Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
The reason I think that we are getting faction neutrality as a big expansion theme is because it’s not in Shadowlands. It absolutely should be, as we are in another world and with new factions, but its held back by story reasons: namely Tyrande vs Sylvanas. People even asked multiple times this expansion and you see the devs being more and more responsive about cross-faction grouping. Lately it’s been almost confirmed by Ion.
So why is it not in this expansion? Because again it’s likely held back by the end of the Tyrande vs Sylvanas storyline, as they are the last “remnants” of the faction war storyline from BFA. Even if Sylvanas isn’t Horde in SL she still represents them against Tyrande: and when Tyrande spares her and exiles her at the literal epilogue of the SL story it will symbolize Nelves quashing their beef with the Horde (though there will be dissent ofc both in game with NPCs and the fans).
So they are building up to a big story moment to tie faction cooperation into the next expansion, and that’s the last big Horde hating NPC from the Alliance chilling out (and even thanking Horde players even if she says she doesn’t trust them).
Why would they wait this long to let faction balance fester through SL instead of just switching on faction coop? Because they have big plans for it beyond it just being a gameplay function, and with new leaders like Calia and Gazlowe (and the inevitable return of Thrall) we’re probably going to see cities open up where both sides are allowed to hang out.
tl;dr They are building up faction coop too much for it to be as simple as a gamemode toggle. It may be an expansion box feature and if there’s a revamp it may play a big part in the story.
If they wanted factions at some kind of war forever we’d have a new Warchief.
Last edited by Wharren; 2022-01-16 at 06:01 PM.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
Sometimes, the light of the moon is a key to other spaces. I've found a place where, for a night or two, the streets curve in unfamiliar ways. If I walk here, I might find insight, or I might be touched by madness.
So, after mulling over this a bit, I think that WoW honestly does not need a new class at this point, or ever really, but could clearly use something that freshens up the current class gameplay. However, I don't think something like an additional specialization for each class is feasible either.
Let's assume that 10.0 is The Dragon Isles, then I think a new drakonid/dragonkin race is definitely in order. Something like Worgen human/drakonid form would definitely be cool.
But in terms of adding in something new for classes, I think they should and actually might just go for a system of shared abilities that you can pull from to customize your current class/spec combo. Less restrictions than Covenant Abilities, probably double the amount actually available, and just encouraging taking bits and pieces of what you like and really selling that class customization fantasy. Covenants gave you a specific ability based on your specialization, but this would be pulling from a grab bag of abilities (kinda like PvP talents) that would be class-agnostic. You take 2-3 and use it to customize your specialization.
Last edited by Edward Wu; 2022-01-16 at 06:37 PM.
If we get cross-faction play I hope it isn't just limited to raids, as they've sort of implied recently.
The story has been leaning toward cross-faction play fairly hard since the end of Battle for Azeroth and Saurfang's speech about breaking the cycle, but the story has been capable of cross-faction since launch. The whole point of Warcraft III was to move the evil of the Orcish Horde into the Burning Legion, leaving the Horde as good guys alongside the Alliance and new Night Elven faction. Also, basically every expansion at some point has culminated in the factions working together, and the most heroic characters have tended to be effectively neutral for their relevant plot or outright neutral all along. It's even been a theme before, like in Mists of Pandaria, which had an epilogue that basically said we have learned our lesson now and shouldn't have any more wars.
PvP is the only place where a complete lack of cross-faction options has made sense (and even then, hard-coded teams is a bad thing for PvP balance which is why Mercenary Mode happened).
The main reason to feel this time is different is the way Ion and co. have been talking about it, but in game the story's been ready for it for a long time.
Edit:
Beat me to it. ;P
Ok so the guy you believe is only making the game for raiders and m+ has been responsible for
Benthic gear being better than mythic
Worst raid balance and scaling
The removal of master loot
The ilvl trade lock
The m+ score upgrade system
Covenants
He’s making it for raiders…and gets corrected about how raiders act in interviews
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I hate that egotistical cunt
Comparing people who say “so the game is being delayed” to his rapist coworkers is a fun hill
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I am ready for the zidormii revamps
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Ya know the best way to bring in cross faction is with a story that points out how dumb the separation is and we have a few characters that agree with it…like wrathion
I don’t think it will be limited to raids if they are waiting for a story beat to do it. It wouldn’t make sense for both sides to (mostly) forgive each other and then have them only cooperate in instances.
Even if it’s not coop in the story, they will probably lower the mandatory language barriers and let everyone group up for anything. Dungeons, quests, raids, RP, whatever.
Otherwise they would’ve done it in SL already, if it was just for raids its just a gameplay mechanic and there’s no reason to wait to turn it on.
I think its something that's only going to be enabled for certain areas. Instances and probably the new zones in the next expansion.
That would be the easiest way to add it without having to worry about retrofitting old content. What will be interesting is to see how they handle guilds which will need a major overhaul regardless of how co-faction grouping pans out.