The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I am not sure I would go that far. You absolutely could have had faction conflcit with the honorable Horde that Thrall was trying to establish after WC3 and the Alliance without the Horde reverting to WC2 mentality. Ofc the main issue is that the Kaldorei and Forsaken never belonged in their respective factions (the Blood Elves have largely been inoffensive as a state).

The Kaldorei and the Forsaken shouldn't be going anywhere in the factions. That was never an issue.

Indeed, the faction conflict should have ended with WC3, with minor issues like Jaina dealing with her family's judgment. The repeat return to "Orcs vs Humans, raaaaah!" has hurt WoW time and time again.

If it means making half of your playerbase do questionable stuff and make them feel bad yeah, lets not repeat that.

I'll always say, if they had kept the warcraft 3 factions (Alliance/Humans, Horde, Kaldorei, Forsaken and either make the Blood Elves part of Alliance or add Illidari) into WoW, the story would have been far easier and better. The gameplay would have required cross faction play from day one though.

Yeah no, it would not of been better. The Night Elves align far more with the Alliance then the Horde. And easier? Wat? This feels so forced and stupid.

[Hitei]

That's the funny thing about all this.

People always go on about how "OH It's called World of WARcraft, not World of PEACEcraft!" when the end of WC3 literally was about "yo, you factions need to fight together or else some evil threat is gonna fuck your planet up!".

Faction war in WoW was, and always has been an ass-pull. It never made any sense.

There's never really been any point where the factions working together was a real logical necessity, to be quite honest. Also if anything is an ass-pull, it's the Alliance and Horde being unified factions, not the two factions fighting.

[Skytotem]

I'll always say, if they had kept the warcraft 3 factions (Alliance/Humans, Horde, Kaldorei, Forsaken and either make the Blood Elves part of Alliance or add Illidari) into WoW, the story would have been far easier and better. The gameplay would have required cross faction play from day one though.

Eh, balancing 4 factions would've had their own issues, but at least they should have NARRATIVELY treated the Night Elves and Forsaken as their own nations that were ALLIED to the Humans and Orcs, rather than members of the Alliance/Horde themselves.

[Makabreska]

Faction war in WoW was, and always has been an ass-pull. It never made any sense.

Faction war being an ass-pull with all the bad blood between Horde and Alliance since Warcraft 1? We are going now from one extreme to another.

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There's never really been any point where the factions working together was a real logical necessity, to be quite honest. Also if anything is an ass-pull, it's the Alliance and Horde being unified factions, not the two factions fighting.

Uhhhh, what? Not during ANY world ending threats we were facing since Vanilla?

[Hitei]

Uhhhh, what? Not during ANY world ending threats we were facing since Vanilla?

Pretty much. Logistically speaking, there's never really been a pressing need for both factions to handle a threat beyond the fact that writers just make the claim that they need to. It's never really made much sense within the context actually presented.

For example, the devs maintain that for some reason, the Alliance and Horde had to work together at the end of MoP to deal with Garrosh or he would have taken over the whole world. But this has never really checked out in any sort of actual look at what was happening. The Darkspear Rebellion had two jobs to do at Orgrimmar, take the Harbor and actually lay siege to the city (that is, break through the wall). They were being funneled resources from the barrens by both factions to do this.

They didn't do either of those things. The champions who were fighting the Vale show up and have to take the harbor by force, and the Darkspear have literally lost at the gates, when Tyrande shows up and breaks through. Afterwards you just have faction-specific progression through the city and to Garrosh. So the Alliance could have had Alliance heroes clean up Vale, take the harbor, Tyrande take the gate and then push into the city and end it. The Horde was wholly unecessary.

To begin with how was Garrosh at all a credible threat to the Alliance? He didn't generate a bunch of armies out of nowhere, his forces were the Horde forces MINUS all the other factions (including the one with decent magic, and the Forsaken, the actual credible threat), with no external resources in a city that is starving at the absolute best of times when it isn't being sieged--and in return he gained some prototype goblin tech (that was beaten by champions), literally a few dozen mantid (who the champions already bested the literal home seat of power for), and some old god empowerment (that agian, the champions handle).

What was he going to do? How could the Alliance not have taken him alone? We know that canonically, Jaina had to be talked down from SOLOING the entire city using the focusing iris. She could have wiped out the entire Kor'kron force in one go, objectively. But for the sake of gameplay and story beats, the devs claim that it was somehow necessary for the two factions to work together and help each other out in order for Garrosh not to beat both of them one after the other, despite none of that adding up.

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You'll find pretty much ever threat that was "working together" is like this. It's only necessary because the factions just stop using anything else at their disposal. Why didn't the Forsaken mass plague bomb the demonic presence at the Broken Shore? The two biggest combined faction movements in Legion are the Broken Shore and Surmar, and BOTH times they fail. The shore is a loss and the Blood/Night/High Elf forces are time-stopped. It's literally just champions taking the Night Hold and then Illidan and the Army of the Light closing the deal.

Did the Shattered sun really need to be the Scryers and Aldor (not that these are actually even Horde/Alliance, but whatever)? It could have just as easily replaced the Draeneic forces with the Orcs and Forsaken and been even better off.

The Horde attack the Alliance THREE separate times in the campaign against the Lich King. What did working together provide?

I guess you could maybe argue Thrall was needed for Cata, but his role was literally being a stand in, so I sort of doubt that this is a case of both factions being needed, and they were fighting all over the map the whole time.

MoP and Legion are above, they didn't work together much in Draenor or Shadowlands, so really, when has it ever really been the case that they actually needed to work together beyond word of god just saying "trust me, they had to"?

[Makabreska]

Pretty much. Logistically speaking, there's never really been a pressing need for both factions to handle a threat beyond the fact that writers just make the claim that they need to. It's never really made much sense within the context actually presented.

You are kinda entering a mental gymnastics territory here. With this type of reasoning you could say that any threat we faced could be quickly resolved by some kind of a wunderwaffe or war effort. But this is a game, we need to have a reason and opportunity to enter that raid and defeat that boss. If NPC's were 100% successful, then we players would have nothing to do. And claiming that for example a final Burning Legion attack didn't require a general team up (where previous two invasions did) is kinda weird. Sure you can say, "oh if x happened and y was used, no teaming up would be required", but this is not how the story was presented. Broken Shore united effort failed, becasue Dreadlords infiltrated Alliance ranks and produced false intel. Was it an unreasonable story ass-pull? Not really.

[Makorus]

Faction war being an ass-pull with all the bad blood between Horde and Alliance since Warcraft 1? We are going now from one extreme to another.

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Uhhhh, what? Not during ANY world ending threats we were facing since Vanilla?

You noticed how I said WoW?

And yeah, faction war was an asspull and doesn't make any sense. Sure, there being conflict between Orc and Humans makes sense (even if it is a bit dubious because the Orcs from WC1/2 are a completely different Horde) but Gnomes, Dwarves and Night Elves joining in is... stupid?

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There's never really been any point where the factions working together was a real logical necessity, to be quite honest. Also if anything is an ass-pull, it's the Alliance and Horde being unified factions, not the two factions fighting.

Very true. It made so much more sense for the Horde and the Alliance to actively fight eachother while the Burning Legion was this close to destroying Azeroth.

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[huth]

Indeed, the faction conflict should have ended with WC3, with minor issues like Jaina dealing with her family's judgment. The repeat return to "Orcs vs Humans, raaaaah!" has hurt WoW time and time again.

They should have done what they're slowly introducing now from the start, and have players be independent from the factions like they had originally planned.

That would have made storytelling way easier, wouldn't have required some of the questionable faction alignment decisions and generally avoided some of the issues the game now has. They've shown that having people select one of several options is perfectly possible when needed.

Not like it ever really added anything anyway.

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Pretty much. Logistically speaking, there's never really been a pressing need for both factions to handle a threat beyond the fact that writers just make the claim that they need to. It's never really made much sense within the context actually presented.

That's a worthless argument. Without the writers making it so, there wouldn't be a threat in the first place. Or, for that matter, any factions to be allied or at odds with one another. The only reason we have a story at all is because the writers made it so.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

But i like killing alliance...
Nothing better than killing a gnome!

But on serious note, even that i don't want another faction war i still want to see some disturbance in main factions leadership in the future.
Some inner politics explored more and citizens that live in their capitols, like we had in Human heritage questline.

EDIT: But thinking about it now, i don't see anyone from the horde council going bad/villain or from the Alliance.. Well maybe besides turalyon, when the light story happens again.

[Nymrohd]

But i like killing alliance...
Nothing better than killing a gnome!

But on serious note, even that i don't want another faction war i still want to see some disturbance in main factions leadership in the future.
Some inner politics explored more and citizens that live in their capitols, like we had in Human heritage questline.

EDIT: But thinking about it now, i don't see anyone from the horde council going bad/villain or from the Alliance.. Well maybe besides turalyon, when the light story happens again.

Geyarah actually could freak out and do some crazy shit against random Draenei in Ashenvale she never met tbh. The Mag'har shown in BfA were pretty much WC2 Orcs but less crazy.

[Super Dickmann]

The WC3 Horde was a sleeping pill that was written out of its own expansion's main plot. There's very little you can do with a race lead by a messiah that's solved both their external and internal problems and trolls and tauren that exist only as satellites to it. The Alliance in general was impossible to carry from WC3 as the playable humans between both games have no connection short of Theramore.

The initial success of the game, both marketing-wise and in terms of dynamism hinged on the two faction format. It is and is a major distinction it had relative to other games and that produced the strongest emotional investment in its story. All the most memorable plot beats hinge on conflicts between factions which have direct investment from the players either by way of being prominent/playable in the RTS or in the actual game. The more it has moved towards depersonalized threats the weaker and more apathetic the reaction becomes.

[Skildar]

After doing the Baine questline in Onhara plains, I'm reassured at what good values there are to let players of any faction play together and declare that the war is over. They now can tell any story they want and make it accessible to any player. There are still some limits to what stories they will tell but they won't feel obligated to even the scale by telling one horde and one alliance story with one being just an obligation to the players and as such less interesting

[Nymrohd]

The WC3 Horde was a sleeping pill that was written out of its own expansion's main plot. There's very little you can do with a race lead by a messiah that's solved both their external and internal problems and trolls and tauren that exist only as satellites to it. The Alliance in general was impossible to carry from WC3 as the playable humans between both games have no connection short of Theramore.

The VAST majority of the stories that actually involve WoW's gameplay have nothing to do with the factions. Sure the main narrative of several xpacs was faction-based but the raids and dungeons that were can be counted in one hand? So you'd get to see how the WC3 Horde would interact with all those external threats without having to not just hit them on the head but pretty much fuck them with the villain bat until they were dead.

[Super Dickmann]

The VAST majority of the stories that actually involve WoW's gameplay have nothing to do with the factions. Sure the main narrative of several xpacs was faction-based but the raids and dungeons that were can be counted in one hand? So you'd get to see how the WC3 Horde would interact with all those external threats without having to not just hit them on the head but pretty much fuck them with the villain bat until they were dead.

There's nothing to see in terms of them because they've no investment in any of these threats even in the game as is. The only connection the Horde has to the Lich King stems from the Forsaken and Blood Elves, added in the MMO and even then it defaults to John Human Paladin. When they do have something to do with that story, as is the case with the Legion, they are absent from it. There's a reason that TFT didn't follow up on Thrall and Jaina in the main plot but instead focused on those who do have an emotional heft to it - those affected directly by the Scourge, the night elves and the Scourge's internal conflict itself.

Put simply, once you've done the story where your two fresh-faced nice youngsters ditch the entire rest of their society and set up their Jerusalem(s) on new land free of the conflict of old and put their figurative and literal demons to rest, they've nowhere to go that's interesting to tell. You can tell the story of them settling in that new land against unrelated parties, but that too was the other main beat of the Founding of Durotar. Without putting the orcs at odds with the Night Elves and later turning Durotar barren the orcs have no reason to engage with the world outside the goodness of their hearts which leads to boring, impersonal conflict.

The story of putting aside your differences and coming together to fight Satan can only be told once because if you repeat it becomes disingenuous and repetitive. You can tell it even less so when the first time it's told, as in WC3, none of those involved actually had anything to do with the wrongs done between their respective races so the bad blood between them exists only on a meta level. And while the kind of meta subversion of orcs was trend-setting when the game released and works perfectly well in the microcosm of the RTS, it doesn't lend itself to a semi-sandbox that's meant to go on indefinitely.

[Skytotem]

But i like killing alliance...
Nothing better than killing a gnome!

But on serious note, even that i don't want another faction war i still want to see some disturbance in main factions leadership in the future.
Some inner politics explored more and citizens that live in their capitols, like we had in Human heritage questline.

EDIT: But thinking about it now, i don't see anyone from the horde council going bad/villain or from the Alliance.. Well maybe besides turalyon, when the light story happens again.

Orc: Let's see... Orcs are probably done with "Villainbat" internal conflict, they had enough of that with Garrosh and Zaela losing popular characters to being raid bosses, BUT it'd be interesting to see conflict where they don't straight up murder each other or turn evil. Arguments between Shamans, Warlocks, and the Industrial branches of orc society, debates between orc clans and troll priest groups, etc... I want to see Jorin Deadeye as a move and shaker in orc politics but NOT as a bad guy.

Troll: It'd be cool to see the Darkspear and Zandalari playing politics with the other troll tribes, recruiting folks, maybe even trying to resettle Zul'drak with Frost Trolls from other areas and Horde members, and a few of the undead Drakkari preserving their culture. Horde mending fences with the Sandfury wouldn't hurt either, since they could help negotiate for the Steamwheedle to trade with them and stop stealing their stuff if the Sandfury stop raiding the steamwheedle's workers.

Forsaken: Whew boy have they got a ton of potential cloak and dagger politicking to have go on, I'm hoping we see a Cult of Shadow member of their council at some point, maybe a councilmember to represent non elf/humanoid undead too if Blizz ever decides to acknowledge them as part of the Horde in any meaningful number.

Tauren: The big issue is mostly Magatha and the Grimtotem still hanging around, but even beyond that I can see something being done with the Bloodtotem remnants as well as cultural friction between the Taunka, Highmountain, and Mulgore tauren, maybe even some overtures to the Yaungol since we never properly saw Horde interaction with them.

Goblin: Gallywix is explicitly not dead, so he can still cause trouble and since he's not leader anymore they can also lean more into his dark comedy vibe without it feeling too jarring. Plus, Goblins are inherently competitive, so it'd be interesting to see some other cartels join the Horde and work alongside the Bilgewater. Or sabotage some non-Horde leaning cartels to crowd out their business if the Venture co is still causing trouble or some non-steamwheedle/bilgewater cartels are making trouble.

Nightborne/Belf: Lor'themar is regent and has had a pretty totalitarian hand to keep the belfs stable, while Thalyssra is taking charge of a society that's just now leaving the police-state that Elisande had running, so it'll be interesting to see what hiccups they encounter as they start relaxing their control and are forced to make the classic freedom vs safety decisions while leading their nations, and whether to keep power centralized with themselves or whether to delegate it a bit.

Dracthyr/Vulpera/Pandaren: I think these groups are too small and close knit to have real infighting, especially since the Dracthyr are already sorting out their internal issues in the DF story.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The factions are always(And should) matter. That doesn't mean we're always in full scale war and they're probably gonna be more careful if they face each other.

[Nymrohd]

If it means making half of your playerbase do questionable stuff and make them feel bad yeah, lets not repeat that.

Or make a faction that is unequivocally about doing questionable stuff so anyone who joins has signed up for it. Imagine a faction with the Forsaken (Lordaeronian humans in the classic Forsaken Zombie style and Quel'thalas banshees and wraiths inhabiting their rotting bodies) and add to it say Worgen but led by Ralaar and struggling to contain the beast and maybe Nerubians or San'layn (or heck I was thinking, we got Zombie, Ghost, Werewolf, Vampire, we need a Mummy, maybe develop a race of plagued trolls). If you joined that faction and it started doing all different kind of atrocities, you wouldn't really get to be angry about it. They are classic monsters, that's their job.

[Makabreska]

Or make a faction that is unequivocally about doing questionable stuff so anyone who joins has signed up for it. Imagine a faction with the Forsaken (Lordaeronian humans in the classic Forsaken Zombie style and Quel'thalas banshees and wraiths inhabiting their rotting bodies) and add to it say Worgen but led by Ralaar and struggling to contain the beast and maybe Nerubians or San'layn (or heck I was thinking, we got Zombie, Ghost, Werewolf, Vampire, we need a Mummy, maybe develop a race of plagued trolls). If you joined that faction and it started doing all different kind of atrocities, you wouldn't really get to be angry about it. They are classic monsters, that's their job.

Pretty crappy idea to introduce a faction with the intention of only doing nasty stuff and therefore hard limiting their story progression. What would such pigeonholing achieve? "Damn, here comes the new faction, they will surely do something bad". Not to mention that I doubt many players would want to be these bad guys. People who care about the story in general identify with their faction. Look how Hordies reacted to everything post Cata, they did not sign up for the atrocities and Warchief-turned-raidboss clown fiesta.

[Nymrohd]

Pretty crappy idea to introduce a faction with the intention of only doing nasty stuff and therefore hard limiting their story progression. What would such pigeonholing achieve? "Damn, here comes the new faction, they will surely do something bad". Not to mention that I doubt many players would want to be these bad guys. People who care about the story in general identify with their faction. Look how Hordies reacted to everything post Cata, they did not sign up for the atrocities and Warchief-turned-raidboss clown fiesta.

Oh I am absolutely not saying introduce a faction now. That makes no sense. I am saying about having had that from the start. Have a faction that follows up on Sylvanas from TFT. And I would not consider it a villain faction; they would not be trying to kill the other factions or anything similar. Just that they would defend their land with the most dishonorable means. Since the main stories would be about the overarching threats, they would ultimately be on Azeroth's side, you just would not want them to be fighting anywhere near you. If you picked to play a faction led by TFT Sylvanas and it betrayed people left and right while allowing experimentation and similar things, it wouldn't exactly be a surprise but at the same time you would expect that faction to be mostly about the end justifying the means with a Scourge theme on top (similarly you could have had an Illidari faction which would be similar but prettier). You would have signed up for it. As for people not wanting to be those bad guys . . . we'll never know how many Sylvanas loyalists were out there (and heck in that timeline Sylvanas would not be braindead) but at least this community makes me believe there are plenty of people who absolutely want to be the bad guys (and there is a third group that wants to be the bad guys but never get called out on it but you can't satisfy those buffoons).
It WAS a surprise for people who joined the Horde after playing WC3 and suddenly found themselves in the same faction with the Forsaken or attacking the Alliance unprovoked multiple times during the war with the Lich King which was clearly dishonorable.

[ChairmanKaga]

BfA should have resulted in both factions split in two based on an aggressive vs isolationist theme. I think NElf and Forsaken were positioned to take over from the central Orc v Human paradigm.