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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast 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 4 of 7)
Kylenne Nov 6th 2011 12:50PM
I really hate when people go on like this about such-and-such race should leave. People NEVER look at this from both sides of the equation. Alliances aren't formed for the benefit of one faction. It goes both ways. No sane member of the Horde is going to let the Blood Elves go so easily, just as a start. The Sunwell is arguably one of the strongest forces on Azeroth. During the Second War the magisters were able to use it to protect the entirety of Silvermoon from dragon attacks, and the only reason they didn't use it similarly during the Third was because Villain Sue sold them out. Then there's the fact that they're arguably the most knowledgable mages in Azeroth. What makes you think anyone would want to lose such a resource?
There's also the fact that this isn't Anasterian's Quel'Thalas anymore. That kind of isolationism ended rather abruptly when their wagon train to the family reunion on another planet got nipped in the bud. It's been proven a couple of times now that it's a tremendously bad idea for them to try to go it alone, and I think people are seriously understating their attachment to Sylvanas. I don't see anyone in Sunfury Spire being especially pleased about the turn she's taken. And as much as I hate that ridiculous fanfic about Lor'themar, it is canon, and they weren't even feeling it when she had to twist their arm about Northrend, *before* all this other shit went down. No, I don't think they're going anywhere. If Sylvanas goes rogue, she's going to be doing it on her own, and the Horde's going to need the Blood Elves to stop her.
Artificial Nov 6th 2011 3:12PM
"...it is canon..."
This is Blizzard we're talking about. There is no canon...
Dave N. Nov 6th 2011 9:02AM
I think they should just do away with player factions altogether. The war is perpetuated by moronic leaders and that is about it. The war just isn't in the lore, not matter how much they try to insist that it is. All the npcs are so buddy buddy with each other I don't see why we should even have player factions anymore. I want to be a tauren and play with the friends I have that play alliance now.
Massumma10 Nov 6th 2011 9:05AM
While the scenarios in the Breakfast Topic might make sense, I cant see any kind of split so radical that it would cause the Worgen, Night Elves and Draenei to engage in open combat against the Dwarves, Humans and Gnomes. Same for the proposed Horde division, except for perhaps the Forsaken. And without major revamps to every zone, what does splitting the factions, especially along those lines really accomplish? It seems arbitrary to me.
No, if I third faction were to ever be released, it would have to be a faction that would have good lore reason to be at odds with both Horde and Alliance. Personally, I think there are enough bipedal humanoid races in the Burning Legion to lay the groundwork for a new playable faction, but if they were to have Druids, Paladin, and to a lesser extent Monks and Shaman, there'd need to be some DAMNED good lore behind it.
Nathanyel Nov 6th 2011 9:04AM
Existing races splitting off: impossible, guilds and friends would be ripped apart based on the visuals of their characters.
Third faction with new races: somehow possible, but would require much, much reworking of Azeroth (again), Outland and Northrend to provide enough content for that faction to level up with.
More likely is that they begin to drop the faction barriers, first for instances, then later maybe an "envoy" mode where you can interact with players and NPCs of the other faction, or at least get a "don't KOS" tag.
Let's face it, albeit many people do PvP, the game is PvE at heart. It is not required to have a constant "war" only because the first game in that world, which had little to no backstory or "lore", had this word in the title. Warcraft 3 started to let former enemies become friends or at least allies, and in Vanilla and BC, there was only a very slight Cold War going on, with the only real quarrels being single quests and the battlegrounds.
Speaking of BGs, these of course continue to stay in the game, they already have a somehow inherent "re-enactment" vibe anyway. Arenas and RBGs lift the "Alliance vs Horde" restriction, because in the end, people don't care as much what faction they're fighting against, as long as they're fighting against real players.
PvP doesn't need the "war" backstory from the PvE part. The re-igniting hostilities in WotLK felt too much like they were just a response to the vocal minority, complaining about having to stand next to a Horde/Alliance player in Shattrath without being able to enforce the perceived "red means dead" policy. "Cats and dogs er humans and orcs can't be friends!"
Cataclysm did a better job of explaining the hostilities as ressource/territory conflicts, but it still too often feels like much of the aggression comes from "grah, your race is different/our fathers hated each other!"
I don't expect the Horde and Alliance as a whole to become true allies within the (ingame) timespan of WoW, but it would feel, dunno, "better", like more sophisticated writing if there were more examples "ok, we don't really like each other, and our factions are technically at war, but let's just kill this demon together and then go our own ways again."
Tael Nov 6th 2011 10:05AM
"your race is different/your fathers hated each other"
Sad and silly as it is... how do you think racism happens in the real world?
Nathanyel Nov 6th 2011 10:39AM
Of course, Tael, but that doesn't mean I like it. At least in my perception, Warcraft is among the more "modern" works of fiction that, when they touch the subject, treat racism as a rather negative trait, and/or explain the motives, not to justify, but to explain. And of course the actual racial slurs are rare (as opposed to general faction insults)
But it somehow still feels "wrong", it has to much importance in a world that was already so diverse before the wars (after the retcons)
In my opinion, of course.
Kylenne Nov 6th 2011 1:28PM
@Nathanyel: Actual (in-universe) racial slurs are rare in this game? Did you just not play any of the revamped old world zones in Cata? Every third sentence out of somebody's mouth is "$color-skins", generally directed at Orcs, though they give as good as they get on occasion. The only thing more prevalent are borderline homophobic cracks about male belves looking like women.
logandawson43 Nov 6th 2011 9:31AM
If Blood Elves and Undead break off I'm going to be so excited, those are my two favorite races. I can see Night Elves breaking off the alliance to join the Undead and Blood Elves since Sylvanas is a dead Night Elf.
staffan.johansson Nov 6th 2011 9:51AM
Sylvanas was a high elf in life, as in the race that became Blood elves when they started eating fel mana instead of regular after the Sunwell was extinguished. Not a night elf.
s.scott.staten Nov 6th 2011 10:01AM
Sylvanus is a dead High (Blood) Elf.
logandawson43 Nov 6th 2011 10:43AM
Oh sorry, wowwiki said something about her being a Night Elf. I guess you can't trust everything on that site.
raposo02790 Nov 6th 2011 9:28AM
I want to play burning legion very doable. Just make it a heroic faction... every class starts off at a higher level.
raposo02790 Nov 6th 2011 10:31AM
and balance every zone from there on out for the 3 factions
Gerbera Nov 6th 2011 9:43AM
You mention that there are currently 12 races spread across 2 factions, but the problem with introducing a new faction for *current races* to go into would be that it would totally destroy guilds.
Currently, my guild's main priest (me), mage, and warlock are all Blood Elves and we have no undead raiders at the moment (I might suspect those two would stick together lore-wise). If Forsaken and Blood Elves branched off into their own faction, not only do you have the problem of no druids and no shaman for those races, but raids would end up being split.
I suppose you could argue that you can give people the choice to race change on patch day (for free), but it still really screws over people who wanted to be a certain race for whatever reason, and flies in the face of their oft-quoted statement about how they want character creation choices to matter.
If you have new races with their own faction, the problem then becomes balance between the factions, perhaps even worse on some realms than it is currently.
In the end, I don't really see how a new faction could work out in a *practical sense* at this stage in the game.
Matt Nov 6th 2011 9:43AM
Making the Argent Dawn/Crusade/Ashen Verdict group a playable faction would address a few concerns I've seen about redesigning the game. They already exist in game as a faction, already have a starting area, already have major players written into the bigger story.
Lore-wise, the writers could make their leaders re-assess their scope to include fighting [Insert Old God Demonic Sargeras-ish Big Bad Here] as well as the Scourge in order to bring them out onto the bigger stage. It wouldn't be a difficult leap to just make them want to fight all evil instead of just the undead kind. You could weave a pretty complex story from it, I think...and still be able to connect them with the Alliance and Horde. Who says they have to stay neutral in the face of things to come? Evil is a very subjective term, and I think that Blizzard could maintain the integrity of the faction that a lot of people already love and still give it an added edge without turning it into the Scarlet Crusade/Onslaught.
Just my .02 cents.
Llowe Nov 6th 2011 6:56PM
Well put. I for one would want to have my undead rogue I've had since Vanilla sign up for this faction ASAP, since that is what her character wants to do anyway from an RP perspective.
cosmicape Nov 6th 2011 7:28PM
So is that the same as .02 dollars? =P
metalfreak7676 Nov 6th 2011 9:48AM
To make life better and spice things up abit, and make life easy on the programmers, Blizz could introduce sub factions that are Alliance and Horde friendly.
The Tauren and Night elves could belong to the Cenarion faction, therefore allowing NE to go horde, and Tauren to go Alliance, say at lvl 10 like the Pandaren are doing. Bizz could also revamp the storyline between the Worgen and Forsaken, completing Sylvanas's insanity train, outsing her and making her a raid boss, or having some old god involved with a mind controll aspect of her. That would open up Worgen for the horde side, and Forsaken for the Alliance.
Vai Nov 6th 2011 9:53AM
I'd like to see Bolvar's Scourge become the third faction. The power of the Lich King tempered by Bolvar's spirit, rising up to fight the Burning Legion. It could be neutral to both of the original factions and be made up of all the other races but limited to Death Knight-esque cosmetic styles. The faction wouldn't get druids or paladins but could get an exclusive class along the lines of a Cult of the Damned member.
It'd be fun to see.