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Battle for Azeroth: Isn’t It a Little Overdone?

WoW's next expansion was announced at Blizzcon during the opening ceremony, and I have to admit that for the first time in many, many years I'm not even a little tempted.

It's once again this big "Horde vs. Alliance" debacle. Honestly, I feel like it's become a little (or a lot) overdone, to the point of being contrived.

Every other expansion the two factions once again hate each other, and in the other expansions they have to put aside their differences to come together and save the world.

During every cycle we see that both Horde and Alliance are very similar. Neither is truly good or evil, yet both have characters who display properties of both. There are redeeming qualities on both sides which is why they eventually come together.

To once again be pitted against each other feels like we're once again ignoring the fact that these factions have done this time and time again. While not necessarily an unfamiliar story trope, I feel like we need more to justify it. I haven't seen it.

And let's not ignore the role of the player -- or, the complete lack thereof. I never feel as those any player's actions matter in any of the lore.

I'll be skipping this expansion while I eagerly await this battle and lore to hopefully fuel a need for Warcraft 4 to continue the story! Given the fact that the WoW Classic Server announcement has overshadowed the new expansion, perhaps I'm not alone.

  • Amen. Last expansion I only got 3 characters to cap and hung up the hat. You are so right. Funny thing is they could have made a neutral faction and actually might would have helped bring some back. People have wanted a neutral faction since at least WotLK.

    Announcing Classic Servers now after all these years of saying they couldn’t shows how desperate Blizz is to keep the WoW cash cow a milking.

  • The entire WoW lore is completely opaque to me. For the whole half a year when I was playing 30+ hours a week and all the sporadic times I’ve played since I never had the least clue who anyone was, what they were doing or why. It’s a huge problem for all fantasy franchises that have been around this long and have this much backstory, but I found WoW to be particularly terrible at introducing or explaining any lore whatsoever or putting anything into any kind of context.

    This far on I wouldn’t even attempt to try and decipher any of it. It’s just a lot of angry people hitting each other and setting each other on fire.

  • I disagree wholeheartedly!
    The war between the factions was exactly why I loved playing vanilla wow, and with each expansion after the burning crusade it’s been more of a merry go along holding hands and fighting a common enemy kumbaya bullshit world, finally we’re getting a reason to hate the alliance again! /spit

    First expansion for many years that has me interested in playing from start.

  • I agree, I personally was hoping they would merge horde and alliance and just do away with the 2 faction thing.

    There really is little to no reason for the conflict, it feels massively forced and pointless and it is long past time to be done with it.

  • I’ve read this blog for years. This isn’t the first time you’ve said you’re done with WoW, not interested, will never raid again. Then lo and behold you’re playing WoW again, leveling, completing a few raids, writing posts about class changes, etc. A few months later you’re back to saying “never again”.

    If I was a betting man I’d say the good money is on you purchasing and playing Battle for Azeroth at launch, even if it’s only for a few months.

    • Shhhhh you’re not supposed to think about crazy past-Keen. Only present wiser, smarter, never going to play again Keen.