Having a state of war does not necessarily mean that an Alliance player will never see a Horde player as anything other than a HK or vice-versa. In my server (granted, RP-PVE, so your experience might very well be different), before cross-realm BGs were introduced, the people that knew each other the best were the PvP'ers, since they were always fighting each other. And that led to a lot of interaction in forums, making alts in the other faction to chat, etc. Of course this was ruined when cross-realm BGs came around, but Wintergrasp has managed to rekindle this, to a degree.

As for whether WoW will evolve to an all-out war between Horde and Alliance, there's one big problem with that - namely, that Blizzard cannot let a faction achieve any sort of meaningful victory without alienating the other faction. So the only possible outcomes to such a war would be either a stalemate, which is not very satisfying for anyone, or, surprise surprise, the appearance of a common foe that forces the warring sides to ally against the new threat.

That being said, since WoW is clearly taking on an episodic nature, there's nothing stopping Blizzard from actually going in the direction of a war in the next expansion only to introduce that new foe in the one after that (Sargeras or Deathwing being the obvious candidates here).

Pandaren pops to my mind as another possible cross-faction race that could go either way. They have no real bias to one side or the other as long as they can fight honorably and drink their booze, they'd get along fine with both Orcs and Dwarves. They'd probably represent a lot "prettier" and more attractive option for a neutral race then goblins.

There are several ways that it would be possible for a neutral race to occur while still preserving faction identity. There could be different hair/skin colorings for alliance vs. horde versions. Of course the red enemy nameplates vs. green ally nameplates means you rarely need to distinguish them in detail on the field of battle.

The faction could be simply a band of mercenaries, or have some civil strife that splits the race in two (similar to the blood elf vs. high elf split).

Furbolg wouldn't be so far off of a candidate either. They're really closely tied with the Nightelves, and they're almost always involved when there is corruption. They wouldn't be so far off from a typical humanoid form and could probably wear most armor without too much adjustment. They'd probably be slightly better tied into the Emerald Dream though.

One thing strikes me is that the Draenei and Blood Elves had a very vested interest in the whole of the Burning Crusade expansion. Draenei because of their homeworld, and Blood Elves because of the Kael storyline. When it comes to the Emerald Dream and the Maelstrom however, the only race that really has stake in them is the Night Elves. Goblins have a minor stake in maelstrom due to their involvement in the south seas, and perhaps purified/redeemed naga?



Unrelated to the above --

Given the Northrend storyline about the Kvaldir, is it possible that we haven't seen the last of the Vrykul yet? Will there be pockets of Vrykul out there on the great sea?

You're making some very good points, but I think that the classic Horde-Alliance hatred as a motor of the story of the Warcraft Universe is, well, not dying out, but slowly fading away. Sure, the first two RTS games were about Orcs against Humans/Elves/Dwarves, but the second already hinted at larger things, though most of what we know today wasn't invented until WC3, which explained the Orcish invasion. But story-wise, except the occasional battles with single groups, there was no actual war between the (new) Horde and the Alliance: the Humans were fighting a fallback war against the Scourge, the Orcs you fought with Arthas were still loyal to the old Horde and the Legion, while Thrall's Orcs were trying to find a new home. Though they had to steal ships and for that killed some humans, they never planned to do this, and the conflicts with the Night Elves arose from non-communication with the inhabitants of this "new" continent. Most of this, including of course the death of Cenarius, can even be blamed on Grom alone. But in the end, Night Elves, Orcs and the Theramore Humans stood together against the Legion, if only to basically split again after that.
Of course the mistrust among the races runs understandably deep, the Orcs' ravaging through Draenei and Human cities under the control of the Legion, then the attacks on Orc settlements under Proudmoore, Sr., what the now-Forsaken did as minions of the Lich King and thus the Legion, the remaining Human ranks of Lordaeron letting the High/Blood Elves down after the Scourge's attack on Silvermoon, and the Orc/Night Elf conflicts in Kalimdor (again a good part of Legion influence involved)
But every intelligent leader can see that, besides the ever-present evil of the Legion, most of those acts were done under the command of at least arrogant individuals. It will take a long time to get over these events, but at least a real truce (on the paper) should be possible and wanted.

Besides, I don't see a Warcraft 4 coming anytime soon, not just because it'd compete with Blizzard's own Starcraft 2, but also because at the moment, a real war between the player factions would have no winners, except for the Scourge and the Legion. Maybe something related to other worlds, both factions invading/coming to the rescue, with the current uneasy truce but also several outbursts of direct conflict as in WC3, while mainly fighting the Legion, but not until the current major threats on Azeroth itself are dealt with, say the Lich King, Azshara and possibly Neltharion, and those are way too good content candidates for the MMO.

Unless Horde = red/brown and Alliance = blue/white, you can't expect players to identify other players of that neutral race on the fly. If a future tier would have different models for each class, and the neutral race had 6 classes, those'd be 12 different shoulders already, for each tier of course, plus at least one model per class for the PvP set (if they keep the current 'evolution' of this gear) which you'd have to associate, plus, not all future dungeons will be based on a tournament, so they won't drop faction-specific nonset gear, but even if, that would increase the possible number of different looks even more.
"Ok, there's a goblin riding on a neutral mount, what does he wear? Which class/faction was that shoulder from again?"
Maybe a bit contradicting to what I wrote above, the Horde-Alliance conflict will stay for a long time, though it may cool down even more, this conflict slash battlegrounds as its ingame representation will always be a major part of the game, and you can't build a neutral faction around this.
Neutral characters, 'friendly' to both classic factions would sure be interesting as mediators and for players not interested in PvP, but I just can't see it coming for WoW.

A serious question though: How many of you actually look at the character and surmise faction from the class? I notice the giant red or yellow letters above their head before I get close enough to distinguish a race/faction. If it's blue, it's not a threat to me, Horde or Alliance (I'm PvE on my main server).

I'm pretty keen on the mercenary Goblin idea myself. A phased starting area (could still be in the existing Azeroth somewhere this way) for 15-20 levels and at the end of the line, choosing your faction. You wouldn't be allowed to join a guild until you were done with the area (to avoid complications later). Mounts wouldn't be an issue since you can't get one in those levels anyway. Goblins are long overdue, as they should've been the Gnome's counterpart, and South Seas is a perfect time to add them in finally.

Blizz already said this gear is only for this instance and not how future sets will be. These type of sets just match the Coliseum.


I don't like cluttering my screen so I don't see red names (or any names for that matter) above peoples heads and rely solely what I see. If goblins were made playable we would likely just see a horde sympathizer faction pop up.

The tournament is certainly an odd bird, from how much we got through(Darn bugs).

Ok so you're announced, your faction cheers you on a race by race basis. Then the other faction's champions come out, 12 fighters in all, with 3 of those fighters being city champions. You kill 9 of those fighters, then you fight the last 3 which are the toughest and knock them off horse back, then you fight all 3 of them on the ground, and they retreat after you defeat them.

Then the next part has you kill 9 Argent NPCs.

I just found it odd how brutal this tournament is, I just figured that the champions/argent NPCs we fought wouldn't be getting killed, it seems rather counter-productive to Tirion's wishes. >.>

Well, they could always add defeat cinematics to the champions before they release it, but I don't see any reason not to have them implemented by now. Unless they'd actually reveal something we're not supposed to know about the whole place, and that's bloody unlikely.

I see a couple possibilities here.

1. Tirion, unlike Saurfang, has already faced and defeated Arthas in single combat. Yes, that was on holy ground and now we're on the Lich King's home turf, but you can't overlook their previous encounter.

2. Tirion's bluffing and trying to draw out Arthas where he would be an easier target than inside his citadel.

3. He has, in fact, lost it. I think this would be an unfortunate direction to take him, since there's been really no setup for him to fall. Sadly, the incident with Arthas' heart doesn't bode too well unless there was something going on there that we still don't know about.

Except for the incident at LH Chapel in wich Arthas was against the odds he has been teasing and playing with us all along.

It could very well be that he is just making sure the most powerfull amongst the players/NPC's assult him so that he can find himself an even more powerfull shell/body.

Actually, taunting Arthas at this point couldn't really hurt. I mean, worst case scenario, he'd just rush the already planned invasion of Azeroth, and hopefully make some mistakes along the way. Best case scenario, he'd rush head first into a trap and make a target of himself, with the option of completely ignoring the taunts as middle ground. Seeing as he's the threat to all life everywhere, I'm sure we'd be expecting an invasion anyway, so there's really nothing to lose here.

As an added benefit, this could serve to rally the Horde and Alliance together once more.

A valid arguement in my opinion against Goblins being playable is this:

Goblins are not confrontational creatures. They don't fight, they hire mercenaries, they swindle or manipulate, or they simply take their business elsewhere or use leverage to get what they want.

This makes little sense then for there to be goblin "Heroes"/player characters running around. Gnomes do not have this predisposition.