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  1. #21
    Brewmaster Depakote's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Soon-TM View Post
    People expressing their opinions on an internet forum, and daring criticise Blizzard writers on top. Oh the horror.

    More on topic, I agree with OP about factions being too large. Which definitely contributes to blur their identities; the Alliance was originally a bunch of human kingdoms + Quel'thalas banding together to fight the Orcish Horde, but now it has become the SW king's personal show (despite now being far more multicultural than ever). In the meantime, Thrall's Horde, after being at A Crossroads™ for like 5234589612 times, has become a Red Alliance. Since the original Alliance is already boring, a copy is bound to be even worse. Both factions definitely need more internal struggles, in order to make them more palatable and believable. Especially the Alliance imo, and the story elements are already there.

    It remains to be seen if writers will actually use them... and how.
    Last time i checked it's not our story. It's Blizzard's story.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by Depakote View Post
    Last time i checked it's not our story. It's Blizzard's story.
    And they are free to write for themselves, but they should not be surprised with results.

    Which they wont be since they willingly surround themselves in circlejerk groups.

  3. #23
    Coincidentally, this just occurred to me just a bit ago. I was looking at a fan mock-up of a sub-race template system for the new character creator, one of which had the troll tribe options, and my first thought that it was neat that all these options will finally be playable.

    My second thought, which hit me quite suddenly was... isn't it a bit silly that all of these are now on our factions? It wasn't a good feeling.

    It's one of the less talked about elements of the Nightborne being added to the Horde that felt very odd. Here was this nation with a fully realized city. It could have been a new power in the world, not to fight us, but to add some more variety. Instead they're added to the Horde wholesale, and any chance at having more complex interactions between nations disappears.

    Part of the problem is the apparent need for a playable race to have its political entities join the faction as well. It's so bad that the Dark Iron had to join the Alliance multiple times, because they canonically joined in Cataclysm, but when they became playable, there are places in game where they talk about it like they officially re-joined, which is completely unnecessary.

    It's made all the more pointless because Pandaren are a notable exception to that trend, like they are to others. The playable Pandaren actually are small groups that aligned themselves with the faction, so their nation didn't have to be dragged into it. It would be nice to see more of that. Goblins are the only other exception I can think of, but even then, the neutral goblins tend to be more strongly associated with the Horde post-Cataclysm.

    Imagine if the playable Nightborne were, instead, like the Pandaren, simply a delegation who were willing to align themselves with the blood elves while the rest of Suramar works to rebuild back home and not risk what they just regained by jumping into the deep end of a world situation they have no context for.

    It wouldn't be so bad if the factions weren't treated as such monolithic entities whose every actions are written forever in stone. The factions should be able to exist as powerful coalitions that wax and wane in power as wars occur and alliances change, but they never do. Instead both of them just keep getting bigger and bigger forever and nothing ever changes it. Even when something devastating happens to one or both, the effect is never shown.

    Despite a lot of faction debates revolving around the RTSs, this is something that the RTSs actually handled better. In Warcraft I, there was no Horde (as a coalition) or Alliance. There were orcs coming through a portal and Stormwind humans defending the land. In Warcraft II, we saw both sides gain new allies and create the factions as we understand them now. But then Warcraft III changed things once more. Between games, the high elves had left the Alliance (with only a handful staying behind to help out). The Horde was completely dismantled. Thrall's Horde made completely new alliances. The forest trolls, ogres, and goblins were gone, replaced by the Darkspear trolls and tauren. Then you had two entirely new playable factions, new world powers, in the Night Elf Sentinels and the Undead Scourge. As the story went on, it got even more complicated. The Alliance was fractured, with Jaina's forces on Kalimdor essentially treated as a new Alliance. In the Frozen Throne, each campaign was essentially about a new, rogue faction (forces that originated in one faction, but very directly broke away from it). The blood elves was the Alliance campaign, and they were chased out of a remnant Lordaeron into a new faction in what would later be known as the Illidari. Maiev eventually found herself going against the night elves once her duplicity about Tyrande was revealed. Even the Scourge got a rogue faction in the Forsaken.

    The political landscape of the world was constantly changing, but now it's static. All it ever does is absorb more and more.
    Last edited by Jokubas; 2020-07-04 at 01:02 AM.

  4. #24
    Titan Orby's Avatar
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    I say split up all the races and let them rule alone... I mean Dwarf Independence is all I am asking :P

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Depakote View Post
    Everyone's a small time player until Blizzard decides they're not anymore and puts them in the spotlight. Maybe let them write the story of WoW instead of trying to tell us how you think it should go.
    I really miss factions like the scarlet brotherhood/crusade. Haven't been any good ones since Wotlk.

  6. #26
    Brewmaster Depakote's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Verdugo View Post
    And they are free to write for themselves, but they should not be surprised with results.

    Which they wont be since they willingly surround themselves in circlejerk groups.
    well with such lovely fans as yourself i'm sure they'll be really encouraged to put out a quality story. /s

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Tronski View Post
    I really miss factions like the scarlet brotherhood/crusade. Haven't been any good ones since Wotlk.
    As far as i'm aware those factions don't exist anymore lorewise. Could be wrong though.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Depakote View Post
    well with such lovely fans as yourself i'm sure they'll be really encouraged to put out a quality story. /s
    You would think that writers would want to be proud of their work, not join the industry just to spite people.

  8. #28
    If you want multiple factions, don’t play WoW.

    At this point wow needs to go f2p if it continues the way it has been going...or risk losing its entire remaining playerbase to nw.

    Have you seen sir medieval’s latest video? Looks incredible and the likes and comments tell me this game will finally give us mmorpg fans what we have been asking from blizzard to no avail.

    Wow’s Job is not to make players happy or have fun, but to legally steal their money.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Depakote View Post
    well with such lovely fans as yourself i'm sure they'll be really encouraged to put out a quality story. /s

    - - - Updated - - -



    As far as i'm aware those factions don't exist anymore lorewise. Could be wrong though.

    That was my point though. The good ones are gone and new ones, when any, are nowhere near as rich in lore and existence.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Tronski View Post
    I really miss factions like the scarlet brotherhood/crusade. Haven't been any good ones since Wotlk.
    Very much my feeling on the matter. It wasn't like the Scarlet Crusade was ever presented as some world-ending threat, but they were clearly large enough to be a credible threat to the Forsaken, and the Horde didn't have the resources to just send an army to fight them. Similarly, the Defias Brotherhood was literally just a group of blue-collar laborers that got stiffed and decided to buck against the system.

    The game needs more independent factions, in at the same time, the player factions (Horde and Alliance) need to be brought down to a more suitable level for a Fantasy setting. Having the entire world divided into "either the Allies or the Axis" just makes the world itself feel small and uninteresting.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Claymore View Post
    I've alluded to this in previous posts, but I thought it warranted its own thread. I genuinely believe that both the Horde and the Alliance have grown too large, to the point of rendering the actual *WORLD* of Warcraft quite boring.

    It's one of the big reasons Vanilla is held in such high regard; the world feels full of all kinds of unique threats, all kinds of different factions, many of which are isolated to a single area. Sure, most are local threats and not exactly "world-ending" stuff, but they help establish the feeling of a living, breathing universe.

    It's a core tenant for why so many people love Fantasy settings to begin with; the feeling of "making it on your own". You're in a big, ruthless world, and you make a name for yourself through your own actions. Not unlike the wild west.

    Problem is, modern WoW is closer to real-world scenarios, where the Horde and Alliance are these global superpowers of which no other factions pose any sort of meaningful threat.

    I know some people are predicting a time-skip after Shadowlands. Truth be told, I'm actually not opposed to the idea (although I'd personally have at least SOME of the main characters join us in the time-skip, such as Jaina). I've actually thought and even suggested a similar idea myself; that after defending Azeroth from the Void Lords, she (Azeroth the Titan) would put us players in a sort of hibernation for thousands of years, allowing the wilds to reclaim Azeroth. Instead of two all-encompassing factions, each race might make up a handful of small encampments.

    Essentially, "hitting the reset-button" in the game's world.

    In truth, I don't know what the best solution is. All I know is that having the entire planet consist solely of the Horde and the Alliance makes for a pretty bland universe.
    Your not the only one. The near single portrayal of anything relevant in light of either blue or red is well known as a factor that has seriously hurt world of warcraft.

    The countless posts about no factions, more factions, races going out on their own etc, are all results of this.

    Much of the unique flavour of the world has died, and while you still see stuff, it's very secondary to the faction super powers.

    Ofc it's much worse on the alliance, who seem to be just one race really, but yeh, I agree with you.

    Solution is horde and alliance should just be like clubs you choose rather than super powers

  12. #32
    It's not just the factions being too "global", they also appear to have infinite resources in the soldier department, as if all these conflicts have had no population impact whatsoever. This can be a useful tool in order to make the world relevant again.

    For example, we could return from the Shadowlands to a Horde and an Alliance stretched thinly from the constant multi-generational conflict and struggling to actually exercise control over the lands that they claim, with benefits including: (a) Rendering the regional (non-alligned) factions more important and forcing us to treat them as actual threats once again. There's no reason such factions cannot have their own "champions" rivaling the PCs, risen to power in our absence; (b) Slowing down (if not halt) the power creep that we've experienced over recent expansions; Who has time to worry about void lords and space ships when there's farmland in need of defending from bandits? Towns threatened by the local group of armed zealots? Roads controlled by savage tribes? Dark forests where the population dares not go? Etc. Make the world feel like Europe after the collapse of the western Roman administration.

  13. #33
    I am Murloc! KOUNTERPARTS's Avatar
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    I think apart of the world feeling uninteresting is that a lot of the "mystery" is gone. But that's because we've had countless expansions of things being elaborated on or implemented in-game (you can only go so long with this events, places, characters being referenced and not seen) or things explained, lore fleshed out, etc.

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