Do you feel blizzard has turned H/A into mirrors of each other?

[Mace]

Has the individuality and unique flavour of the races and factions been watered down heavily in the name of expedience? or do you think enough flavour comes though?

Tbh, for quite a while there was feeling that wow had 2 races instead of 20 odd, despite all the unique lore , architecture, set up they do for the start, once that is over, they seem to be reduced to either horde race or alliance race and no more.

Also it's getting hard to distinguish between some races, not enough unique flavour - biggest culprits are Nightborne and Blood elves.. which is odd because you have enough flavour difference between same race allied races, like night elf/nightborne, Zandalari/Darkspear, even human/Kul'tiran feel significantly different.

But then, you don't see enough flavour coming through when the race isn't involved - this is largely because we're now in one big adventure when we're an individual mixing with other individuals, rather than racial politics and dynamics.


It seems a shame, with such a detailed and diverse background, we still have far too little interactive flavour through content - unless a new race is introduced... this feels bland - it's like we're all one happy family ...

I will say that they do have some flavour still coming through, it just doesn't feel enough... do you agree?

Now we have seen the Shadowlands factions and the dragonflight covenants and dragon isle groups - i wonder if we'd ever get something similar for races that makes the content feel far more personalised, dynamic and involved in a realistic way. I mean games like ES and WH tend to do this quite well, wow has seem to nearly altogether ignore their player groups outside faction areas unless the expansion main storyline crosses them, and it hasn't for a long time.

[Dancaris]

I think that major factions thing is quite old concept to this 20years old game. I prefer not 2 superfactions but 6-10 minor ones. And then add more.
Its quite odd that most races could care shit about another faction and even problems in faction inself. Like Vulpera and Lightforged dont know about some Theramore, Taurajo (heh, I know that this will start endless crying) or about Purging, or Brenadam, or Path of Glory etc. Same most of the races.
I think that could be done better by not making some cold war parallels, but make some lesser conflict.
Make taurens at war with dwarves, but with dwarves alone. No Night Elves I think interested about some Titan ruins and tauren camps.
Make Night Elves at war with Orcs, but Taurens not involved in that.
Forsaken-Gilnean in Gilneas
Goblins-Night Elves in Azshara
Orcs vs Humans
Gnomes vs Goblins
Forsaken vs Night Elves (make its local conflict without burning)
Humans vs Trolls
Zandalari vs Kul-Tirans
And with that - we can have Allied races atop of that conflicts. Lightforged joins humans with war against Orcs, but Mag`har joins Orcs in war agains the Lightforged.
Zandalari helps trolls in war agains humans, that sparks kul-tirans to help humans.

But in war Night Elves vs Forsaken - taurens help Night Elves (druid that heal, non combat help).
Goblins and Orcs vs Night Elves in Azshara, but no Blood Elves helps them
Draenei and Blood Elves clean Sunwell.
Kul-Tirans helps Gilneas vs Forsaken, Blood elves helps undead, but in Northrend Blood Elves and Kul-Tirans are battling agains Scourge together.

[Al Gorefiend]

I think too many of the races get put in the background so Blizz can tell the human and elf stories. We get nonstop humans and elves, even during BfA on Zandalar the Horde story wraps up anything troll by the end of the campaign and it's back to Sylvanas, Lorthemar, Thalyssra and Jaina. Baine does one thing and we see characters like Rokhan and Rexxar as background soldiers.

Less humans and elves in the story, they get too much of it. More time for Tauren, troll, dwarves, gnomes, goblins. Why do we care about lorthemar getting married when we still have leaderless races and forsaken have been forgotten since BfA

[Kralljin]

Has the individuality and unique flavour of the races and factions been watered down heavily in the name of expedience?

Sort of.

I think the big issue is that, looking back, is that the Horde was run by someone who very staunchly towards a peaceful solution (Thrall) and the Alliance is your traditional "morally good" factions that never commits anything remotely morally grey.

Vanilla to some extent broke that at least on the Alliance's part and gave the Dwarves a bit of an edge by portraying themselves as very imperialistic and were willing to dig through foreign lands for the sake of knowledge, even if it upsets the local populace (Orcs, Tauren).
Which then lend itself to some natural conflict, Horde's land get invaded, they defend themselves and the Alliance helps their dwarven allies.

The next thing is that any character who is more pro war had its motivations barely shown ingame.
Garrosh hated the Alliance because..."he's Hellscreams son, okay?".
Varian was willing to start a war over personal vendetta, which is relatable but also extremely reckless.
Sylvanas just wants to get rid off the Alliance because..., well she doesn't want to die, so let's start a war over it.

It's just very difficult to portray war between two "not evil factions" in a reasonable fashion when you basically fight over virtually nothing (other than the utter destruction of the opponent) and the peaceful solution just requires everyone to walk away and stop the fighting, without cutting any losses.

Then there's the factor that basically any character who disagrees with the "peace advocates" is wrong, it's pretty much a rule of thumb at this point, if you disagree with the likes of Anduin, Thrall etc., you'll be proven wrong sooner or later (only exception is when they assume that a certain character is not THAT evil).
It's no surprise that sooner or later everyone adopts the same moral mindset and without that, identity is obviously lost.

[Gurahk]

I'm not really digging the "Horde council" as it is right now, I'd prefer an actual warchief with a council beneath him. Perhaps the council could vote out the Warchief to prevent a Garrosh/Sylvanas situation?

[mysticx]

Alliance and Horde have been mirrors of each other since BC, when pallies/shaman were given to the other faction.

In a way they just swapped styles, the Horde now has a council, and the Alliance (Somebody standing in for) the "High king", and it doesn't matter right now anyway, because as adventurers, we get our marching orders from neutral characters, anyway.

[Varodoc]

No.

The Horde remains the faction with the evil-coded, primitive-coded races; the Alliance remains the faction with the good-coded, advanced-coded races. The Alliance remains a beacon of nobility, justice, and order; the Horde remains a beacon of... doing whatever the fuck they want with no concern whatsoever for the consequences.

[Reinhart11]

A proper diplomacy system would be great for the story. And for gameplay.

On the other hand it would be quite a bit of work. Especially for the writers. They'd have to really think more about what basic needs and wants and the geo political agenda of each race would look like. And also sub groups.

Tauren for example consist of many tribes. Not every tauren should act like Baine. They have different goals and agenda. Or should have if it is supposed to be interesting.

As always though you need competent writers who are capable and willing to portray the different races in unique ways and not just differently coloured humans.

[Shadowferal]

A proper diplomacy system would be great for the story. And for gameplay.

My rewrite restructures the certain classes that bridge the old horde/alliance dynamic. The druid class would be forefront...but I added in the paladin class "Knights of the Silver Hand" bridges with "Sunwalkers" and "Scarlet Crusaders." (My rewrite sees Tauren as the race most likely to be "independent" from the horde faction)
Just an example...

Tauren for example consist of many tribes. Not every tauren should act like Baine. They have different goals and agenda. Or should have if it is supposed to be interesting.

Tauren need a story that posits Baine (or other) as a diplomat, gaining alliances with the Yaungol, Taunka, and High Mountain Tauren, (Just to name a few. An idea I'm still working on), forging their own independent faction.

[Garymorilix]

A proper diplomacy system would be great for the story. And for gameplay.

On the other hand it would be quite a bit of work. Especially for the writers. They'd have to really think more about what basic needs and wants and the geo political agenda of each race would look like. And also sub groups.

Tauren for example consist of many tribes. Not every tauren should act like Baine. They have different goals and agenda. Or should have if it is supposed to be interesting.

As always though you need competent writers who are capable and willing to portray the different races in unique ways and not just differently coloured humans.

This is generally the issue with the more modern interpretation of races.

Racial leaders were always used to represent the races during scenes where we need a perspective of any specific race.
This worked because racial leaders were like the generic stereotype of their races morals/ thinking/ whatever.

Then Blizz started to use racial leaders as actual individual characters.
Now we lost the "generic" representation of each race in favor of actual characters.
Not only that but the racial identity of some races started to mimic the leader's character rather than how it was before.

They need to be willing to write races as they are supposed to be rather than "human moral values but a troll".

[dragi]

They can't write good stories anymore because of political correctness. All good stories hurt someone's feelings, but they afraid too much.
2nd reason is they trying explain somehow faction merging and they slowly fading borders. Instead split story and players base, i mean let players play together even if is war in story.

[Biomega]

They need to be willing to write races as they are supposed to be rather than "human moral values but a troll".

This is a general problem in fiction, where writing very often tends to gravitate towards "pretty much just human, but <insert one shtick>". The primary reason for this is that's it's significantly more difficult to write truly non-human races in a way that doesn't just lose the audience because they can't find a way to relate. Much easier to just make them all stand-in humans with one or a few divergent characteristics.

This becomes amplified in commercialized writing, such as WoW's - they want people to be able to engage immediately, without requiring them to think a lot, have background knowledge, or have a particular kind of engagement or investment; because that's much easier to sell. If your lore feels like you can't properly understand things unless you've played for 10 years and read fifty books, that's not good for sales. So everything is dumbed down, simplified for immediate and context-free digestibility, and effectively anthropomorphized at every level.

But even in more sophisticated fiction, it's far rarer than you'd think to find truly well-done inhuman writing. Even, say, the spider aliens in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which are described in meticulous detail and given a lot of historical and sociocultural context over hundreds of pages, are at the end of the day "pretty much just humans, but they hibernate every few years and have particular thoughts about when to have children".

Added to this is WoW's inherent "faction problem", where their idea of a Orcs vs. Humans legacy translated into a Horde vs. Alliance mechanic has been systematically falling apart over the last decade or so, because it doesn't lend itself to the kind of complexity a living, growing world of multiple shifting narratives demands. They keep on pushing that idea for historic reasons, but at the same time try to have faceted faction identities - which obviously doesn't work, and only leads them to make laughable attempts at giving everyone a chance to do something, yet also wanting the recognition factor of constantly recurring characters and viewpoints.

[Itisamuh]

I have felt this way ever since Wrath at the latest. The moment the Alliance accepted Death Knights into their ranks, the dividing point no longer made sense, and it has only gotten worse since then. Why accept Death Knights but not the Forsaken? Why accept Worgen, Dark Iron, Void Elves and Demon Hunters, but not Tauren, Goblins or Vulpera? Why continue a pointless faction conflict when they both have the exact same ideals and goals, and constantly work together against other enemies? At this point Blizzard is just being stubborn keeping them around.

[Garymorilix]

This is a general problem in fiction, where writing very often tends to gravitate towards "pretty much just human, but <insert one shtick>". The primary reason for this is that's it's significantly more difficult to write truly non-human races in a way that doesn't just lose the audience because they can't find a way to relate. Much easier to just make them all stand-in humans with one or a few divergent characteristics.

This becomes amplified in commercialized writing, such as WoW's - they want people to be able to engage immediately, without requiring them to think a lot, have background knowledge, or have a particular kind of engagement or investment; because that's much easier to sell. If your lore feels like you can't properly understand things unless you've played for 10 years and read fifty books, that's not good for sales. So everything is dumbed down, simplified for immediate and context-free digestibility, and effectively anthropomorphized at every level.

But even in more sophisticated fiction, it's far rarer than you'd think to find truly well-done inhuman writing. Even, say, the spider aliens in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which are described in meticulous detail and given a lot of historical and sociocultural context over hundreds of pages, are at the end of the day "pretty much just humans, but they hibernate every few years and have particular thoughts about when to have children".

Added to this is WoW's inherent "faction problem", where their idea of a Orcs vs. Humans legacy translated into a Horde vs. Alliance mechanic has been systematically falling apart over the last decade or so, because it doesn't lend itself to the kind of complexity a living, growing world of multiple shifting narratives demands. They keep on pushing that idea for historic reasons, but at the same time try to have faceted faction identities - which obviously doesn't work, and only leads them to make laughable attempts at giving everyone a chance to do something, yet also wanting the recognition factor of constantly recurring characters and viewpoints.

This is only partially true.

In the past we had actually pretty noticable differences while we interacted with the world.
I think the Forsaken and the Goblins were expecially well written, now they are both heavily toned down even tho they don't need to be. Like for real, have you seen a Goblin recklessly blowing up shit for money on the Dragon Isles? That's their thing. And all the goblins we meet are just "funny but clumsy" quest givers.

They had clear directions for each race but then somehow gave up on them recently.

I personally think they want a clear line of morality for the playable races which just makes more outstanding races feel bland af.
Look how bland the Dracthyr are. They are literally humans but dragonish. Like if you listen to their voice lines there is no unique touch to them at all.
The actual Drakonid guards we meet on the isles have way more personality in them. Why couldn't they just make the Dracthyr like that? Because they are playable.

[Biomega]

They had clear directions for each race but then somehow gave up on them recently.

That's not an unreasonable objection, and I do agree - homogenization HAS gotten worse, to where a lot of characters don't even have their shtick anymore but might as well be actual humans.

It's connected to the main problem, though, because the one-shtick approach tires people out quickly. Sure goblins are "humans but greedy with explosions" but if EVERY goblin you meet blows shit up for profit, that's also a problem. Ideally you'd add nuance by distinguishing them in other ways, but as you point out, often their solution does seem to be to just cut back and make them generic "people", i.e. just humans in fact if not name.

I personally think they want a clear line of morality for the playable races which just makes more outstanding races feel bland af.

Tying morality to race is problematic, because it leads to other simplifications along the lines of "all X are evil" or "all X are neutral" or whatever, which is not only unrealistic but also boring. That being said, WoW in general has SUCKED at portraying moral nuance. There's a few good moments here and there, but by and large it's been pretty shit, riding out some marquee concepts like "orcs value honor" or whatever where appropriate, but generally avoiding anything that isn't directly tied into narrative front lines - i.e. if they want a bad guy they're COMICALLY bad, "all you built shall fall"-style speeches and all. Even attempts like with e.g. Garrosh which would have given them a chance to explore ambitious, uncompromising leadership just ended in him turning into an insane dictator literally mutating into a monster at the end. Or Sylvanas - instead of showing someone who can make hard choices and navigate between efficient goal-seeking and diplomatic pitfalls, they just turned her into a nihilistic moron who is flabbergasted when someone literally called THE JAILER living in the SANCTUM OF DOMINATION turns out not to be all that big on freedom.

My suspicion is they don't WANT to explore morality. They want everything to end up in clearly set, clear-cut lines, easily boxed and easily digested. Good or bad guys need to look, sound, and feel like good or bad guys. All nuance is purely pretense, and narrative contrivance employed or discarded as needed. Oh Alexstrasza, why didn't you just kill Raszageth? "Nooo she was my sister, I could never!" Okay WE killed her. "You did? Whew, good to hear, thanks a bunch!" Pure vomit.

[VinceVega]

Nah not really.
Horde just develops into a less... warmongering faction by giving the orc less and less power. Thank god. No country in exitstance can live in a state of constant war. It is not sustainable.

I think horde still has their individuality and i actually think the horde has developed the different race more and more instead of just saying horde = orcs.

Alliance on the other hand are still rather... samey. Even Nightelves got a their own story in recent years but they still feel like they are only their leaders and nothing else exists sadly.

Horde actually feels more like different people and that there are actually people behidn the leaders instead of just a hivemind.

[Myradin]

I'm not really digging the "Horde council" as it is right now, I'd prefer an actual warchief with a council beneath him. Perhaps the council could vote out the Warchief to prevent a Garrosh/Sylvanas situation?

While I agree. I think this would actually to the 2 sides being even more similar, as thats effectively how the alliance high king works.

Then again, the alliance should just be the alliance.

[Shadowferal]

My rewrite of the lore see a "War-chief" and a "Peace-chief." With Garrosh still alive and kicking. A bit resentful towards Thrall, but respectful towards the spiritual center he represents.

[Mace]

I think that major factions thing is quite old concept to this 20years old game. I prefer not 2 superfactions but 6-10 minor ones. And then add more.
Its quite odd that most races could care shit about another faction and even problems in faction inself. Like Vulpera and Lightforged dont know about some Theramore, Taurajo (heh, I know that this will start endless crying) or about Purging, or Brenadam, or Path of Glory etc. Same most of the races.
I think that could be done better by not making some cold war parallels, but make some lesser conflict.
Make taurens at war with dwarves, but with dwarves alone. No Night Elves I think interested about some Titan ruins and tauren camps.
Make Night Elves at war with Orcs, but Taurens not involved in that.
Forsaken-Gilnean in Gilneas
Goblins-Night Elves in Azshara
Orcs vs Humans
Gnomes vs Goblins
Forsaken vs Night Elves (make its local conflict without burning)
Humans vs Trolls
Zandalari vs Kul-Tirans
And with that - we can have Allied races atop of that conflicts. Lightforged joins humans with war against Orcs, but Mag`har joins Orcs in war agains the Lightforged.
Zandalari helps trolls in war agains humans, that sparks kul-tirans to help humans.

But in war Night Elves vs Forsaken - taurens help Night Elves (druid that heal, non combat help).
Goblins and Orcs vs Night Elves in Azshara, but no Blood Elves helps them
Draenei and Blood Elves clean Sunwell.
Kul-Tirans helps Gilneas vs Forsaken, Blood elves helps undead, but in Northrend Blood Elves and Kul-Tirans are battling agains Scourge together.

I like this, it has a nuance to it. In Legion , I rem ember the Forsaken - Gilnean conflict, it was never an all out faction war, and the main conflict was there, while everyone pretty much got in together... there should always be elements that continue telling what the races are up to, and not just throw in NPCs for representation.

- - - Updated - - -

I think too many of the races get put in the background so Blizz can tell the human and elf stories. We get nonstop humans and elves, even during BfA on Zandalar the Horde story wraps up anything troll by the end of the campaign and it's back to Sylvanas, Lorthemar, Thalyssra and Jaina. Baine does one thing and we see characters like Rokhan and Rexxar as background soldiers.

Less humans and elves in the story, they get too much of it. More time for Tauren, troll, dwarves, gnomes, goblins. Why do we care about lorthemar getting married when we still have leaderless races and forsaken have been forgotten since BfA

They did the same with night elves in Legion, by 7.1, the night elf stories were all wrapped up, you did not really see racial involvement of either night elf groups, esp new comer Nightborne involved as a race... extraordinary, seeing it was the Cathedral of Eternal night we were claiming back. I was all about legion involvement for sure, but I never felt the Order of Elune, Suramar and the new stuff just needed to be abandoned for more legion and class order hall activity.

We could have had the Sister hood of Elune heavily involved in all the class order order halls, directing, and instead used Tyrande as a high priestess in action in Suramar and the broken shore, leaving Vereesa to do the alliance stuff.


It shows a lack of after care... which is a shame, expansions start with so much detail, Zandalari and night elf/borne are typical examples in BFA and Legion respectively that just vanish later on in favour of main characters.

You wonder if it is the same team that gave such incredible initial detail that does the shoddy stuff mid expansion onwards. It's fare less detailed or refined. Shadowlands was an improvement though.

What happened to the Draenei in WoD ? or the Ogres, didn't even get the shattrath raid or the ogre continent.

[Khaza-R]

Compared to Vanilla? Yes, absolutely.

The tone of the Horde is radically different than it was in the beginning of the game. Horde is no longer the underdog, they went from the oppressed to the oppressor in the narrative.

Then culturally there's been a decay in what made the factions unique. Everyone is a druid, shaman, priest, arcane wielder now. These things would be fine if they maintained their own uniqueness but they don't. Its all been muddled into a bland mixture of beige, chopped in two and then covered in a veneer of red and blue paint.