What if Horde and Alliance Merge Factions?

[Sierra85]

if they merge factions i would like to see a "legion" faction introduced and you get to play in the legion empire.

now that would be a shake up!

[markdall]

What if that happened? Well...

1. Realm populations would effectively double in terms of AH activity, people you could group and guild with, run dungeons with, etc.

2. World PVP would be pretty wacky. I suppose they could either let you still be flagged as your original faction, or flag you all the same as your guild leader, or something. They'd have to be really careful, but honestly? This already happens now. On the dead server I transferred from, one of those really trollish guilds that recruits everybody they can and has like 900 people total, all had characters in both factions. So when my guild leader wanted to buy something that their guild leader wanted to buy, from the BMAH? They logged their opposite faction characters and proceeded to gank. The solution of course is to CRZ with a different server, but I digress. Cross faction guilds are already a reality in some cases.

3. Arenas wouldn't change - I'm about 99% sure the last time I played arena we'd fight the same faction sometimes.

4. BGs wouldn't change much - kill the people whose names are red. Now with about half the wait time.

If I think of more I'll add them.

[darkwarrior42]

I don't see any reasonable change that would occur.

1) Lore is irrelevant. Players have no ability to impact the lore in any way, and the lore has become so absurd that using it as justification is laughable at best (see: all of Cataclysm. See: "There must always be a lich king." There are others, but those are the two that stick out in my mind.)
2) The Alliance vs. Horde war is irrelevant. There are PvP servers, but the primary purpose of those is to facilitate ganking, and on PvE servers PvP combat can be trivially avoided. Arenas already support same faction fights, it'd be easy to implement a similar change for all battlegrounds. Just let PvP flagging in the world work against anyone not in your guild and you have world pvp and ganking back, for those who want it.
3) ... even if the war were relevant, players can't affect it at all. Battlegrounds are fought, but victory and defeat don't meaningfully affect the way in any way. It was literally impossible that any action on the Horde's part would have saved camp Taur'ajo, or that any action on the Alliance's part would have saved Theramore Isle. The war is just another narration on Blizzard's part, and any war action on the part of the players is just an illusion to make them feel like they're doing something without actually having them do anything at all.


What does WoW have, from a gameplay perspective?
-Open World questing (both daily and otherwise)
-Resource collection
-Pet Battles
-Collecting (rare pets, rare mounts, achievement, whatever)
-Open world PvP
-Structured PvP
-Scenarios
-Dungeons
-Raids
-Patch events

None of those require the Alliance vs. Horde war to exist. None of those are affected in any way by the war from a player perspective, because nothing we do affects it. It is a narrative only, one that serves to make things slightly easier to justify from a lore perspective... but one which we could easily do without.

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I love to hate the opposite faction, it brings passion and energy to the game.

It's a bit sad how some of you raiders don't even think of PvP as a part of this game.

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...except Blizz have been totally inconsistent with it. They let the Horde destroy Theramore, they get us all excited for some revenge with Admiral Rogers and the badass squad, but then, this patch it's like "go help vol'jin!" ....

I am holding my breath for this next patch, if we (The Alliance) seriously just go in, help kill Garrosh, and leave, I am going to be majorly pissed.

I acknowledge that PvP is a part of the game, I Just don't acknowledge any faction role in PvP. When you gank, you're not advancing your faction's cause, you're killing a player... so regardless of what faction banner you wear or what you scream while doing it, it's not a part of the war, it's just an engagement between two players. I don't care what the terrain skins of WSG or AB are, nothing you do there has any effect on anything, so it's not a part of any war, it's just a game between two teams.

You wouldn't be getting revenge on anyone for anything, even if they let the Alliance go after the Horde for what happened in Theramore. No Alliance player will ever get credit for killing anyone responsible for that attack, and anything you do will have zero impact on whether or not vengeance is had.

They may want Alliance/Horde hatred, but they've failed to give me any reason to hate the other faction. I'm Horde atm, and anything I do will have literally zero impact on the Alliance, so what difference does my emotional reaction to them make? None, so getting emotional about it is a waste of time.

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If they want to make the Alliance/Horde rivalry matter, let opposing factions actually do damage to each other. When the Alliance raids the crossroads, let them be able to seize control of it for the Alliance. If they invade Orgimmar and take down the auctioneers, increase the auction house cut on Horde side for a while as the auction house goblins try to make back the money they lost in the attack. Let PvP actions actually have an impact on how the players function on a day-to-day basis, and you'll give players some actual incentive to go out there and attack the enemy... because then they'll actually be the enemy, instead of just being players you can't talk to.

[Canadian Aviator]

Essentially, something needs to be done to stir up the heat between the two factions. I have a feeling that they will include Anduin, since if he were ever to inherit the throne, he would be an advocate for rainbows and sunshine. If he were to parish, particularly to someone of the orcs that would likely stir up a lot of drama with him being the son of Varian.

Unfortunately I feel like it needs to be a faction effort to stir things up. Not one single individual or character who draws all the hate to the faction he belongs to. In all likelyhood it needs to somehow involve the raid where Garrosh dies.

[xezar]

I say yes if only so I can raid with other faction buddies...

In all seriousness, the "war" ended in WC3. There has been no true Horde/Alliance war since, Cata certainly didn't do much other than having the horde advance into areas it was already minorly winning in before, and MoP is a laughable attempt at starting a "war". Just go back to letting the fake cold war proxy continue imo, as we all know we're gonna band together whenever something threatens Azeroth anyways (LK, Deathwing, inevitable next burning legion expansion, etc etc).

I'm kinda curious as to what MMO started this whole faction-based concept, probably Everquest? I mean there's other MMOs where it doesn't matter at all and they get along fine.

[Ravanna]

The worst bits story-wise lately have involved the Alliance/Horde war, so I'd be all for getting it over with. Got a feeling that's what Wratheon's working towards.

The only faction/race that really *wants* war is the Forsaken, since war = more bodies to reanimate. Orcs might be a little iffy, if just due to the past, but I think everyone else could get along decently.

[Gothicshark]

I'm shocked at how many yes votes this got. Either there's a lot of trolls or I'm just way more out of touch than I thought with the rest of the community.

20 years of Orcs vs Humans, with no end in sight. I voted no, because the idea of Peacecraft is lame. But the story has become a bit stale, especially with the underlying horde bias.

[Deleted]

The worst bits story-wise lately have involved the Alliance/Horde war, so I'd be all for getting it over with. Got a feeling that's what Wratheon's working towards.

The only faction/race that really *wants* war is the Forsaken, since war = more bodies to reanimate. Orcs might be a little iffy, if just due to the past, but I think everyone else could get along decently.

I could see Trolls, Tauren and Blood Elves be on peaceful terms with the Alliance, same as I could see Humans.. wait no, the Alliance are a bunch of resentful asses.

Draenei are afraid of the orcs, Night Elves I think still hold grudges, Worgen are all for slaying every forsaken there is, Gnomes don't really care I think, Dwarves just want beer.

Maybe the Gnomes can use money to buy plans from Goblins, and they actually use eachother's reasources for better tech, Dwarves will just drink beer with both the Tushui and Huojin Pandaren, and anyone who joins for a beer is welcome.

Humans suck.

Orcs are just like humans, but green and aggressive.

Forsaken want whatever they can get and will slaughter anything for it.

I play Alliance and I've rolled Horde a few times, but most of my 5 years of WoW were Alliance.
I like Alliance because of the races, I like how they look, I don't like their lore.

I would absolutely love for the Tauren to accept several other races into Mulgore to just let it all slide, have fun, enjoy the epic plains.

Both factions suck, but also have their good sides.

[Elegiac]

Personally, I wouldn't mind in the least. The "Orcs vs Humans" shtick is getting really, really old to me and quite frankly a lot of the "neutral" storylines like BC and Wrath have provided me with more engaging content.

If the two factions have to be retained I would rather see a "choose your faction" feature implemented, dividing them along ideological lines rather than racial ones.

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It's a bit sad how some of you raiders don't even think of PvP as a part of this game.

Because it's such a minor portion of the game that has contributed nothing but balance issues since it was introduced in a big way.

[anisadora]

You said the magic word. Blizzard just recently said they like Red vs Blue so i don't see it happening for a looong long time.

BUT...it's a fact that when the game starts feeling dead as the years roll by, merging the factions effectively doubles the community size. I still don't think it would necessarily happen (would there be any world pvp at all at that point? how would it work?), but that would be the tipping point IMO.

they could make it everyone versus everyone?

idk.. /shrug

[PenguinChan]

If we didn't get so many "Ex-Lover" neutral stories I would say no, but I'm inclined to say yes because of it. Neutral content seems to have been the more engaging, with the underlying tone of faction hatred. It still comes up and surely causes riot in a lot of lore and quests, but we still had a lot of neutrality through this games history. It's so weird that within 20 - 40 lore years the factions have paired together more than a few times to take others out. And there wasn't anything but few rumbled cries of war between working with the enemy, or so it seemed.

Blizzard doesn't portray their neutral times in the game well enough to convince me there is any hatred between the factions at that time. It all suddenly seems like my Night Elf Female could go hug a giant green Orc and be happy forever in those times. I literally think of it like that, as I don't get many readings other than silence between the two factions working together.

[Erolian]

Merge factions? Meh. I wouldn't really care but it's not very interesting either way. Make it so each character can CHOOSE the faction they want regardless of race? I'd take it in a heart beat.

[Elegiac]

Merge factions? Meh. I wouldn't really care but it's not very interesting either way. Make it so each character can CHOOSE the faction they want regardless of race? I'd take it in a heart beat.

Yus, I concur. Make Horde/Alliance an ideological split!

[LilSaihah]

I wouldn't really be bothered if players could play together across faction without doing some kind of dorky race change to bridge the gap; the reasons they're antagonistic towards one another are, at best, unappealing. I think having them as the one faction would kinda kill the charm, though.

[Saberstrike]

They should be merged. And then allowed to kill each other, free for all! Cause let's be honest here, you hate your own faction's dumdums more than you ever hated any ganker. That would make shits for brains think twice before being a nuisance.

PvP already has same factions fight in opposite teams in RBG / Arena so nothing will change. Wars will just be more 'local' and, in my opinion, that's a good thing.

[Durandro]

World of Peacecraft sounds pretty awful. It's an illusion even here on our planet of one race, imagine if we had aliens visit us.

Because there's no-one else to go to war with, amirite?

Oh wait. The Burning Legion. The Old Gods. Darn, almost!

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I could see Trolls, Tauren and Blood Elves be on peaceful terms with the Alliance, same as I could see Humans.. wait no, the Alliance are a bunch of resentful asses.

Incorrect. You're painting an entire faction as 'resentful' on what basis? A few humans?

Any hatred the Alliance has of the Horde is justified, and vice versa. But there are plenty that have no real grievence anymore, or are holding on to old grudges for no good reason.

Humans aren't bigotted at all. Some are, most aren't. Stormwind, their capital city, had always had a Dwarven district (which if anything is in a better state then Old Quarter) and for a long while had a park that was mostly filled with Night Elves. They even have a Goblin working for SI:7, and its definately not an exclusive human organisation anymore (unlike the Kor'kron which is exclusively Orcish).

Night Elves are the closest to 'racists' in the Alliance camp, and they seem to have dropped that trait long ago. The fact they temporarily allied with Blood Elves in The Frozen Throne despite knowing their relation to the Highborne (their old enemies) shows they can work with anyone against a common threat. And now they have accepted Highborne back despite their past.

Draenei are afraid of Orcs? Even if they are, they have good reason to be - they massacred the vast majority of their population after living together peacefully for a long time. Infact it could be argued the Draenei helped the Orcs uplift their society, and even gave their planet a name when it had none previously. Otherwise the Draenei seem very open to helping others - the moment they land on Azuremyst they start cleaning up the mess they made and open communications with the Night Elves despite being mistaken for Eredar demons. They even offered to help fight the Lich King - something that isn't even really their fight - but were denied due to spy sabotage.

And the Pandaren welcome to the Alliance is far more friendly and brotherly then the Horde's welcome. I think that alone says how accepting the Alliance has become.

[Deleted]

Pretty much this.

There USED to be a point to it, but since we have so many baddies now to defeat, who cares? I say let everyone group and play what they want. Works well in GW2 for me and my friends!

Yep thats what im saying... everything in the game doesnt matter which faction you are to be able to do it. Raiding certainly doesnt matter and pretty much ALL PvE content has no bearing on what faction ur.

The only place in the whole game that uses the 2 factions for its gameplay is in Battlegrounds... it doesnt even matter in Rated BGs.

GW2 used the clever design aspect to put realms against realms... THAT was a masterstroke and is the reason their rivalry will always exist

[Dreknar20]

Oh wait. The Burning Legion. The Old Gods. Darn, almost!

Just because those exist wont erase the bad blood between factions.

Thousands have died, or lost their livehoods in war, not to mention the countless old hatrds across history, these are things people will not easily forgive and forget.

[Deleted]

What does WoW have, from a gameplay perspective?
-Open World questing (both daily and otherwise)
-Resource collection
-Pet Battles
-Collecting (rare pets, rare mounts, achievement, whatever)
-Open world PvP
-Structured PvP
-Scenarios
-Dungeons
-Raids
-Patch events

None of those require the Alliance vs. Horde war to exist. None of those are affected in any way by the war from a player perspective, because nothing we do affects it. It is a narrative only, one that serves to make things slightly easier to justify from a lore perspective... but one which we could easily do without.

I can add some more aspects of gameplay which have no bearing on faction...

-Arena
-Rated Battlegrounds
-LFR
-LFD
-Guild competition
-world and realm first achievements
-achievement hunting
-transmogging

The list of parts of the game which uses the two factions is EMBARRESSINGLY tiny

-Battlegrounds
-Wintergrasp & Tol Barad

[Deleted]

Lol it would never happen, that way the faction change pay feature won't have any meaning so less money for Blizzard >_>
Plus peace is an illusion :P