflict something to "give up"? It's restricting gameplay. Even if it's well-written, the result of an Alliance/Horde war is a foregone conclusion because no-one can win or lose. There's no reason that it's inherently good for the story even if they can make it work. Seriously, the whole thing is flawed as a concept.

I AM holding Blizzard to a higher standard. The higher standard dictates ditching the garbage story element that has consistently failed to work well ever since it became a point of focus in WoW.

[Jokerfiend]

The problem is, WC3 had constantly made a point through the end of the campaign (when the Alliance, Horde, and Sentinels banded together) that the mortal races don't need things like Guardians to fend off the Legion anymore, because when they work together they're unstoppable. Even leading into TFT the Sentinels didn't really show any beef with the Horde and the Alliance seemed content to live and let live outside Daelin (who was a whole other bag of ferrets).

Even in WoW, in Vanilla things were uneasy and there were constant border clashes (which is the justification for the classic BGs and world PvP), but they still banded together to get shit done when the Quiraji stopped by to say 'hey.' In BC, there's questgivers who out and state the Alliance and Horde are allies, and you get sent out to help the other faction out early in Hellfire Peninsula. Blizzard didn't get a hardon for the faction war until WotLK, and handled it extremely badly, letting an out-of-universe decision force the plot to twist in on itself, and many characters to behave contrary to their previous characterization, exclusively for the sake of continuing the faction war long after it should have settled into an uneasy, tense, but effective ceasefire interrupted by clashes between adventurers and on the borders like the story was building up to prior to Blizzard's sudden about-face on the notion.

Again, it goes back to lazy, and under performance basically. So why are people willing to give it up, to give Blizzard a free pass?

[Varitok]

Because this is the world you choose to play in. No matter what greater conflict arises, the races simply cannot and will not remove their racist attitudes and forget their past aggressors. You're asking for Worgen and Forsaken to be friendly among one another, for Goblins and Gnomes to get along, for Humans and Orcs to shake hands. The world may be in constant state of armageddon but these two factions are too caught up in their ways to see the greater bad. Its interesting story telling.

That is not interesting story telling, what you just said was we are constantly at war because racism. That might be a good basis for one or two expansions but not every single expansion and literally no progression of the story happens. At this point its awful story telling, its a dumb attempt at keeping PvP relevant within the story.

[Jtbrig7390]

Yes, I think the faction conflict is stupid and only serves for the wannabes who think PVP is still serious business. It's about time to get rid of it similar to how Rift did: Factions are at war, players are not. BGs still exist, you can't go into Horde territory as Alliance or vice versa without getting attacked by guards, have open world PVP areas that are still free for all, but let cross-faction communication and grouping happen. Basically win-win. If they must, only keep things as they are on pure PVP servers; PVE, RP and RP-PVP would be open (RP-PVP is a weird option here but the idea is that RP would want it open, but PVP is still an option for those who want to play like that e.g. a Human whose family was killed by Orcs and hates them).

If people gravitate towards PVP servers, they want to keep it alive. If they leave, they do not. Simple way to gauge it.

To add to this we already share a auction house with each other.

[Thage]

Again, it goes back to lazy, and under performance basically. So why are people willing to give it up, to give Blizzard a free pass?

They've demonstrated a consistent and clear lack of ability to write the war with any sort of grace. When someone keeps fucking up for I want to say seven years straight, it's the very definition of insanity to allow them to continue pursuing the thing they fuck up with any expectations of improvement.

[Eats Compost]

and why create a random retarded reason when there is a perfectly servicable one already implemented? It's world of WARCRAFT, and it is never going to change, independent of whatever little RP-PVE heroes want to have.

We're always at war with a big bad. The title "Warcraft" doesn't exactly lose relevance when the Alliance and Horde make peace. Was Warcraft 3 not a Warcraft game? Because Orcs versus Humans was about 10 minutes of it, and then a mini-campaign at the end where the guy who wanted to continue the Alliance/Horde war was clearly established as the bad guy.

Also, the current reason is definitely not serviceable. Hell, the relatively-recent mercenary mode is a symptom of exactly how serviceable it isn't.

[Alixie]

Considering the Draenai can easily forgive the orcs for their genocide, and work together to rebuild their homes, it makes less sense for the Alliance and Horde to keep their heated war with each other.

According to that Pandaren tavern waiter, the fractions need to have endless war to "balance and strengthen each other." What a shit reason.

[Jokerfiend]

Why is the conflict something to "give up"? It's restricting gameplay. Even if it's well-written, the result of an Alliance/Horde war is a foregone conclusion because no-one can win or lose. There's no reason that it's inherently good for the story even if they can make it work. Seriously, the whole thing is flawed as a concept.

I AM holding Blizzard to a higher standard. The higher standard dictates ditching the garbage story element that has consistently failed to work well ever since it became a point of focus in WoW.

And again, that is Blizzard fault. Is that mine or your fault it hasn't worked?

So why are we blaming Blizzard for fault, instead of giving them grounds to change the whole point? What's the point of factions? What's the point of races? If all you want is cooperation and hand holding?

[beanman12345]

They've demonstrated a consistent and clear lack of ability to write the war with any sort of grace. When someone keeps fucking up for I want to say seven years straight, it's the very definition of insanity to allow them to continue pursuing the thing they fuck up with any expectations of improvement.

So, you assume they can write "peace" with grace?

[Eats Compost]

Again, it goes back to lazy, and under performance basically. So why are people willing to give it up, to give Blizzard a free pass?

You've got a bizarre idea of what giving Blizzard a free pass means. Telling them that A) their story is bad and that B) they should change it and C) give players greater freedom seems, to me, like the ideal way to hold Blizzard to account.