Honestly...I kinda miss the faction war. Cata classic is reminder that it was fun to have an opponent that you kinda hated.
Unfortunate editorializing by the Wowhead article writer.
A controversy so hot, this is literally the first I've ever heard about it. Spicy!
My only growing concern is that this idiotic "faction identity" dead horse will survive and will keep getting shoved down my throat.
If Blizzard actually had better writing for the factions, faction pride and faction identity would be burning hot and the Alliance and Horde would hate each other like they should. The grass is greener where you water it. BFA was Blizzards attempt at watering it but they don't realize they used bad water so now their conclusion is the community must not want a faction war.It shouldn't ever dissolve farther than a tenuous pact, like in Icecrown Citadel. One of WoWs most famous raids and I think part of it is because you can visibly see the Alliance and Horde hate each other but they need to fight the Scourge together.There's emotions and connections you make to that kind of threat of survival, you hate the guy dressed in blue and you hate the guy dressed in red but you can't risk fighting them because there's an even bigger threat. Those kinds of emotions won't be present when Alliance and Horde aren't factions anymore.Then for PvP you sit there wondering why we're fighting each other at all. Blizzard would have to rewrite the premise of each battleground to just be like some weird gladiator arena story where each player Horde or Alliance gets dumped into just simple Team A or Team B. But for what? Glory? Gold? From a lore perspective that makes sense for some people's characters but many characters is not the case. Again there's attraction to war, a struggle, a desire to defend and protect the land you fight for.
Just get over with it already. We are fighting cosmic forces for faaaaaaaaaaaar tooooooooo long now that faction war was never a thing.... not even in BFA that some people thought it's gonna be the "SHOWDOWN EXPPANSIOOOON FUUUUUCK YEEEAHHH" . ... The War part of WoW is between azeroth citizens and outer forces that want to literally eradicate em. It always was. It always be.
The average citizen for each faction does not have a reason to want to go neutral or friendly. The average person is not kept up to date with what is happening across Azeroth. The Alliance does tend to be the most aggressive when it comes to accepting new races into their mix, which means the Alliance is probably the reason there will never be a true 'friendliness' between Alliance/Horde. The Horde is more of a found family scenario, which does come with a lot of characters who have more reasons to be against trying to make good with the Alliance. Why should they? The Alliance tend to be the ones who shun away others and have historically ruined their chances to accept members of the Horde into the Alliance. And vis versa, the Horde tend to have people come out who aren't particularly good people, causing the cycle of distrust between the factions to simmer, at best. It's because of this that I don't think the people who are concerned about losing the faction war aspect ENTIRELY have to worry, but in my opinion, it will never be the highlight, and historically, it has never been the highlight. It has served as an inciting incident, and has served as a flame to start issues, but in the end, the Alliance and Horde has always ended up having to work together, even in the original Warcraft series. It's true that the faction war aspect of expansions has never been handled very well, especially in newer expansions, but that's honestly because there really isn't a lot you can get out of it narratively anymore because every victory will just be a hollow victory. Something else will happen. A faction war can't go on forever, there needs to be one winner and one loser eventually. Blizzard has to take an equal amount from both sides. A cold war can only go on for so long before one side decides to take a drastic step. As we've seen with Teldrassil / Undercity, if the main focus was actually on the faction war, the end result will be mass destruction of Azeroth's face. Blizzard isn't going to do that, and as much as someone would say that would be awesome and preferable, it isn't the kind of storytelling WoW has EVER had.The player character is so heavily involved in protecting Azeroth, the Hero of Azeroth and those involved with them directly do not have a reason to involve themselves in faction conflict, except when it becomes a major threat. The player character has taken on a greater calling to involve themselves in all threats (IE involving themselves in wars) against Azeroth. Your character and the important NPCs, both Alliance and Horde, bypass the limitations of factions and from a story standpoint, I don't see that changing. Ever. How you/your character actually feels about it is a personal opinion that affects how you percieve the game and it's story beats, but the canon of the situation is you've stepped up to be a hero, for everyone.Out of the game, most people have Horde and Alliance characters. Most people do not feel as strongly as some specific players do about faction identity. I doubt the Alliance or Horde gimmick is ever going to go away, maybe it needs to be replaced with a new Us vs Them? But that Us vs Them aspect won't go away. I am sure they will make things more accessable for friends from both sides to be able to play with each other easier, but that isn't going to be able to stop you from turning on war mode and going to attack low level quest hubs. That isn't going to stop you from forming a group and raiding a faction city. But the idea that World of Warcraft stands for just the faction war is incorrect.