Is it time to scrap the Alliance and Horde?

[InfiniteCharger]

They need an evil faction that players can join because the problem is the Horde vs Alliance is purely contrived for the purposes of game play and because having each race be a faction is too difficult to implement. But because of that the Horde players often get hit with the evil bat at various times in order to promote the story and a lot of players don't see themselves or the Horde as evil. Unfortunately having an evil faction wouldn't make sense in the context of shared dungeons, raids and world quests as the goals and objectives of the evil faction would be totally different from everyone else.

[Hambo94]

You claim to be a big WC RTS fan, yet you're harping about a conflict that took center stage in only one of the three RTS games. There was no Alliance in WC1. WC2 was Horde vs Alliance. WC3 had some Horde vs Alliance in the tutorial and then that was dropped to focus on all the other stories, with the orc campaign pointing out (in the two missions where they actually fought) that it was versus the "human expedition" (the game itself doesn't refer to Jaina's survivors as Alliance forces once in that campaign). Furthermore, the Alliance campaign doesn't once deal with the Horde, focusing on rebel orc offshoots in the two missions where orcs make any appearance.

Now if you were to say orcs vs humans was a cornerstone of the RTS, I'd agree with you (even if the main orc vs human story in WC3 was tacked on to the end of the expansion). But while I think it works in an RTS perspective, where the player takes on some pre-selected commander persona or is completely absent from the narrative, it doesn't work as well in an MMO where we're playing the individual characters with their own goals and ambitions that have more frequently diverged from said factions (e.g. Covenants and Order Halls, though even Tirion's tournament or Vol'jin's anti-Zandalari assault attempted to pull characters away from faction conflict to deal with other threats). And that ongoing orc vs human conflict feels even further removed when the player base is largely not even of those races (the last census data that I could find put human/orc at about 20% of the character population). While I agree that keeping some of that old RTS flavor is good, Warcraft has only briefly been strictly an Alliance vs Horde situation, and we need not bind our characters to such institutions when exploring the game's mechanics or narrative arcs. After all, you're the one who claimed that the last expansion heavily tied to the faction identities was considered "trash" by most people.

Harping xD Quite the exaggeration! Not sure why you people are getting so emotional around what I said were my OWN opinions. Firstly, its irrelevant whether that conflict only took center stage in one of the three RTS games, what is relevant is how I, as a kid, teenager, growing up, came to love Warcraft, and that was as a game, with factions, that were highly divided. I stated that it was my OPINION, so you can shove off with all of these arguments about how im 'wrong' to feel the way I do.

The simple fact is that playing those games growing up, I associated the game as one where the orcs, undead, and NE/Humans, didnt like each other, AT ALL. The horde are a collective of 'beast' like creatures that live a very barbarian life, the Undead are enemies of all, and the NE/Humans, whilst different, were allies. Whether from the story or not that is technically portrayed isnt relevant here, again, I made that crystal clear in my first post, that this was my opinion, born from playing the original games.

Its like saying that Sauron isnt bad because all Sauron wants to do in the book is find order and create a system of control, which is clearly irrelivant, because go and ask 1000 LoTR fans, and they'll tell you hes the big bad, and that to them, LoTR's is about the 'alliance' versus the 'darkness'

You cant just kick the pillar out from beneath people who have that opinion whether you think its right or wrong. Ion already stated the same opinion to I believe preach? In an interview.

For me, im already on the verge of not playing retail anymore. I used to have id say approx ~10 irl friends who played WoW. Me and one other are the ONLY ones who have kept playing since the end of Cata, and one other friend plays the game every 2 years for like 6 weeks to PvP when he gets that urge. As of this expac, both me and my last friend have quit. Ill be honest with you, I NEVER thought my other friend would quit, he has literally never stopped paying a sub since mid TBC when he was a kid, literally never. We used to tease him and call him the WoW wizard and laugh about how he really was a hardcore WoW player. Bearing in mind he was a WoW player, he played the RTS but not as much as me for example.

And why? Because of the story sucking, and because im his words, its just not Warcraft anymore. All these spaceships and Shadowlands and all this and that.

Im not saying that you're wrong for wanting to scrap certain parts of WoW's core, I totally understand how its been, Im a big supporter of having horde/alli, but ive also been as you said 'harping' on for years that there should be some loosening of restrictions like being able to raid/dungeon together for practicality purposes. I know that first hand, I used to grind Orcs in the RTS games, and I wanted to play horde, but ALL of my IRL friends played Alli on WoW, so it sucked for me. I just dont think that orcs should be able to walk around Stormwind and humans around Orgimmar, for me it serves literally no purpose other than to destroy yet another one of the themes that many love in WoW. Like WHY do people want that? You can literally change the story away from constant war, create cross faction guilds, raids, dungeons and still keep that theme of red and blue.

Ive yet to see a solid example of the direction that the game should be taken if this is the case. What, peoples solution seems to just be "alright fuck it lets just get rid of the horde and alliance and let everyone be mercenaries because this other MMO I played is really good and thats how they do it and then like lets just not have anymore wars and tension between them because its just boring now"

For what purpose, for what end goal?

[VladlTutushkin]

Harping xD Quite the exaggeration! Not sure why you people are getting so emotional around what I said were my OWN opinions. Firstly, its irrelevant whether that conflict only took center stage in one of the three RTS games, what is relevant is how I, as a kid, teenager, growing up, came to love Warcraft, and that was as a game, with factions, that were highly divided. I stated that it was my OPINION, so you can shove off with all of these arguments about how im 'wrong' to feel the way I do.

The simple fact is that playing those games growing up, I associated the game as one where the orcs, undead, and NE/Humans, didnt like each other, AT ALL. The horde are a collective of 'beast' like creatures that live a very barbarian life, the Undead are enemies of all, and the NE/Humans, whilst different, were allies. Whether from the story or not that is technically portrayed isnt relevant here, again, I made that crystal clear in my first post, that this was my opinion, born from playing the original games.

Its like saying that Sauron isnt bad because all Sauron wants to do in the book is find order and create a system of control, which is clearly irrelivant, because go and ask 1000 LoTR fans, and they'll tell you hes the big bad, and that to them, LoTR's is about the 'alliance' versus the 'darkness'

You cant just kick the pillar out from beneath people who have that opinion whether you think its right or wrong. Ion already stated the same opinion to I believe preach? In an interview.

For me, im already on the verge of not playing retail anymore. I used to have id say approx ~10 irl friends who played WoW. Me and one other are the ONLY ones who have kept playing since the end of Cata, and one other friend plays the game every 2 years for like 6 weeks to PvP when he gets that urge. As of this expac, both me and my last friend have quit. Ill be honest with you, I NEVER thought my other friend would quit, he has literally never stopped paying a sub since mid TBC when he was a kid, literally never. We used to tease him and call him the WoW wizard and laugh about how he really was a hardcore WoW player. Bearing in mind he was a WoW player, he played the RTS but not as much as me for example.

And why? Because of the story sucking, and because im his words, its just not Warcraft anymore. All these spaceships and Shadowlands and all this and that.

Im not saying that you're wrong for wanting to scrap certain parts of WoW's core, I totally understand how its been, Im a big supporter of having horde/alli, but ive also been as you said 'harping' on for years that there should be some loosening of restrictions like being able to raid/dungeon together for practicality purposes. I know that first hand, I used to grind Orcs in the RTS games, and I wanted to play horde, but ALL of my IRL friends played Alli on WoW, so it sucked for me. I just dont think that orcs should be able to walk around Stormwind and humans around Orgimmar, for me it serves literally no purpose other than to destroy yet another one of the themes that many love in WoW. Like WHY do people want that? You can literally change the story away from constant war, create cross faction guilds, raids, dungeons and still keep that theme of red and blue.

Ive yet to see a solid example of the direction that the game should be taken if this is the case. What, peoples solution seems to just be "alright fuck it lets just get rid of the horde and alliance and let everyone be mercenaries because this other MMO I played is really good and thats how they do it and then like lets just not have anymore wars and tension between them because its just boring now"

For what purpose, for what end goal?

Maybe because it just dosent seem to work? Every time game focuses on faction war it ends up in shambles, pisses off players and creates bullshit plot contrivances that actually LED to more bullshit like Shadowlands.

It just dosent work. At all. In players minds and dreams it may be something cool or interesting but every time Blizz gets on the job to make it it turns out like a steaming hot pile of shit and nobody wants to play it. Case in point BfA player drop.

[Caiphon]

I'm sorry, blowing dust to summon a voodoo death entity is not exactly the definition of an advanced civilization.

I mean witchcraft is literally a part of Kul Tiran culture yet Kul Tiras is still considered a kingdom...

[Nymrohd]

I'm sorry, blowing dust to summon a voodoo death entity is not exactly the definition of an advanced civilization.

No but vast civic infrastructure is.

[Hambo94]

Maybe because it just dosent seem to work? Every time game focuses on faction war it ends up in shambles, pisses off players and creates bullshit plot contrivances that actually LED to more bullshit like Shadowlands.

It just dosent work. At all. In players minds and dreams it may be something cool or interesting but every time Blizz gets on the job to make it it turns out like a steaming hot pile of shit and nobody wants to play it. Case in point BfA player drop.

I think it just dosent work because the lead developers either suck, or arent being given enough resources (or both).

For example, look at Warfronts which were pitched as these epic battles where stories can be told, huge battlegrounds can be created. It. Fucking. Sucked.

Like im sorry, but any developer worth their salt would have known that that entire feature from doomed from the start.

Who wants to collect wood? mine resources? half the people AFK? They literally proved that you can win a warfront when almost every single person is AFK. It was clearly just a fucking terrible game mode that was never going to succeed and would ruin an expansion main feature.

They could have made it a 'mini rts' or something where you can play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 etc etc against either the AI or other players in a throw back to the original RTS games, where you play as a hero character (yourself) and you have to enter menu's to upgrade different buildings, hire units, defend your different units. It could have been a feature that they could still be creating new battlegrounds for today years later.

Im not saying that the BfA story either was great, and im not saying that the faction stuff hasnt sucked in WoW, im saying that just because its sucked in WoW dosent mean its a bad idea in my opinion, its just that the writers suck. Honestly, as I said above about my friends quitting. If they get rid of the horde/alliance divide and go more in the direction of these random storylines like shadowlands, outerspace cosmos shit and away from what makes warcraft, warcraft, in my opinion. Then I will be gone for good. Just being honest, if theres no horde/alliance tension then I just have no interest in the Warcraft universe anymore.

Thats my opinion, I think it can be fixed just with better writers, developers, more resources etc.

[Myradin]

I'm sorry, blowing dust to summon a voodoo death entity is not exactly the definition of an advanced civilization.

Given how how the worshippers of the Light, the most common faith amongst what you probably consider 'advanced civilizations', fail to summon their related entities at all, I'd say those voodoo people are onto something.

[VladlTutushkin]

I think it just dosent work because the lead developers either suck, or arent being given enough resources (or both).

For example, look at Warfronts which were pitched as these epic battles where stories can be told, huge battlegrounds can be created. It. Fucking. Sucked.

Like im sorry, but any developer worth their salt would have known that that entire feature from doomed from the start.

Who wants to collect wood? mine resources? half the people AFK? They literally proved that you can win a warfront when almost every single person is AFK. It was clearly just a fucking terrible game mode that was never going to succeed and would ruin an expansion main feature.

They could have made it a 'mini rts' or something where you can play 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 etc etc against either the AI or other players in a throw back to the original RTS games, where you play as a hero character (yourself) and you have to enter menu's to upgrade different buildings, hire units, defend your different units. It could have been a feature that they could still be creating new battlegrounds for today years later.

Im not saying that the BfA story either was great, and im not saying that the faction stuff hasnt sucked in WoW, im saying that just because its sucked in WoW dosent mean its a bad idea in my opinion, its just that the writers suck. Honestly, as I said above about my friends quitting. If they get rid of the horde/alliance divide and go more in the direction of these random storylines like shadowlands, outerspace cosmos shit and away from what makes warcraft, warcraft, in my opinion. Then I will be gone for good. Just being honest, if theres no horde/alliance tension then I just have no interest in the Warcraft universe anymore.

Thats my opinion, I think it can be fixed just with better writers, developers, more resources etc.

Well after 8.1 and "totally free willed undead elves serving Sylvanas" i quitted WoW BECAUSE of faction war bullshit.

[Hambo94]

Well after 8.1 and "totally free willed undead elves serving Sylvanas" i quitted WoW BECAUSE of faction war bullshit.

I dont have any evidence to support this but based on my own personal experience with as I said above, the ~10 or so IRL friends ive historically played WoW with, and the logic that TBC/WoTLK were the peak of WoW in terms of subs/growing subs, im willing to bet that you are a minority and that the majority of WoW players, and historical WoW players, are quite entrenched in the RTS themes and therefore will always be willing to accept a faction war story.

I just think you underestimate how many people played the RTS games and the earlier expansions/stories. Even though TBC/WOTLK dont have anything to do with faction wars dont get me wrong, for me its showing that they are an earlier generation of Warcraft fans, and in my experience, they almost universally believe in the faction division stuff. Fair enough then, you're just opposite to me and thats fine.

Do you play any other MMO's? And how long have you played WoW?

[VladlTutushkin]

I dont have any evidence to support this but based on my own personal experience with as I said above, the ~10 or so IRL friends ive historically played WoW with, and the logic that TBC/WoTLK were the peak of WoW in terms of subs/growing subs, im willing to bet that you are a minority and that the majority of WoW players, and historical WoW players, are quite entrenched in the RTS themes and therefore will always be willing to accept a faction war story.

I just think you underestimate how many people played the RTS games and the earlier expansions/stories. Even though TBC/WOTLK dont have anything to do with faction wars dont get me wrong, for me its showing that they are an earlier generation of Warcraft fans, and in my experience, they almost universally believe in the faction division stuff. Fair enough then, you're just opposite to me and thats fine.

Do you play any other MMO's? And how long have you played WoW?

I played WoW since mid WotLK, when i got my account from a friend who couldnt play much so he gave it to me. And i only started playing GW2 AFTER i quit WoW , as few months passed.

[Myradin]

How can someone be pro-faction war and claim they're a fan of the RTS games. WCIII was literally about moving away from the WCII faction conflct, and coming together to beat the big bad, a theme that's continued in every expansion since.

And before you ask. I came into this franchise with WCII, the arc of redemption for the Horde was one of my favorite stories growing up. The fact WoW has continued to tell us that 'no, the horde is just bad afterall' has continued to baffle me.


I do think the Horde and Alliance should still exist, but the faction war itself lost its point ages ago and just serves as WCII memberberries.

[Caiphon]

Well after 8.1 and "totally free willed undead elves serving Sylvanas" i quitted WoW BECAUSE of faction war bullshit.

Can relate from the other side, being forced to play the moron who leads the entire Zandalari army into Nazmir because 'there were mists', ultimately resulting in Rastakhan's death and the sacking of Zuldazar really put me off the game for a while. The Horde was quite literally the idiot faction throughout BfA, just randomly throwing their soldiers at Kul Tiras as fodder while the Alliance managed to infiltrate Zandalar and plant explosives everywhere without a single soul figuring out what was going on.

If Blizzard can't write faction drama without insulting the players' mental capacities maybe it's best to not center an entire expasion on said drama.

[VladlTutushkin]

Can relate from the other side, being forced to play the moron who leads the entire Zandalari army into Nazmir because 'there were mists', ultimately resulting in Rastakhan's death and the sacking of Zuldazar really put me off the game for a while. The Horde was quite literally the idiot faction throughout BfA, just randomly throwing their soldiers at Kul Tiras as fodder while the Alliance managed to infiltrate Zandalar and plant explosives everywhere without a single soul figuring out what was going on.

If Blizzard can't write faction drama without insulting the players' mental capacities maybe it's best to not center an entire expasion on said drama.

And "Suicide Army" in Nazmir that Alliance had to throw there despite ALREADY luring Zandalri out with the mist was mostly made of night elves, dwarves and void elves... And not humans. You know, i can understand dwarves - they are populous enough. But near extinct, genocided race and a small collective of void mages? Really?

[Aresk]

Harping xD Quite the exaggeration! Not sure why you people are getting so emotional around what I said were my OWN opinions. Firstly, its irrelevant whether that conflict only took center stage in one of the three RTS games, what is relevant is how I, as a kid, teenager, growing up, came to love Warcraft, and that was as a game, with factions, that were highly divided. I stated that it was my OPINION, so you can shove off with all of these arguments about how im 'wrong' to feel the way I do.

The simple fact is that playing those games growing up, I associated the game as one where the orcs, undead, and NE/Humans, didnt like each other, AT ALL. The horde are a collective of 'beast' like creatures that live a very barbarian life, the Undead are enemies of all, and the NE/Humans, whilst different, were allies. Whether from the story or not that is technically portrayed isnt relevant here, again, I made that crystal clear in my first post, that this was my opinion, born from playing the original games.

Its like saying that Sauron isnt bad because all Sauron wants to do in the book is find order and create a system of control, which is clearly irrelivant, because go and ask 1000 LoTR fans, and they'll tell you hes the big bad, and that to them, LoTR's is about the 'alliance' versus the 'darkness'

You cant just kick the pillar out from beneath people who have that opinion whether you think its right or wrong. Ion already stated the same opinion to I believe preach? In an interview.

For me, im already on the verge of not playing retail anymore. I used to have id say approx ~10 irl friends who played WoW. Me and one other are the ONLY ones who have kept playing since the end of Cata, and one other friend plays the game every 2 years for like 6 weeks to PvP when he gets that urge. As of this expac, both me and my last friend have quit. Ill be honest with you, I NEVER thought my other friend would quit, he has literally never stopped paying a sub since mid TBC when he was a kid, literally never. We used to tease him and call him the WoW wizard and laugh about how he really was a hardcore WoW player. Bearing in mind he was a WoW player, he played the RTS but not as much as me for example.

And why? Because of the story sucking, and because im his words, its just not Warcraft anymore. All these spaceships and Shadowlands and all this and that.

Im not saying that you're wrong for wanting to scrap certain parts of WoW's core, I totally understand how its been, Im a big supporter of having horde/alli, but ive also been as you said 'harping' on for years that there should be some loosening of restrictions like being able to raid/dungeon together for practicality purposes. I know that first hand, I used to grind Orcs in the RTS games, and I wanted to play horde, but ALL of my IRL friends played Alli on WoW, so it sucked for me. I just dont think that orcs should be able to walk around Stormwind and humans around Orgimmar, for me it serves literally no purpose other than to destroy yet another one of the themes that many love in WoW. Like WHY do people want that? You can literally change the story away from constant war, create cross faction guilds, raids, dungeons and still keep that theme of red and blue.

Ive yet to see a solid example of the direction that the game should be taken if this is the case. What, peoples solution seems to just be "alright fuck it lets just get rid of the horde and alliance and let everyone be mercenaries because this other MMO I played is really good and thats how they do it and then like lets just not have anymore wars and tension between them because its just boring now"

For what purpose, for what end goal?

My point wasn't that your feelings weren't valid, because that's a ridiculous argument to make. My point was that the Alliance/Horde conflict has only ever been a small component of the pillar you've been describing, with orcs vs humans forming the underlying thread through the WC RTS franchise, rather than the actual Alliance vs Horde conflict. Thus, the RTS conflict can exist devoid of either Alliance or Horde. My questions for you: is the current Alliance/Horde structure the only way to depict this pillar for you (vs other strategies they've tried, like Aldor vs Scryer or Oracle vs Frenzyheart rep-style conflicts)? And how, mechanically, do you want to see players set up to fulfill this fantasy (exclusive player bases, world PvP zones, narrative conflict between player-connected factions, etc.)?

You list plenty of other criticisms of the game, such as spaceships and "Shadowlands" (it's not clear what part of the expansion is the issue here: traveling to another realm, the concept of the Shadowlands, exploration of afterlives, etc.), and this all occurs when we have the separate Horde/Alliance factions, so clearly the factions alone are not sufficient to make the game enjoyable. The essence of this thread is, are they necessary? They weren't in WC or WC3. Are they in WoW?

[Shadowferal]

They need an evil faction that players can join because the problem is the Horde vs Alliance is purely contrived for the purposes of game play and because having each race be a faction is too difficult to implement. But because of that the Horde players often get hit with the evil bat at various times in order to promote the story and a lot of players don't see themselves or the Horde as evil. Unfortunately having an evil faction wouldn't make sense in the context of shared dungeons, raids and world quests as the goals and objectives of the evil faction would be totally different from everyone else.

In my rewrite, I have the "good" faction, (Horde or Alliance), and a "neutral" faction, (referred to as "independent factions")
Ive been playing with an idea of an "evil" faction. A faction (or factions) that you the player would choose at the start. And unknown to all throughout the game until the right expansion comes along.

[hecpercu]

I'd rather it had been done organically with the factions actually being dissolved because something happened that made it make sense.

This, or nothing.

[InfiniteCharger]

In my rewrite, I have the "good" faction, (Horde or Alliance), and a "neutral" faction, (referred to as "independent factions")
Ive been playing with an idea of an "evil" faction. A faction (or factions) that you the player would choose at the start. And unknown to all throughout the game until the right expansion comes along.

Sounds interesting and tries to address the idea that factions aren't always 'at war' with each other vs being temporary.

[username993720]

Still haven't gotten a good answer why the Tauren should stay Horde.

Because it's the "shamanistic" faction?

In a world where the entity is real?

I wouldn't call that primitive, it's just using magic

There's that and there's using magic to power spaceships and robots.

I mean witchcraft is literally a part of Kul Tiran culture yet Kul Tiras is still considered a kingdom...

Drust. Some Kul Tirans just adopted it.

No but vast civic infrastructure is.

Yes, they are more advanced than your average Darkspear Troll, but they still practice Voodoo and mysticism.

Given how how the worshippers of the Light, the most common faith amongst what you probably consider 'advanced civilizations', fail to summon their related entities at all, I'd say those voodoo people are onto something.

Perhaps.

[Caiphon]

Yes, they are more advanced than your average Darkspear Troll, but they still practice Voodoo and mysticism.

In a world where magic is real and all sorts of higher powers roam the earth (the Zandalari loa literally live on the island with the trolls that worship them) I'd say mysticism is the norm rather than a 'primitive' exercise. A human priest drawing power from his belief in the light is no different from a Priestess of the Moon being granted power from Elune, or a Zandalari prelate drawing power from Rezan.

Even in terms of technology, if you exclude the eredar-derived races who are literal aliens of a far older civilisation, the technological level between the factions isn't all that significant. There's a reason why gnomish and goblin engineering were equivalents back in the day.

[Nymrohd]

This, or nothing.

For me there were several points in time this could have happened.
At end of MoP or during WoD. I mean if the Iron Horde had been an actual existential threat it could have happened right then. Picture this, at the prepatch of WoD instead of the limp dick Blasted Lands invasion, Zaela BLOWS UP Stormwind using that Iron Star while Garrosh goblins blow up the entire Underhold which they had left rigged with explosives turning Orgrimmar into a sinkhole. Tens of thousands dead, factions in shambles, have to ally against greater evil. Skip Ashran, it sucked. Still have factions split but have them come together at Tanaan instead of in two separate camps.

But what I'd have done is give a different end to BfA. Give N'zoth a full expac, end BfA with Siege of Stormwind. First part works like Dazar'alor with split experience for the two factions ending with a couple of major NPC deaths (one side can kill Nathanos the other maybe Genn?). At end of raid N'zoth crashes the party, Sylvanas yeets away telling us we are all nothing and she has better things to do, we barely drive N'zoth away (maybe Magni dies for that? Anything to keep him away for next xpac). Then we have an xpac of the factions consolidating having to constantly choose in different areas between saving civilians or NPCs of the opposing faction or letting them be sacrificed by the Black Empire. Every time a faction fight is about to start in the story, either interrupt it by Black Empire assault or show that twilight cultists caused the fight. By the time we end N'zoth, world is a mess but we've been fighting shoulder to shoulder for two years.