Change my mind: faction war detracts from the story rather than enhances it

[Zaktar]

@Zaktar
True, but you're assuming creativity. Besides, any such event would likely be limited time, and people already whine about limited time events.

As I said, that would be the boring way, the interesting way would be to let it play out over a long period of time.

I agree it would never happen, just an interesting idea (to me) which could work, even within the confines of budget. The game is made by a corporation though and while I disagree with the notion that the designers lack creativity, I do think they are too well managed to take such a big risk. Which is too bad, the game could use a bold risk.

[Super Dickmann]

@Feanoro

Don't get me wrong, they're not on the level of the WC3 nelves, but the mindset is there, as are all their units and the style. If they stuck this course, you'd have something really good going. The issue is they're fucked by the format, since there's a Sword of Damocles over their head and it reads "T-MINUS 1 PATCHES BEFORE ANDUIN FORGIVES THE HORDE".

[Feanoro]

The game is made by a corporation though and while I disagree with the notion that the designers lack creativity, I do think they are too well managed to take such a big risk. Which is too bad, the game could use a bold risk.

Fully agree, didn't mean to imply that it's the designers who lack creativity. A LOT of decisions have clearly been made by spreadsheet jockeys... sorry, dumbasses... sorry, managers. Everything we predicted about selling out to Activision came true, after all.

@Feanoro

Don't get me wrong, they're not on the level of the WC3 nelves, but the mindset is there, as are all their units and the style. If they stuck this course, you'd have something really good going. The issue is they're fucked by the format, since there's a Sword of Damocles over their head and it reads "T-MINUS 1 PATCHES BEFORE ANDUIN FORGIVES THE HORDE".

Even it wasn't Anduin, it'd be some Varian-t on Horde not remotely paying for their rampages ("We will end you!" Riiiiiiiiiiiight.). I'd disagree about even the mindset. WC3 mindset isn't the warfront's "Take back the land from the Horde!" WC3 mindset would be "Kill every last one of these filthy invaders to purify the land!"

[Florena]

Some of the individual moments are alright but I really don't like the faction war as the main focus.

Yes, back in WC 1 and 2, that's what the core of the game was.

We moved past that in WC 3 and the story was better for it. But because 'WAR in WARcraft' we have to keep going back to it, and BFA has had too many parallels to MOP to even feel somewhat original with it, and I have very little faith that BFA will still be about the faction war by 8.3's raid.

If we must have the factions taking shots at eacother keep it smaller scale in individual zone stories. I really hope that BFA is the swansong of the faction war as a main driving conflict for an expansion and we just go back to Vanilla-BC levels of faction conflict.

[Super Dickmann]

Even it wasn't Anduin, it'd be some Varian-t on Horde not remotely paying for their rampages ("We will end you!" Riiiiiiiiiiiight.). I'd disagree about even the mindset. WC3 mindset isn't the warfront's "Take back the land from the Horde!" WC3 mindset would be "Kill every last one of these filthy invaders to purify the land!"

We did have some of this in A Good War when they cooked those Horde soldiers alive. And I don't think they at the moment are limited to Darkshore in terms of aims.

As for the problem, the problem is in the way Blizzard commits to writing faction conflict. Too high stakes and at the same time the commitment to end it in one expansion, rather than allow an on-going regional and proxy war where neither side has to give up its grievances.

[Super Dickmann]

Part of me still hopes we are at T-minus 2 patches before the factions split up over grievances N'zoth helped engineer while growing a mustache to twirl (a squid with a mustache!) so next xpac we can dissolve the faction barrier and focus on RACIAL storylines.

Tyrande deserves a throne made of orc and forsaken skulls. Give the girl some bling to make up for not getting laid for a millenium!

The optimist in me thinks dissolving the factions will allow the writers to focus on individual racial stories and grievances that couldn't be addressed without fluid alliances. The realist in me knows that it'll just be a non-stop human potential fest now that no other races need apply even for gameplay reasons.

[Itisamuh]

The faction war would be a lot better if the Horde was just a flat out dark faction, instead of a recolored Alliance. Maybe not full on evil to the extent of the Scourge, Legion, Twilight cultists, etc, but at least a very dark shade of grey, while keeping the Alliance a more traditional good. As it is, any justification for the faction war went out the window in Cataclysm, when the Alliance started recruiting traditionally dark outcasts as well, which has only been added to with Dark Iron and Void Elves. At this point, there is no clear defining difference between them, and anytime a leader like Garrosh or Sylvanas tries to make them darker, the rest of the Horde characters, as well as a large chunk of the playerbase, whines about it and rebels. So yes, as long as there is no discernible difference between the factions, there might as well not even be a split, and it does detract from the story. Ganking is the only use I have for separate factions.

[Super Dickmann]

Here is the thing. Tying to my signature, I think one thing that stops a world revamp, even a partial one, is that a large number of the zones and questlines would only be relevant to a small number of players. Not everyone will want to do quests about the Forsaken or the Dwarves and if we are talking about making the world useful at max level, you will just not feel any connection to Dun Morogh as an orc. But what if we could quest everywhere?
Removing the faction barrier means that a lot more content suddenly becomes available for everyone. Sure some of it will be weird as hell. A Worgen questing for the Forsaken just sounds retarded. One option would be to have an intervening expansion where we are actually brought to the brink of extinction. My expansion idea for after Legion was to spend an entire expansion travelling back from Argus and only in the last xpac to arrive to Azeroth to find that the Black Empire WON and the few remaining people had joined, regardless of past hatred simply so as to survive.
The portals rooms in 8.1.5 are killing that idea. It just seems certain that Blizzard is committed to Stormwind and Orgrimmar and nothing will change from that.

Blizzard have shot down the idea of a full all at once world revamp recently and I can understand why. It sucked up a lot of resources in Cataclysm and it left the endgame barren and fairly plotless as well from a story viewpoint. I also think that far too much is tied to the factions in previous content to make it apply to everyone without seriously fucking it over and Danuser and the like have said that the factions are staying in some form. It's why I'm betting that we'll just get peacemode to solve the raid imbalance issue and they'll call it a day.

The main issue from a story perspective is that in neutrality expansions the focus is already on a fairly limited cast that I've named enough already. The factions mean that at least some air time from the others is required, but in a factionless world that's not the case. They'll be able to freely pretend that content themed for one faction is for all players and we already know what they like - moral lessons, human potential and black and white conflict.

[micwini]

The only expansion where the faction conflict made sense was cata. Where both sides were "Battling for the world's deminished resources". Idea for BFA was good, but poorly executed. It was too random and sudden. There should have been way more build up.

[Super Dickmann]

In such a case we would not have a world revamp but rather a world remake; imagine if almost the entire world sinks beneath the waves due to N'zoth and we only have a couple of zone clusters (the places with high altitude so North Kalimdor and Khaz Modan) where everyone is forced to cluster. Old world can be revisited by Bronze Dragonflight.

The last suggestion is very risky, but I can see some version of it happening more than I can a world revamp. Honestly, the bronze dragons should allow Blizzard to make much more liberal use of old zones, but it's one of those things they haven't fully exploited yet.