Breakfast Topic: Could there be more than two factions?
by Matt Clerico 
Nov 6th 2011 at 8:00AM
As World of Warcraft grows older, perhaps it's time to shake up things a bit to keep things interesting. After seven years of a war between two groups being the focus of the storyline, could we return to a time of four factions? That's right, a return. After all, Warcraft 3 had four opposing armies: Humans, Undead, Night Elves and Orcs. Presently, we have 12 races among the two factions, and considering all the new class/race combinations implemented in Cataclysm, perhaps four separate groups are not as unthinkable as they once were.
With the political climate of the Horde being what it is and Sylvanas going farther off the grid all the time, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine the Banshee Queen pulling the Foresaken and her Blood Elf relatives out of the Horde, establishing her own nation in Northern Lorderon. (For the sake of racial number balance, maybe she bribes the goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel into joining her with a new home city of ... Gilneas!) Or frustrated by the unwillingness of King Varian to stop the Orc's systematic destruction of Ashenvale , could Tyrande (finally doing something in-game for once) decide to defect from the Alliance, bringing her Worgen and Draenei allies with her?
Do you think additional factions would be interesting? How would they work in game? What do you think they would look like?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 7)
Udderpowered Nov 6th 2011 8:07AM
I'd rather have a Legion faction. Shivara shadow priest, fun.
Tiqu Nov 6th 2011 8:31AM
Now that you mention it, playing the Legion might be fun. I vote "yes" on this one!
anuillae Nov 6th 2011 8:59AM
It would be fun, yeah, but I don't think it could work. The trouble with having a 'baddies' faction that wants to eradicate all life is that they can't ever come out on the winning side; if they did, it would be the end.
Also, if you want to reuse any content at all, you've got to have goals that are at least similar - Horde and Alliance both want to prevent the world from being overrun by zombies, for example.
Agravaine Nov 6th 2011 2:38PM
There obviously can't be any winning side at all, because it would indeed be the end of the world. Of Warcraft. With that consideration, I don't see any problem with having a Burning Legion Faction. It would add an interesting dynamic to existing battlegrounds -- "which side are we going to be up against in this one?"
And for all that warlocks are cool, they've always been incongruous as PCs since they're obviously agents of the Burning Legion. They have no other agenda for wielding fel magic and summoning demons. What, to further their own ends? Dream on. Them powers and demons don't come cheap.
And Matt, it sounds like you've not read Wolfheart. The Worgen joining the Alliance wasn't simply at the behest of the Night Elves. There is a spiritual bond between Wrynn and Greymane, and Tyrande is in awe of Wrynn because he is an avatar of Goldrinn. Nor are the Draenei just lapdogs to the Night Elves -- guess where the future ruler of Stormwind has gone off to college. No, the Alliance is just fine, thanks.
Agravaine Nov 6th 2011 2:42PM
There obviously can't be any winning side at all, because it would indeed be the end of the world. Of Warcraft. With that consideration, I don't see any problem with having a Burning Legion Faction. It would add an interesting dynamic to existing battlegrounds -- "which side are we going to be up against in this one?"
And for all that warlocks are cool, they've always been incongruous as PCs since they're obviously agents of the Burning Legion. They have no other agenda for wielding fel magic and summoning demons. What, to further their own ends? Dream on. Them powers and demons don't come cheap.
And Matt, it sounds like you've not read Wolfheart. The Worgen joining the Alliance wasn't simply at the behest of the Night Elves. There is a spiritual bond between Wrynn and Greymane, and Tyrande is in awe of Wrynn because he is an avatar of Goldrinn. Nor are the Draenei just lapdogs to the Night Elves -- guess where the future ruler of Stormwind has gone off to college. No, the Alliance is just fine, thanks.
snowleopard233 Nov 6th 2011 8:13AM
This was honestly part of what I liked about Warcraft 3. However, I really don't see it happening in WoW. The whole game has been balanced and designed around two factions. They would have to renovate every zone in the game to have tis change make sense and I don't see them doing that again anytime soon.
It will be interesting to see what kind of factions, if any, will exist in Titan. Personally, I think they may just do away with them all together in their next mmo. All they really serve to do is create an atmosphere for world PVP that no one wants to partake in and divide players from one another. It's a neat idea but I don't necessarily thinks its accomplished what it was originally designed for.
WrecklessMEDIC Nov 6th 2011 9:45AM
"All they really serve to do is create an atmosphere for world PVP that no one wants to partake in"
Really? I wouldn't say that. I personally love Open World PvP and wish we had more of it. Maybe I'm just alone here. ;)
SamLowry Nov 6th 2011 11:04AM
I suspect there are servers that might actually cater to world pvp; I believe they're called "PVP servers".
The rest of us would like to play uninterrupted by the idiocy of dead vendors, flight masters and auctioneers. Oh, wait, the devs are actually trying to encourage that in the new panda zones.
For some strange reason I see the number of cancelled subs going above 900k.
Gossamer Nov 6th 2011 11:05AM
Not to mention the headache of splitting up the factions. The way I see it either the lore would have to support factions that are not split down race lines or force players that are of a specific race away from their friends of another race. Can you imagine how mad that Undead Warrior would be because his Tauren Paladin buddy can't heal him in dungeons any more because Sylvanas went off the deep end?
Khirsah Nov 6th 2011 12:08PM
@ SamLowry...
Chicken Little says "Hi".
The Devs may be trying to "encourage" more world pvp, but that does not mean that you will have to engage in this activity if you don't want to. I don't know what the new zones will look like, or how they will implement world pvp in those zones, but I do know that Blizz does not force any aspect of the game on its players. You can always choose to participate in the parts of the game you like the most, and not participate in the parts you hate with little or no penalty.
snowleopard233 Nov 6th 2011 12:29PM
Well there are certainly plenty of people who like world PvP (present company included) but I think most trends in this game point to it becoming less of a desirable way to spend one's time leveling or at the end game. Most players that are into PvP will go into BG's or arenas. Then you have the great majority of WoW players that prefer to PvE, raid, and login to PvE servers so that they never have to deal with fighting the opposite faction. There was a period in vanilla wow when world PvP was one of the main ways to play the game but I'd argue that for most of WoW's existence it's been relatively low priority from both a developer and player perspective.
We'll see how that changes in MoP. I'm sure there are a lot of ways the developers can encourage people to fight in the world. The question is whether or not players will want to do this. I'm really of the opinion that most players log on WoW to conveniently consume PvE content as fast and relaxingly as possible. Not too many players quit or leave servers because they aren't getting ganked enough.
Maybe factions will mean something more in the next expansion and people will really enjoy killing each other in the open world again. All I know is that in the game's current state where you get fight your own faction in BG's, play both factions on a PvP server, chat with the opposite faction via bnet, and level through the whole game in dungeons, factions don't mean as much from a gameplay perspective as they once did.
Hob Nov 6th 2011 2:14PM
People don't want world PvP, even if you give them really cool mounts for it.
Otherwise Halaa would be a warzone instead of...
/sunglasses
...a snore zone.
Den Nov 6th 2011 3:04PM
Even most pvp servers don't have a lot of world pvp =/ I've LOVE a third faction to help balance things out, and I was expecting that in this expansion, but... I think folks need to support the games that go with the 3 faction system before WoW will go in that direction.
DarkWalker Nov 6th 2011 6:37PM
@Khirsah:
Have you ever heard about the "School of Hard Knocks" achievement? Blizzard do force play styles unto players.
It's what I think made the player base drop during Cataclysm. Blizzard forcing players that were quite happy casually raiding, or even just running random heroics, into a more hardcore play style.
As for MoP, at Blizzcon it was confirmed that the player hubs in Pandaria would not be sanctuaries, would be smaller, and would be more subject to PvP attacks (due to the guards being weaker). Blizzard wants to "encourage" more world PvP (which is just a nice way of saying they want to force players into it).
For my part, what this means is that the chance of me purchasing MoP at launch became virtually nill. I don't want to be subject to increased world PvP, so I will wait until after the launch, while lurking in forums and sites like here, to see how the PvP situation evolves.
SamLowry Nov 6th 2011 11:00PM
DarkWalker, thank you for straightening Khirsah out. I agree with everything you said and I also have no interest in being forced to stand around and wait for quest-givers and JP vendors to rez after being slaughtered for the tenth time today.
I complained repeatedly on the boards about the Horde's compulsion to kill the Southshore flight master, and so the devs fixed the situation for good by giving them the city entirely. That's not exactly what I consider "progress".
Dragoniel Nov 7th 2011 9:00AM
LOLWHAT?
Open world PvP that no one wants to participate in?! Buddy, wake up!! I play this game for freaking world PvP. And not just me - WE have spent countless hours prowling Orgrimmar, decimating questing hubs and flying back and forth responding to anti-ganker calls. Hellfire, Quel'Danas, Nagrand, Wintergrasp, Tol Barad, Molten freaking Front, I fought on ground, underwater and even in air, back when it was still possible to 4-shot people.
Crawl back to your PvE server if you don't like PvP. This game (and MMOS in general) needs more world PvP, not less.
Jesus Christ.
aitrean Nov 6th 2011 8:16AM
I WANNA PLAY A FRIGGIN' TUSKAR!!!
taokore Nov 6th 2011 9:06PM
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. I want to play Tuskarr and Vrykul more than just about anything else I want to do in WoW.
daniel Nov 7th 2011 1:09PM
No no.. Ogre! Ogre's would be the most awesome new race.
Thomas Higgins Nov 7th 2011 7:08PM
Ogres, yes, Ogres. Now, please. For Alliance obviously, Hordelol maybe when the Forsaken and their Lich Queen leader go the way of Arthas.