Is it time to scrap the Alliance and Horde?

[InfiniteCharger]

The only reason after this many years that scrapping the factions keeps coming up is because there is no way for players to actually "win" anything outside of Blizzard deciding the winners and losers. Not to mention the lack of a truly "evil" faction keeps the Horde being put in the position of being antagonists, not because it makes sense, but because Blizzard says so in order to drive the narrative. WPVP itself is never going to be more than open world skirmishes with some additional loot tables and player rankings but other than that has nothing to do with your faction winning or losing anything in the overall story. And there is also the fact that any kind of substantial changes to the world in terms of an actual war between the factions cannot realistically done without controversy from the playerbase.

The fact is that WOW was never designed to enable the scale of combat and warfare seen in the RTS and was never going to be able to satisfactorily push that kind of story as a core part of the game play, because even though it is called world of "warcraft", "war" between factions was never a significant part of the game. And most of the actual narrative was about some or other big bad outside of the factions that they both fought against because dungeons and raids have to be shared between both factions. WOW is nothing more than a game full of questing, raids and dungeons and they never planned to make separate versions of those for each faction. Which means the best decision they made was creating WOW when they did by focusing on the Arthas story line outside the RTS which drove the popularity of WOW in the early years. Otherwise, the faction conflict is mostly for red vs blue flavor vs any actual substance in terms of player agency.

Fact is, I am still amazed how the Legion invasion didn't scorch most of Azeroth and leave it almost destroyed outside that one island they made for narrative convenience. Plus the fact that the sword is still sticking out of the planet and nobody has done anything about it. Those being examples of how you really cannot do any of these story lines any justice in this format vs the RTS, including faction conflicts on any level.

[Syegfryed]

Wrong analogy. Faction conflict never “worked” in WoW. Every time Blizz focus on it they fuck up.

False, it worked just fine from warcraft one to mop, only in bfa they fucked up, don't put the blame on the factions but the devs

[VladlTutushkin]

False, it worked just fine from warcraft one to mop, only in bfa they fucked up, don't put the blame on the factions but the devs

MoP was no shining gem either, neither was Cata. Notice how Legion is second most popular expansion after WotLK and it has only a little of faction conflict including Genn and Sylvanas grudge, while all other story is basically detached from factions entirely.

And MoP was basically a "faction war bad" expansion with whole Garrosh going mad plot.

Only good part was Landfall actually, and i liked it but thats not enough.

[Syegfryed]

MoP was no shining gem either, neither was Cata. Notice how Legion is second most popular expansion after WotLK and it has only a little of faction conflict including Genn and Sylvanas grudge, while all other story is basically detached from factions entirely.

And MoP was basically a "faction war bad" expansion with whole Garrosh going mad plot.

Only good part was Landfall actually, and i liked it but thats not enough.

Legion most popular expansion, with what metrics? i know it was popular because the artifacts, but it was garbage all together

Cata was the high point of the factions, Mop was good until they decided to make Garry Villain and Varian the hero.

Like i said, tis not a matter of "factions are a problem" dvs being incompetent is a problem, everything after SoO has being an absolutely crap related to the factios, races and leaders, but its a problem easy fixed by people who know how to write then

[HansOlo]

With the end of BFA, came the end of all out war between the factions.
Thorough Shadowlands we cast out faction affiliation away for covenants, all the races fought a common yet terribly implemented foe.
In Dragonflight we will set out as explorers and support the flights. The conflict has passed and data mined npc's show that the divide between factions is healing slowly.

While many want to see the Alliance positioned as the bad guy of an expansion for once. It would just be a rehash of the Horde civil war during Garrosh's era.
In the end the faction divide seems only to serve PvP.

I admit that having an Orc or Forsaken walk through Stormwind safely would be unlikely, as would a Human or Night elf walking through the Undercity.
However the factions let Death Knights, Warlocks and all other kind of shady individuals wander around the capitals as long as they are considered "Heroes" (Our player characters).
We even have situations like the Dwarfs. Ironforge has the Dark Iron walking thought the city once more.

My solution - Allow player characters to join any faction. As champions (or whatever) the prestige should overrule old grievances.
To make PvP situations work in the story line. Borrow from the idea of FFXIV Free Company's. Merc forces that fight over points of interest works better than trying to explain why the Horde and Alliance still fight in many of the battlegrounds.

Preferably Dragonflight will continue to mend the divide between factions and allow for a new era.
Another Faction conflict would just be more of the same.

You know how it feels and sounds like?

"Should we put some pineapple in your coffee"?

Why and how did you come up with this? That's wrong with the current setting and why do you compare this game to FF?

[VladlTutushkin]

Legion most popular expansion, with what metrics? i know it was popular because the artifacts, but it was garbage all together

Cata was the high point of the factions, Mop was good until they decided to make Garry Villain and Varian the hero.

Like i said, tis not a matter of "factions are a problem" dvs being incompetent is a problem, everything after SoO has being an absolutely crap related to the factios, races and leaders, but its a problem easy fixed by people who know how to write then

And so far, in all expansions we hardly ever had a single writer who could write a half decent, not even "great" faction war story.

By its fucken nature faction wars suck in games like this.

Even SWTOR mostly works because we know how it ended in canon, aka Sith Empire eventually collapsed on itself but Jedi became so cucked they kinda went into political cuck corner for the rest of the story and self-removed from anything more serious then minor disputes.

[Syegfryed]

And so far, in all expansions we hardly ever had a single writer who could write a half decent, not even "great" faction war story.

By its fucken nature faction wars suck in games like this.

Even SWTOR mostly works because we know how it ended in canon, aka Sith Empire eventually collapsed on itself but Jedi became so cucked they kinda went into political cuck corner for the rest of the story and self-removed from anything more serious then minor disputes.

Like i said, it was fine from war1 till mop, when they decided that "war is bad", after that it was a clusterfuck

wow lore was never a masterpiece, so wanting the faction was to be is just a dream.

Also, faction war is good when its in the background, as sidequests, when they tried to put the spotlight it became garbage

[angrywithmygod]

Blizzards current writing staff are basically Hippies who believe all conflict is bad and we should all hold hands and sing Cumbya. War and conflict is baked into the DNA of the game hence the name "warcraft", the current writers attempts to remove the faction conflict and painting all conflict as bad is what is killing the game not the actual factions.

Cross faction still works when there is conflict as we are all essentially adventures in the game we don't owe it to either faction to kill each other if we have bigger fish to fry. We make the decision to work together not the factions and even with cross faction being a thing doesn't mean that all guilds are going to use it.

[VladlTutushkin]

Blizzards current writing staff are basically Hippies who believe all conflict is bad and we should all hold hands and sing Cumbya. War and conflict is baked into the DNA of the game hence the name "warcraft", the current writers attempts to remove the faction conflict and painting all conflict as bad is what is killing the game not the actual factions.

Cross faction still works when there is conflict as we are all essentially adventures in the game we don't owe it to either faction to kill each other if we have bigger fish to fry. We make the decision to work together not the factions and even with cross faction being a thing doesn't mean that all guilds are going to use it.

They are far from “hippies”, they just afraid to go all out. First they burn Teldrassil and then cuck Alliance out of meaningful revenge because it would mean doing damage to the Horde actually.

[Nymrohd]

Cata was the high point of the factions, Mop was good until they decided to make Garry Villain and Varian the hero.

Didn't we know Garrosh would be the villain of MoP back when the expac was announced???

[Aresk]

Why don't just scrap the game itself? lol guys

its like saying "is i time to scrap the force from the jedi?"

This is a false equivalence. Warcraft is a franchise. The Jedi are a fictional organization in the Star Wars franchise. Additionally, the force is a core staple of the very nature of the universe in Star Wars. The Horde and Alliance are political/military organizations that have existed for ~30 years in a history that spans over 10,000 years on Azeroth (longer if you extend to the Titans/Eternal Ones/Eredar stories). The Alliance didn't even exist until the second game; it would be more akin to ditching Cloud City than the Force. There's definitely many well-formulated arguments for keeping the faction divide, but as cross-faction grouping has shown, there's a lot of success in removing the player base barriers as well. The series is just as much (arguably more) about Azeroth natives fighting off society- to world-ending threats as it is about Horde fighting Alliance; just in the RTS, you got to play the threats in addition to the people of Azeroth.

- - - Updated - - -

Didn't we know Garrosh would be the villain of MoP back when the expac was announced???

The announcement at Blizzcon had Metzen stating that "war itself" was the villain of MoP. There were also lines about the Horde fighting to defend what made it great, but I dont' recall if that was during that Blizzcon or a later Blizzcon. Regardless, I don't recall knowing that Garrosh would be a raid boss until SoO was announced, though I also unsubbed prior to the Darkspear revolt event, so that may have made things more obvious.

[Caiphon]

They are far from “hippies”, they just afraid to go all out. First they burn Teldrassil and then cuck Alliance out of meaningful revenge because it would mean doing damage to the Horde actually.

Alliance literally waltzed into Zuldazar and killed the king (who, up until that point, had done practically nothing to harm them), all while making the Horde PLAYER look like an absolute idiot. Didn't even lose anyone in the process as Jaina's got plot armour thicker than the walls of a nuclear reactor and even the damn gnome was eventually revived from stasis. Say what you will about Alliance quests, I have yet to see one that actively portrays the player to be dumber than a gronn.

[Varodoc]

(who, up until that point, had done practically nothing to harm them)

He didn't keep Zul on a leash and, as a result, Zul waged war on the Alliance for years and his Zandalari agents even threatened to destroy Ironforge. Whether Rastakhan truly supported Zul or not (we know from testimony that he found his ideas of troll conquest appealing at the very least), the Alliance wouldn't know what was going on behind the scenes, so what are they to do when Zandalari troops are literally waging war against them in Cataclysm and MoP? Wars have been started irl for far less and with much less ambiguity.

Rastakhan was an idiot king, I genuinely don't understand how anyone can mourn him. The story very clearly depicts him as a puppet on copium life support, who is genuinely blind to all the threats encroaching on Zandalar and still believes that Zandalar is the greatest empire in the world, when it's literally a ruined wasteland barely hanging on to its last city.

He ignores the Blood troll threat as they are literally breaching his gates and Talanji has to lead an expedition by herself to Nazmir. He ignores the Sethrak threat in Vol'dun as they are invading a village on the borders of Zuldazar. He doesn't realize that half of his council is comprised of traitors who are actively conspiring to remove him from power and are in league with an artificial Old God, including his chief advisor and leader of said council, Prophet Zul. Zul himself probably wouldn't resent him so much if at least he listened to his warnings of the Cataclysm; Rastakhan not doing anything resulted in the capital taking considerable damage during the Cataclysm and only barely having rebuilt by the time of BfA. He has the sheer gall to antagonize the Horde emissary when the Horde is literally the only hope for Zandalar and the only ally he'll ever hope to find.

He was a literal garbage king, the Alliance frankly did Zandalar a favour by getting rid of him. And, for the record, it is stated that the Alliance could have attacked and ended the Zandalari after Rastakhan's death, they didn't do it only because Jaina didn't want to stoop to the Horde's level and attack them while they are mourning at a funeral.

For how long did he rule? 200 years? Elven leaders including Azshara and Anasterian ruled for millennia and accomplished far more than him during their reign.

Horde PLAYER look like an absolute idiot.

The Horde PC certainly doesn't need the Alliance for that.

Serving two genocidal tyrants in the span of a few years, taking part in genocide, how would you call it?

[Soikona]

The Horde PC certainly doesn't need the Alliance for that.

Serving two genocidal tyrants in the span of a few years, taking part in genocide, how would you call it?

Just following orders. Or “war is good cause I is ugly beast man”. Those are the only two answers you get from horde fans.

[VladlTutushkin]

Alliance literally waltzed into Zuldazar and killed the king (who, up until that point, had done practically nothing to harm them), all while making the Horde PLAYER look like an absolute idiot. Didn't even lose anyone in the process as Jaina's got plot armour thicker than the walls of a nuclear reactor and even the damn gnome was eventually revived from stasis. Say what you will about Alliance quests, I have yet to see one that actively portrays the player to be dumber than a gronn.

Majority of Alliance quests portray Alliance as either dumb, inefficient to all hell and/or weak. And then we also forced to make peace with the Horde over and over again, no matter how enormous are the grievances.

Also Rasta chronologically sent his army to Kul'Tiras first, in Jaina Admiral quest.

[Loreth88]

Alliance literally waltzed into Zuldazar and killed the king (who, up until that point, had done practically nothing to harm them), all while making the Horde PLAYER look like an absolute idiot. Didn't even lose anyone in the process as Jaina's got plot armour thicker than the walls of a nuclear reactor and even the damn gnome was eventually revived from stasis. Say what you will about Alliance quests, I have yet to see one that actively portrays the player to be dumber than a gronn.

Does the Horde player look like an idiot? When the Horde enters night elf territories undetected and kills everyone on the road and in towns/villages. An area that is foreign to them and navigation/movement is more difficult (especially with catapults, etc.) than the race that has lived there for 10,000 years. And the neighboring allied nation forgets that it lives a stone's throw from a supersonic spaceship in its garage.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, one of the leaders of the elves almost lost his life in the battle with Sylavanas, because a noble orc attacked him in the back. Then, of course, at the end of the war, the supreme leader of the Alliance carries the corpse of the noble orc on his shoulders.
Oh yeah a racial leader died, but we know from the beginning he have to go somehow, because his girl need to rule. From the beginning, the girl's story was that she knew everything better than her father.

[Varodoc]

The idea that the Alliance was never made to look foolish is, frankly, hilarious.

Both faction war expansions are kickstarted by the Alliance literally being tricked and made to look like fools.

Garrosh tricked the Alliance into sending their best generals and bulk of their forces at Theramore, deceiving them into thinking he was preparing for a frontal assault, when in reality he gathered all of them there to nuke them.

Sylvanas tricked the Alliance by making the SI:7 agents in Orgrimmar think that her plan was to conquer Silithus, thus tricking the Kaldorei into sending their military to Silithus, at which point it was much easier to wage war on the defenceless Night elf lands.

Later on, the Alliance are tricked into sending their forces after the few remaining Horde ships left at sea, upon which they take massive losses when they fall into the trap at Nazjatar, having completely taken the bait.

Even in Legion the Alliance is made to look foolish, as the SI:7 once again messes up; they get infiltrated by the Nathrezim, they receive false intel, and they mistakenly lead everyone into the ambush at the Broken Shore, where the combined Alliance-Horde army is wiped out.

The Alliance is made to look idiotic several times lol.

[Darth-Piekus]

The idea that the Alliance was never made to look foolish is, frankly, hilarious.
<<snip>>
The Alliance is made to look idiotic several times lol.

Generally I would say that by enforcing War in Warcraft in that way really pissed both playerbases. The Horde important political factors were made to look like amateur idiots falling to the lies of both Garrosh and Sylvannas and serving world ending threats intentionally or unintentionally. The Alliance playerbase however are right to be more pissed because they are made to look also like idiots falling to the most pathetic threats in Warcraft which is Garrosh and Sylvannas and then denied actual consequences to the faction that supported them and to make matters worse they have to sacrifice resources and manpower to clean up the mess that is created.

So I would like to pose an interesting question. Why shouldn't the Horde be erased as a faction only instead of the Alliance. After all the Alliance exists because of the Horde and it will stop existing once the Horde doesn't exist anymore. Was the Horde ever trully needed? If you think of it most factions are Alliance based and the Horde weren't even able to participate effectively without them. In Legion they were unable to go to Argus without the Draenei and they needed Dalaran as a base of operations. Then there is the part where two Warchiefs have done more damage to Azeroth than all of the villains combined, tried to bring back or freed Old Gods and caused the Legion to invade faster than normal first and then cooperated with the Jailer to unmake all reality. If it wasn't for the Alliance and it's numerous population and resources to provide and clean up their mess I don't know what would have happened.

[Varodoc]

Generally I would say that by enforcing War in Warcraft in that way really pissed both playerbases. The Horde important political factors were made to look like amateur idiots falling to the lies of both Garrosh and Sylvannas and serving world ending threats intentionally or unintentionally. The Alliance playerbase however are right to be more pissed because they are made to look also like idiots falling to the most pathetic threats in Warcraft which is Garrosh and Sylvannas and then denied actual consequences to the faction that supported them and to make matters worse they have to sacrifice resources and manpower to clean up the mess that is created.

Indeed, very true. Garrosh and Sylvanas are idiots, that is beyond doubt.

But then what does that make the Alliance, who fell for their tricks many times?

So I would like to pose an interesting question. Why shouldn't the Horde be erased as a faction only instead of the Alliance. After all the Alliance exists because of the Horde and it will stop existing once the Horde doesn't exist anymore. Was the Horde ever trully needed? If you think of it most factions are Alliance based and the Horde weren't even able to participate effectively without them. In Legion they were unable to go to Argus without the Draenei and they needed Dalaran as a base of operations. Then there is the part where two Warchiefs have done more damage to Azeroth than all of the villains combined, tried to bring back or freed Old Gods and caused the Legion to invade faster than normal first and then cooperated with the Jailer to unmake all reality. If it wasn't for the Alliance and it's numerous population and resources to provide and clean up their mess I don't know what would have happened.

I mean, Yeah, as I said earlier, only the Horde should disband. It actually makes sense for the Alliance to remain, since it's a military alliance like NATO. Why would NATO ever disband? But the Horde is not a military alliance, it's almost like a country, and it's a very unstable one at that, who recently went over a complete reshape of their government after 2 brutal civil wars and lot of political instability. The Horde is kept together only by plot armour of WoW being a dual faction MMO.

The point you bring up reminds me of a stupid, nonsensical thing Lor'themar Theron once said. He once said something along the lines of "When will they [the Alliance] see that the Horde exists only because of them?!??!", which is just hilarious, given how the Alliance was literally formed because the Horde invaded their world, while the Horde was formed because the orcs wanted to conquer stuff, and it's even said that if the Horde never invaded, there would be no Alliance and the human kingdoms would actually start fighting amongst each other.

But even if/when the Horde disbands, there will still be threats to the Alliance, and so it makes for these individual states to remain united in a formal pact of mutual military cooperation.

[Caiphon]

He didn't keep Zul on a leash and, as a result, Zul waged war on the Alliance for years and his Zandalari agents even threatened to destroy Ironforge. Whether Rastakhan truly supported Zul or not (we know from testimony that he found his ideas of troll conquest appealing at the very least), the Alliance wouldn't know what was going on behind the scenes, so what are they to do when Zandalari troops are literally waging war against them in Cataclysm and MoP? Wars have been started irl for far less and with much less ambiguity.

Rastakhan was an idiot king, I genuinely don't understand how anyone can mourn him. The story very clearly depicts him as a puppet on copium life support, who is genuinely blind to all the threats encroaching on Zandalar and still believes that Zandalar is the greatest empire in the world, when it's literally a ruined wasteland barely hanging on to its last city.

He ignores the Blood troll threat as they are literally breaching his gates and Talanji has to lead an expedition by herself to Nazmir. He ignores the Sethrak threat in Vol'dun as they are invading a village on the borders of Zuldazar. He doesn't realize that half of his council is comprised of traitors who are actively conspiring to remove him from power and are in league with an artificial Old God, including his chief advisor and leader of said council, Prophet Zul. Zul himself probably wouldn't resent him so much if at least he listened to his warnings of the Cataclysm; Rastakhan not doing anything resulted in the capital taking considerable damage during the Cataclysm and only barely having rebuilt by the time of BfA. He has the sheer gall to antagonize the Horde emissary when the Horde is literally the only hope for Zandalar and the only ally he'll ever hope to find.

He was a literal garbage king, the Alliance frankly did Zandalar a favour by getting rid of him. And, for the record, it is stated that the Alliance could have attacked and ended the Zandalari after Rastakhan's death, they didn't do it only because Jaina didn't want to stoop to the Horde's level and attack them while they are mourning at a funeral.

For how long did he rule? 200 years? Elven leaders including Azshara and Anasterian ruled for millennia and accomplished far more than him during their reign.



The Horde PC certainly doesn't need the Alliance for that.

Serving two genocidal tyrants in the span of a few years, taking part in genocide, how would you call it?

Blaming Rastakhan for what Zul did during Cata/MoP is like blaming Terenas II for the Scourge. Rastakhan sent Zul off with a fleet because he was just about done with Zul's prophecies of Zandalar sinking under the sea. Also worth noting that the Alliance and Horde fought off the Zandalar together in both expansions. You can't call yourself peaceful and just when fucking Sylvanas takes a more diplomatic approach than you do. Though I do agree that Rastakhan is a dumbass. He's a fairly good-willed dumbass though, selling his soul off to the Loa of Death to save his people from the blood trolls when he FINALLY realised they were about to run his kingdom over.

The Horde quests involving Garrosh and Sylvanas are actually not as bad as you'd think. The PCs consult with sane leaders and individuals of the faction, observe just how far the warchief is willing to go, and take part in an uprising to be rid of him/her when it becomes certain they can't be redeemed. Not the best story ever written and it certainly wasn't worth repeating, but it's a true demonstration of intellect compared to 'look Nazmir's a bit misty, let's throw the entirety of our armed forces at it and leave our home base completely unprotected!'.

Majority of Alliance quests portray Alliance as either dumb, inefficient to all hell and/or weak. And then we also forced to make peace with the Horde over and over again, no matter how enormous are the grievances.

Also Rasta chronologically sent his army to Kul'Tiras first, in Jaina Admiral quest.

The Alliance has spies setting up bombs in Zandalar before Jaina is freed from Gorak Tul, pretty sure this is before Rastakhan's army sets foot in Kul Tiras. The Alliance has indeed also made a fool of itself now and again but afaik the Alliance player was not responsible for such events.

Does the Horde player look like an idiot? When the Horde enters night elf territories undetected and kills everyone on the road and in towns/villages. An area that is foreign to them and navigation/movement is more difficult (especially with catapults, etc.) than the race that has lived there for 10,000 years. And the neighboring allied nation forgets that it lives a stone's throw from a supersonic spaceship in its garage.
Oh yes, I almost forgot, one of the leaders of the elves almost lost his life in the battle with Sylavanas, because a noble orc attacked him in the back. Then, of course, at the end of the war, the supreme leader of the Alliance carries the corpse of the noble orc on his shoulders.
Oh yeah a racial leader died, but we know from the beginning he have to go somehow, because his girl need to rule. From the beginning, the girl's story was that she knew everything better than her father.

Again, there is a difference between Alliance NPCs looking like idiots and Alliance players looking like idiots. Sure the Alliance leadership hasn't been the brightest (though I'd argue Horde leadership has generally been even worse since Cata) but the players themselves seldom act like morons - at least not in the expasion we're talking about. Horde players are literally one of the two responsible (the other being Talanji) for being played like a fiddle by Telaamon and leading the 'entire' Zandalari army into Nazmir resulting in the events of the Dazar'alor raid. It's a whole different experience when the game makes YOU the fool rather than having you clean up after fools. Last time I saw this kinda shit happen was with Jin'do back in vanilla, but he a) screwed over both factions and b) was actually crafty enough to make HIM look badass rather than making the player look like an imbecile.