The horde should have been dismantled after Siege of Orgrimmar ideally

[Caerule]

The problem is that the Horde races are struggling ones, that thrive because they have banded together.

The Alliance doesn't care about them thriving. They do not care for giving them a place in the Alliance. And they definitely do not care for making investment and personal sacrifice towards the good of these races that they would never accept as equal citizens in places like Stormwind.

The moment the Alliance wins, they stop being the "Good guys". Because despite the empathy of Alduin, Orcs, Forsaken and Trolls would never receive the care, empathy, acceptance and support of the average Alliance citizen.

[RobertMugabe]

Actually I imagine removal of factions would be positive for WoW. Faction MMORPGs are outdated, terrible for storytelling, fuels a toxic community and restricts players

The game and its lore would be so fucking dull without the factions that it would probably kill the game for real this time.

[Magical Mudcrab]

People often forget that the Iron Horde was ended as a threat litterally in the opening scenario of the entire expansion.

The only reason the Iron Horde was a "threat" is because their incursion point was totally ignored by the world and virtually undefended. No one expected enemies to come through the Dark Portal, which everyone believed was still connected to Outland at this time.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

We can monkey's paw your wish:

In the attempt to annihilate Horde culture in Orgimmar, overzealous alliance factions go too far and sack horde outposts in Ashenvale, causing wide environmental damage that greatly anger the night elves. With their sacred forest now more damaged than ever, Tyrande makes the call to leave the Alliance. Tensions mount, and the First Human-Elf War breaks out. This culminates in Malfurion dropping a massive cyclone on Stormwind, spinning it into the sky and out to sea.

That'd be cool!

The problem is that the Horde races are struggling ones, that thrive because they have banded together.

The Alliance doesn't care about them thriving. They do not care for giving them a place in the Alliance. And they definitely do not care for making investment and personal sacrifice towards the good of these races that they would never accept as equal citizens in places like Stormwind.

The moment the Alliance wins, they stop being the "Good guys". Because despite the empathy of Alduin, Orcs, Forsaken and Trolls would never receive the care, empathy, acceptance and support of the average Alliance citizen.

Hey look there's your morally grey stuff

[TickTickTick]

In a single player story-driven game? Yes.

WoW is not that though. If only blizzard writers finally learned to write a story that they cannot tell realistically in game.

[Toppy]

They were still building a force and could invade again. Or did you not play WoD to know this. As long as Garrosh was on AU Draenor, they were still a threat.

Not really. He had already used up his time juice, they lost their power sources, and also lost their imprisoned warlocks needed for portals.

Did you not play WoD? Because they had no means of going after us after the first 10 minutes of the scenario. And we confirm later that they absolutly have no way of getting at us anymore.

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The only reason the Iron Horde was a "threat" is because their incursion point was totally ignored by the world and virtually undefended. No one expected enemies to come through the Dark Portal, which everyone believed was still connected to Outland at this time.

Pretty much. Even their initial, entirely failed invasion, only did as "well" as it did due to surprise.

[Mamut]

Actually I imagine removal of factions would be positive for WoW. Faction MMORPGs are outdated, terrible for storytelling, fuels a toxic community and restricts players

Then lets remove alliance from the game and lets see how it plays.

[Wondercrab]

I've always maintained that WoW would be far more interesting both narratively and gameplay-wise if we got another Cataclysm-style revamp expansion where something like this actually happened. The conflicts of a post-war Horde and Alliance would be *so* much more fresh and engaging than the same old red vs blue vs existential thread of the week stories.

[Caerule]

Hey look there's your morally grey stuff

Morally Grey is fine, but people seem to hate being confronted with the fact that the Alliance is... kinda racist.

While I'd be up WoW becoming an allegory for modern day racism, I'm pretty sure the other 95% of the WoW community will not be.

And admittedly, a 12+ game is not the right platform for that.

[Toppy]

Morally Grey is fine, but people seem to hate being confronted with the fact that the Alliance is... kinda racist.

While I'd be up WoW becoming an allegory for modern day racism, I'm pretty sure the other 95% of the WoW community will not be.

And admittedly, a 12+ game is not the right platform for that.

Alliance has done plenty of horrible stuff. The issue is the story always ignores it. Like they've started multiple wars, but the Horde it the one chewed out in these wars because they always hit back too hard, ignoring that they wouldn't have done so in the first place if they hadn't been dragged in. BfA being a prime example. The whole conflict started with Genn attacking the Horde but its all the Hordes fault because Sylvaanas went way too far at Darkshore. This was originally even more against the Alliance till Golden naturally came in and retconned things. Originally the Alliance struck Horde at Silithus, but Golden hates the Alliance looking bad so made it so the Horde struck first.

Of course Golden being an poor writer they are also doesn't seem to realize that she had Calia and Anduin stage a coup against Sylvaanas (prior to Darnassus), but we're not going to discuss that either because that would make the Alliance look bad.

[SirBeef]

Not really. He had already used up his time juice, they lost their power sources, and also lost their imprisoned warlocks needed for portals.

Did you not play WoD? Because they had no means of going after us after the first 10 minutes of the scenario. And we confirm later that they absolutly have no way of getting at us anymore.

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Pretty much. Even their initial, entirely failed invasion, only did as "well" as it did due to surprise.

They were still a threat, and the allied forces had no clue they couldn't open a portal. Not to mention the BL had plans for them, despite their set back before when they didn't drink the blood of Mannortth. When Kairoz found this version and connected it to Azeroth, it would have been just a matter of time, if we didn't stick around, before Garrosh and company found Gul'dan and used him as portal fuel again.

[NorthernDragon]

You forget to add "...because I say so" - after all I bet every MMO without factions has a super-duper community, brilliant stories and have basically crushed WoW...as I am sure you can prove to us by naming many, many examples.

1. why must something crush WoW, especially since we don't even know how many people actually play it
2. there are many successful online games praised for their story without faction
3. objectively a story about player faction conflict just doesn't work in mmos because there's zero stakes and no conclusion
4. ofc a community is going to be less toxic without artificial player factions, that's just common sense

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Then lets remove alliance from the game and lets see how it plays.

You don't really need to remove Alliance or Horde, just the ingame restraints and future plot. Obviously it will never happen because 1. effort and 2. Blizzard cash in on the tribal mentality

[EntertainmentNihilist]

There could have been an in-between option, where there was some sort of peace treaty with conditions for the Alliance allowing the Horde to persist. Maybe a de-militarized zone in between the two.

[NorthernDragon]

The game and its lore would be so fucking dull without the factions that it would probably kill the game for real this time.

Majority of WoW has had very little to do with Faction War until BfA

Vanilla - Border disputes and internal affairs
TBC - Too busy defeating Illidan and the Legion
WotLK - Too busy defeating Arthas and Old Gods
Cataclysm - Innitial skirmishes but ultimately Deathwing was the goal
MoP - Battle for control until Sha shit and Garrosh
WoD - Too busy defeating Iron Horde and Guldan
Legion - Too busy defeating the Legion
BfA - War yes but then majority was Old Gods

The fact that it's been almost 15 years between 3rd war and 4th war is telling. The only reason we really have factions is because of the RTS and PvP

[Varodoc]

People are forgetting that the Alliance was able to respond to the Iron Horde threat so quickly because they had fresh armies close to the Dark Portal at their disposal. That's why in the WoD pre-patch Stormwind had already deployed its forces to the Blasted Lands.

How could they accomplish this if they were busy conquering the various Horde nations? Not only would their forces be stretched thin, they would be far away from the Dark Portal. At which point, no one would be able to contain the Iron Horde and stop them from pouring into Stormwind and then Khaz Modan.

Let alone the fact that Stormwind and co. would need to establish garrisons in the conquered Horde kingdoms to make sure the population cannot rise up against them, thus making a successful counter-attack against the Iron Horde even harder to accomplish. I'm being generous and focusing only on the Iron Horde, because with the Legion it would be over.

Varian was stubborn, ruthless, and proud. But he was not stupid. He understood that trying to crush the Horde would leave the kingdoms of the Alliance vulnerable to potential new threats.

[Darth-Piekus]

People are forgetting that the Alliance was able to respond to the Iron Horde threat so quickly because they had fresh armies close to the Dark Portal at their disposal. That's why in the WoD pre-patch Stormwind had already deployed its forces to the Blasted Lands.

How could they accomplish this if they were busy conquering the various Horde nations? Not only would their forces be stretched thin, they would be far away from the Dark Portal. At which point, no one would be able to contain the Iron Horde and stop them from pouring into Stormwind and then Khaz Modan.

Let alone the fact that Stormwind and co. would need to establish garrisons in the conquered Horde kingdoms to make sure the population cannot rise up against them, thus making a successful counter-attack against the Iron Horde even harder to accomplish. I'm being generous and focusing only on the Iron Horde, because with the Legion it would be over.

Varian was stubborn, ruthless, and proud. But he was not stupid. He understood that trying to crush the Horde would leave the kingdoms of the Alliance vulnerable to potential new threats.

It's simple. There would be no Iron Horde. Garrosh would have been killed instantly. Nothing would have happened.

[Varodoc]

It's simple. There would be no Iron Horde. Garrosh would have been killed instantly. Nothing would have happened.

Jaina told Varian to dismantle the Horde AFTER Garrosh was already taken into custody by Taran Zhu and brought to Pandaria. At that point, his fate was no longer under Varian's sole jurisdiction.

[Eapoe]

Technically the Iron Horde wouldnt have happened as he would have killed Garrosh right then and there. Even if it happened the Iron Horde were the most pathetic opponents I have ever seen and I doubt they would have done anything spectacular. The Legion though is another story.

Keep in mind, the Iron Horde happened because of Wrathion and a bronze dragon (whose name I can not remember) that Garrosh then betrayed. They use Garrosh because they thought he would agree with them and also be a good Warlord while uniting all the Orcs across all timelines.
Even without Garrosh it’s pretty simple to see Wrathion would have just used another tactic, even if as a last resort he went himself to warn them of Mannoroth’s blood.

[Hellobolis]

Well it was what would realistically happen to the horde IF the horde would be decisively be defeated like Germany did.

and it did happen the first time the horde was defeated. they were all put in interment camps. only worked while they were suffering from demon blood withdrawal syndrome.

and if you wanna talk realism: by siege of orgrimmar the horde as a nation spanned half a continent and like you said: the cost of occupation would just be prohibitive. just look at real world examples. it wouldn't be just a couple dozen interment camps like the first time.

genocide is the only solution that works, but apparently they feel iffy about that when it comes to orcs as opposed to kobolds/troggs/etc.

now they could ofc do some pillaging and reparations as part of the peace treaty, but they also already know from wow history that orcs get a bit upset if they live in a resource poor desert. so in a practical sense, trying to build better relations for the future to delay the next war for as long as possible was the only workable solution. worked too until external influences messed it up.

[Aresk]

Not really. He had already used up his time juice, they lost their power sources, and also lost their imprisoned warlocks needed for portals.

Did you not play WoD? Because they had no means of going after us after the first 10 minutes of the scenario. And we confirm later that they absolutly have no way of getting at us anymore.

When did they confirm that there was no way for the Iron Horde to get at us anymore? I presume without the continued interference of Horde and Alliance forces, the Iron Horde would just rebuild the portal, track down the warlocks, and do it all again a few months later. And Gul'dan/the Legion pretty much did just that after BRF, with Archimonde transporting Gul'dan to our time to start the events of Legion.


On Topic: If the Horde had been dissolved, wouldn't that also spell the end of the Alliance? The Alliance has only existed to counter the Horde, and without a Horde, it has no reason to be. I personally wouldn't mind if there was a dissolution of super powers and we went to racial storylines, though the transition period could be a little awkward.