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World of Warcraft Shadowlands Horde vs Alliance and Warcraft Faction Restrictions.
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I agree factions are dead. But problem with WoW is blizzard listens to the community way too much. The community doesn't always k ow what's best for the game. They just everything handed to them with little effort. Pvp kept dying more and more each expansion. It started with instant queue and instantly sent to dungeon. Look at current WoW. Its so safe. Vanilla was exciting and felt danger leaving town.
PVP mode on = can't work together, PVP mode off = can work together. Cities/NPCs stay faction-aligned as they are. Faction change possible via a campaign or a choice at a specific level/milestone.
I fundamentally disagree with your analysis of the Horde vs Alliance conflict, especially as far back as Vanilla. Even in Classic, you can see the narrative drift away from the faction conflict as they were brought together to face off not only C'thun, but Kel'thuzad as well, and this is a theme we see as far back as Warcraft 3. Factions, while a great system that gave World of Warcraft a unique spin, have always been tacked on. They weren't even slated to be separated when the game was in it's first inception, it just happened because they thought it was cool.
Factions just need to go period.
I can't express it now that I'm at work but there is just no point to it anymore.
Never cared for either faction… i don't want to be either… i want to be a mercenary adventurer, at this point in the games life span the population split does more harm than good and nothing that's tied to anything with the horde and alliance even matters in the big picture.. petty squabbling thats always put aside for fighting the villain of the week.
I think what Blizzard could do is just change the factions entirely, maybe to fit the theme of future expansions. For example, after shadowlands, we explore the cosmology chart further (maybe light and void), and we are able to choose which one to be a part of, similar to what you suggested (Any race can choose any faction/covenant/whatever Blizzard decides to call it next). The thing is, Blizzard is too focused on adding systems these days, just to be forgotten in the next patch or the next expansion.
Or, regarding balance, they could just rework racial traits, as to not affect a faction's performance in cutting edge content. An example I can think of this is SWTOR, purely cosmetic.
P.s. Just came across your channel man, it's nice seeing a fellow South African being successful on YT and passionate about WoW, looking forward to watching the rest of your vids!
Now Ya'll are starting to see it.
Retail is already a complete mess in both gameplay and lore. Removing factional would be the final nail in the coffin. It may as well be a cheap chinese mount transmog farmer. Play classic, and it’s clear why factions NEED to exist.
edit: I think it would be easier to fit an extra detail into the edit to this post (at the end) than to place it where I originally thought.
It took me a while to form my comments about the topic, and most of this time I was removing things that can be removed without losing the core of the ideas. But still, to make it readable I'll split it into 3 posts. In this video you touched so many topics at once. Which is also a part of what makes your content interesting.
So, I'll start with the last points, about the suggestions you propose for the future story.
When it comes to removing faction restrictions for the races, we already have an example. It being pandaren. How was this race handled? Does the story shows how they changed in the factions they chose? Or how they changed factions? Based on what little I saw, the answer would be "no" to all of those things. They are as bland and barely mentioned as possible. So, based on what we can see already, what is going to happen, should all the races get their branches in the factions, at least doubling the amount of stuff needed to tell those stories (assets, stories, characters, etc.)
Going further, we have 2 factions. How different are they? What do they stand for? These and many more questions are left ignored even when we have just 2 factions with a lot of legacy info about them, rich backstories, and quite a few characters. Would reshuffling the thing, effectively resetting the amount of content to be used as a basis, make the thing easier to handle?
Unfortunately, I am not sure if we have precedents to expect those things to work out effectively. Could they be good? Well, they could be amazing. Will that be good with the team that led us to where we are currently? Not so sure…
And a big problem that I have, is that the devs seemingly like to mention "moral lessons", "moral compasses" and things like that. The story, in game and in interviews (some) has clearly right and clearly wrong characters and decisions. Which is why IMO in such framework loyalist line could never succeed. Because the devs do now want it to succeed. They want to tell the story of heroisation characters that overcome faction division. They seemingly want to show that Anduin / Saurfang approach is great, (and ignore in the process how BfA story of Varok devalued his previous character development, or how many troubles decisions of Anduin actually caused behind a pretty face; and neither of them would be called out for the troubles they caused, I am pretty sure about it)
So, when you have such clear moral superiourity of some characters and some behavior models, how can you have 2 factions which would have their ideologies portrayed as valid? I think we have the answer. And the asnwer is, either praising of only things like what the Crossroads cinematic shows, have to go or be treated as "sometimes it's good, sometimes it's a horrible decision", or we're doomed to be repeating loyalist story treatment again and again.
edit: IMO it's not enough to have shades of morality in just the cosmo forces. It's way more crucial to have those presented in the factions and the characters we interact with. And here what we have is… The game explicitly call Baine "best of the horde". C. Golden call Anduin a role model, and taurens "the moral compass" of the horde. S. Danuser talking about importance of moral lessons in the story. When there is such favoritism, can realistically we have a story, where another faction of those who does not share Baine / Anduin views would be portrayed as valid and in some situations proving to be leading to better results? Or will it exist only to be bashed and highlight how some views are unquestionably correct and even if there are consequences, it's not because what they did was out of place in the given circumstances, but because there is an evil opressive force targeting them?
Unfortunately, I do not see the current devs having a situation similar to what we had in BfA and telling to Saurfang / Jaina / Anduin "sure, you're cool guys, but right now you're going to kill us all / betray those who trusted, if we take this route".
gl hf
2nd thing I wanted to touch is your comment about what previous expansions did for the concept of factions.
When it comes to the very origins, that started to erode during WotLK days, I think C. Kaleiki described the concept rather well in his "why I left Blizzard" video: "the world is the main character, the player is the story, the community is the content". Those core ideas are barely visible nowadays in the game, and the most recent example of that would be "Evolution of Thrall" panel. When I finished it, I was in 2 minds. On one hand it's cool to see the devs being so enthusiastic about the story and characters. On the other – by the end of it I had a question "and where is the role of the player in all of that? Where is the attention to how the dev cycle, content distribution across different media, and other things, are affecting the player experience?"
When it comes to messages relative to the factions, that I remember from expansions, what I can say is:
– The bulk of the Cata story post 1st patch is "only together…" Be it following Thrall for the cloak quest, assisting deadly-neutral Cenarion Circle with the Firelands part, and later – more about aiding aspects against Neltharion.
– MoP main story by the end have a scene with a moralizing panda about "only together…" . Other than that, it showed IMO is that the horde is not allowed to follow it's leader and must rely on the alliance. And for the alliance it was a spit on the night elves for the sake of praising how awesome Varyan "narrative black hole" Wrynn is.
– WoD is the expansion ending with "Draenor is free" which made people scratch their head because how abrupt this transition is and how impossible it seemed that the draenei would be able to get over what they've been through so quickly. Also many people see WoD as undermining the W3 orcs, since the demon blood is not needed to start killing whoever they can.
And even that silliness is not allowed to have meaning and continuation, because, as one of the recent interviews mentioned, the conflict was apparently not over… like, what? How does that story flows from what we see in WoD?
– Legion has the class halls in the center. All I did so far is the mage one, and all of it could be summarized as "factions are stupid, caring about factions is stupid – while those idiots waste the time, we must solve ze real problems. Only together…"
– BfA could not even stick to topic of the faction conflict, hopped back and forth. In the end it was a heroisation of Jaina / Thrall / Anduin, and "only together…" concept.
None of those expansions had a theme of "it's good to keep factions". Factions up until this point are treated as a cheap to kick villain, source of troubles, and negativity. If the devs want to praise a heroic hero – here they have factions. Just show how they overcome faction limitations and solve "the real problems". And those things by extension also undermine the concept of the factions. They can't be heroes of the story. Can't be praised / celebrated. Good things happening can't be attributed to the factions.
And eventually we got from the players caring about factions, to loads of players and content creators just saying that it's pointless / outdated, and so on. The devs over the years were bashing the concept till it start to fall apart.
So, could in that context, could any of those expansions "fix" the problem, if only 1 ideology is allowed to thrive, only 1 approach can be praised, and at every corner, the role of the factions is that of a source of troubles? I do not think the devs ever truly wanted to fix the problem. They just wanted to tell stories about selected few "heroes" and fill the screen time with "cool" moments IMO. And when instead of making scenes for the story, we have a story slapped on top of what an unknown group of people decided to be cool – we can see so far in the last couple of expansion. Will Shadowlands be better? Too early to tell. Start is good-ish, but there is a long road ahead. Burning of Teldrassil also could be a beginning of an intense and nuanced story. Except it wasn't in the end.
The 3rd and final part is me pondering about what could be done on paper to improve the situation with the factions. And why I think the current dev team won't take this route.
1st of all, I do not know what are the resources that blizz have. I do not know if their dev process allows for the course correction based on the feedback (because it's relevant to be sure that the story that the narrator wants to tell is the same story as what the end users see). I do not know many other things about why the take the odd directions that they do. Beyonds "what is cool" without defining who is the target audience to check is the thing actually ended up being cool or it's not the path to follow.
So, my view on the topic is that the factions are not just = conflict. There are also good things that comes from them. First, a set up for what I try to say:
– from what I know, unrestricted competition leads to homogenization. In the wild, a creature effective in 1 niche "pushes out" all less successful species out of existence. Local wildlife can suffer greatly from a new more adapted creature. Like what happened in Australia with dogs or rabbits.
– as companies grow bigger, sadly I often see that they prefer to just invest into not allowing others to compete, rather than in developing their own products / servises. An infamous example would be Intel practically bribing OEMs to lock out AMD in early 2000s. With almost resulted in AMD going bankrupt (it was an all-in bet on the success of Zen in 2014-2016) (Dell was “the best friend money can buy")
Where in the story that could be shown?
– (my knowledge is limited on that subject, but based on the little I know) what is the current state of orc clans? With joining the horde, the clan identity of those who chose to do so is practically a non-entity anymore.
– "Draenor is free" as bad as the evolution of the original "explore Draenor" concept is, it could show the possible results of uniting over more isolated approach of the MU Draenor denizens. When one side has the upper hand, it just consumes others.
For a more complicated example, let's take a look at, say, mage class hall and it's consequences (I know a bit more about it than the rest). In the mage story the dominant force above all, and the center of all mage-related is Kirin Tor. The story barely has any focus on the magisters of the horde, and their system of education and role in society. But also, when did the players last time heard about the Academy of Arcane Arts and Sciences of the alliance? What are the possible outcomes of such situation?
First of all, Dalaran and Kirin Tor are relatively small in comparison to Azeroth overall. Which meanst that there are only so many students they can teach. It does not help that there are few details about the internal work of the organization, so I can't even say if bureaucracy is a problem, if the kids who are someone's relatives / friends having preferencial treatment. Or how do they seek for new talents? Mysteries.
So, when there is only a limited space for in the dominant mage school of Azeroth, what is going to happen to those kids who were not so fortunate to get an opportunity to join the place? Well, the quest line "The Folly of Levia Laurence" tell what can happen even with a member taught in Kirin Tor. But the outcome of what happen is described by Modera as following:
«I can't imagine what Agatha will be capable of with Levia's power. And who knows what secrets Levia shared while under her thrall?»
So now we can have a situation where a lots of sometime "meh", but sometimes "could be strong" mages would be just "in the wild", as easy pray for different cosmic entities, regular criminal organizations, cults, and so on.
On top of that, when resources are finite, it's easy to see Kirin Tor just sticking mostly to "best practices" in their education and day to day activities which could lead to loss of what individual races and members could do before. We have a peculiar example woth Kirin Tor pushing away necromancers. Is it a good decision? Or paper, yes. They tried to limit the spread of dangerous practices that could cause a lot of problem. Except that with stopping such research, they also stop with understanding of the evolution of the thing. How big of a role that organization had against the LK? Not much. If there would not be other organizations to fall onto, what would Kirin Tor do against the enemy who has skills way outside of what the mages knew at the time? Homogenizing that aspect could lead to tragic results.
Also, I think I should mention, that factions could also be a source of mercy. You know the story of draenei. Just as the recent night elf events. Yes, some get over the thing. But for some, the pressure where you can never be away from those who reminds of horrors of the past is a dangerous proposition. On the horde side I can mention the forsaken. Sure, some are fine with their new state. But for some betrayal of the living could be a big deal. Or being unable with stay next to the living, constantly having to see what they can never be again. Or some living, can be through traumatic enough events so that the possibility of a random forsaken being nearby could be a big problem.
Some need that space where they are guarantee not to be all the time next to sources of all those negative things. A place where the existance of undead would not be a double mysery because of the living. A place where a draenei who lived through the events on draenor does not have to be surrounded by reminder of the thing that make the blood boil. And lack of such things could lead to conflicts, more hatred, loss of innocents, extra "exiles" who would rather join the Twilight Hammer than such ally. How many new recruits for those organization would such faction unity produce? Who would be guilty of bolstering enemies when it was possible not to?
Those are very surface level ideas about what good can come out of the faction system. But now, it's the question: are there the devs in blizzard who can or want to tell such stories? because things do not exist in the vacuum. Just like every story praising the heroes that overcome the faction separation is also causes damage to that concept, having faction being heroes could mean that at one point the story will tell "Anduin, Jaina, Saurfang. You're nice and all. But what you advocate for will cause death and suffering of innocent, and will create enough "outliers" to guarantee presence and recruits for the forces that can and will destroy Azeroth". And this is the line that I do not see the current team stepping over. I do not see them abandoning the concept of a hill of moral absolutism, telling the story, that things and ideas that the game promoted as "heroes" of BfA in some situations could be a road to ruin.
Will those things fix the faction? No, at least not instantly. It took more than 1 expansion to cause troubles, and will take more than 1 to make the situation better. But it's possible. On paper. For blizz? I do not know if they're willing to treat all of the characters and races as cosmo forces, that there are some "good" and some "bad" sides of every character / side. That there is no 1 size fit all, 1 unquestionably correct answer, etc.
gl hf
I will only come back to wow when the factions are united! I hate being on a 10% alliance server and that's the population pool for your experience or go horde where everyone else is or transfer servers and change factions.
I’ve been playing WoW since Cataclysm and I’ve always been Horde and I love The Horde and I hate The Alliance but what I absolutely hate more is being forced to help The Alliance. I love 90% of Shadowlands but it feels like Blizzard or Activision are trying to destroy WoW. If Blizzard removes factions then I’ll probably quit WoW after 11 years. This scares the shit out of me as I’m a Guild Master.
Been saying this for years…
Next expansion: Galactic threats are dealt with, azeroth safe, time to figure out how we coexist in peace. Baine disagrees with Anduin about how stonetalon should be split between Horde and Alliance – boom – war. You dont need a reason for factions to hate each other I mean look at real life. Countries hate each other for no reason and wars start based on either countries wanting more land or two random politicians disagreeing with each other. In the case of a fantasy world with magic, monsters and cosmic titans starting a war between two factions would be easier than stealing candy from a baby. Blizz just suck at it from what we've seen in bfa but it is quite doable.
i dont like this …idk if it will be better for players or not but storywise i it will be bad ….half of the reason im intersted in the story is cause of whole blue vs red
Not sure how you showed up on my recommended man, but you seem pretty cool
The problem of this expansion as I see it isn't that the factions are useless it's more of an that they are not real anymore since we are currently on a unreal universe hence shadowlands. The internal conflict of HvA isn't currently that important but trust me it will have it's own spin in patches to come. Removing the factions would be a bad design choice for the stories to come, every race would loose it's identity because behind every race there was reasoning of why they exist.
I see shadowlands as a mix of legion and bfa, the first part of shadowlands has a purely legion footprint, the second will be of bfa footprint which will set the stage for the next xpac and a new faction conflict. And to be honest Tyrande has the most potential to mess things out cause you know she's really mad and up until now we still don't have a clue what is she up to.
i play horde b/c i'm not:
1) a child
2) a pve only scrub
3) a goldshire perv
4) a virgin
Im getting ready to remove blizzard games from my computer.
I hope Blizzard remove the faction restrictions. I honestly can't choose which faction I identify with. I played both factions so that I don't miss out on the cinematics and see the experiences on both sides. That and I think faction war is evil. Both factions want peace right now, so keeping the faction system is meaningless.
You could have Turalyon take over the Alliance (possibly by a little bit of force) and turn it into kind of the regimented, Law and Order, slightly dictatorial faction, and have the Hord be kind of the ragtag, freedom of speech type group (A kind of Victorian England vs Early American Settlements deal). It's why I loved the Pandaren. Lore wise they would obviously have no prior affiliation to any of the groups and it was cool that you weren't forced into going into the other faction just to play the new race.
I like your idea Acco, but I think it should be a choice made at lvl 20 or 30, not max lvl. Seems like too long of a wait. Just throwing it out there.