A perspective from a long time Horde Player: I think BFA is a huge factor in faction pride death because it was the death of faction nuance. Warcraft’s story was at its best when the races of each faction were treated as actual people with their own thoughts, feelings, ideology and genuine reasons for doing what they do. Vanilla-Wrath executed this perfectly, expanding on WC3. For example, it made perfect sense that there would be plenty of humans who still resent and distrust the Orcs due to their history, especially if they lost family directly and there are still Old orcs around who have committed atrocities in their past-but at the same time, why should an a younger generation of Orcs pay for the crimes of their parents? Their only crime was to be born on a planet which they aren’t welcome. And the Orcs as a whole were left with no choice but to carve out a new existence and redemption for themselves. This created a narrative where both sides had good reasons for what they did. Both sides had values, families, and a future they wanted to preserve. It rejected the shallow narrative of Orcs just being inherently evil while still holding them accountable. Orcs and Humans are also just one of the many examples of where things were evened out. The new Horde’s desire for a prosperous future sometimes required them to play an antagonistic role because it was essential to their survival in a world who views them as little more than savage brutes, but an antagonistic approach didn’t necessarily make them comically evil either. MOP did a great job too imo. That’s where we see the Horde’s differing and diverse ideologies collide. Many rallied behind Garrosh and many stood against him. And even though the horde was definitely antagonistic in MoP, there was NUANCE. but ultimately, the story forced the horde to overcome the ideology that allowed a leader like Garrosh to happen. But then that entire plot was rendered useless in BFA. The evil for evil’s sake was not surprising for the Forsaken to do, but for the Horde to seemingly be complacent and even thrilled about it until the end was out of left field. Why on Earth would all these races who loudly stood against Garrosh suddenly forget about that and be okay with Sylvanas? The burning of Teldrassil made the conflict a distinct black and white. And now since then, the narrative has been one where Horde has had to spend the past few years apologizing and being ashamed. That is incredibly demoralizing for a playable faction. I feel like now it’s either the Horde completely kisses the Alliance’s ass and share all the same values as them or else they’re evil. It’s either be Red Alliance or turn into comically evil monsters, there can be no in between. And that’s just shallow
I think part of that is also the consequences of the way that MoP was done with the importance of Alliance characters and forces in that story and fight. It kinda left the Horde gutted in that aspect and the differences seem really dumb. Now if the Alliance didn't explicitly choose to walk away and not kill the Horde, but instead took to many loses compared to the Horde troops and so couldn't win a follow up fight despite wanting to. It would make more sense for the conflict to continue as it did before. They could bring the conflict back as it was, and I think it would do a lot for the story or setting but it would require a good amount of story telling work.
I think for the Horde, faction pride died the second time they got slapped with a Big Bad for the leader. The Garrosh plotline was bad enough, but repeating it note for note with Sylvanas was the nail in the coffin. I've often said that if BfA had been written and plotted in the same spirit as its opening cinematic, then things would have been a lot different. But instead...
Faction pride was always based off good vs evil/barbaric conflict where you could play as evil and enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a video game. I'd say the problem is that furries and woke storylines led you to believe horde isn't evil and watered down its barbaric character.
@@Pihtorich no, literally never was. What you talking about was dying agony of faction pride, because "playing as villain" was achieved ONLY at the expense of Alliance. So Blizzard burned Alliance to cook for the Horde, when Alliance died as a faction you were left to starve.
@@Pihtorich That's simply not true. The Horde might be barbaric, but it hasn't been painted as evil since WC2. The Horde we're introduced to in Vanilla has evil elements in it (looking at you Forsaken) but is led by Thrall and also has the Tauren. Please tell me with a straight face that Thrall and the tauren are evil.
@@cenotemirror would be more fair to say it has some good elements in it. If what's been happening in Ashenvale, Stonetalon, Hillsbrad etc during vanilla is fine, then I don't understand what "turn to evil" people are talking about. Garrosh and Sylvanas did nothing wrong
Your last point is by far the most important. There are better ways to portray faction pride then being at war with and attacking the other faction. Adding faction, race, and class quests FAR more often than they do would go a long way to making your choices feel important. I understand that it means Dev time for quests that not everyone may interact with, but I think we're at a point in WoW's cycle that to draw players back it needs to be more than just a rush to end game content which is what it feels like.
Like the Tauren quest to get the two-hand Totem weapon. It felt so good being a Tauren and doing that quest. Way more than the Tauren heritage armor quest, which just felt like a prelude to Shadowlands. Another great example is the Orc heritage quest.
As a death knight I don't feel any faction pride. I started as Horde and friends pushed me to go Alliance. All the story lines of the Alliance and the Horde never really feel like they're for me. I enjoyed Legion way more focusing on our class fantasy than Red vs Blue. Yes it's neat to see the differences between one another but the constant fighting over any little stone thrown doesn't interest me and doesn't make my character feel like they belong to a group, just that I have no agency. Perhaps it's just my roots but as a technical undead, why wouldn't my character see eye to eye more potentially with the Forsaken and instead be sworn to the Alliance just because I'm human?
Because your character is limited to the world, and wouldn't technically carry your values in the real world. People having views aligned to the real world other than the universe limitations of the game kinda makes no sense, but it's still a game so it cannot be avoided, however; in game, it would be harder for a human to forgive the Forsaken since a lot of survivors surged towards Stormwind after Lordaeron fell.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 As a death knight why would I care? What I'm trying to say is fueling class fantasy is better than needing to fuel the red vs blue and faction pride
@@Jackofl3lades Lingering attachments to the faction you fought till death for. Death just doesn't magically rid you of your attachments, or just even the copium of trying to help your faction because of the denial that your dead could still work. That's how I see it, but it could very well be someone who just doesn't care at all too, heck, there are probably members of the Horde, and Alliance that just don't care as long as it's good money, and just Alliance, or Horde by technicality, and not personally.
Well blizzard had 2 choices. Keep finding reasons for the factions to fight with no real evolution because neither side can truly lose due to representing 2 player factions. The other option, and the one they chose, was to build on the world and threats that pose both factions, at the sake of faction identity and loyalty.
Quel'thelas makes the absolute most sense for both tactics in that city. The elves were allies with the humans well before they became horde to fight the Amani trolls. With the introduction of a Lothar in the war within just strengthens that old alliance.
This 100%. I think one of the biggest problems when people talk about this kind of thing is that they focus on "[FACTION] not getting enough rep, while [OTHER FACTION] get a bunch". When really people should be wanting specific races to be getting rep instead. I think faction pride is stupid and hope it goes away, and I think the whole idea of faction pride morphed out of control into real life where real human people in real life hate other real human people in real life because of the video game faction they pick. So I already strongly dislike the faction pride stuff, and factions and general and the faction war, and basically any of that garbage. However I will agree that I would like to see more specific race rep. TWW seems to be focusing a lot on humans and dwarves, but from what I've heard it sounds like the last zone has a lot of Goblin stuff which is cool. I imagine Blood Elves will obviously play a big role in Midnight as well as Void Elves. But it would be nice to see Dracthyr keep being a thing going forward, Tauren haven't done a whole lot lately, it would be nice to see them do stuff, Draenei I'm sure will come up again in the Last Titan. I'd love to see Vulpera do a bit more etc. Also frankly I'd like to see more friendly NPC races. I think it's very cool the Niffen aren't being forgotten about and are actually gonna have a society set up in TWW. It was cool seeing another whole part of the world with Tuskarr. I'd love to see more of that.
I think faction pride in terms of red vs blue has gotten to a point where its immature at this point. WoW needs smaller storylines that deal with the aftermath, the consequences, of all these wars and define the cultures of the world. People aren't "blue", people are the Kaldorei, they're the Gnomes, they're Dwarves, they're the Draenei, they're the Humans. People aren't "red", they're Orcs, they're Trolls, they're the Tauren, they're the Forsaken. Give us storylines of us rebuilding cities, give us mythologies, give us smaller and less stupid conflicts, give the factions internal conflicts and character development. I want the Nobles to matter again for the Humans and Elves, where politcal intrique and class wars are back on the menu. I want tribal identity, loa worship, to matter again for the orcs and the trolls. I want storylines where cultures are sharing knowledge and skills with each, like the Earthen Ring & the Cenarion Circle expanding the shaman and druidism across the races. I want to know what neutral factions are doing nowadays and where they're going, like the Tuskarr and the Argent Dawn. SoD has done a good already in providing these types of stories and I'd love to see that come into Retail.
And what’s worse is that it’s always the same one and some of their players have actually made allowances for their actions because they don’t want to have been playing for the fantasy nazis (which they never should have been made to).
It's only because its easier to rally against a single problem, rather than paint a realistic image of two groups of warring factions pitted against one another. The Horde should have defined wins against the Alliance and not be chastised for utterly destroying them. And vice versa for the Alliance to gain realistic wins. There's plenty of reasons for both sides to fight one another. Resources is the major prize for many of them. Orgrimmar is always in need of resources to grow, expand, and aid their peoples. There's always a need for that and they can fight for it. The Alliance have old grudges and ownership of the land as well. Eager to defend itself or reclaim what is lost. But Blizzard are too god damn cowardly to let the Alliance and Horde win and lose ANYTHING and let it stick. Garrosh for hell sake had to be off'd by Thrall in WoD because they didn't want to give Garrosh's death ot either side. When in reality, Jaina at least earned that right for Theramore. Or Vol'jin making good of his threat years ago.
@@foxygames165 yes, it’s not writers who write those stories atrociously, somehow a kid who thought that playing as a big cow was cool ten years ago is now to blame for shitty writing.
It was nice to be with the strongest of your class or the most cunning. For me I would prefer if the Heroes were like mercs. Willing to help any "right" side for gold and weapons and some faction or class pride stuff for good measure.
Playing since Vanilla and watching the faction war become largely pointless, the class order halls were my favorite concept to replace the factions. Really loved the priest one.
There's room for faction pride that is not defined by having to fight the other faction. The game has to grow it's culture - not base it entirely on the war as it generally has been. I think WoW could do well with a live-service team that's beefed up to add more culture and variety and events to the world, even with small cosmetic rewards, like the Azerothian Archives was added. Flesh out the cultures with events that don't have to pertain to the expansion cycle. Harvest festivals in Stormwind and trade markets, honor duels (not to the death) and proving yourself to the clans in various ways for the Orcs. Bring back that wrestling thing from Argus for the Draenei and add some events pertaining to their history and culture to participate in. All the like, we need more than war to define them, since the war is increasingly ignoring a faction split and it no longer can be trusted or used to be the biggest defining split between Alliance and Horde. I feel like Faction Pride can be mistaken as a "I am Horde and proud" and "I war against the Alliance proudly" statement. The two aren't the same or exclusive. A better poll may have had a third option of "Faction War!" to really see how many remain pro-gameplay split.
You brought up an interesting point about the Dracthyr. Why did they choose each faction? With the Pandaren, we learned of the Huojin and Tushui schools, and how their philosophies lead them to choosing each faction, but the Dracthyr all seemed unified in purpose, so why do some follow Cindrethresh and Ebonhorn to the Horde while others follow Azurethal and Wrathion to the Alliance? Even after doing the questline we still don't have a clear answer to that question.
I feel the 'Visage Day' quest kind of answered that. The quest goes deep into how the Dracthyr chose the visage forms they did, and it also gave us insight to how the Dracthyr make choices. Overall, it is pretty simple, they are really the first race that has come up in peace time (so far) so they had the ability to just choose whatever they felt was right for them.
They follow who they think they can trust the most (which is weird since Wrathion caused a literal invasion into Azeroth) I mean I know why Ebonhorn joined the Horde (his loyalty is to Mayla Highmountain and to the Highmountain Tauren)
If you redo the starting zone for the Dracthyr, before you make a decision, you can actually ask each of them why they are making their choices. Its also how they set up Sarkarath, and why there is a neutral faction of Dracthyr who linger back in Valdrakken.
For those of you saying the "For the Alliance" is copying Horde, or is cringe, have I got news for you. For the Alliance came first. "For the Horde" was first uttered by the grunt unit in Warcraft 3. "For the Alliance" was first spoken by the elvish unit in Warcraft 2. Its just that For the Horde caught on first. Of the various rallying cries, the ones I remember the most are, "For the Alliance/Horde." "Remember the Sunwell." "Death to the living." "Remember Theramore/For Theramore." "For the Dark Lady." "Lok'tar Ogar." "Remember Gilneas/For Gilneas" and of course, "For Azeroth"
What would be high risk of bad writing would be to throw in some more faction war. Like, after everything done, it's just madness to expect those two factions to run at each others throat.
I think the choice of race and class is way more interesting than faction choice. The faction choice should be an in-game choice like Aldor and Scryers. There is no reason for our characters existence to be tied to them.
I feel like Blizz blew it SO BADLY with BFA and Sylvanas that they’ve poisoned the well on faction content. It really put a bad taste in people’s mouths. I do think faction identity is at the heart of this game, though, and they could actually do something interesting if they wanted to shake things up. Third faction? What about adding 3 new neutral factions that you can pledge your character to? Steamwheedle cartel, a reformed Scarlet Crusade, old god apologists, I don’t know. They won’t do this because it is far too interesting and apparently would cripple their team of 600 developers for a decade like cross faction capabilities or increased bank space.
Battle for Azeroth did incredible damage to the Faction Pride divide because of how it villainized the Horde without thought for the previous context of their villain arc in Pandaria, and for the character assassination of Sylvanas and by extension some of the other Horde leaders. On the Alliance side, it bred resentment and a sense of powerlessness among the Night Elves, one of the game's most popular races, and gave tacit approval to a variety of horrific actions by their military over the course of the war, like killing civilians and military experiments on animals just as a couple of off the cuff examples. Most of the Alliance's crimes were never even highlighted as being bad, let alone atoned for, implicitly sending the message to the players that they were justified, which erodes the Alliance's identity without even the literary merit of making it seem intentional to the player. Meanwhile the Horde is made SO evil in some instances that Horde players weren't even allowed to see them (Brenandam anyone?) and in most other instances they were left to impotently watch as everything got worse from a front row seat despite the past experience of Pandaria. I want Faction pride to be part of Warcraft's story. My problem is I don't know if I can ever trust Blizzard to do it in a way that won't be disastrous after BFA
Horde was sort of villainous since the beginning. There's nothing wrong in playing as a villain with a purpose to play as a villain. People do and enjoy that. It's a video game.
@@Pihtorich No they weren't, unless you think Conan the Barbarian is the villain in his books. People who say the Horde were always the bad guys in the franchise and people should be OK with that after Warcraft 3 need to develop their reading comprehension skills.
@@PihtorichOnly horde race you could even potentially label as 'evil' were Forsaken and that's if you entirely ignore the context of how and why they did what they did. So no they were never the 'Evil' faction just people always assume the faction with humans and dwarves are by default obviously the 'Good' faction.
@@SanguineQuestConan has nothing to do with it. In that universe there are no paladins in shining armor to contrast them against ugly looking aggressive slave driving people living in dirty shacks that orcs are in Warcraft. Also re-read forsaken introduction in vanilla if you pride yourself on reading comprehension.
@@117haseo3 because that assumption is pretty much correct. But if you try hard enough sure, even LotR orcs can come as poor misunderstood people. Yes Blizzard had a good guy Thrall and played with the noble savage ideal but orcs still are slave driving barbarians living in dirty shacks, and Horde was intended as faction for edgelords, that is players who enjoy the idea of dark/unconventional hero
As a nightborne I feel no faction pride because I was forced into the Horde. My Suramar and my Nightborne were saved by an alliance mage. To think that I had to join the Horde simply because Tyrande was an asshole is disappointing. Why would all of us join the horde? Especially when we didn't have to stand with Nelves to stand with alliance. Especially when our magic needs not interact with people of Darnassus. I'd rather stand with the remaining High elves. I don't feel at home in Orgrimmar, the little piece of belonging comes to my character from Silvermoon. I don't trust nor do I respect all but two horde leaders, Lor'themar and Baine . I'd rather stand with Anduin, Jaina or Alleria. I play a nightborne thus I am a nightborne. My character has pride in one symbol only; A dusk lily fluttering over the walls of Suramar. Were such thing an option I would have spied for the alliance. Were I given an option to desert in BFA I would have. If I am given such an option I will take it.
Remember, you play a Nightborne character, you are not THE Nightborne character, if it's RP, what you know is limited, and pompous Elves do not like other pompous Elves.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 Still I was there to experience the meeting between Thalyssra and Tyrande and it felt forced, stupid really. I wish we were neutral with a choice. And yes. The RP aspect of the immersion is quintessential for me when it comes to this kind of game. Tis a mmoRPg after all.
@@WaywardHex Tyrande leads the Night Elves, and in a medieval setting, representatives getting insulted by other representatives can be seen as a slight to who they're representing for. Heck, in the real world, that's still the case. It's basically geopolitics in Warcraft.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 Still it felt contrived and it doesn't mean that some Nightborne couldn't join the alliance. If it came from Anduin then maybe I would see this as an insurmountable slight. Not Tyrande however. Especially with high elves still there and let's not forget other night elves who decided to return to the arcane arts. I do understand that Lorthemar swooped in on the occasion to present an alliance to the Nightborne but pushing them as a monolith after the involvement alliance had in liberating Suramar felt weak. I can see a whole lot of Nightborne not agreeing with this decision...and it's completely skipped in game. (Like many other things, especially in BFA)
@@WaywardHex Yeah, I get the point, since some Nightborne might've been helped by the Alliance, but if misinformation is rife in the real world, it's even more so in a world that's technologically behind in terms of mass media. Then just because Tyrande begrudgingly let the Eldre'thalas Elves back, and possibly teach new blood, it doesn't really just remove that millennia long hatred towards magic, especially since the Nightborne's leadership in general are also from Tyrande's time. Remember, Suramar is Tyrande's city, and they did not support the rebellion in her eyes.
I've played since Warcraft 1, and that cutscene brought back some good memories! Having said that, I'm okay with "faction pride" fading away. It served its' purpose in the RTS games and early WoW, but with ever larger threats looming over the horizon, it feels increasingly pointless. I honestly thought the faction war was done for good with Garrosh's downfall in MoP, but for whatever reason Blizzard gave us another faction conflict in BfA, which had a story so insultingly bad I nearly gave up on Warcraft entirely after being a fan for more than 20 years. Faction tensions are fine, that's what battlegrounds are for, but we really don't need another BfA.
BfA *so very much could have worked* if it had bothered to see it through to the end, instead of once again putting the factions back together after the first raid. We had *one* raid tier that actively explored how a faction war raid could have looked from both ends, fighting functionally the same boss from different perspectives and advancing stories for both sides... And then it dunked us all in the ocean chasing after Fishlips and said "right, enough of that conflict malarky. You each get a type of fishy friend, but even *they* aren't trying to fight each other and you get along by the end anyway." By the time the Old God woke up to be the main threat (AGAIN, just like in MoP) we had basically forgotten the war all over again. The problem isn't faction war itself. It's refusing to let that *stay* the main focus all the way through an expansion.
As a draenei player I don’t feel any faction pride. I feel draenei pride, lol. Both the horde and the alliance helped us battle the legion ever since TBC, and the Alliance didn’t kick us off Azuremyst. Works for me! But that’s about it.
Yeah but the Horde also almost exterminated you on mainline Draenor remember? I mean we defiled your fallen as well. Meanwhile you were nothing but nice to us
I also feel like they danced around this whole "time of peace" without giving much in the way of detail oh how it's any different than anyother time. It's not like your going to see an orc sell thier wares in stormwind harbor. Without getting lynched first might i add.
As a Horde player all I want to do is feel proud of my faction... but that's really fucking hard to do when Blizzard is either A. Giving us the villain bat... again, or B. Not involving our faction leaders/representatives in the expansion at all... again...
@TheStygian While that may have been the case during the OG Warcraft games (aside from Thrall and his arc), I don't think that's necessarily true anymore. We've had plenty of questlines with tyrannical alliance forces and plenty of horde ones with for-the-good connotations and vice versa. Plus like, one of the starting races for the horde were the Tauren, one of the most peaceful races in the game. Not saying the Horde hasn't done bad (especially when led by two certain shitty leaders), but alliance has had their fair share as well (internment camps, murder, etc) just less so the main games.
Or when they give us fox furries and dwarves. I swapped Alliance after 12 years of Horde after I saw Blizz got so lazy that they threw us the reskinned dwarves too. Horde identity is dead mate, feelsbad
@@kingocoffee6354uhm we barely got if any in the OG Warcraft games. Mostly because of the forming of the Horde, erased Orc culture. They were individual clans coming together each with their own customs. That used to be just once a year in a festival. With the Horde forming that was permanent.
Varian's version of "for the Alliance" had more impact for me than Anduin's. The vehemence with which he says it just gold. Of course you can't really shout it like that, unfortunately. Personally I'm absolutely sick of the faction wars. It's so repetitive. So is the "next big bad guy" thing we have going on. But the faction wars are just... urgh. Come on, we have worked together so many times now. In my headcanon, by now my Alliance characters and my Horde characters have totally bonded over many a life-threatening fight, many a trek through bloodied mud, many a cold night around a campfire. I cannot imagine them fighting each other. They'd refuse. I feel mostly the same way about faction pride, although I think in that case it's a personality thing. I don't have even a flicker of competitiveness in me. I don't have it in me to get hyped up about one faction or the other. My choices do not actually impact the game. I have no choice, no real agency. My actions do not impact the narrative one bit. Nor the world. Not the faction, not the race, not the class. My characters will do the quests they're given even if I am vehemently opposed to the action they're being asked to take, because there is no choice. I cannot influence the world, I can only walk one path, so what is there to feel pride in, as a player?
I feel the game has definitely given the wrong impression of this on and off team up in wow. Those being rather the exception and not the rule and don't represent the factions as whole especially when we consider how big they are realistically. You're a human who lived through the horrors of the first and second wars and all of the sudden you have to share this world with an invasion force who alk if the sudden changed their tune because they happen to live on the other side of the ocean. Well chances are if they brought the human kingdom down once they can do it again.
Legion class order halls was when I first started really changing my mind about factions, before that least I was neutral about 'killing horde' in quests Then we banded together with Khadgar saying, "The legion has never seen an Azeroth so united" as we marched upon the broken shore as one army united against the burning legion a second time. IMO BfA was stupid as fuk for breaking the unity that was established in Legion, only for us to 'embrace it again vs the armies of Azshara and N'Zoth' It seems now we are finally at peace and united against sources of darkness and powers that seek to destroy Azeroth. I pray it stays that way
We have a lot of faction conflicts and pride since Warcraft I. I think we're due to see what it could be when orcs and humans unite (on the long term). Not only would that make more sense story wise but it would be interesting and compelling, just like I find witnessing Thrall and Anduin fighting together compelling.
I love what Nobbel says at the end. Faction pride is more than just the faction conflict. I would like to see this explored a lot more. Faction ideologies, and what can make you proud to be a part of a faction without needing to feel hostility towards the opposing faction.
How? Like how is that compelling? If it was Varian and Garrosh I would have said okay I get it. Both have a temper and are very quick to anger. But Thrall and Anduin like each other, them fighting alongside each other isn’t nearly as compelling as you make it out to be
I really hope they don't include something to the effect of the faction tensions rubbing off on the Dracthyr, causing debates, or whatnot as you put it. One of the reasons I started maining a Dracthyr is because it enabled me to identify more as an Obsidian Warder, who were introduced to the Alliance for help, just as the Dark Talons were taken to the Horde for the same reasons. All that faction stuff, those four wars, we were asleep in a hole in the ground at the time and doesn't have anything to do with us.
I feel like, at least in terms of character creation, it wouldn't surprise me that "picking a faction" would ever go away. I don't have the knowledge of Blizz's code base, but I would bet that picking a faction when creating a character would be hard coded into the game, making it extremely difficult to change. This was likely due to they didn't expect for the story to go as it did when making WoW originally, so they made picking a faction important.
People that are mad about the Faction pride stuff... Guys...We are just not at war with each other. Instead of killing each other were working together. You can still be proud of the faction youre in. Like how youre proud of the country youre from. Or the Sports team you like.... The only difference is now we still claim horde or Alliance... its just were not Killing on sight. Me personally Id rather Claim Pally or Shaman while working with people from horde and the alliance.
Let's all be real, the core of WoW has been entirely changed since the OG Classic WoW Back then, everyone was fine with just playing without any major threat looming over their in-game characters. We weren't too concerned about there always being lore
We need to go back to the gritty war - not "I want the power of the gods" war but the general "I need somewhere to live and youre in a spot that i want" and "Your values conflict with ours so youre not welcome here" to touch on how people learn to deal with those issues and set aside the war - if A v H isnt a thing then make it Azeroth v Something else and give it real impact on characters. The issue imo is that wow story is done and its being dragged out at this point to fill in all the blanks and tie off loose ends that just leads to new ones and retcons.
For the Horde! I love my faction, but like... Alliance cities are so much nicer, and I want to visit them on my toons without being attacked. Lol And yeah, factions are cool but ultimately pointless if we're constantly teaming up to stop the apocalypse every other year.
I was 13 when Warcraft 1 came out. the strategy was make warlock demons and kill all. I remember killing Khadgar quest was hard because limited units and he had demons.
early BFA was the best feel-wise for me, a player who started playing at the end of MoP (although MoP wasn't chicken shit either when it comes to the factions going at each other's throats). Then with the culmination of the Saurfang story at the end of BFA, something lame happened. I felt like I didn't want to see faction stuff again, it was so demoralizing. After late SL and Dragonflight, I can say I no longer play WoW because of the story/lore. Also, no one should let go of their enjoyment of pvp or faction pride even just because a bunch of people are ready to move on, a person is an individual, you are allowed to be into your faction. That's the essence of WoW and it will be as long as there are the two factions still and pvp is in the game.
This is the thing a lot of people don't understand, you can have faction pride with out fighting the other side. It's the difference between patriotism and nationalism
The faction war is a relic from the RTS days that just outright doesn't work for an MMO. Simply due to how the game is structured you can't really have either player faction loose anything important. It doesn't matter how many leaders the Alliance assasinates the Horde will never break, it doesn't matter how many cities the Horde destroys the Alliance will still stand. No-one can ever actually win. So their options were either eternal stalemate or this on again off again bullshit.
Story is half the problem with modern WoW. The other half is that it's a press-board palace built upon mud with no foundation, which means the world in world of warcraft can never exist, because as it sinks into the mud they just build another 10 level layer on top of it adding more weight to the problem, instead of spreading it out and making the world in world of warcraft relevant.
Faction pride died in Dragonflight, contrary to popular belief that BfA killed it. Dragonflight pretty much just let dracthyr pick either faction "cuz they could", unlike Pandaren that picked a faction to their belief in monk stuff or whatever pandas do. Dragonflight also just pretty much said "ok guys so basically we're cool and stuff", the biggest sign that Dragonflight pretty much murdered faction pride was when in The Waking Shores, you went to talk to your faction's expedition leader, and they make you interact with the other faction's expedition leader, which then their son/daughter has doubts of the other faction, but their mother's made them be peaceful by force. The lack of any competition between both factions also killed it because the expansion practically unifies the 2 factions into peace, which in turn makes Dragonflight PvP more of a "mercenary free for all" type of PvP. Mercenary mode really destroyed faction pride by allowing players to choose the opposite faction, this makes faction pride useless as PvPers can bascially "pick their meta" with whatever faction is currently winning BGs. Have pride for the Horde? Too damn bad, go alliance in mercenary mode, the Horde is losing BGs. Do you love the Alliance? Too bad, Horde wins more BGs, switch to Horde in mercenary mode. Notice that there is 0 quests in Dragonflight's story where the opposite faction fights the other faction. In Classic, you were either killing Humans in Hillsbrad, or killing Orcs in Arathi. In TBC, you were burning down the other faction's artillery, and fighting them in BEM. In WotLK, easilly obvious that factions fought. Wrathgate, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Grizzly Hills, etc.. In Cataclysm, you were fighting in Tol Barad and killing Dragonmaw and Wildhammer alike in Twilight Highlands. In Pandaria, the first quest you ever do there is invade the opposite faction's base in the Jade Forest. In WoD, Ashran was being fought over. In Legion, Stormheim was being fought over by Gilneas and Forsaken. In BfA, thats the whole point of the expansion. Shadowlands didnt have alot of it, but obviously didnt make Horde and Alliance truce. However, in Dragonflight, the 2 factions are "truced" and dont fight at all. This one's gonna stir some conflict, but political correctness also attributes to it. Alot of Blizzard is acting PC, which is why theres alot more "LGBTQ things that totally isnt just for money" and other things. The reason that PC kills faction pride is because PC believes that war = bad, and you know damn well they put the war in Warcraft. This led to the "good guy storyline writers" to make the Horde and Alliance at peace to "set muh example". Aside from RP guilds retaining any faction pride and keeping it revived, I can say pretty much every other aspect of the game has had their faction pride annihilated from Dragonflight.
ANOTHER MAJOR POINT worth adding (even though I am late to the party, and nobody will read it) for the death of faction identity is just how much we share these days, and I don't mean just cities. When I was smaller, playing quest chains in the kingdoms, and then creating my horde character to be met with an entirely different continent, with quest lines, stories, items and flight paths exclusive ONLY to my faction, was blowing my mind. Taking a boat to northrend, and knowing that on the other side of the continent, horde is making its push towards icecrown made me really rallied up, and motivated me to be better than them. But nowadays, horde and alliance players rarely have anything exclusive to them, or their races other than heritage quests. Everybody does everything, and everything has to be easily accessible to everyone. We share the same city, same storylines, same frontlines, follow the same band of characters through zones and stories, and even help out a gang mixed of both horde and alliance. There is no sense that what I am doing, is something I do for the alliance, and its exclusive to me, and someone else, at the other end of the continent from horde might be doing their own thing I won't be able to experience, so best thing I can do is do my own thing better than them. *I think its a major issue that contributes towards lack of faction identity. Because we both do the same things.* I think Broken Shore scenario was simply perfect when it comes to the faction pride and identity. Both factions were playing at the same time, but they both were split, they had their own tasks, and they followed their own stories. Both factions ended this scenario, and had different context to what happened (initial reaction for alliance players was utter confusion, and anger towards the horde, then fueled by varians "for the alliance").
Blizzard are too cowardly to make decisions stick, and changing up how war plays. The formula is simple: 1. Horde initiates the conflict, either purposely or tricked into it. 2. Alliance defends itself but typically gets its teeth kicked in. 3. Horde fractures from within. 4. Alliance helps Fractured Horde recover itself and then calls it a day. The faction pride is dying because Blizzard doesn't want to engage in themes and choices where there's clear winners and losers without making it so boldly handed. We also have too many times where the factions are uniting against a major threat, when the technology exists where Alliance and Horde could easily just fight on different fronts or have different takes on fights. But now.. Blizzard is just going to do away with the factions. It's coming where your faction has very little impact and we'll see the homogenization. It's easier to just design for a narrative rather than two takes of the world. They already ignore 80% of the playable races for Orcs, humans, and elves as is anyways. Why bother with the effort and just settle for the simplest design? Faction pride had died in BFA, and they're going to stick to this neutral champions of Azeroth BS which just won't work.
I never really had a strong sense of faction pride, I always wanted to play elves and my guild back in legion was a horde one so I was happy playing my belf warlock but when the void elves came out I was suddenly annoyed that I couldn't play with my new favorite race simply because they were alliance and my guild was horde, to me that conflict always got more in the way of my enjoyment of the game than it helped and having my guildies be super extremist against the alliance and making fun of the shitty writing of the burning of teldrassil by calling nelves charcoal really got on my nerves. I don't mind having the conflict of ideals here and there but straight up war feels dumb to me even if the IP is called "Warcraft"
I know this is unreasonably hard for them to implement continuously, but the Legion Order Halls were easily the most fun concepts they ever had for the "player faction narrative" outside of the Horde/Alliance conflicts. That whole sequence where Paladin players leave to help the Priest players, only for Death Knights to raid the Paladin order hall trying to resurrect Tyrion... That was perfection. I'm sure that, over the years, players have developed a far deeper bond with their classes through gameplay & their communities, than they can ever have with the currently-dilluted factions. The racial heritage quests are also cool, but races feel far less important for the game than ever before.
I think it would have been more interesting if the war had ended years ago and the game made different alliances between factions, like say the undead and the humans reconciling or the night elves and the tauren forming an alliance that opposes goblins, for example. In WWII, Japan was an enemy of the USA but now they are very close allies. If the game wasn’t going to fully commit to the factions all the way, then they could have just let them end years ago to explore new dynamics. It would have made players more connected to their races, rather than their factions.
When I was in college, right around the end of vanilla and the start of BC, we had assaults take place on campus because of faction choice. Tells you how much it mattered back then.
I was in my early 20s whe Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans came out. I played every game and was in WoW beta where I played a Undead Warlock. When WoW went Live I decided to be Alliance only so from Launch until MoP I would only make Alliance characters. But after MoP came out I now make characters of both factions and have since. Personally I think the factions are no longer necessary. I feel the community has grown and evolved with the game. From a lore and gameplay reasons you are correct with the criticism. But now I no longer play games I play characters in any games.
They might need to rethink faction in general. For instance, I think the Tauren and night elves could be allies. Make a neutral faction for the panda's, Goblins and gnomes could work together on crazy devices. They can spice it up and mix it around a bit while still having conflict of interest between different races.
@@max7971 they were examples, could be anything. Tell me you don't understand what you read without telling me you don't understand what you read. But maybe you have a better example, let's hear it
no need to fix something that's not broken, just re-ignite the faction war like it was before and it's done. WoW doesn't have to always be just about Azeroth vs Cosmological force.
Honestly, after all the wars, the death, and the bloodshed, I can totally see most inhabitants of Azeroth to be fed up of fighting for their lives. Leaving all the war and suffering to the past and try to forge a new era of peace is totally a step forward in my opinion, and the most sensible thing in the future of this game. Having Alliance and Horde fight endlessly "because yes" makes little sense to me, and I think comes mostly from people who care little about the lore and just want them to slaughter each other even if there's no actual reason to. We have Talia Menethil in the Forsaken, Sylvanas cleansed, Genn has learned to let go of his anger and left his throne to his daughter, Anduin seems more inclined to peace than his father was, Thrall is for peace too and is quite respected in the Horde. Lor'Themar as far as I know tried multiple times to join the Alliance. Convincing Tyrande and Malfurion might be harder but still doable I think. I'm quite out of the loop about WoW lore but that's how I feel. I hope the game keeps going in the direction of ending the faction war and open all capitals to all factions. And in-game wise... I don't like anything about the horde, except the Blood elves, so i would absolutely love to be able to visit and learn teleport and portal to Silvermoon with my human mage, it would become my 100% go-to hub.
Destroying faction pride is what made me quit the game. They completely ruined the Horde in BfA, once again forcing the Horde in the incompetent villain role, once again falling into a civil war.
Blizzard really fell off in terms of Faction pride and Faction conflict after Pandaria, Legion dealt a lethal blow and shadowlands put it down completely as much as people disliked it, BFA tried its best to bring it back but in the end the ol stick of fighting the 3rd guy came up. though it was the time when the Alliance Finally got its second warcry 'Stand as one'. but from what I've seen Blizz hasn't really Bothered to promote it the same way they throw around Lok'tar Ogar. the devs can say what they say, but actions speak louder than words and the horde boner doesn't lie: pandaland is a prime example, Horde: the Trolls ride on Orgrimmar. Alliance: Robot Cat, and not like the sabers I mean like a house cat. I wouldn't be Until _Legion_ when we get something of Equal Epicness with Anduin taking up Shalamayne at the place where his father was disenchanted theres some really fertile ground for interracial tension and conflicts. there is no fuckin way, that the Night elves are just going to forgive the burning of Teldrassil, they had so many opportunities to do a "did you think we will forgive? did you think we will forget?" as a mirror to the Forsaken's march on the Wrath gate and I don't mean whole faction fights, I just mean some minor conflicts, like Night elves telling goblins to stop harvesting their forests, goblins going Nah Profit. and then suddenly Goblins go missing in the night and are found slaughtered all over the felled trees with new saplings planted near their corpses. you have so many ideals and beliefs there is no way they all get along without hating every second of it or just don't care because they've reached the nirvana of not giving a Shit. its like the dying dragon maw Orc, why was there no neutral option to say you have no place judge the orc for his actions because you have killed so many things that you could fill a lake with their blood and not everything that you slayed deserved it.
Alliance and Horde just became more and more dumb with time. I'd say I care about a Stormwind if I'm with my human, about the Kaldorei when I'm playing my Night Elves. I'd say you can feel more Horde if you are playing your orc than orc, but also orc. Not sure I can care much about the Horde that much tho when you have undead, vulpera, elves all around.
The most recent example, for me, was when they allowed people to unlock a Man'ari Draenei customization. As cool as it was, it was kinda uncanny seeing a bunch of literal demons just casually running around Stormwind. A far cry from Vannila when, canonically, Warlocks had to hide away in secret locations to avoid persecution.
I've mained a troll since BC, and while I now have toons on both sides, and all races, I still love the Horde, bruised and all, but I am definitely more loyal to the trolls, especially my mistreated boy Vul'jin... Though Rokhan has been a good Darkspear chieftain and has grown on me.
It doesn't matter anymore. When the mechanics and gameplay that supported faction vs. faction pvp disappeared with War Mode and Blizzard refuses to implement GvG, it's no shit that Faction pride simply ain't there.
The probable lore-accurate reason they want to "combine" the factions is due to faction-majority realms. They combatted this years ago with merged realms in retail (seeing others with * from other realms), it's an issue on classic realms and I bet era suffers too. Problem is, instead of coming up with genuine ideas at the time and try to flesh out the factions equally, they went with "Red=bad, blue=good" trope, which was interesting in MoP but it was done awfully in BfA. But at least it all led to the Dragonflight Avengers squad on their own island!
Not only did they damage faction identity (which I consider as a core value for WoW), they also damaged the racial identity with the new starting zone Exile's Reach. While I see the advantages of having an updated starting experience, new players are completely missing the history, meaning and feeling of their chosen race. The way the new players are thrown into the current expansion's story must be incredibly confusing for them. As a forsaken I'll never forget the thrill of visiting Undercity for the first time and meeting the Dark Lady. I find racial identity to be essential for the foundation of faction identity in a player. Also it's what made WoW unique among other mmorpg titles, those "wowkillers", at the time.
From what I remember you can only peacefully enter gilneas during the quest line as horde, after that you can get attacked in the city so you can only peacefully sit outside
in the end what was that voice clip for "for the horde?" I was expecting a Thrall or normal garrosh quote but im just not remembering that voice line atm
I get liking the lore and aesthetics of one over the other, but we're not getting a more "faction war" expac than BFA and people hated that one. People don't care about it in the story and PvP (where it's by FAR most prominent) is super-underplayed. "Faction pride" is a complete relic, and that's fine.
Faction conflict at this point is stupid. It has been stupid since Legion. The fact we had an invasion by demons, with thousands upon thousands killed, only to turn around and start another war makes absolutely no sense. There is a thing called war weariness, ya know? Even a warrior faction like the Horde is not beyond experiencing it. Not to mention the loss of so many people would have made the ability to go to war near impossible. The fact Saurfang didn't strike Sylvanas down the moment she ordered the burning of Teldrassil is beyond me. Don't even bring that honor stuff into it either. Saurfang had seen what genocide looked like, harbored deep feelings of regret for it, yet he allowed it all the same. He knew what would happen if Sylvanas did like she wanted and burned Teldrassil down. It was a blatant repeat of his past and he failed to stop it before it happened. How was that in any possible way honorable? Its not honorable to follow a leader that will lead to all your people being killed. Having honor doesn't mean you're stupid. Lets not even get into the fact that the Horde had experienced a bad leader not long before that in the form of Garrosh. You would THINK the Horde would be on guard against another murderous maniac. Now, mind you, I'm not blaming Saurfang. I'm blaming the writers. They heavily undermined both Saurfang and Sylvanas' characters in that act. Finding out what Sylvanas reasoning was/is flawed at best. The dude that made the Lich King possible, ya know, Arthas that killed you and all your people? Yeah. Now you're following his orders to "end the cycle of death". ... Really? What we have now isn't about faction pride. It's about picking the pieces up from a shit storyline that made little to no sense. The fact Amidrassil and Gilneas both are open to the Horde makes NO sense at all. I know the Fourth War and death's veil shattering happened seven years ago, but we're talking about night elves that have lived thousands upon thousands of years. Not to mention the current Worgen are the same Worgen that saw their homeland invaded without provocation and summarily sacked. Not their children, not their grandchildren, but the very people that these war crimes were commited against. They just let them waltz right in? Nah. I call bullshit on that. Now they're trying to artifically drive the whole faction peace thing down our throats when it makes no sense. They could have just had that happen after Legion.
There is more to faction pride than the faction war, but the way they write the different factions/races doesn’t reflect this. They mostly feel like different variations of humans, and not unique. I got this feel a lot in the heritage armor quests, you could replace all the npcs with humans and it wouldn’t feel any different
To be honest, current Alliance is more like Horde from the beginning of WoW (led by the one high king, or in this case, regent), than current Horde, which is even more then divided than Alliance back then, when every race was focused on their problems than faction's affairs in general. In short, Alliance became blue Horde, since concept "together but apart" seems foreign for many players.
Been playing Warcraft games since 1994. During the campaigns in Warcraft 3, I had assumed that the faction war was going to finally be over. When Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game came out in 2003, it seemed to confirm this by allowing mixed Horde/Alliance parties and seeming to encourage it. I was rather disappointed when WoW came out and the faction war was back on. I wanted to play an Orc Warrior and had a friend that was going to play a Human Paladin, we were disappointed when we found out we couldn't play together. Honestly, if the faction war and the whole Horde vs Alliance thing is finally gone, then its a good thing. There's only so many times you can have the Horde and Alliance team up against a world ending threat only to go back to trying to kill each other before it starts getting old.
Yeah but the story can get repetitive (very repetitive) if it’s just The Horde and Alliance have to team up against another threat… again. The main reason why the faction war exists is to keep the factions themselves interesting. The Horde is always a powder keg a few seconds away from exploding and while that makes them the aggressor causing disharmony and making the Alliance the aggressor for once would have made things very different but made them very interesting
@@JamailvanWestering "Yeah but the story can get repetitive (very repetitive) if it’s just The Horde and Alliance have to team up against another threat… again." Which is why the story should not be about the Horde or the Alliance. It should be a focus on the player. At this point, my Blood Elf Paladin has stopped Old Gods, Elemental Lords, Crazed Dragons, The Burning Legion, the Scourge, and other threats to Azeroth, has been called Hero and Champion by various important figures and nuetral factions, aided the Worgen in reclaiming Gilnaes, and has proven time and again that he cares only about protecting Azeroth......but because he's a Blood Elf, he will be attacked by farmers, villagers, and/or guards for wandering into the wrong area while out exploring. Other MMORPGs have done great at telling stories without needing to use factions and a faction war as a crutch, so why can't WoW? Why must the existence of the Horde and the Alliance and their eternal, pointless, war be such a huge focus? Why does a hero get murdered by the people he has saved and protected multiple times simply because he's the wrong race?
Honestly, I used to be all about the Horde... but as I've played and dabbled in the alliance, and played on RP servers, I just found myself always wishing I could interact with the other factions than I'm playing at the moment a bit better. I tend to carry the Potion of Tongues and trade them to people. Also on Moonguard, the few horde players there tend to be found at alliance RP events and it adds a lot. Making us permanent enemies is actually what destroyed my faction pride. Why do the factions constantly need to be at war from the players point of view?
When I started World of Warcraft I played Horde exclusively. Part of it was because all of my friends were on that side, but I also liked the "monsters banding together to survive" vibe of the faction. But my friends started leaving, and my love for the faction took a big hit when Garrosh was made warchief and the Horde started committing war crimes. So I created a few Alliance characters and played them... and found I preferred Alliance zones anway for leveling. And then came Battle for Azeroth. Bad writing as yet another warchief starts (you guessed it) committing war crimes, and that was that. I stopped playing Horde entirely, and haven't looked back. I guess I do still have a bit of the old faction pride... for the Alliance. But mostly I'm just sick of it. Let the faction conflict end permanently. It's a relic of the past.
My worgen rogue hated the horde because of Sylvanas but now she’s gone, he is hesitant in trusting the horde but will cooperate if it means the betterment of Azeroth. My void elf Mage doesn’t care about the horde since the Rhen’dorei where banished from silvermoon so he is more for Azeroth. I want to keep faction pride but focus more on “for Azeroth”
Yep, because of Blizzard's black and white disney style story telling the values of horde and alliance has become homogeneously interwined in such a way that there is no distinction between the two factions.
I think that faction pride is healthy for the game; however, I would like to have an option to make a “Mercenary” (non-faction) character of any race, to do all the content of both factions.
To be honest , I loved the factions as they were in WC3 , and its story was so well written because there were multiple factions , not just two , not just one. I think 1 faction will greatly diminish the story telling.
What is interesting of Warcraft is definitely the diversity of cultures, races, histories, and characters that populate the world. That should be front and center, and each time they manage to do so, the outcome is fantastic and makes the setting more interesting than most. BUT faction conflict it NOT necessary to have all that; actually at this point it just makes characters and events unnecessarily stupid, and it pushes the different races and cultures within each faction into a forced and uninteresting uniformity. Faction conflict is just an aspect in this wealth of lore, stories and characters accumulated over time, and it's a mistake every time they get conflated. At this point in the history of Azeroth, faction conflict doesn't make much sense, both thematically and gameplay wise. There are bigger threats to unite against, most major characters have learned from the mistakes of war and... People just want to play whatever they want with their friends with any character they choose to make, ffs! So, basically: Identity, cultures, tensions and differences: YES. Faction conflict and separation? We have outgrown that simplification, and so do our best characters, so at this point NO.
As a player I never really had faction pride. I picked characters based on which my friends played, then aesthetics and now with cross play I just pick on aesthetic. I feel like faction pride needs to be coming from lead narrative characters to really have any impact on the progression of the game and since almost every expansion revolves around ganging up on Big Bad that is rarely affiliated with one side or the other.. meh. We commonly end up working together, we didn't kill each other in order halls.. we can be civil and get things done more effectively without this conflict. There is plenty of war in warcraft without faction ire.
I somehow have strong yet mixed feelings on this topic. On one hand I feel like Factions have been such a core of what has built Warcraft as a franchise, story and game that they do need to keep that pride and identity relevant. On the other hand, post W3 most "Faction Conflicts" have been extremely forced and poorly written, often causing them to contradict the main narrative of any given expansion or storyline (Pandaria being the one *big* exception). By now I genuinely feel that there's nothing in the nature of both Horde and Alliance that inherently makes them fight, plus it's problematic gameplay wise (hence the cross-faction changes in recent years). Currently I feel like WoWs lore have made it more reasonable for conflicts and tensions to arise between the cosmological forces (depending on how this new Saga ends but especially if it's in a "forced balance" between all of these forces). That IMO would lead to both frictions that feel way more natural (as all forces do have an *inherent* reason to keep the others in check), but also to those same forces naturally allying with one another to fight both external and internal threats, since the importance in keeping that "balance" would be above any other interest for everyone.
Getting back into MoP remix made me realize how much I been missing the faction war. It reminded me a lot of my values back when I was motivated to fight for the Horde. Remember the BFA promotional material when guys were avoiding sitting next to each other on the bus because they had opposite tattoos? Faction pride matters, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
I think Blizzard should stop trying to force faction conflict in the game. Trying to come up with a reason why Alliance and Horde should be at war again after having just teamed up to stop whatever world-ending threat in the previous expansion for the umpteenth time gets contrived. Plus, it's not like payers actually need a lore reason to rep their faction and pvp. Remember that lore-wise during vanilla WoW the factions were supposed to be in a state of cold war instead of open conflict, with multiple quests being about keeping a full-scale war from breaking out (for example that's the whole reason for Horde players to do the Onyxia questline), yet that didn't stop players from getting very attached to their faction and fighting the opposite one. Meanwhile BFA was billed as the expansions that would "put the War back and Warcraft", and it's widely hated as one of the worst expansions and even Blizzard seems to have admitted the faction conflict plotline didn't work because they abandoned it partway through to have the Alliance and Horde fight a common threat once again.
While I really like the faction war and the two sides being different, Blizzard has been slowly ruining that with every expansion for the last 19 years. I'm not surprised that people have stopped caring since they're basically the same at this point. The most cynical i can be is that doing away with the factions means Blizzard only has to make 1 set of quests instead of 2.
For me: I used to think the faction thing was good for years, I'd say maybe up until orignal Wrath, but then it just sorta got to a point where I just wanted to be able to play with others. Also round about that time I tried out a few other mmo's (wow was my 1st) and it was at that point that I thought the whole faction thing didn't really have anything of value to it. The stories told involving the factions generally always end the same, after all we always need to end up at the same place lorewise. Another thing for me, is so much time has passed since the old wars in-game, and a lot of new faces have come to the forefront. Hanging onto that old story at this point, especially after we've worked together so many times, it just seems like a waste. Again because we just end up working together towards a common goal at the end of the day. Now to be clear I know WoW will never get rid of factions outright, I can see the other comments on here and a great many folks still care about that stuff. For me, however, it's just an old lame duck that I'd wouldn't care if it went away.
![The STORY you NEED to KNOW before The War Within - SPOILER FREE! [Lore]](/img/1.gif)
i used to have faction pride, now i just have Class pride. Suffer well fellow knights of the ebon blade
A perspective from a long time Horde Player:
I think BFA is a huge factor in faction pride death because it was the death of faction nuance. Warcraft’s story was at its best when the races of each faction were treated as actual people with their own thoughts, feelings, ideology and genuine reasons for doing what they do. Vanilla-Wrath executed this perfectly, expanding on WC3.
For example, it made perfect sense that there would be plenty of humans who still resent and distrust the Orcs due to their history, especially if they lost family directly and there are still Old orcs around who have committed atrocities in their past-but at the same time, why should an a younger generation of Orcs pay for the crimes of their parents? Their only crime was to be born on a planet which they aren’t welcome. And the Orcs as a whole were left with no choice but to carve out a new existence and redemption for themselves. This created a narrative where both sides had good reasons for what they did. Both sides had values, families, and a future they wanted to preserve. It rejected the shallow narrative of Orcs just being inherently evil while still holding them accountable.
Orcs and Humans are also just one of the many examples of where things were evened out.
The new Horde’s desire for a prosperous future sometimes required them to play an antagonistic role because it was essential to their survival in a world who views them as little more than savage brutes, but an antagonistic approach didn’t necessarily make them comically evil either.
MOP did a great job too imo. That’s where we see the Horde’s differing and diverse ideologies collide. Many rallied behind Garrosh and many stood against him. And even though the horde was definitely antagonistic in MoP, there was NUANCE. but ultimately, the story forced the horde to overcome the ideology that allowed a leader like Garrosh to happen.
But then that entire plot was rendered useless in BFA. The evil for evil’s sake was not surprising for the Forsaken to do, but for the Horde to seemingly be complacent and even thrilled about it until the end was out of left field. Why on Earth would all these races who loudly stood against Garrosh suddenly forget about that and be okay with Sylvanas? The burning of Teldrassil made the conflict a distinct black and white. And now since then, the narrative has been one where Horde has had to spend the past few years apologizing and being ashamed. That is incredibly demoralizing for a playable faction.
I feel like now it’s either the Horde completely kisses the Alliance’s ass and share all the same values as them or else they’re evil. It’s either be Red Alliance or turn into comically evil monsters, there can be no in between. And that’s just shallow
I think part of that is also the consequences of the way that MoP was done with the importance of Alliance characters and forces in that story and fight. It kinda left the Horde gutted in that aspect and the differences seem really dumb. Now if the Alliance didn't explicitly choose to walk away and not kill the Horde, but instead took to many loses compared to the Horde troops and so couldn't win a follow up fight despite wanting to. It would make more sense for the conflict to continue as it did before. They could bring the conflict back as it was, and I think it would do a lot for the story or setting but it would require a good amount of story telling work.
@@Gronmin yes I absolutely agree with that take. You make a good point
I think for the Horde, faction pride died the second time they got slapped with a Big Bad for the leader. The Garrosh plotline was bad enough, but repeating it note for note with Sylvanas was the nail in the coffin.
I've often said that if BfA had been written and plotted in the same spirit as its opening cinematic, then things would have been a lot different. But instead...
Faction pride was always based off good vs evil/barbaric conflict where you could play as evil and enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a video game.
I'd say the problem is that furries and woke storylines led you to believe horde isn't evil and watered down its barbaric character.
@@Pihtorichscary woke people ruined the horde being evil. They must have gone back in time and changed Warcraft 2.
@@Pihtorich no, literally never was. What you talking about was dying agony of faction pride, because "playing as villain" was achieved ONLY at the expense of Alliance. So Blizzard burned Alliance to cook for the Horde, when Alliance died as a faction you were left to starve.
@@Pihtorich That's simply not true. The Horde might be barbaric, but it hasn't been painted as evil since WC2. The Horde we're introduced to in Vanilla has evil elements in it (looking at you Forsaken) but is led by Thrall and also has the Tauren. Please tell me with a straight face that Thrall and the tauren are evil.
@@cenotemirror would be more fair to say it has some good elements in it.
If what's been happening in Ashenvale, Stonetalon, Hillsbrad etc during vanilla is fine, then I don't understand what "turn to evil" people are talking about. Garrosh and Sylvanas did nothing wrong
"So, let's talk about where it all began..." And so he boots up Windows 95, I love it!
Your last point is by far the most important. There are better ways to portray faction pride then being at war with and attacking the other faction. Adding faction, race, and class quests FAR more often than they do would go a long way to making your choices feel important. I understand that it means Dev time for quests that not everyone may interact with, but I think we're at a point in WoW's cycle that to draw players back it needs to be more than just a rush to end game content which is what it feels like.
Like the Tauren quest to get the two-hand Totem weapon. It felt so good being a Tauren and doing that quest. Way more than the Tauren heritage armor quest, which just felt like a prelude to Shadowlands. Another great example is the Orc heritage quest.
As a death knight I don't feel any faction pride. I started as Horde and friends pushed me to go Alliance. All the story lines of the Alliance and the Horde never really feel like they're for me. I enjoyed Legion way more focusing on our class fantasy than Red vs Blue. Yes it's neat to see the differences between one another but the constant fighting over any little stone thrown doesn't interest me and doesn't make my character feel like they belong to a group, just that I have no agency. Perhaps it's just my roots but as a technical undead, why wouldn't my character see eye to eye more potentially with the Forsaken and instead be sworn to the Alliance just because I'm human?
Because your character is limited to the world, and wouldn't technically carry your values in the real world. People having views aligned to the real world other than the universe limitations of the game kinda makes no sense, but it's still a game so it cannot be avoided, however; in game, it would be harder for a human to forgive the Forsaken since a lot of survivors surged towards Stormwind after Lordaeron fell.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 As a death knight why would I care? What I'm trying to say is fueling class fantasy is better than needing to fuel the red vs blue and faction pride
@@Jackofl3lades Lingering attachments to the faction you fought till death for. Death just doesn't magically rid you of your attachments, or just even the copium of trying to help your faction because of the denial that your dead could still work. That's how I see it, but it could very well be someone who just doesn't care at all too, heck, there are probably members of the Horde, and Alliance that just don't care as long as it's good money, and just Alliance, or Horde by technicality, and not personally.
For the Alliance? For the Horde?
No, hail to the Scourge.
@@thenerdbeast7375 Pftt. For Lord Illidan.
It died in BFA when Saurfang yelled "For Azeroth!"
That felt like a huge moment to me.
It died in Legion when Varian said "For Azeroth!", its corpse just shambled around for a while
It ended in the siege of orgrimar when varian walked away instead of ending the horde.
Well blizzard had 2 choices. Keep finding reasons for the factions to fight with no real evolution because neither side can truly lose due to representing 2 player factions. The other option, and the one they chose, was to build on the world and threats that pose both factions, at the sake of faction identity and loyalty.
@@ungulatemanalphadidn't he say "for the alliance" before he died?
"I don't think many would have expected factions to share cities with each other". Me nodding my head in agreement as I sit in Valdrakken.
Or Shattrah, Dalaran, Dalaran again, our covenant HQ’s, our class halls. Oribos
@@JamailvanWestering Those are non Alliance/Horde cities that the factions are guests in. Not faction cities.
valdrakken is not a faction city so it doesn't count
Quel'thelas makes the absolute most sense for both tactics in that city. The elves were allies with the humans well before they became horde to fight the Amani trolls. With the introduction of a Lothar in the war within just strengthens that old alliance.
@@JamailvanWestering Neutral grounds.
I love the Horde but I would honestly be happier if the focus shifted from the factions to the races.
This 100%. I think one of the biggest problems when people talk about this kind of thing is that they focus on "[FACTION] not getting enough rep, while [OTHER FACTION] get a bunch". When really people should be wanting specific races to be getting rep instead. I think faction pride is stupid and hope it goes away, and I think the whole idea of faction pride morphed out of control into real life where real human people in real life hate other real human people in real life because of the video game faction they pick. So I already strongly dislike the faction pride stuff, and factions and general and the faction war, and basically any of that garbage. However I will agree that I would like to see more specific race rep. TWW seems to be focusing a lot on humans and dwarves, but from what I've heard it sounds like the last zone has a lot of Goblin stuff which is cool. I imagine Blood Elves will obviously play a big role in Midnight as well as Void Elves. But it would be nice to see Dracthyr keep being a thing going forward, Tauren haven't done a whole lot lately, it would be nice to see them do stuff, Draenei I'm sure will come up again in the Last Titan. I'd love to see Vulpera do a bit more etc. Also frankly I'd like to see more friendly NPC races. I think it's very cool the Niffen aren't being forgotten about and are actually gonna have a society set up in TWW. It was cool seeing another whole part of the world with Tuskarr. I'd love to see more of that.
Are you a furry/scally?
Nope, would be awful, i hope they still put they words in the paper, after saying that the faction war will be back in the War within ending
I think faction pride in terms of red vs blue has gotten to a point where its immature at this point. WoW needs smaller storylines that deal with the aftermath, the consequences, of all these wars and define the cultures of the world. People aren't "blue", people are the Kaldorei, they're the Gnomes, they're Dwarves, they're the Draenei, they're the Humans. People aren't "red", they're Orcs, they're Trolls, they're the Tauren, they're the Forsaken. Give us storylines of us rebuilding cities, give us mythologies, give us smaller and less stupid conflicts, give the factions internal conflicts and character development. I want the Nobles to matter again for the Humans and Elves, where politcal intrique and class wars are back on the menu. I want tribal identity, loa worship, to matter again for the orcs and the trolls. I want storylines where cultures are sharing knowledge and skills with each, like the Earthen Ring & the Cenarion Circle expanding the shaman and druidism across the races. I want to know what neutral factions are doing nowadays and where they're going, like the Tuskarr and the Argent Dawn. SoD has done a good already in providing these types of stories and I'd love to see that come into Retail.
Why not both?
The faction wars seem to rely on one faction turning into Fantasy Hitler and if that's the case I'm done with it.
And what’s worse is that it’s always the same one and some of their players have actually made allowances for their actions because they don’t want to have been playing for the fantasy nazis (which they never should have been made to).
It's only because its easier to rally against a single problem, rather than paint a realistic image of two groups of warring factions pitted against one another. The Horde should have defined wins against the Alliance and not be chastised for utterly destroying them. And vice versa for the Alliance to gain realistic wins.
There's plenty of reasons for both sides to fight one another. Resources is the major prize for many of them. Orgrimmar is always in need of resources to grow, expand, and aid their peoples. There's always a need for that and they can fight for it. The Alliance have old grudges and ownership of the land as well. Eager to defend itself or reclaim what is lost.
But Blizzard are too god damn cowardly to let the Alliance and Horde win and lose ANYTHING and let it stick. Garrosh for hell sake had to be off'd by Thrall in WoD because they didn't want to give Garrosh's death ot either side. When in reality, Jaina at least earned that right for Theramore. Or Vol'jin making good of his threat years ago.
Horde players have made it abundantly clear that they will always support Fantasy Hitler, so they're partly to blame.
@@foxygames165 yes, it’s not writers who write those stories atrociously, somehow a kid who thought that playing as a big cow was cool ten years ago is now to blame for shitty writing.
@@max7971 Horrible strawman. If you aren't aware of the "Garrosh did nothing wrong" meme, then you just plain haven't played the game.
The faction war just doesn't make sense anymore. The two sides have fought alongside each other more than they fought against each other.
I prefer Class Factions like on Legion, world had changed
It was nice to be with the strongest of your class or the most cunning.
For me I would prefer if the Heroes were like mercs. Willing to help any "right" side for gold and weapons and some faction or class pride stuff for good measure.
i would be down with that
For some reason, the leaders of horde and alliance have no language barrier with each other but the players do.
Vol’Jin had to send out secret messages to the Alliance to come help with the Gurubashi and Zandalari threats remember?
@@JamailvanWestering In human language? 🙂
@@CueCN you said that faction leaders were communicating with each other, when that’s not entirely true
@@JamailvanWestering I’m saying they can understand each other’s language, but horde players cannot understand alliance players’ language.
@@CueCNits just for the sake of the story dude
Playing since Vanilla and watching the faction war become largely pointless, the class order halls were my favorite concept to replace the factions. Really loved the priest one.
There's room for faction pride that is not defined by having to fight the other faction. The game has to grow it's culture - not base it entirely on the war as it generally has been. I think WoW could do well with a live-service team that's beefed up to add more culture and variety and events to the world, even with small cosmetic rewards, like the Azerothian Archives was added. Flesh out the cultures with events that don't have to pertain to the expansion cycle. Harvest festivals in Stormwind and trade markets, honor duels (not to the death) and proving yourself to the clans in various ways for the Orcs. Bring back that wrestling thing from Argus for the Draenei and add some events pertaining to their history and culture to participate in. All the like, we need more than war to define them, since the war is increasingly ignoring a faction split and it no longer can be trusted or used to be the biggest defining split between Alliance and Horde.
I feel like Faction Pride can be mistaken as a "I am Horde and proud" and "I war against the Alliance proudly" statement. The two aren't the same or exclusive. A better poll may have had a third option of "Faction War!" to really see how many remain pro-gameplay split.
You brought up an interesting point about the Dracthyr. Why did they choose each faction? With the Pandaren, we learned of the Huojin and Tushui schools, and how their philosophies lead them to choosing each faction, but the Dracthyr all seemed unified in purpose, so why do some follow Cindrethresh and Ebonhorn to the Horde while others follow Azurethal and Wrathion to the Alliance? Even after doing the questline we still don't have a clear answer to that question.
I feel the 'Visage Day' quest kind of answered that. The quest goes deep into how the Dracthyr chose the visage forms they did, and it also gave us insight to how the Dracthyr make choices. Overall, it is pretty simple, they are really the first race that has come up in peace time (so far) so they had the ability to just choose whatever they felt was right for them.
They follow who they think they can trust the most (which is weird since Wrathion caused a literal invasion into Azeroth)
I mean I know why Ebonhorn joined the Horde (his loyalty is to Mayla Highmountain and to the Highmountain Tauren)
If you redo the starting zone for the Dracthyr, before you make a decision, you can actually ask each of them why they are making their choices. Its also how they set up Sarkarath, and why there is a neutral faction of Dracthyr who linger back in Valdrakken.
Some Dracthyr really like spikes on their buildings and some don't. Simple as that
@@ReikaBirdVods I am still utterly peeved that I was given ZERO CHOICE in my drac's visage form.
The only time I felt faction pride was on the original DK starting zone
Glory to the scourge!
For those of you saying the "For the Alliance" is copying Horde, or is cringe, have I got news for you. For the Alliance came first. "For the Horde" was first uttered by the grunt unit in Warcraft 3. "For the Alliance" was first spoken by the elvish unit in Warcraft 2. Its just that For the Horde caught on first. Of the various rallying cries, the ones I remember the most are, "For the Alliance/Horde." "Remember the Sunwell." "Death to the living." "Remember Theramore/For Theramore." "For the Dark Lady." "Lok'tar Ogar." "Remember Gilneas/For Gilneas" and of course, "For Azeroth"
Anduin's "stand as one" really should have been echoed in BFA as the Alliance's new war cry.
I'm partial to "Alliance, Assemble!"
@@Marcai I know. But beyond the trailer, was it ever used again?
Silly commenter, WoW players haven't played Waracft
you forgot the goblins battlecry of "for all my homies"
What would be high risk of bad writing would be to throw in some more faction war. Like, after everything done, it's just madness to expect those two factions to run at each others throat.
I think the choice of race and class is way more interesting than faction choice. The faction choice should be an in-game choice like Aldor and Scryers. There is no reason for our characters existence to be tied to them.
I feel like Blizz blew it SO BADLY with BFA and Sylvanas that they’ve poisoned the well on faction content. It really put a bad taste in people’s mouths.
I do think faction identity is at the heart of this game, though, and they could actually do something interesting if they wanted to shake things up. Third faction? What about adding 3 new neutral factions that you can pledge your character to? Steamwheedle cartel, a reformed Scarlet Crusade, old god apologists, I don’t know.
They won’t do this because it is far too interesting and apparently would cripple their team of 600 developers for a decade like cross faction capabilities or increased bank space.
Battle for Azeroth did incredible damage to the Faction Pride divide because of how it villainized the Horde without thought for the previous context of their villain arc in Pandaria, and for the character assassination of Sylvanas and by extension some of the other Horde leaders. On the Alliance side, it bred resentment and a sense of powerlessness among the Night Elves, one of the game's most popular races, and gave tacit approval to a variety of horrific actions by their military over the course of the war, like killing civilians and military experiments on animals just as a couple of off the cuff examples. Most of the Alliance's crimes were never even highlighted as being bad, let alone atoned for, implicitly sending the message to the players that they were justified, which erodes the Alliance's identity without even the literary merit of making it seem intentional to the player. Meanwhile the Horde is made SO evil in some instances that Horde players weren't even allowed to see them (Brenandam anyone?) and in most other instances they were left to impotently watch as everything got worse from a front row seat despite the past experience of Pandaria.
I want Faction pride to be part of Warcraft's story. My problem is I don't know if I can ever trust Blizzard to do it in a way that won't be disastrous after BFA
Horde was sort of villainous since the beginning. There's nothing wrong in playing as a villain with a purpose to play as a villain. People do and enjoy that. It's a video game.
@@Pihtorich No they weren't, unless you think Conan the Barbarian is the villain in his books. People who say the Horde were always the bad guys in the franchise and people should be OK with that after Warcraft 3 need to develop their reading comprehension skills.
@@PihtorichOnly horde race you could even potentially label as 'evil' were Forsaken and that's if you entirely ignore the context of how and why they did what they did. So no they were never the 'Evil' faction just people always assume the faction with humans and dwarves are by default obviously the 'Good' faction.
@@SanguineQuestConan has nothing to do with it. In that universe there are no paladins in shining armor to contrast them against ugly looking aggressive slave driving people living in dirty shacks that orcs are in Warcraft.
Also re-read forsaken introduction in vanilla if you pride yourself on reading comprehension.
@@117haseo3 because that assumption is pretty much correct. But if you try hard enough sure, even LotR orcs can come as poor misunderstood people.
Yes Blizzard had a good guy Thrall and played with the noble savage ideal but orcs still are slave driving barbarians living in dirty shacks, and Horde was intended as faction for edgelords, that is players who enjoy the idea of dark/unconventional hero
As a nightborne I feel no faction pride because I was forced into the Horde.
My Suramar and my Nightborne were saved by an alliance mage. To think that I had to join the Horde simply because Tyrande was an asshole is disappointing.
Why would all of us join the horde? Especially when we didn't have to stand with Nelves to stand with alliance.
Especially when our magic needs not interact with people of Darnassus. I'd rather stand with the remaining High elves.
I don't feel at home in Orgrimmar, the little piece of belonging comes to my character from Silvermoon.
I don't trust nor do I respect all but two horde leaders, Lor'themar and Baine . I'd rather stand with Anduin, Jaina or Alleria.
I play a nightborne thus I am a nightborne.
My character has pride in one symbol only; A dusk lily fluttering over the walls of Suramar.
Were such thing an option I would have spied for the alliance.
Were I given an option to desert in BFA I would have. If I am given such an option I will take it.
Remember, you play a Nightborne character, you are not THE Nightborne character, if it's RP, what you know is limited, and pompous Elves do not like other pompous Elves.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 Still I was there to experience the meeting between Thalyssra and Tyrande and it felt forced, stupid really.
I wish we were neutral with a choice. And yes. The RP aspect of the immersion is quintessential for me when it comes to this kind of game. Tis a mmoRPg after all.
@@WaywardHex Tyrande leads the Night Elves, and in a medieval setting, representatives getting insulted by other representatives can be seen as a slight to who they're representing for. Heck, in the real world, that's still the case. It's basically geopolitics in Warcraft.
@@jameschristophercirujano6650 Still it felt contrived and it doesn't mean that some Nightborne couldn't join the alliance. If it came from Anduin then maybe I would see this as an insurmountable slight. Not Tyrande however. Especially with high elves still there and let's not forget other night elves who decided to return to the arcane arts.
I do understand that Lorthemar swooped in on the occasion to present an alliance to the Nightborne but pushing them as a monolith after the involvement alliance had in liberating Suramar felt weak. I can see a whole lot of Nightborne not agreeing with this decision...and it's completely skipped in game. (Like many other things, especially in BFA)
@@WaywardHex Yeah, I get the point, since some Nightborne might've been helped by the Alliance, but if misinformation is rife in the real world, it's even more so in a world that's technologically behind in terms of mass media.
Then just because Tyrande begrudgingly let the Eldre'thalas Elves back, and possibly teach new blood, it doesn't really just remove that millennia long hatred towards magic, especially since the Nightborne's leadership in general are also from Tyrande's time. Remember, Suramar is Tyrande's city, and they did not support the rebellion in her eyes.
I've played since Warcraft 1, and that cutscene brought back some good memories! Having said that, I'm okay with "faction pride" fading away. It served its' purpose in the RTS games and early WoW, but with ever larger threats looming over the horizon, it feels increasingly pointless.
I honestly thought the faction war was done for good with Garrosh's downfall in MoP, but for whatever reason Blizzard gave us another faction conflict in BfA, which had a story so insultingly bad I nearly gave up on Warcraft entirely after being a fan for more than 20 years. Faction tensions are fine, that's what battlegrounds are for, but we really don't need another BfA.
BfA *so very much could have worked* if it had bothered to see it through to the end, instead of once again putting the factions back together after the first raid. We had *one* raid tier that actively explored how a faction war raid could have looked from both ends, fighting functionally the same boss from different perspectives and advancing stories for both sides... And then it dunked us all in the ocean chasing after Fishlips and said "right, enough of that conflict malarky. You each get a type of fishy friend, but even *they* aren't trying to fight each other and you get along by the end anyway." By the time the Old God woke up to be the main threat (AGAIN, just like in MoP) we had basically forgotten the war all over again.
The problem isn't faction war itself. It's refusing to let that *stay* the main focus all the way through an expansion.
As a draenei player I don’t feel any faction pride. I feel draenei pride, lol. Both the horde and the alliance helped us battle the legion ever since TBC, and the Alliance didn’t kick us off Azuremyst. Works for me! But that’s about it.
Yeah but the Horde also almost exterminated you on mainline Draenor remember?
I mean we defiled your fallen as well.
Meanwhile you were nothing but nice to us
@JamailvanWestering Yeah, I main a draenei shammy and while she can work with the Horde, she'll always side eye the orcs.
I also feel like they danced around this whole "time of peace" without giving much in the way of detail oh how it's any different than anyother time. It's not like your going to see an orc sell thier wares in stormwind harbor. Without getting lynched first might i add.
As a Horde player all I want to do is feel proud of my faction... but that's really fucking hard to do when Blizzard is either A. Giving us the villain bat... again, or B. Not involving our faction leaders/representatives in the expansion at all... again...
The horde is pretty much just the "bad guys". Not saying ALL bad, but mostly bad with some good.
@TheStygian While that may have been the case during the OG Warcraft games (aside from Thrall and his arc), I don't think that's necessarily true anymore. We've had plenty of questlines with tyrannical alliance forces and plenty of horde ones with for-the-good connotations and vice versa. Plus like, one of the starting races for the horde were the Tauren, one of the most peaceful races in the game.
Not saying the Horde hasn't done bad (especially when led by two certain shitty leaders), but alliance has had their fair share as well (internment camps, murder, etc) just less so the main games.
Or when they give us fox furries and dwarves. I swapped Alliance after 12 years of Horde after I saw Blizz got so lazy that they threw us the reskinned dwarves too. Horde identity is dead mate, feelsbad
@@kingocoffee6354uhm we barely got if any in the OG Warcraft games.
Mostly because of the forming of the Horde, erased Orc culture.
They were individual clans coming together each with their own customs.
That used to be just once a year in a festival.
With the Horde forming that was permanent.
@@bennettmorgan7651Blizzard is dead, don't expect the game to find its roots ever again, it is over.
Varian's version of "for the Alliance" had more impact for me than Anduin's. The vehemence with which he says it just gold. Of course you can't really shout it like that, unfortunately.
Personally I'm absolutely sick of the faction wars. It's so repetitive. So is the "next big bad guy" thing we have going on. But the faction wars are just... urgh. Come on, we have worked together so many times now. In my headcanon, by now my Alliance characters and my Horde characters have totally bonded over many a life-threatening fight, many a trek through bloodied mud, many a cold night around a campfire. I cannot imagine them fighting each other. They'd refuse.
I feel mostly the same way about faction pride, although I think in that case it's a personality thing. I don't have even a flicker of competitiveness in me. I don't have it in me to get hyped up about one faction or the other. My choices do not actually impact the game. I have no choice, no real agency. My actions do not impact the narrative one bit. Nor the world. Not the faction, not the race, not the class. My characters will do the quests they're given even if I am vehemently opposed to the action they're being asked to take, because there is no choice. I cannot influence the world, I can only walk one path, so what is there to feel pride in, as a player?
Faction pride? Back in TBC I was killed and camped by an Undead Rogue on the bridge in Redridge. I vowed to get revenege and seek it till this day
I feel the game has definitely given the wrong impression of this on and off team up in wow. Those being rather the exception and not the rule and don't represent the factions as whole especially when we consider how big they are realistically. You're a human who lived through the horrors of the first and second wars and all of the sudden you have to share this world with an invasion force who alk if the sudden changed their tune because they happen to live on the other side of the ocean. Well chances are if they brought the human kingdom down once they can do it again.
Legion class order halls was when I first started really changing my mind about factions, before that least I was neutral about 'killing horde' in quests
Then we banded together with Khadgar saying, "The legion has never seen an Azeroth so united" as we marched upon the broken shore as one army united against the burning legion a second time. IMO BfA was stupid as fuk for breaking the unity that was established in Legion, only for us to 'embrace it again vs the armies of Azshara and N'Zoth'
It seems now we are finally at peace and united against sources of darkness and powers that seek to destroy Azeroth.
I pray it stays that way
We have a lot of faction conflicts and pride since Warcraft I. I think we're due to see what it could be when orcs and humans unite (on the long term). Not only would that make more sense story wise but it would be interesting and compelling, just like I find witnessing Thrall and Anduin fighting together compelling.
Yes because mankind has done the same by now. Oh wait.
I love what Nobbel says at the end. Faction pride is more than just the faction conflict. I would like to see this explored a lot more. Faction ideologies, and what can make you proud to be a part of a faction without needing to feel hostility towards the opposing faction.
We tried explaining this to you guys back like 2 or 3 expansions ago. This game is dead.
How? Like how is that compelling?
If it was Varian and Garrosh I would have said okay I get it.
Both have a temper and are very quick to anger.
But Thrall and Anduin like each other, them fighting alongside each other isn’t nearly as compelling as you make it out to be
Sounds boring.
I really hope they don't include something to the effect of the faction tensions rubbing off on the Dracthyr, causing debates, or whatnot as you put it. One of the reasons I started maining a Dracthyr is because it enabled me to identify more as an Obsidian Warder, who were introduced to the Alliance for help, just as the Dark Talons were taken to the Horde for the same reasons. All that faction stuff, those four wars, we were asleep in a hole in the ground at the time and doesn't have anything to do with us.
I hope they include it. No tension is boring as fuck.
The Alliance's battle shout should definitely be "For Azeroth!", imo.
Alleria was walking around quel'thelas and she was like "wtf, why cant i fly here?"
I feel like, at least in terms of character creation, it wouldn't surprise me that "picking a faction" would ever go away. I don't have the knowledge of Blizz's code base, but I would bet that picking a faction when creating a character would be hard coded into the game, making it extremely difficult to change. This was likely due to they didn't expect for the story to go as it did when making WoW originally, so they made picking a faction important.
People that are mad about the Faction pride stuff... Guys...We are just not at war with each other. Instead of killing each other were working together. You can still be proud of the faction youre in. Like how youre proud of the country youre from. Or the Sports team you like.... The only difference is now we still claim horde or Alliance... its just were not Killing on sight.
Me personally Id rather Claim Pally or Shaman while working with people from horde and the alliance.
Let's all be real, the core of WoW has been entirely changed since the OG Classic WoW
Back then, everyone was fine with just playing without any major threat looming over their in-game characters. We weren't too concerned about there always being lore
I only feel pride towards my True Faction
The Scourge
We need to go back to the gritty war - not "I want the power of the gods" war but the general "I need somewhere to live and youre in a spot that i want" and "Your values conflict with ours so youre not welcome here" to touch on how people learn to deal with those issues and set aside the war - if A v H isnt a thing then make it Azeroth v Something else and give it real impact on characters. The issue imo is that wow story is done and its being dragged out at this point to fill in all the blanks and tie off loose ends that just leads to new ones and retcons.
For the Horde!
I love my faction, but like... Alliance cities are so much nicer, and I want to visit them on my toons without being attacked. Lol
And yeah, factions are cool but ultimately pointless if we're constantly teaming up to stop the apocalypse every other year.
Came here to say essentially this, but you worded it perfectly.
For Azeroth!
I was 13 when Warcraft 1 came out. the strategy was make warlock demons and kill all. I remember killing Khadgar quest was hard because limited units and he had demons.
early BFA was the best feel-wise for me, a player who started playing at the end of MoP (although MoP wasn't chicken shit either when it comes to the factions going at each other's throats). Then with the culmination of the Saurfang story at the end of BFA, something lame happened. I felt like I didn't want to see faction stuff again, it was so demoralizing. After late SL and Dragonflight, I can say I no longer play WoW because of the story/lore. Also, no one should let go of their enjoyment of pvp or faction pride even just because a bunch of people are ready to move on, a person is an individual, you are allowed to be into your faction. That's the essence of WoW and it will be as long as there are the two factions still and pvp is in the game.
Personally I dont care if theres faction pride or not, I just want the story to be written as best as it can be for whatever option they choose
This is the thing a lot of people don't understand, you can have faction pride with out fighting the other side.
It's the difference between patriotism and nationalism
Hello Tataru.
The faction war is a relic from the RTS days that just outright doesn't work for an MMO.
Simply due to how the game is structured you can't really have either player faction loose anything important. It doesn't matter how many leaders the Alliance assasinates the Horde will never break, it doesn't matter how many cities the Horde destroys the Alliance will still stand.
No-one can ever actually win.
So their options were either eternal stalemate or this on again off again bullshit.
Story is half the problem with modern WoW. The other half is that it's a press-board palace built upon mud with no foundation, which means the world in world of warcraft can never exist, because as it sinks into the mud they just build another 10 level layer on top of it adding more weight to the problem, instead of spreading it out and making the world in world of warcraft relevant.
Faction pride died in Dragonflight, contrary to popular belief that BfA killed it.
Dragonflight pretty much just let dracthyr pick either faction "cuz they could", unlike Pandaren that picked a faction to their belief in monk stuff or whatever pandas do. Dragonflight also just pretty much said "ok guys so basically we're cool and stuff", the biggest sign that Dragonflight pretty much murdered faction pride was when in The Waking Shores, you went to talk to your faction's expedition leader, and they make you interact with the other faction's expedition leader, which then their son/daughter has doubts of the other faction, but their mother's made them be peaceful by force.
The lack of any competition between both factions also killed it because the expansion practically unifies the 2 factions into peace, which in turn makes Dragonflight PvP more of a "mercenary free for all" type of PvP. Mercenary mode really destroyed faction pride by allowing players to choose the opposite faction, this makes faction pride useless as PvPers can bascially "pick their meta" with whatever faction is currently winning BGs. Have pride for the Horde? Too damn bad, go alliance in mercenary mode, the Horde is losing BGs. Do you love the Alliance? Too bad, Horde wins more BGs, switch to Horde in mercenary mode.
Notice that there is 0 quests in Dragonflight's story where the opposite faction fights the other faction. In Classic, you were either killing Humans in Hillsbrad, or killing Orcs in Arathi. In TBC, you were burning down the other faction's artillery, and fighting them in BEM. In WotLK, easilly obvious that factions fought. Wrathgate, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Grizzly Hills, etc.. In Cataclysm, you were fighting in Tol Barad and killing Dragonmaw and Wildhammer alike in Twilight Highlands. In Pandaria, the first quest you ever do there is invade the opposite faction's base in the Jade Forest. In WoD, Ashran was being fought over. In Legion, Stormheim was being fought over by Gilneas and Forsaken. In BfA, thats the whole point of the expansion. Shadowlands didnt have alot of it, but obviously didnt make Horde and Alliance truce. However, in Dragonflight, the 2 factions are "truced" and dont fight at all.
This one's gonna stir some conflict, but political correctness also attributes to it. Alot of Blizzard is acting PC, which is why theres alot more "LGBTQ things that totally isnt just for money" and other things. The reason that PC kills faction pride is because PC believes that war = bad, and you know damn well they put the war in Warcraft. This led to the "good guy storyline writers" to make the Horde and Alliance at peace to "set muh example".
Aside from RP guilds retaining any faction pride and keeping it revived, I can say pretty much every other aspect of the game has had their faction pride annihilated from Dragonflight.
wow 50/50 I love the horde. i play alliance because of friends.
Since BfA, I've replied to "for the Horde" with "for Teldrassil"
ANOTHER MAJOR POINT worth adding (even though I am late to the party, and nobody will read it) for the death of faction identity is just how much we share these days, and I don't mean just cities.
When I was smaller, playing quest chains in the kingdoms, and then creating my horde character to be met with an entirely different continent, with quest lines, stories, items and flight paths exclusive ONLY to my faction, was blowing my mind.
Taking a boat to northrend, and knowing that on the other side of the continent, horde is making its push towards icecrown made me really rallied up, and motivated me to be better than them.
But nowadays, horde and alliance players rarely have anything exclusive to them, or their races other than heritage quests. Everybody does everything, and everything has to be easily accessible to everyone. We share the same city, same storylines, same frontlines, follow the same band of characters through zones and stories, and even help out a gang mixed of both horde and alliance. There is no sense that what I am doing, is something I do for the alliance, and its exclusive to me, and someone else, at the other end of the continent from horde might be doing their own thing I won't be able to experience, so best thing I can do is do my own thing better than them.
*I think its a major issue that contributes towards lack of faction identity. Because we both do the same things.*
I think Broken Shore scenario was simply perfect when it comes to the faction pride and identity. Both factions were playing at the same time, but they both were split, they had their own tasks, and they followed their own stories. Both factions ended this scenario, and had different context to what happened (initial reaction for alliance players was utter confusion, and anger towards the horde, then fueled by varians "for the alliance").
I always liked "Stand as One!" for the "For the King!" as Alliance chants given they follow Stormwind's lead
Blizzard are too cowardly to make decisions stick, and changing up how war plays.
The formula is simple:
1. Horde initiates the conflict, either purposely or tricked into it.
2. Alliance defends itself but typically gets its teeth kicked in.
3. Horde fractures from within.
4. Alliance helps Fractured Horde recover itself and then calls it a day.
The faction pride is dying because Blizzard doesn't want to engage in themes and choices where there's clear winners and losers without making it so boldly handed. We also have too many times where the factions are uniting against a major threat, when the technology exists where Alliance and Horde could easily just fight on different fronts or have different takes on fights. But now.. Blizzard is just going to do away with the factions. It's coming where your faction has very little impact and we'll see the homogenization.
It's easier to just design for a narrative rather than two takes of the world. They already ignore 80% of the playable races for Orcs, humans, and elves as is anyways. Why bother with the effort and just settle for the simplest design?
Faction pride had died in BFA, and they're going to stick to this neutral champions of Azeroth BS which just won't work.
I never really had a strong sense of faction pride, I always wanted to play elves and my guild back in legion was a horde one so I was happy playing my belf warlock but when the void elves came out I was suddenly annoyed that I couldn't play with my new favorite race simply because they were alliance and my guild was horde, to me that conflict always got more in the way of my enjoyment of the game than it helped and having my guildies be super extremist against the alliance and making fun of the shitty writing of the burning of teldrassil by calling nelves charcoal really got on my nerves. I don't mind having the conflict of ideals here and there but straight up war feels dumb to me even if the IP is called "Warcraft"
I know this is unreasonably hard for them to implement continuously, but the Legion Order Halls were easily the most fun concepts they ever had for the "player faction narrative" outside of the Horde/Alliance conflicts. That whole sequence where Paladin players leave to help the Priest players, only for Death Knights to raid the Paladin order hall trying to resurrect Tyrion... That was perfection.
I'm sure that, over the years, players have developed a far deeper bond with their classes through gameplay & their communities, than they can ever have with the currently-dilluted factions.
The racial heritage quests are also cool, but races feel far less important for the game than ever before.
I think it would have been more interesting if the war had ended years ago and the game made different alliances between factions, like say the undead and the humans reconciling or the night elves and the tauren forming an alliance that opposes goblins, for example.
In WWII, Japan was an enemy of the USA but now they are very close allies. If the game wasn’t going to fully commit to the factions all the way, then they could have just let them end years ago to explore new dynamics. It would have made players more connected to their races, rather than their factions.
When I was in college, right around the end of vanilla and the start of BC, we had assaults take place on campus because of faction choice.
Tells you how much it mattered back then.
I was in my early 20s whe Warcraft: Orcs vs Humans came out. I played every game and was in WoW beta where I played a Undead Warlock. When WoW went Live I decided to be Alliance only so from Launch until MoP I would only make Alliance characters. But after MoP came out I now make characters of both factions and have since. Personally I think the factions are no longer necessary. I feel the community has grown and evolved with the game.
From a lore and gameplay reasons you are correct with the criticism.
But now I no longer play games I play characters in any games.
They might need to rethink faction in general. For instance, I think the Tauren and night elves could be allies. Make a neutral faction for the panda's, Goblins and gnomes could work together on crazy devices. They can spice it up and mix it around a bit while still having conflict of interest between different races.
“Tauren and NE could be Allies”
“Gnomes and goblins could work together”
Tell me you know jack shit about wow lore, without telling me:
@@max7971 they were examples, could be anything. Tell me you don't understand what you read without telling me you don't understand what you read.
But maybe you have a better example, let's hear it
@@max7971tell me you don’t know about moonglade, without telling me you don’t know about moonglade.
no need to fix something that's not broken, just re-ignite the faction war like it was before and it's done. WoW doesn't have to always be just about Azeroth vs Cosmological force.
@@jeCktHeReal I didn't say to get rid of faction wars, I was talking about mixing up. Not sure what the point in your comment is
Honestly, after all the wars, the death, and the bloodshed, I can totally see most inhabitants of Azeroth to be fed up of fighting for their lives. Leaving all the war and suffering to the past and try to forge a new era of peace is totally a step forward in my opinion, and the most sensible thing in the future of this game. Having Alliance and Horde fight endlessly "because yes" makes little sense to me, and I think comes mostly from people who care little about the lore and just want them to slaughter each other even if there's no actual reason to.
We have Talia Menethil in the Forsaken, Sylvanas cleansed, Genn has learned to let go of his anger and left his throne to his daughter, Anduin seems more inclined to peace than his father was, Thrall is for peace too and is quite respected in the Horde. Lor'Themar as far as I know tried multiple times to join the Alliance. Convincing Tyrande and Malfurion might be harder but still doable I think.
I'm quite out of the loop about WoW lore but that's how I feel. I hope the game keeps going in the direction of ending the faction war and open all capitals to all factions.
And in-game wise... I don't like anything about the horde, except the Blood elves, so i would absolutely love to be able to visit and learn teleport and portal to Silvermoon with my human mage, it would become my 100% go-to hub.
Destroying faction pride is what made me quit the game. They completely ruined the Horde in BfA, once again forcing the Horde in the incompetent villain role, once again falling into a civil war.
Blizzard really fell off in terms of Faction pride and Faction conflict after Pandaria, Legion dealt a lethal blow and shadowlands put it down completely
as much as people disliked it, BFA tried its best to bring it back but in the end the ol stick of fighting the 3rd guy came up. though it was the time when the Alliance Finally got its second warcry 'Stand as one'. but from what I've seen Blizz hasn't really Bothered to promote it the same way they throw around Lok'tar Ogar.
the devs can say what they say, but actions speak louder than words and the horde boner doesn't lie:
pandaland is a prime example, Horde: the Trolls ride on Orgrimmar. Alliance: Robot Cat, and not like the sabers I mean like a house cat. I wouldn't be Until _Legion_ when we get something of Equal Epicness with Anduin taking up Shalamayne at the place where his father was disenchanted
theres some really fertile ground for interracial tension and conflicts. there is no fuckin way, that the Night elves are just going to forgive the burning of Teldrassil, they had so many opportunities to do a "did you think we will forgive? did you think we will forget?" as a mirror to the Forsaken's march on the Wrath gate
and I don't mean whole faction fights, I just mean some minor conflicts, like Night elves telling goblins to stop harvesting their forests, goblins going Nah Profit. and then suddenly Goblins go missing in the night and are found slaughtered all over the felled trees with new saplings planted near their corpses. you have so many ideals and beliefs there is no way they all get along without hating every second of it or just don't care because they've reached the nirvana of not giving a Shit.
its like the dying dragon maw Orc, why was there no neutral option to say you have no place judge the orc for his actions because you have killed so many things that you could fill a lake with their blood and not everything that you slayed deserved it.
Alliance and Horde just became more and more dumb with time. I'd say I care about a Stormwind if I'm with my human, about the Kaldorei when I'm playing my Night Elves. I'd say you can feel more Horde if you are playing your orc than orc, but also orc. Not sure I can care much about the Horde that much tho when you have undead, vulpera, elves all around.
The most recent example, for me, was when they allowed people to unlock a Man'ari Draenei customization.
As cool as it was, it was kinda uncanny seeing a bunch of literal demons just casually running around Stormwind. A far cry from Vannila when, canonically, Warlocks had to hide away in secret locations to avoid persecution.
I've mained a troll since BC, and while I now have toons on both sides, and all races, I still love the Horde, bruised and all, but I am definitely more loyal to the trolls, especially my mistreated boy Vul'jin... Though Rokhan has been a good Darkspear chieftain and has grown on me.
It doesn't matter anymore. When the mechanics and gameplay that supported faction vs. faction pvp disappeared with War Mode and Blizzard refuses to implement GvG, it's no shit that Faction pride simply ain't there.
Omg I love the Cranius reference, haven't heard that in years.
The man made some of the best video game songs in those days.
*sigh* The Internet seemed so much smaller and less busy back then...
The probable lore-accurate reason they want to "combine" the factions is due to faction-majority realms. They combatted this years ago with merged realms in retail (seeing others with * from other realms), it's an issue on classic realms and I bet era suffers too. Problem is, instead of coming up with genuine ideas at the time and try to flesh out the factions equally, they went with "Red=bad, blue=good" trope, which was interesting in MoP but it was done awfully in BfA. But at least it all led to the Dragonflight Avengers squad on their own island!
Not only did they damage faction identity (which I consider as a core value for WoW), they also damaged the racial identity with the new starting zone Exile's Reach. While I see the advantages of having an updated starting experience, new players are completely missing the history, meaning and feeling of their chosen race. The way the new players are thrown into the current expansion's story must be incredibly confusing for them.
As a forsaken I'll never forget the thrill of visiting Undercity for the first time and meeting the Dark Lady. I find racial identity to be essential for the foundation of faction identity in a player. Also it's what made WoW unique among other mmorpg titles, those "wowkillers", at the time.
From what I remember you can only peacefully enter gilneas during the quest line as horde, after that you can get attacked in the city so you can only peacefully sit outside
When the music starated up for the Warcraft 1 story I was so confused because it was SO familiar but I had no idea what it was. That was awesome!
in the end what was that voice clip for "for the horde?" I was expecting a Thrall or normal garrosh quote but im just not remembering that voice line atm
Corpsegrinder at blizzcon!
@@Nobbel87 ah, that ultimate shitstain...
As a member of thrall's horde, I have faction pride but I also seek peaceful sharing of azeroth
I think people wanting faction peace in-game is an extension of how people feel in real life regarding modern politics
I get liking the lore and aesthetics of one over the other, but we're not getting a more "faction war" expac than BFA and people hated that one.
People don't care about it in the story and PvP (where it's by FAR most prominent) is super-underplayed. "Faction pride" is a complete relic, and that's fine.
*BFA killed faction pride*
Alliance were incompetent and Horde hated itself.
Faction conflict at this point is stupid. It has been stupid since Legion. The fact we had an invasion by demons, with thousands upon thousands killed, only to turn around and start another war makes absolutely no sense. There is a thing called war weariness, ya know? Even a warrior faction like the Horde is not beyond experiencing it. Not to mention the loss of so many people would have made the ability to go to war near impossible. The fact Saurfang didn't strike Sylvanas down the moment she ordered the burning of Teldrassil is beyond me. Don't even bring that honor stuff into it either. Saurfang had seen what genocide looked like, harbored deep feelings of regret for it, yet he allowed it all the same. He knew what would happen if Sylvanas did like she wanted and burned Teldrassil down. It was a blatant repeat of his past and he failed to stop it before it happened. How was that in any possible way honorable? Its not honorable to follow a leader that will lead to all your people being killed. Having honor doesn't mean you're stupid. Lets not even get into the fact that the Horde had experienced a bad leader not long before that in the form of Garrosh. You would THINK the Horde would be on guard against another murderous maniac.
Now, mind you, I'm not blaming Saurfang. I'm blaming the writers. They heavily undermined both Saurfang and Sylvanas' characters in that act. Finding out what Sylvanas reasoning was/is flawed at best. The dude that made the Lich King possible, ya know, Arthas that killed you and all your people? Yeah. Now you're following his orders to "end the cycle of death". ... Really?
What we have now isn't about faction pride. It's about picking the pieces up from a shit storyline that made little to no sense. The fact Amidrassil and Gilneas both are open to the Horde makes NO sense at all. I know the Fourth War and death's veil shattering happened seven years ago, but we're talking about night elves that have lived thousands upon thousands of years. Not to mention the current Worgen are the same Worgen that saw their homeland invaded without provocation and summarily sacked. Not their children, not their grandchildren, but the very people that these war crimes were commited against. They just let them waltz right in? Nah. I call bullshit on that.
Now they're trying to artifically drive the whole faction peace thing down our throats when it makes no sense. They could have just had that happen after Legion.
There is more to faction pride than the faction war, but the way they write the different factions/races doesn’t reflect this. They mostly feel like different variations of humans, and not unique. I got this feel a lot in the heritage armor quests, you could replace all the npcs with humans and it wouldn’t feel any different
To be honest, current Alliance is more like Horde from the beginning of WoW (led by the one high king, or in this case, regent), than current Horde, which is even more then divided than Alliance back then, when every race was focused on their problems than faction's affairs in general.
In short, Alliance became blue Horde, since concept "together but apart" seems foreign for many players.
Blizzard may take control of our character's Mind and our Bodies... But there is one thing a Warrior always keeps!
HIS PRIIIIIDE!
his Charge!
What does the scouter say about Thrall's power level?
I go with that bank dragon in Valdrakken: For the Hoard!
Been playing Warcraft games since 1994. During the campaigns in Warcraft 3, I had assumed that the faction war was going to finally be over. When Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game came out in 2003, it seemed to confirm this by allowing mixed Horde/Alliance parties and seeming to encourage it. I was rather disappointed when WoW came out and the faction war was back on. I wanted to play an Orc Warrior and had a friend that was going to play a Human Paladin, we were disappointed when we found out we couldn't play together.
Honestly, if the faction war and the whole Horde vs Alliance thing is finally gone, then its a good thing. There's only so many times you can have the Horde and Alliance team up against a world ending threat only to go back to trying to kill each other before it starts getting old.
Yeah but the story can get repetitive (very repetitive) if it’s just The Horde and Alliance have to team up against another threat… again.
The main reason why the faction war exists is to keep the factions themselves interesting.
The Horde is always a powder keg a few seconds away from exploding and while that makes them the aggressor causing disharmony and making the Alliance the aggressor for once would have made things very different but made them very interesting
@@JamailvanWestering "Yeah but the story can get repetitive (very repetitive) if it’s just The Horde and Alliance have to team up against another threat… again."
Which is why the story should not be about the Horde or the Alliance. It should be a focus on the player.
At this point, my Blood Elf Paladin has stopped Old Gods, Elemental Lords, Crazed Dragons, The Burning Legion, the Scourge, and other threats to Azeroth, has been called Hero and Champion by various important figures and nuetral factions, aided the Worgen in reclaiming Gilnaes, and has proven time and again that he cares only about protecting Azeroth......but because he's a Blood Elf, he will be attacked by farmers, villagers, and/or guards for wandering into the wrong area while out exploring.
Other MMORPGs have done great at telling stories without needing to use factions and a faction war as a crutch, so why can't WoW? Why must the existence of the Horde and the Alliance and their eternal, pointless, war be such a huge focus? Why does a hero get murdered by the people he has saved and protected multiple times simply because he's the wrong race?
Honestly, I used to be all about the Horde...
but as I've played and dabbled in the alliance, and played on RP servers, I just found myself always wishing I could interact with the other factions than I'm playing at the moment a bit better. I tend to carry the Potion of Tongues and trade them to people.
Also on Moonguard, the few horde players there tend to be found at alliance RP events and it adds a lot.
Making us permanent enemies is actually what destroyed my faction pride.
Why do the factions constantly need to be at war from the players point of view?
The faction wars have well and truly already served their purpose in the story, as *main* story material anyway.
When I started World of Warcraft I played Horde exclusively. Part of it was because all of my friends were on that side, but I also liked the "monsters banding together to survive" vibe of the faction. But my friends started leaving, and my love for the faction took a big hit when Garrosh was made warchief and the Horde started committing war crimes.
So I created a few Alliance characters and played them... and found I preferred Alliance zones anway for leveling. And then came Battle for Azeroth. Bad writing as yet another warchief starts (you guessed it) committing war crimes, and that was that. I stopped playing Horde entirely, and haven't looked back.
I guess I do still have a bit of the old faction pride... for the Alliance. But mostly I'm just sick of it. Let the faction conflict end permanently. It's a relic of the past.
My worgen rogue hated the horde because of Sylvanas but now she’s gone, he is hesitant in trusting the horde but will cooperate if it means the betterment of Azeroth.
My void elf Mage doesn’t care about the horde since the Rhen’dorei where banished from silvermoon so he is more for Azeroth.
I want to keep faction pride but focus more on “for Azeroth”
Yep, because of Blizzard's black and white disney style story telling the values of horde and alliance has become homogeneously interwined in such a way that there is no distinction between the two factions.
I think that faction pride is healthy for the game; however, I would like to have an option to make a “Mercenary” (non-faction) character of any race, to do all the content of both factions.
I find it challenging to be engaged in wow's current story for multiple reasons.
As much as I love playing with my friends from the other faction, I miss the faction conflict story-wise.
To be honest , I loved the factions as they were in WC3 , and its story was so well written because there were multiple factions , not just two , not just one. I think 1 faction will greatly diminish the story telling.
What is interesting of Warcraft is definitely the diversity of cultures, races, histories, and characters that populate the world. That should be front and center, and each time they manage to do so, the outcome is fantastic and makes the setting more interesting than most. BUT faction conflict it NOT necessary to have all that; actually at this point it just makes characters and events unnecessarily stupid, and it pushes the different races and cultures within each faction into a forced and uninteresting uniformity.
Faction conflict is just an aspect in this wealth of lore, stories and characters accumulated over time, and it's a mistake every time they get conflated. At this point in the history of Azeroth, faction conflict doesn't make much sense, both thematically and gameplay wise. There are bigger threats to unite against, most major characters have learned from the mistakes of war and... People just want to play whatever they want with their friends with any character they choose to make, ffs!
So, basically:
Identity, cultures, tensions and differences: YES.
Faction conflict and separation? We have outgrown that simplification, and so do our best characters, so at this point NO.
This asf
I'll gladly make peace if Blizzard just gives me some fucking new Tauren lore for Earthmother's sake!!!
As a player I never really had faction pride. I picked characters based on which my friends played, then aesthetics and now with cross play I just pick on aesthetic. I feel like faction pride needs to be coming from lead narrative characters to really have any impact on the progression of the game and since almost every expansion revolves around ganging up on Big Bad that is rarely affiliated with one side or the other.. meh. We commonly end up working together, we didn't kill each other in order halls.. we can be civil and get things done more effectively without this conflict.
There is plenty of war in warcraft without faction ire.
I somehow have strong yet mixed feelings on this topic.
On one hand I feel like Factions have been such a core of what has built Warcraft as a franchise, story and game that they do need to keep that pride and identity relevant. On the other hand, post W3 most "Faction Conflicts" have been extremely forced and poorly written, often causing them to contradict the main narrative of any given expansion or storyline (Pandaria being the one *big* exception). By now I genuinely feel that there's nothing in the nature of both Horde and Alliance that inherently makes them fight, plus it's problematic gameplay wise (hence the cross-faction changes in recent years).
Currently I feel like WoWs lore have made it more reasonable for conflicts and tensions to arise between the cosmological forces (depending on how this new Saga ends but especially if it's in a "forced balance" between all of these forces). That IMO would lead to both frictions that feel way more natural (as all forces do have an *inherent* reason to keep the others in check), but also to those same forces naturally allying with one another to fight both external and internal threats, since the importance in keeping that "balance" would be above any other interest for everyone.
Why would anyone expect the majority to care about faction pride when Blizzard stopped caring about faction pride years ago?
Getting back into MoP remix made me realize how much I been missing the faction war. It reminded me a lot of my values back when I was motivated to fight for the Horde. Remember the BFA promotional material when guys were avoiding sitting next to each other on the bus because they had opposite tattoos? Faction pride matters, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't.
I think Blizzard should stop trying to force faction conflict in the game. Trying to come up with a reason why Alliance and Horde should be at war again after having just teamed up to stop whatever world-ending threat in the previous expansion for the umpteenth time gets contrived.
Plus, it's not like payers actually need a lore reason to rep their faction and pvp. Remember that lore-wise during vanilla WoW the factions were supposed to be in a state of cold war instead of open conflict, with multiple quests being about keeping a full-scale war from breaking out (for example that's the whole reason for Horde players to do the Onyxia questline), yet that didn't stop players from getting very attached to their faction and fighting the opposite one. Meanwhile BFA was billed as the expansions that would "put the War back and Warcraft", and it's widely hated as one of the worst expansions and even Blizzard seems to have admitted the faction conflict plotline didn't work because they abandoned it partway through to have the Alliance and Horde fight a common threat once again.
While I really like the faction war and the two sides being different, Blizzard has been slowly ruining that with every expansion for the last 19 years. I'm not surprised that people have stopped caring since they're basically the same at this point.
The most cynical i can be is that doing away with the factions means Blizzard only has to make 1 set of quests instead of 2.
Faction wars were what made me want to play wow. The death of pvp servers and heavy faction imbalances nailed the beginning of the end for factions.
I do feel faction pride, for both factions, I think it’s what makes the story interesting
For me: I used to think the faction thing was good for years, I'd say maybe up until orignal Wrath, but then it just sorta got to a point where I just wanted to be able to play with others. Also round about that time I tried out a few other mmo's (wow was my 1st) and it was at that point that I thought the whole faction thing didn't really have anything of value to it. The stories told involving the factions generally always end the same, after all we always need to end up at the same place lorewise. Another thing for me, is so much time has passed since the old wars in-game, and a lot of new faces have come to the forefront. Hanging onto that old story at this point, especially after we've worked together so many times, it just seems like a waste. Again because we just end up working together towards a common goal at the end of the day.
Now to be clear I know WoW will never get rid of factions outright, I can see the other comments on here and a great many folks still care about that stuff. For me, however, it's just an old lame duck that I'd wouldn't care if it went away.