I happen to agree on this issue. I find it quite tiresome, myself, as well as extremely odd. Blizzard has repeatedly shown that they seem to prefer the Horde side of the coin. Thrall is the hero of Azeroth and WoW. No Alliance member can really compete in morality and sticking to his guns about doing the right thing. Yet Varian is getting large amounts of face-time (all the better to emorage, my dear). Brann is rather annoying - the Horde should have no justification to work with him. "Aye, I'm the brother o' King Magni and Muradin. Yeah, Muradin helped Artha... Gahhkk" - Brann chokes on his own blood as an axe is inserted into his lungs.

I'm sorry, but in WoW racial profiling would be a gut reaction. An Alliance sees someone with green skin, they immediately think murderer (look at those bulging muscles!) and thief (look at that sloping brow, obviously a nefarious lesser race), so naturally are justified in attacking the poor farmer (from ambush) with no provocation. Horde would do the same - Orc says: "Look at that human oppressor - they held us as slaves, let us avenge our fathers!"

The War never left Warcraft. Orcs and Nelves have been sparring over Ashenvale for years. Horde assaulted Alliance in Icecrown with the undead in stone's throw distance. Both factions are shooting at each other's flying machines regularly in north Icecrown. This is happening not because the other faction is evil, but because A) they're different (Xenophobia) and B) because we've "always fought them."

The only reason War needs to be reinjected is because players are blase. Outside of a PvP server or a Battleground, you see the opposite faction and just don't care. It's a player attitude. We see them every day. Blizzard can blame Sanctuary cities if they like - being actively unable to attack the other faction will drive the reaction of "Blizzard doesn't want us fighting, therefore we're at peace." It's going to be very hard to change player attitude. Players have been trained to treat everything as Neutral or a Lootbag.

Possibly the only way to solve the issue of "meh, just another Hordie" properly would have been to turn all realms into PvP ones--but if Blizzard ever did that, the resulting level of tears would dwarf anything we've seen thus far.

I doubt it, since the general reaction on a PvP server in my experience is somewhat similar. Because there's no real advantages to PvP on a PvP server, so in the vast majority of cases there's a pretty strict balance of terror going on. You don't mess with me, I don't mess with you, we all get our dailies done and can go do something else, cheers.

I agree it's not a storyline problem, it's a design problem. The way the game is set up even when permanently flagged for attack, there are nothing but drawbacks to actually wage the war the game is supposedly about. They can do whatever the want with the story to try and change this, but - in a fairly illuminating manner - when that story itself is presented in a format where engaging in PvP delays the player's participation in the story rather than advance said story, well...

One way to implement story advances would be through quests with very high quality loot, similar to the PvP gear you used to buy with your rank back in vanilla. Quests like kill xx members of the alliance/horde are already in place in Icecrown and Venture Bay, however, there are no rewards besides some gold, which most of the players have plenty of. Offer an epic weapon, a pet, a mount or something along these lines and you will probably attract more players. The only problem I see with this is the imbalance in horde/alliance population on some servers and that may very well the reason they decided against it.

Relating to lore that's going on in the game right now, I wanted to make the observation that the appearance of the elemental rifts in Outland, which some players are complaining makes no sense from the standpoint of "the Shattering", was in some small sense set up before Wrath even launched.

As I understand it, the rifts are due to twilight cultists summoning elemental forces with the intent of generally fucking up Azeroth, and the fact that some are doing this in Outland confused a lore-enthused guildmate of mine. But note that this is almost exactly the explanation for the midsummer boss -- Ahune is an elemental servant of Neptulon, being summoned by Twilight cultists in Outland, in order to work towards the destruction of Azeroth.

I wonder if that setup was in any way intentional.

Pretty sure the rift appearance in Outland is purely due to gameplay purposes, that is to allow 60-70 players to take advantage of the dailies, rather than tied to lore in any ways.

Post-shattering Cataclysm has considerably more war. Blizz have perfected their npc fighting technology, and there are skirmishes almost continually from Azshara through Ashenvale and Stonetalon to Barrens. It is less noticable at higher levels simply because most zones are fully neutral. However, Twilight Highlands in particular has a fair amount of horde vs alliance fighting going along.

From a story telling perspective, Blizzard won't abandon neutral characters because it would require a duplication of effort to tell stories, because in some circumstances it makes sense for people to band together to fight a dangerous common enemy ('Guys Ragnaros has awoken and is going to burn the world to a crisp!''Meh who cares, we're going to fight for these abandoned shacks over there') and there is also an impulse that even if there is a habitual enemy over the rise, you don't mess with them if you have other important things to do and they don't mess with you (as you see on PvP servers as discussed above)

Going back to the Infinite discussion a few pages back, I was browsing the new rare NPCs in Cata I came across Occulus the Corrupted, which is an Infinite Dragonflight version of the bronze drake Occulus that used to hang out outside the CoT. Seems it was added in August but not seen it mentioned. To anyone on beta, is there any storyline whilst questing in Tanaris involving CoT/Infinites?

There are a few other interesting ones, Narain Soothfancy moved to a new quest hub but a rare spawn Twisted Reflection of Narain still spawns at his old hut. Also the named Tanaris pirates are now rare spawns, as well as Aquementas from the old Zelda quest line.

Cho'gal knows that if he can destroy Outlands, everyone will be stuck at level 58 and thus unable to combat his devious schemes in Azeroth. Anyone with half a brain could simply observe players walking through the portal at level 58, never to be seen again until levl 68.

It is explained in the latest set of pre-Cataclysm quests that elemental rifts come from a weakening of the physical plane. Draenor is pretty much a broken planet, so it kind of makes sense.

Lady Sinestra was first seen in Outlands as well. Not to mention there are numerous Black Dragons in Outlands. Certainly Deathwing must know the Netherwing are his progeny as well.

The in-game lore is more or less "Azeroth's is being weakened in a similar manner to Outlands, lets study Outlands to see if we can prevent Azeroth from being shattered like Draenor was".

Also, as seen in both Auchindoun and Shadowmoon Valley, Outlands has connections with Old Gods and Elemental Lords as well (the one Arakkoa are trying to summon and Murmor the Lord of Sound).