OMFG stop pretending you're surprised, 8.2 is EXACTLY THE SAME AS 5.2!This cinematic is a repeat of Vol'jin's deal with Varyan in 5.2,
I sure hope so, just look at alliance hall of fame for crucible... alliance is dying. Whoever plays alliance has a choice either pay extreme amounts of money to swap their characters to horde, or quit. Personally I feel like quitting, the fees are just too high and I have several alts. I imagine many other alliance players are stuck in this situation. Alliance scene both in raiding and in m+ is shrinking, so there's no way to reverse it. The only way is to merge factions or just accept alliance players will keep quitting so you'll end up with 1 faction game anyway. So far this doesn't affect casuals yet, but when more and more people quit seeing they can't efficiently push m+ keys or mythic raid on alliance side, it will trickle down to the lower levels of content too. Hall of fame has proven awfully ineffective to do anything against alliance slowly dying out. For mythic+ you can check websites like bestkeystone and it shows the horde activity is often more than twice the amount of alliance activity. Two faction game is not sustainable anymore 15+ years in.
Guess this means the leaks was true...
I'd go for this.
Faction war became dumb and stale long ago. Just scrap it already.
I don't think they are going to end the factions. The Alliance and the Horde are one the pillars in which the IP is built: Character an player identity (inside and outside the game), story development (if any), brand recognition, and some more are tied to the Factions. What I can see is the end of Factions BELIC CONFLICT, a time of peace. You can argue that the war between the factions is the reason of its existence but in the end we always end up working together to defeat our common enemy, just to get shoehorned a new faction conflict at the begining of the new expantion. A period of peace can also put the focus on races and subfactions and add some nuance to the story (if Blizzard is still capable of), just imagine how Genn and Tyrande could feel about all of this. At the end it all comes down to the ideas and systems implementation, something that Blizz is struggling lately.
Man, that would be great if the factions united. Was disappointed they didn't after Legion, but still understandable. Hopefully when 9.0 rolls around, this happens.
2 factions and active world pvp is probably the main feature which makes wow different from other games. But blizz indeed slowly remove it: active pve mode, impossibility to kill enemy faction npcs
I would much prefer those two factions co-exist without war (at least for the next time) but Azeroth still having 2 different governments: the warchief for the Horde races and the King for the Alliance races, because I don't think any Orc would want to be ruled by a human king and I doubt the humans would end their monarchy to be under a warchief (even if that one is elected or from an Alliance race).
For a variety of reasons I am not in favor of ending the faction divide and I believe the devs when they say that they have no plans to end this divide. What I would like to see, and I do think it's a possibility, is for them to loosen the restrictions against cross faction raiding and dungeons. That way groups of friends could go out and do those activities together regardless of faction. There are already mechanisms that exist to facilitate cross faction roleplaying so that divide could stay. As a mostly Night Elf and Worgen player I do not want to see the horde wandering around without chains in places they should not be.
What I instantly thought, is the parallel of how he says "Thunder Bluff is going to burn, like Teldrassil" and considering we've seen Barrens and Silvermoon warfront templates, especially knowing that Lor'thermar is also plotting a betrayal for Sylvanas, could it be the warfronts of us - all of us, and Silvanas' forces? But pretty much it'd only consist out of those from Horde who chose her side tbf, so unlikely, unless it's just a PvE scenario instead.
Keep the Horde and the Alliance, but let people choose from all races. There may be some Tauren who side with the Alliance, as an example, while some Humans might side with the Horde. Just like with the Pandaren, there could be choices for all races.
More likely a third neutral faction than an end to the current ones.