Broken Base / World of Warcraft

• Ever since the start of the second rebellion in Battle For Azeroth, there seem to be a split between the Horde players: those who want to overthrow Sylvanas and think it'll salvage the Horde story, and those who feel it won't accomplish anything else than losing the Horde more heroes and point to the disastrous "Siege of Ogrimmar" which not only killed off most of the Horde's heroes but has thus far permanently destroyed the orcs' racial story.
• Almost any Horde vs. Alliance debate;
  • From the end of Mists of Pandaria up to Battle for Azeroth, it was if "Siege of Orgrimmar" was proper vengeance for what the Alliance went through during Cataclysm and most of Mists, where they were often depicted as either losing, or scoring victories that were pyrrhic at best. Some think the Horde outright asking the Alliance for help, them invading the Horde capital, killing off the Horde's few remaining notable characters and killing most of its soldiers, and Varian issuing threats at them afterward, make it an Alliance victory especially as almost all the Horde victories in Cataclysm involved taking several levels in evil and forever tarnishing the image of the Horde as Noble Savages, while others will point out the weak buildup to it (the Alliance setup consisting of piloting a robot cat to spy on the Horde in a couple of quests, while the Horde got to fend off an army and fight alongside Thrall and Vol'jin), the fact that it's depicted as the Alliance helping the Horde solving its problems, that the threats Varian made were empty and that the Horde got to keep most of what they conquered during Cataclysm, makes an unsatisfying conclusion for them. The majority do agree, however, that the siege storyline in general was both poorly planned and executed.
  • As of Battle for Azeroth, it's whether or not the Alliance raid on Dazar'alor is payback enough for the War of the Thorns.
    ^{Why it isn't} Pick any combination of the following: Considering that the Night Elves were genocided in an entire patch that pulled Emotional Torque as hard as it could, anything less than completely burning Horde territories and genociding one of their own races wouldn't be enough, complete with the head of Sylvanas, Nathanos and (for the angriest ones) the extermination of the entire Horde for falling behind a genocidal Warchief again without protests from anyone but Saurfang when they set fire to Teldrassil. The Zandalari weren't involved in the War of the Thorns at all and just allied with the Horde, so it feels like Misplaced Retribution instead of proper revenge. On top of that, the raid explicitly failed because its aim was to prevent the Zandalari from joining the Horde, but it just drives them into Sylvanas's arms, and it's explicitly called a Pyrrhic Victory in-game, with several Alliance characters refusing to press their advantage because finishing off the Zandalari and Horde as they mourn would make them no better than Sylvanas, which, to those fans, feels extremely hollow when Sylvanas started the war by genociding the Night Elves.
    ^{Why it is:} ]The War of the Thorns was an extremely controversial move, even among Horde fans, who are just as frustrated by the "Horde follows an evil Warchief and must find themselves" being repeated as the first camp is, it's the second time the Alliance raided a Horde city, and this time, they get to kill a race leader that is well-liked by Horde players, and the invasion of Zandalar just renders their entire questlines there into a Shoot the Shaggy Dog story, since the questlines were supposed to help restore Zandalar, and the entirety of the Horde War Campaign is rendered moot by the Alliance stealing the Abyssal Scepter back, and getting Derek Proudmoore back.
  • Finally, the huge, big argument-starting one: which faction does Blizzard prefer?
    Some will point out that, from Cataclysm up until Legion (with the addition of Battle for Azeroth), most of the overarching plot was about the Horde and the Orcs, with the Alliance playing second-fiddle to them, with the Horde depicted as winning most of their battles conquering territories and apparently getting the developer's favor, along with the faction as a whole still being Easily Forgiven despite all their atrocities, the Alliance getting the more boring content (see the entry about horses on this page for an example), and so on. In addition, from a gameplay perspective, the Horde has benefited from better racials, and as of Dragonflight, about 90% of top raiding guilds are on the Horde side, and faction imbalance is about 60%/40% in favour of the Horde. This issue became prevalent during the Classic reboot, with PVP servers being Horde dominated, World PVP became so intense that it lead to a massive exodus of Alliance players to Alliance dominated (mostly PVE) servors or to the Horde.
    Others will point out that most of that characterization and victories came at the cost of taking several levels in evil suffering a civil war, being guilted for choosing Horde and losing their leadership, prominent factions and notable characters most of whom never replaced even years later, orcs never getting a new leader after Garrosh with trolls never getting a new leader after Vol'jin's infamously anti-climatic death at the start of Legion. This got to the point that as of Legion, the orcs have only one Horde character (Eitrigg) still being used whom had to be retconned as a warrior after all prior lore depicted him as long retired due to extreme age. This is a sharp contrast to the Alliance counterpart to orcs, humans, having a wide variety of heroes to use. The Horde having; the orcs' entire history retconed in WoD to make them Evil All Along, no story role in Legion, frequently being forced to work alongside Alliance heroes (Alleria even making anti-Horde rants in front of the Horde player) despite orcs having a big beef with the Burning Legion.
• Mists of Pandaria caused this too, especially given the new setting, playable race, focus, and simplistic handling of the faction war.
• Also, PvE vs. PvP. Players will pull up unoriginal insults akin to Fantastic Racism without the "race".
• Warlords of Draenor had many disliking that it's a time travel expansion that didn't move the main plots forward enough and that Garrosh was a major bad guy again when the last raid before the expansion was about defeating him. Another is that right after MoP's handling of the orcs (which many players disliked), it was yet another expansion focusing on the orcs being evil with seemingly little positive representation, and again killing Horde characters. Others were happy about returning to Draenor, seeing many famous lore characters, being able to build Garrisons, and that Blizzard finally remembered the draenei.
  • The opening cinematic of WoD shows Grom killing Mannoroth with the help of Garrosh, some players argue this was a major waste of character as it would have been interesting to see the reaction of the Burning Legion to the rejection of the Blood of Mannoroth, along with the fact that AU!Mannoroth's death was very anticlimatic. On the other hand, others argue that Mannoroth never had a big role in the expansion anyway and that it was better to kill him in the opening and focus on the expansion on the Iron Horde. In any case, he returns as the penultimate boss of the expansion's last raid.
  • In terms of gameplay, the lack of flying in Draenor on launch caused many arguments on the forums over whether it should've been allowed or not in the future. As this is a prime source of flame bait, let's not say more on it, please.
  • There is a small but growing anti-raiding sentiment among some players on fansites due to the lack of longevity in Warlords of Draenor's world content (especially reputations) and dungeons, the changes to crafting, and the huge nerf to LFR gear (including removing raid gear art in favor of recycling Honor gear models), those players seeing Blizzard as intentionally gimping both to funnel the community into Garrisons and raiding. That Blizzard justified those changes by claiming they didn't like that raiders felt forced into those activities has done nothing to soothe the sting for that group of players, many of whom have left the game due to a lack of perceived things to do at level cap. Other players, however, are just as vocal in preferring the raiding-focused endgame as it allows them to focus more on preparing for progression raiding and spend less time worrying about needing to cap daily reputation gains or dungeon currency to maximize their potential on progression nights.
• Lore-wise, Thrall being depowered in Legion has been welcomed by the Alliance playerbase who felt the character cheated in his duel with Garrosh and got enough publicity, but was met by groans in the Horde fanbase who are annoyed about the Horde's inability to hold onto notable characters against the Alliance's cast of powerful heroes.
• The entire concept of redemption as it would have been applied to major villains. For everyone who supports or voices support for Illidan/Arthas/Kael'Thas/Garrosh/Sylvanas/Anyone redeeming in any way, there will be many that consider said villain to be too far gone or consider the idea of redemption to be naive or overused. It doesn't help that Blizzard has been, so far, solely siding with the fans that don't want redemption, though to what extent is it to bring justice to those who have gone too far or to fulfill desires for "MOAR LOOT" is up to debate. This is also compounded by the fact that the redemption arcs they have are usually aimed at characters many consider less deserving (such as Illidan) while being denied to those considered more deserving (such as Malygos and Kael'thas) with exceptions (such as Lady Liadrin) being rare.
• Look at the entry of Anvilicious above, and usually this question will pop out with two differing sides: Is the constant warfare between the two factions actually a good thing because it lets them hone their fighting skills until the Legion comes knocking? The reasoning for this is usually that if there is a time of peace, it's more likely that no actual life and death situation to spring out the true fighting potential which it may be honed to true skills will appear and sometimes, justice needs to be given for these souls that suffer a lot due to the other faction's antics. Or is constant warfare a bad thing, because their hostilities to each other will be exploited without mercy by the Burning Legion and no matter how cheesy it may sound, sometimes teamwork and unity is the key to defeat the Legion and if it means going hand-in-hand with former enemies, burying the hatchet for good and going for the Easily Forgiven route, so be it, especially since the Battle of Mt. Hyjal has proven that such a thing was the key to defeating Archimonde. Either way, both sides still have strong points that there doesn't seem to be a middle ground between the bases.
• Harkening back to how the game was designed in the first place: It's an MMORPG where the player is the focus and the developers had the intention of making the player feel more immersed to the world of Azeroth and progressing from a random soldier to the realm's biggest badass. For some, it's a REALLY great thing and a contribution of why the game is so popular. For the other camp, it's considered a piss-on to a lot of lore characters, who occasionally gets derailed here and there in order to make the players feel really good, and the player characters getting a bit too much like Azeroth's Spotlight-Stealing Squad, basically turning established lore characters into fodders. In other cases, some of Blizzard's decisions such as killing off characters are influenced with the players' opinion. This has led to lore characters' fate or development (such as Thrall, Garrosh, Sylvanas, Jaina or Xe'ra) ending up at the whims of the players who could be unaware of what constitutes as good story/character development, and instead basing the verdict on on their feelings and personal biases.
• Suramar's storyline is both loved and hated. It's loved for the sheer amount of content available in it (with a significant amount of it being available at launch) with some even appreciating that completing it will usually do most of the rep grinding for you (Whereas every other zone, if done to full completion, will only get you to honoured and maybe revered.) In addition, it basically received a second arc after launch, essentially incorporating it into one of Legion's earliest raids. Others dislike it for the exact same reason - that it's an absolute Marathon Level of a zone, made even longer by gating some of its progression behind requirement for having a certain reputation, needing to complete world quests, or having to collect Ancient Mana. (Stuff that the other zones did not require) and, if you have Alt Itis, you will have to do it again if you want your extra characters to reap the rewards. (This resulted in most players skipping it their second time). Fortunately, everyone on both sides who want the Nightborne appreciate that you only need one character with Insurrection and Exalted with the Nightfallen to unlock the allied race early.
• Four words: "The Fate of Saurfang". Blizzard originally intended this quest to be a Darkspear Rebellion-esque call to action as Horde players rallied behind Saurfang and Zekhan to form an underground resistance movement against Sylvanas' increasingly depraved and self-destructive leadership. Instead, Horde loyalist players were outraged that they were once again being railroaded into defying and betraying their Warchief so soon after Mists of Pandaria, and both Forsaken and Sylvanas fans were outraged over the thought that their race would lose their racial leader. The first group claims that Sylvanas had not done enough to earn the villain status Garrosh had, that everything she did was for survival. Both groups claimed that the heavy implications that Saurfang was in fact a traitor make him too unlikable (It's heavily implied, and later confirmed in "Lost Honor" that Saurfang was intentionally released by Anduin to undermine Sylvanas). As well as that killing off Sylvanas wouldn't solve anything for the Horde or the Forsaken as the prevailing thought on the Siege storyline was that it didn't stop the Horde, especially the orcs, from continuing to be vilified. The backlash against this was so severe that Blizzard was cowed into hastily adding an alternate version where you can choose to remain loyal to Sylvanas, at least for the time being, which in turn led to its own Broken Base as one side praises Blizzard for adding an instance of player agency, while the other criticizes them from seemingly compromising their original vision of the storyline to appease the complainers, with Alliance fans complaining that they weren't given a similar choice despite their own complaints about their story.
• The Vol'dun Incursion originally involved the Alliance explicitly attacking vulpera civilians with "Purge Squads" purely because they were letting the Horde use their trade routes. In 8.1 and the Incursions went live, the Alliance's attacks on the vulpera were censored to them "merely" destroying the Horde supplies and caravans, whilst leaving all vulpera alone. One side feels this is good as it was out of character for the Alliance. The other side finds it another unnecessary Adaptational Self-Defense action, pointing that the Alliance has done similar such as Bael Modan's general in the Barrens explicitly targeting Goblin civilians because they were an easy target and even receiving a promotion for these attacks.
• The end of the War Campaign and the subsequent armistice between the Horde and Alliance has earned a fair bit of ire. The fact that the campaign ends with Sylvanas once again ruining her master plan on impulse before casually killing Saurfang invoked bad memories from the War of Thorns. Some Horde players feel that the loss of Sylvanas as a warchief and the ensuing leadership shake-up has defanged their faction, leaving it controlled by traitors and Alliance bootlickers^note Arguing that while Sylvanas had done horrible things, she inflicted them on the Alliance.; others contend it's a return to what the Horde was supposed to represent in vanilla^note Of the original Horde leaders, Sylvanas and her Forsaken were the Token Evil Teammate while the rest were noble warriors.. Meanwhile, Alliance players are furious that they are once again denied the chance at revenge for Horde war crimes due to plot and the two factions once again working together against a common foe^note Arguing that, at this point, the Horde has done more damage to the Alliance than some of those "common foes", and that as such it should be treated with the same "exterminate at all cost" measures as them rather than be Easily Forgiven again.. Many players on both sides are just relieved the disliked plot is finally over.
• Allied races. Initially many argued that with a few exceptions, they are just Palette Swaps of existing races... with better racials. However, people took issue with the fact that while Alliance finally get their high elves, they are instead VOID elves, that is, former Horde elves that defected. Some felt the reason the nightborne joined the Horde was kind of an Ass Pull, while others felt they actually fit in as being somewhat adjacent to the blood elves. Then comes the Kul Tiran vs. Zandalari troll... sure they are just variations of humans and trolls, but the racials for Zandalari were seen as better than Kul Tiran, which is mostly situational. Finally, mechagnomes and vulpera. Some feel that despite mechagnomes technically existing since Wrath and having every reason in-story for joining the Alliance, they are just a Palette Swap of regular gnomes whereas the Horde race is a brand new race altogether. And then, of course, you also have some people who feel the sethrak would have been better additions over either...
  • Related to void elves is the decision to give them access to the same skin tones, and later hair colors, as blood elves in Shadowlands at the same time that both races get high elf-styled blue eyes. People are either satisfied or think it ruined one or both races' aesthetics and essentially made them a neutral race barely a step up from pandaren.
• Sylvanas becoming a villain during the latter half of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands is either something that makes perfect sense and in fact, should have happened at least ten years ago^note She was always skirting the line between Token Evil Teammate and Nominal Hero, her Forsaken were shown as practicing horrible experimentations all the way since Vanilla, she was compared to the Lich King in-universe as soon as Cataclysm, and both Forsaken intros said that they did not care for the Horde beyond as allies of convenience or it's an awful plot twist that ruins whatever Pet the Dog moments Sylvanas had, rids her of all her depths, and is a cheap plot twist that should not have happened.
• When it comes to combinations of race and class for players, which existing ones make sense or not and which ones should make sense but aren't playable is a frequent topic. Common threads are whether Lightforged draenei make sense as death knights, whether night elves should have paladins after they were shown capable of becoming them in Legion, and then you have the people who believe that the franchise's lore has been butchered so much that restrictions on race/class combinations are completely pointless now^note Most likely, so many combinations are unplayable because they're oxymoronic, counter-cultural, not common enough in the lore, or would simply require too much effort to implement, e.g. new druid and demon hunter races who would each require several new models to be made for their respective transformations.
• A hot button topic after many expansions is whether or not the faction divide should end especially as the whole Alliance vs Horde conflict has many players tired of it. One group is against it, stating that game is called World of Warcraft and that the faction war is a major part of the Warcraft series. Another wants to see the whole war finally come to an end as both Alliance and Horde end up working together to defeat the Big Bad of most expansions (as well as in Warcraft III) and that it would open up a lot of content overall instead of gating half of it for all players. A third group doesn't care but do think the entire conflict and the reason to continue it is poorly executed.