Post Shadowlands, time for 3rd Faction?

[McNeil]

I do think we need a huge shakeup when it comes to factions. Alliance vs Horde is just worn out at this point. I would be fine with either adding 1 or more smaller factions, or just remove factions entirely and let people choose their own paths. I believe this was also the original plan for WoW when it was in its early stages and they had a lot more playable races planned.

[pinkz]

WC III and WC3 FT, has 4 factions. blizzard is good at retconning, rewriting, and undoing lore

- human, dwarf, and FT version which included BE
- horde which was orc, tauren, troll
- NE
- UD

[Azerate]

2 faction system is the cornerstone of wow and it's here to stay. Keep fantasizing all you want, just for your own good and everyone else's, don't start believing this will happen. Recently we had the same situation with "no more factions" bs being spread and perpetuated by people and influencers and when it turned out not to be the case everyone was suddenly disappointed.

[Uko]

A third faction will just exasperate the problems we already have splitting the playerbase even more. For a game with a constantly decreasing population fragmentation is a bad idea. If anything they should just let the factions team up for pve content and treat pvp as like training and mercenary work where its still horde v alliance.

[Cosmic Janitor]

There will never be a time for a 3rd faction, certainly not since the early naughties with DAoC. Especially not with the gameplay restrictions present in WoW. Dividing your playerbase down when you already can't keep up with the content demand for 2 factions, yeah, no. We might get them as NPC factions the player can choose with a soft binding like aldor/scryer or the covenants, but certainly not a major divide like A/H.

Edit: Actually, there is one type of major 3rd faction that could work: A neutral faction that you can join post-character creation which allows you to be .. well, neutral. All it would do is essentially set both the A and H flags on your character for quests and allow you to group with whoever you want. This wouldn't fuck too badly with the existing balance, wouldn't require a new one and would open up grouping opportunities to the underrepresented faction.

[Rhila]

We already have an issue where one faction can barely play the game as the numbes have dwindled, and you want to make it worse by adding a 3rd one?
The population in this game is a lot lower than it used to be, there just arent enough players to populate 3 factions to a decent level even if you coulod somehow spread players out equally.

They need to jsut combine us into one faction already, nobody has enjoyed the aliiance v horde storylines for a long time now, and its just repetitive and boring, and bad for players.
Wow will never return to the glory days, so start designing the game to better function for thise of us that play.

[Aresk]

Personally I prefer the road of allowing cross-faction play in PvE over further segregation of the playerbase. However, I don't think changing the current faction number is feasible from a purely technical perspective. The game was coded with two factions in mind. Systems have been built on that assumption. While it COULD be done, it would be a monumental undertaking, and I don't want to think about how many things would break.

[Blackmist]

Two factions are bad enough, thanks.

[RyudoTFO]

Personally, I would rather want to pick a faction (H/A) myself, independent from race I pick and still be able to play with players from the other faction if I want to (questing, dungeons, raids), with factions only used for PvP activities, like BG's or open world PvP. Other games already are doing that and it works out for them. But WoW has established H Vs. A lore and the developers don't want to move on from that for some reason, so nothing of that has even a 1% possibility to happen right now.

[Tradu]

The faction split is one of the things hurting the game the most currently, adding a 3rd would just make it worse.

[Wheeler]

It'd have been the right move a few years ago, but it's too far out of hand now and a 3rd faction would hurt things further.

But then again - They can't get classes/specs playing correctly before an expansion launches yet still manage to throw more into the mix.

[matrix123mko]

Sadly, Blizzard prefers us to stay in Horde and Alliance forever.

- - - Updated - - -

Two factions are bad enough, thanks.

Three could make them better. However, lack of factions would be likely better, depending on story they want to write. Right now it fits to dismantle both factions.

[Rogue Karl]

Should really remove factions beyond war mode for those who like world pvp.

The vast majority of the player base isn't benefited by a 2 faction system. It cuts potential players in half and if the weird shard abuse is anything to go by most people only want to pvp on servers were they hold a significant numerical advantage.

War ironically has always felt extremely forced after warcraft three and has given us the worst of wows flimsy plots.

[Kemsa]

What ? no for god no, a third factions destroys the sentiment of "a world divided", and also means more "inefficient work" like adjusting battlegrounds etc.
If something that we need, its "cross-playing" between factions, some system related to Bnet friends or an achi like "double agent" or reworking alliance racials to be like the horde ones but alliance version.

But another factions its like literally overkilling WoW.

[Kokolums]

If Blizzard has one more Blitzchung-sized crisis, they are going to be under 1 million players. Because of that, they are likely going to eliminate factions completely.

[Dellis0991]

In the original Warcraft series the Horde where the bad guys. WC3 turned them into the noble savages, but only because of Thrall and the inclusion of the peaceful yet strong Tauren. The undead where most definately the bad guys.

WoW comes around and for some reason the forsaken were included the Horde faction. IMO alot of players chose the horde to play as the more evil faction compared to Stormwind. Not all obviously as lot of players also appreciate that noble savage aspect, honour etc.

With WoWs story now pushing Sylvanas as a big bad, why not steer into it? Give us a 3rd faction, the Forsaken made up of undead version of each race currently in the game with racials that undeady versions of the current. Current characters could take a quest to "die" and be risen in this new faction as a permanent change, unless opted for a paid faction change that is. And all those who took the support Sylvanas quests instead of Varok would have this happen automatically.

Thoughts?

We already got a third faction.....the bad guys.....we kill they asses every expansion they are the third faction that comes through and gets fucked on by the horde and alliance. I wouldn't want to play a faction that gets blades and spells shove up my ass because I decided to be a some evil asshat's henchmen so no.

[gobio]

Time for a quick warm reminder yo~

You are not some "champion", you don't own an "order hall"... those are lies Truman show style.

You are just an insignificant "unit on the map", when the "hero unit" asked your silly tauren druid to kill some elves. You do it, the only other choice you have is quit the expansion and forget about progressing the story. We are not talking about a 3rd faction, we are talking about 3rd mandatory faction that your character can never quit!

[CaptainV]

Honestly the factions died with BFA, adding a third wont work now.

If they had made the Legion a third faction in Legion that might have been a good time to do it, but with the events of BFA, theres no point in factions, and if there gonna add them, they'd be better off making "new" factions as opposed to current ones, aka: 2 new factions to replace the alliance horde conflict, possibly themed more about order/chaos themed conflict.

[allegrian]

There's never going to be a 3rd faction and you should stop asking about it.

[Manariel]

Only in new battlegrounds. Story and pve-wise, dissolving the factions should be the goal to avoid skewing the game ever more toward imbalance.