It's no secret that the composition of the factions in WoW is very inconsistent: Blizzard's attempts to create a conflict between two sides have led to the fact that these unions include races that do not fit in at all.
Based on the ideals of chivalry and progress, the Alliance is poorly suited to the night elves, for whom humans, dwarves and gnomes are the same ravagers of nature as orcs. On the other hand, Thrall's Horde is based on spiritual traditions that the Forsaken, with their questionable morals and attempts to create a New Plague, do not correspond to.
I believe the Night elves and the Undead should be separate factions, as they were in Warcraft 3.
But is it possible to recreate a four-sided world as it should be? And what would the game look like?
LORE
The events surrounding the night elves' allegiance to the Alliance are still a little cloudy. Was it simply gratitude to the Alliance for their help during the Third War and the events at Hyjal that caused them to join, or did the night elves tried to protect Kalimdor from the Horde's expansion? Now it matters not, because the Alliance turned out to be no better for the night elves than the Horde: political intrigues, desecration of nature in pursuit of progress and secrets of the past, the use of Arcane magic - all this goes against the principles of Kaldorei. This caused the Night Elves to distance themselves from the rest of the Alliance.
But the night elves have their own proponents who share the same values. Those who are still faithful to the old oathes - furbolgs, children of Cenarius and even mighty drakonids, servants of Ysera - all of them answerd to the call of Kaldorei to create a new union - the Emerald Concord. The Concord maintains good relations with the Alliance as a sign of goodwill, but shall defend own interests in Kalimdor and beyond.
At the same time, the Forsaken had sufficiently strengthened their positions in Eastern Kingdoms and felt that their association with the Horde had exhausted its benefits. The Horde's military interests on Kalimdor were poorly correlated with the interests of the Forsaken, and the undead had no tools to influence the Horde's policy. All this forced Sylvanas and Varimatras to look for new allies who could be used for their own purposes. As a result, the Forsaken formed an alliance with the faction of Dark Iron dwarves, as well as with a small enclave of blood elves and nagas who escaped from Northrend and failed to retreat with their lords to Outland (that, basically, makes them a mix of "Dark Alliance" vibe and Illidari aestetics). This Ashen Covenant claims power in the north of the Eastern Kingdoms, challenging the interests of the Alliance, and still saves old diplomatic bonds in the Horde - but who knows when these bonds will be cutted off entirely?..
GAMEPLAY
The basics of "new" factions were desribed by me some time ago:
I believe that this way we can have an imitations of fully functioning factions without hardcore coding, and this is how the game will look:Galendor wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 9:24 amLet's say, we wanna create akin of Illidari faction. We're implementing racial restrictions to all existing Horde quests, so only Vanilla races + goblins can accept these quests. Then we're adding new races to the Horde - our "Illidari" races, and set their starting reputation with the Horde as "Hostile". Then we're creating Illidari quests with racial restrictions, so only Illidari races can accept these quests. Now your Illidari are imitating their own faction in most aspects of the game.
Even the character creation screen is redactable, and can place races in any possible order, without their dependency from their faction, so the third column can be added, too.
The problem here is pvp, because such plaulyers will inevitably be marking as Horde players, so they'll be sided with other Hrode members on BGs. However, it's solvable by adding ingame explaining that Illidari are in a state of fragile truce with the Horde.
WHAT'S NEXT?
As you see at the picture, I added something spicy as the expansion of described events. Factions, old and new, are growing and recruiting more new allies after the opening of the Dark Portal. The Alliance will unite with the Sons of Lothar, who have long established ties with the Draenei tribes. Rexxar's futile quest of searching his own kin will lead to including Ogres of Outland in the Horde. The Concord will finally find connections between Elune's will and Worgens, embracing these feral creatures to their ranks. And, finally, the Covenant will find new allies among Satyrs, thanks to Varimatras and his... demonic... charisma.
Of course, all of it is not a work for a week or two - I totally understand that it could be releazed in Turtle WoW 2.0 or even 3.0. But I believe that such changes will make this game much closer to Warcraft 3 worldbuilding and will allow to tell more interesting stories on Azeroth and beyond.
