They never develop the underlying hatred between factions

[Michael Jackson]

People keep bawling about how "the faction war sucks" but forget that this entire conflict has barely started what, 30-50 years ago, and at least half of that time was an ongoing raging massacre on both sides, sometimes even internally.

Stormwind? Alterac? Silvermoon? Theramore? Gilneas? Plus all the small towns and skirmishes for ressources.

World War 2 ended 80 years ago and it only lasted a few years, yet there's still grudges, hatreds and rememberances about it to this day. If all those jews were actually killed, do you think their families have forgiven and just "moved on"?
The Russians of Stalingrad now hug Germans on sight? France can't wait to suck on their baguettes? Japan <3 America long time?

Now imagine Azeroth, and in extension, Draenor (Outland). All the stories of loss and revenge and the ensuing bad blood they've created, they were just forgive and forget because Medivh told us to help each other at Hyjal? With all the shit that happened afterwards?

All they do is shoehorn in these happy go lucky characters like Magni and cheery gnomes and fucking pandas and foxes and fish people and turtles to give this feeling of "omg we can be friends" guys, whilst on the other spectrum you've got fucking Warcraft: Arya Stark worth of characters and stories who simply cannot be swept under the rug like nothing happened.

Blizzard should have stuck with their guns a long time ago and gone the Warhammer route: look, this is our universe, there's WAR so fucking deal with it, we won't try to shoehorn in hippie tree shit all the time, although uneasy alliances can be made occasionally, but other than that, yeah no, people have scores to settle, and we will tell their stories too.

Twice they almost made Jaina go berserk as she rightfully should, and twice they toned her back into a little bitch. It's absurd how hot and cold they keep blowing.

[Darsithis]

I've never felt the tension we're supposed to feel at all. We work together too often to hate the Horde. The entirety of BfA made no sense to me...

...but I also don't read any of the comics or novels, so I suspect a lot of what we're missing is in those.

[Powerogue]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

[Nize]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

How this happened and there wasn't an insta-horde rebellion right off the bat blows my mind, but that's just me.

[Sharnie786]

3 of the top 3 threads are his. I guess he's good at getting people to talk

[Omedon]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

Totally agree here, OP is kinda crazy.

And this expansion they're stoking the fires between character-conceptually-minded players and min/maxers haha!

[Darsithis]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

Probably because, to me, it came out of nowhere. In Legion we were united against Sargeras and then suddenly Darnassus is burning and Undercity is irradiated...but Darnassus felt like the work of rogue elements, not the Horde’s official policy. I never felt the tensions were that high.

[Powerogue]

Probably because, to me, it came out of nowhere. In Legion we were united against Sargeras and then suddenly Darnassus is burning and Undercity is irradiated...but Darnassus felt like the work of rogue elements, not the Horde’s official policy. I never felt the tensions were that high.

So insufficient buildup is your only reason? I know some people consider it a weakness of the story to rely on outside material, but did you read the books? https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ne...-now-available

And it kind of was supposed to be "the work of rogue elements." Sylvanas did something unexpected that was so evil that it splintered the Horde between those who would support her for the sake of achieving victory (as her "no mercy or honor" approach seemed brutally effective) and those who felt, like Saurfang, that a Horde that would go to such lengths is not what they signed up for, and would be no better than when they were enslaved to the Legion.

And again, as we saw with the unrelenting arguing for two years straight, that schism was something they accomplished with overwhelming success.

[Dazmalak]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

Who says it's more mature? It's just more fun. Sorry not all of us need a video game to teach us lessons on morality and how to be a good person.

[Stardrift]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

What else do you expect from people that dump on the Night Fae for not being edgy like the Venthyr or Necrolords lmao

[MrLachyG]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"?



You people have literally been arguing about it since before the expansion started.

If there's one. thing. we should all. agree. was accomplished with flying colors it was stoking player hatred and conflict. Though by the end, it sounds like that's less your goal, and more "every character should be a bloodthirsty war machine with no morals all the time because that makes it more mature somehow."

to be fair this is the same OP who started this thread https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...as-just-absurd

OP is nothing but a troll who makes stupid conflicting threads

[Stardrift]

Who says it's more mature? It's just more fun. Sorry not all of us need a video game to teach us lessons on morality and how to be a good person.

It's less fun when every single character are the same damn thing. Murder murder murder doesn't make for good story.

Characters have to have different alignments to keep things interesting. Conflict of morals makes good drama. Not "KILL EVERYTHING REEE".

[Dazmalak]

It's less fun when every single character are the same damn thing. Murder murder murder doesn't make for good story.

Characters have to have different alignments to keep things interesting. Conflict of morals makes good drama. Not "KILL EVERYTHING REEE".

It's my opinion that we haven't had a good story despite their attempts to make it about moral conflict. You can't have actual drama if there's a foregone conclusion that "good always triumphs over evil", which is what this game does.

To be clear, I'm not really advocating for "rawr, murder, death, kill!" personalities for everyone. But for the purpose of the game Warcraft, I would like to see more actual...Warcraft and less moralizing about the atrocities we commit on one another.

[Adamas102]

It's less fun when every single character are the same damn thing. Murder murder murder doesn't make for good story.

Characters have to have different alignments to keep things interesting. Conflict of morals makes good drama. Not "KILL EVERYTHING REEE".

I do agree with you that a nuanced story would be better, but with the way the game handles the factions they really might as well go the Warhammer route. Sure, we seen NPCs being able to exercise free will and operate separately from their factions but for the players there is no way to do this.

As a Tauren druid we had no way to break from the Horde when Sylvanas burned the tree, or as Night Elves being able to break away from the Alliance when our desire for revenge was ignored by the peace seeking Anduin.

If they refuse to make the factions more fluid in game then they might as well just scrap these pointless side stories of politics and dissent. The factions (as far as players are concerned) are monolithic and stuck in a forever war regardless of the story.

- - - Updated - - -

And again, as we saw with the unrelenting arguing for two years straight, that schism was something they accomplished with overwhelming success.

Buuuuuullshit. You can’t possibly say that with a straight face when the only way players were able to “experience” and take part in that schism was through a couple extra lines of dialogue and an extra cutscene at the end.

[ChairmanKaga]

If all those jews were actually killed

How did no replies even remark on this trolling?

[Powerogue]

You can’t possibly say that with a straight face when the only way players were able to “experience” and take part in that schism was through a couple extra lines of dialogue and an extra cutscene at the end.

I get what you're saying that they could've "went all in" and split into 3 factions or something to add permanence to the choice, it's just that I don't see how they could carry the story forward at that point. At that point, the Loyalists would be the evil faction and would have no reason to ever help the other two against world-spanning monsters, while the other two would have every reason to kill the evil faction.

At least the way I, and a lot of other players, see BFA's story is that you're in a faction that now conflicts with your values is part of the drama of the story.




The most iconic moment of the entire expansion for me was the moment that I, having just made a Faction Pride mog for my horde monk, ripped off my Horde tabard in front of Sylvanas after Teldrassil and stormed off to get drunk with everyone else at the Kirin Tor Bar Crawl.

[Adamas102]

I get what you're saying that they could've "went all in" and split into 3 factions or something to add permanence to the choice, it's just that I don't see how they could carry the story forward at that point. At that point, the Loyalists would be the evil faction and would have no reason to ever help the other two against world-spanning monsters, while the other two would have every reason to kill the evil faction.

At least the way I, and a lot of other players, see BFA's story is that you're in a faction that now conflicts with your values is part of the drama of the story.

How is that drama though if you have no real agency to act on it? Yeah you can have your little RP moment but then you go right back to taking orders from Sylvanas and Nathanos, and fighting along side their loyalists.

Also, some people DO want to be part of a fully evil faction.

It would definitely take a lot of work to make factions more fluid, and perhaps WoW is too simple a game to ever go down that route. I was just taking issue with your proclamation that it was a massive success when many many people either didn’t care about it at all or felt like the end result (the Horde split, Sylvanas peacing out, and everyone coming together to fight N’Zoth) undermined the whole “Factions still at war” schtick.

[Darkeon]

The most iconic moment of the entire expansion for me was the moment that I, having just made a Faction Pride mog for my horde monk, ripped off my Horde tabard in front of Sylvanas after Teldrassil and stormed off to get drunk with everyone else at the Kirin Tor Bar Crawl.
[/IMG]

It can't have been that intense if Sylvanas just let you go like that.

[Baconeggcheese]

How in the everloving hell did you come out of this expansion thinking "wow, I don't think they stoked the fires of faction conflict hard enough to impact the playerbase"

Said event in question was immediately wrapped in Saurfang, one of thee horde characters, not being chill with this, this not representing the horde, Saurfang crossing faction lines to work together against the true evil in this situation Sylvanas, and then us coming together to mourn him after he died, all alongside us putting aside our differences to fight the big bads of the raids. And now we're going to chase after Sylvanas into the SL, the big bad perpetrator of this event.

This game is really good at getting us to come together to fight the bigger threat. Its basically https://i.redd.it/fwh15gpqn5p51.jpg this meme every single xpac.

[vilememory]

How this happened and there wasn't an insta-horde rebellion right off the bat blows my mind, but that's just me.

Didn't have much time to think about it, as Sylvanas kept things rolling because she knew they would come for her at Undercity. Hard to fully comprehend and rebel when you are rushing about. Then like an abusive relationship Sylvanas used the destruction of Undercity, which she planned on doing from the start, to distract people from Darnassus. It worked to a point, it is never the abusers fault it is always something that you did. Now, I am going at this from the view of the characters and their limited knowledge of what is happening. Not from a player viewpoint, but as a player that whole thing just left me feeling numb.