Do You Want One Faction?!

[qwerty123456]

I don't want it but I wouldn't mind it. I definitely want this faction conflict bullshit to stop though. And although I hate Sylvanas I wouldn't mind if she survived and fled and started an evil faction for people that wanna be evil.

[Megitsune]

Faction vs faction is outdated and boring at this point, it's been done so many times that it's just pointless, even the lore characters are realizing it now. So yeah I wouldn't mind one faction or at least for things to shift far, far away from Horde vs Alliance for a long time.

[arkanon]

For PVE, yes. Guilds and dungeons/raids should be merged. PVP can keep factions, or they can just do yellow v. green like arena, or free-for-all.

PvP could be improved with this change imo. Keep the warmode system, however change how ZONES are designated. You have friendly zones, where the old faction lines remain, and then Contested zones where anyone that is not in your party / raid can be attacked. I would imagine absolute chaos and carnage for the first few weeks, then things would settle down.

- - - Updated - - -

Faction vs faction is outdated and boring at this point, it's been done so many times that it's just pointless, even the lore characters are realizing it now. So yeah I wouldn't mind one faction or at least for things to shift far, far away from Horde vs Alliance for a long time.

The writers are well aware of it, and the story is just looping constantly between "GRRRRRRRRR, we hate each other" back to "hmmm, lets be friends to kill these baddies" back to "GRRRRRRR we hate each other". It was ok in vanilla and through to wrath, but by then i was already burned out on the horde Vs alliance stuff.

Late Wrath i was wishing i could group with mates on opposing faction, and that hasnt changed.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't want it but I wouldn't mind it. I definitely want this faction conflict bullshit to stop though. And although I hate Sylvanas I wouldn't mind if she survived and fled and started an evil faction for people that wanna be evil.

SWTOR struggled with this as well - can anyone explain why we cant have an outright 'evil' faction? I would suggest players would embrace it.

[Yunaqt]

Don't really care either way

[Psykd]

I think the wall has already been broken down alot through mercenary mode and the different methods of communicating with the other side as already mentioned, The existence of pandaren shows it can work and won't be too confusing when you have the same model/race present on both sides for things like PvP. Being able to pool from both sides means queue times may improve also for everyone involved (PvE dungeons, LFR and PvP)

The idea of continuing on friendly rivalry within the arena and painting battlegrounds as skirmishes rather than real battles isn't that hard of a pill to swallow either. May games already do that (FF XIV, GuildWars)

A huge problem with the game in some regions is the imbalance with/without warmode. Taking OCE as an example turning it off may stop the ganking but there is still 10 ally flying round for every horde player and that means rare tags are hard to come by in the current environment making the game pretty average if you chose that faction. (A mistake that can cost $60 or a couple of weeks+ to rectify to level and re-gear). If it's everyone is on the same team without warmode and when it's turned on it's basically a free for all outside of making groups/teams then I feel we'd be in a better place and more people would be willing to join in.

Looking at it from a business prospective they would only need to accent one story for a "merged faction" expansion rather than write up two. Maybe accenting it with different characters depending on the race of the player.

They would only need to create one central hub rather than flesh out 2 functional towns where people spend most of their time also. Saving on art/dev time.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I wouldn't say absoluty, but I'm definitely more in favor of it than against it. It's also not like we need to make everything one faction, that is frankly a very simplistic and dishonest interpretation. Breaking down the hard faction divide does not require to completely abandon the faction identities (only the piss poor murder-hobo fraction of the horde really), it just requires to shift the story focus away from this inane and illogical conflict and let people group with others they have on their battle-net list. That is pretty much all I'd ask for anyway. Actually making use of it in your gameplay content and other systems would just be icing for the most part, but I don't even expect post 2015 Blizzard to do anything here.

[Megitsune]

The writers are well aware of it, and the story is just looping constantly between "GRRRRRRRRR, we hate each other" back to "hmmm, lets be friends to kill these baddies" back to "GRRRRRRR we hate each other". It was ok in vanilla and through to wrath, but by then i was already burned out on the horde Vs alliance stuff.

Yeah, exactly it doesn't even make sense from a lore standpoint and even a gameplay standpoint anymore how the factions keep going back to war after they see that they need to band together to take on a big bad. Which is why I'm glad at least Thrall and Jaina seem to notice now, even though they should've noticed a long time ago.

The factions don't even HAVE to combine, just at least come to a complete ceasefire with the faction war BS.

[Mysterymask]

Would prefer an uneasy truce than 1 faction

still a war...but for PVE stuff you can group up with opposite factoin..but pvp stuff should remain

[Flutterguy]

While we're removing the factions, lets drop class restrictions on the races.

[schwank05]

Nope, I'd love a third faction. I don't want to be part of the Horde anymore, I'd love an undead only faction like WC3. Same for Nelves.

This guy get's where I'm coming from.

[Erolian]

These poll results are kinda surprising. I remember the same being asked a few expansions ago and back then general consensus seemed to be: "No, it is against the whole theme of World of Warcraft for there not to be an Alliance and a Horde." or "one faction would be stupid".

Its not really surprising if you've ever played alliance NA. If you like raiding for those people the game has gotten nothing but worse and more stressful/difficult to maintain expansion after expansion because they simply don't have a large recruitment pool. I can understand people maybe liking the theme of faction conflict or whatever but functionally playing the game is simply worse because of the faction divide as the game ages. It was somewhat hidden when it was more popular and there were just so many people it didn't matter which side you picked but as you approach the fringes in 2019 you begin to realize one faction is simply superior because they have more players and that enables you to find groups and participate in the content you wanted more easily. It no longer has to do with racials, faction pride, your favorite color, or whatever. The game is simply better when you have access to other similar players to play the game with. If you want that, at least in NA, you play horde now unless you want to make everything take longer.

So while I have no opinion about the lore of the game or care for the faction conflict I do believe you should be able to group with whoever you want and raid/pvp alongside them. That doesn't have to be reflected in the story of the game. Its just important that people are able to actually participate in whatever content they want at any skill level without it being needlessly difficult because they failed at the faction select screen

[Irian]

Yes, not because I think the system is totally hopeless but because I think Blizzard is totally hopeless at actually playing to its strengths.

Whenever the faction war is brought up it's done under a misunderstanding, or some bigger bad within a faction (read: horde) and with the Alliance being idiotic punching bags with no development. The times where the faction conflict was done well was when the story literally ignored it and let the players decide how to feel instead of trying to tell us.

Without that kind of approach it feels really disingenuous. The story keeps ramming down our throats at every possible opportunity that victory was only achievable because we worked together and that senseless fighting is bad...only for the factions to return to that senseless fighting literally next expansion. At what point are we over this loop? I've been playing the fucking game for 14 years and we've basically had a repeat of this stupid lesson since Wrath, the same one WC3 had.

At this point I've been waiting for them to make me care again about the faction conflict and it's always just been the same old stupid shit. Toss it out so we can maybe get some stories Blizzard writers can handle, like "bad guy appears, fight the bad guy". I'd rather they stick with simple than attempt to tackle complex stories and fall all over their feet like they always do.

[avitush]

I'm not interested in seeing the Horde and Alliance races combine into a single faction.

I do think it would be pretty cool to have an expansion where the playable races just go home to deal with their own shit. The factions could still exist for purposes of world PvP and battlegrounds and such (and keeping things somewhat organized in general), but they'd only be a minor part of the story. So basically, a massively expanded version of each race's starting experience, but it all happens in the new expansion between old level cap and new level cap, not at level 1.

Pretty much all of the races have some problems to deal with, so I think there'd be plenty of content for an expansion. Night elves...well, after BfA, they obviously have all kinds of shit to deal with. Maybe gnomes could take another stab at Gnomeregan, clean it out, and convert it to a flying city that floats around Azeroth. And you wouldn't be restricted to your own race's zones. By the time you reach level cap, you'll have gone through the quests/storylines for all of your faction's races. And you take more orders from your own racial leaders than you do from Anduin or Sylvanas/Nathanos (unless you're playing a human or undead, I guess). And, of course, since this is WoW we're talking about, at least a few of those quests would involve digging through piles of bear shit for a ring or something.

I think one expansion like that could be cool.

[Astven]

I do like factions and don't want them gone. I don't mind times of peace (sort of) to fight a major opponent but in general, i enjoy the open world faction battles quite a lot.

FOR THE HORDE!

[ThelorenEntarus]

No, I want cooperation between factions and the possibility to group up with people of the opposite faction for endgame instance content.

Factions are a huge part of the personality of the game.

Correct. I would extend the in-game cooperation to allow players of the opposite factions to be able to group together to do any content, legacy raids, shared quests. I'd probably only draw the line at faction specific quests. PVP I think should remain as is, Alliance V Horde back to skirmishing over the old hatreds like in Vanilla - Wrath.

[bloodwulf]

Im tired of "UNITE TO FIGHT MEGAENEMY" then a minute later "YOU STEPPED ON MY LAND, YOU SHALL PAY WITH YOUR LIFE"...the flip flopping makes zero sense. After so many times uniting then fighting then uniting, you would have accept the war fatique would like sit in eventually. Maybe still allow for guerilla style conflicts and that is the excuse for PVP, but let me do dungeons with whatever race i want.

[Adamas102]

Yes, I would.

The faction conflict is pretty lame at this point. Plus it would be nice to be able to play with my recently returned buddy who rolled on the “wrong” faction.

[Mahmeya]

No. I'd welcome a third splinter faction however.

Legion and Class Orders were a wasted chance IMO. They could've pretty much depower the factions and instead create a few neutral factions - one forming around the Earthen Ring and the druids would make sense (with pro-neutral races such as draenei, night elves, and tauren having the majority there), another being restructuralized Kirin Tor 2.0 (KT + blood elves + nightborne + mage class order as the base), and a union of Silver hand + Conclave (which were working together anyway). I think any of the three would find more volunteers to their causes than the Alliance and the Horde.

If we were not limited by game design, this would realistically happen in a functional, dynamic, fictional world. The main problem I see in WoW is that keeping the faction intact makes the lore feel far too stale - and prevents any kind of war from having consequences while dividing the playerbase more and more.