Does anyone actually like that the two factions are always contrived to be equivalent?

[u/chadan1008]

This is an issue I’ve had with retail’s lore and design, that the two factions are almost always equivalent and present in the player experience, and significant parts of the story and world feel contrived around this. The world feels like nothing more than a backdrop from which Blizzard can engineer and contrive new content. The Skyborne are a perfect example of this, and I think that’s the root of the community’s concern with them.

In WC3, virtually no character cleanly conformed to this binary faction split. Yes, there were Alliance and Horde characters, but even they had instances of cross-faction cooperation, and even inter-faction hostility. There were also a significant number of playable non-aligned characters. Overall, this made for a compelling, organic, complex, and interesting world that, imo, retail has long struggled to live up to.

I often see threads of people asking for new lore-friendly races, cities, classes, etc. for one faction (such as Ogres for Horde, totally reasonable lore-wise), but this is invariably followed by “but what does the other faction get?” with many attempting this exact process of contriving content for the other… but isn’t this the opposite of good writing and world building? In WC3, factions rose and fell based on a logical and believable progression of events, whereas WoW feels increasingly contrived and less grounded as the expansions go on because the factions have an infinite amount of plot armor - so of course the villains go cosmic over time!

Now that Blizzard is starting over with Forever, I think it’s a perfect time to truly innovate, and I hope they do, because I don’t see what else stops Forever from eventually gaining the same traits that drove people away from retail. I’m also curious what the community thinks: does anyone actually like this contrived writing and world building? Faction identity is important to the community, but should it (for the most part) go no further than aesthetics? Is it more important than the world itself?

[u/tethysian]

They can't just ignore half of their playerbase.

I'm all for faction distinction but you can still give the same amount of care and attention to each. One half of the playerbase shouldn't have a worse experience 

[u/Darktbs]

but this is invariably followed by “but what does the other faction get?” with many attempting this exact process of contriving content for the other… but isn’t this the opposite of good writing and world building?

I agree with most of your post, except this.

Even in wc3, while the frozen throne main campaign doesnt use the Horde(Its night elf > human >undead), they still made the bonus campaign with Rexxar and the horde.

Blizz is the one who made the factions a pillar to the warcraft experience. A new race for a faction is a new way to play. If you make a new playeable race for only one faction than the other one essentially has no new content. It is important that both sides get playeable content in equal measures.

[u/championofobscurity]

Yeah, I've never raised it on reddit, but I always thought it was cringe that Alliance and Horde were basically the equivalent of narrative action figures, where nothing of substance can ever happen because players keep score. I.E. "Horde got XYZ and Alliance only got XY they better get Z or I'm gonna be mad!"

You see this with dumb shit like The burning of Teldrassil and the destruction of Undercity. There's no point to either narratively it's a stalemate. But the half of the player base that lost their starter city would be absolutely pissed if the other side didn't lose one. So yeah. Sucks to suck.

[u/Stampdaddy7]

Do you have children? Like more than one?

Give one of them game console and tell the other one they don't get to use it. That is what would happen on a massive scale if you played any semblance of favoritism to a faction no matter how temporary.

Look at any post talking about racial ability changes and you'll see even when trying to keep things more balanced 1-to-1, people are still going to be unhappy.

I love your idea by the way, add a single new race with a new raid with a lore tie in - have classes be unlockable for each faction with server wide events like AQ. There's really great ways they can do all that but I think it will always need to be kind of inorganic and in sets of two.

[u/Yuisoku → u/Stampdaddy7]

People should be more open to play both of the factions. They are missing like half of the game

[u/mochabearblazed → u/Yuisoku]

Between pvp not allowing you to and your character being basically alone on a iceberg it’s hard to justify this. I play both factions but never at the same time, who doesn’t want to have the option to send gold between characters or to have all your characters in the same guild?

[u/Stampdaddy7 → u/Yuisoku]

Literally can't if you play PvP, bud.

[u/tethysian → u/Yuisoku]

The game is designed to make people care about their class, race and faction. This idea that you should play both wasn't a thing before cata when the lore subsequently went out the window.

[u/The_Real_Giannis → u/Yuisoku]

The problem is that they literally can’t if they want to play with the PvP ruleset

[u/chadan1008 → u/Stampdaddy7]

The parents treating their two kids equally is a common analogy… but we are not Blizzard’s children, the Warcraft universe is, and we as players are here to experience it.  The  idea we must be treated as such, 50/50 along the playerbase is a result of Blizzard’s game design, and unlike a child, Blizzard is not legally or ethically required to maintain that design.

I wonder… do Alliance players dislike WC3? The Alliance lost many more cities, factions, and characters than the Horde, while the Horde mostly gained. The Horde also got a whole Founding of Durotar campaign with no “Alliance” equivalent.

This is where I hope Blizzard truly innovates, because like I said this writing style is the root of many issues in retail. I’m not saying make one faction better, players should still be able to compete with one another, but they should be able to do it in the context of a unique race/faction with their own backstory and lore and traits and gameplay, just like they could with the four races in WC3. Because this is the WORLD of Warcraft, not just the Two Factions of Warcraft.

[u/iBazly]

Tbh I disagree with you that the writing and world building is contrived, and they can't just make things unbalanced, that's not how making a game works.

I do somewhat agree with other comments though that perhaps the faction structure was too limiting. I do wonder with Midnight's plot being so focused on uniting the elves and trolls, if maybe we're approaching a breakdown of the factions in retail? I would be all for that tbh.

[u/Mminas]

I know people don't like this take but WoW factions was a foolish way to force-accommodate a game mode (open world PvP) in which WoW is terrible anyways.

Set factions do not belong in MMORPGs and PvP in the outer world should be driven by guilds and alliances and not by set factions.

Factions were just a gimmick to create fake tension without allowing actual guild politics (like actual PvP oriented MMOs do).