I’ve heard some people throwing around an idea for a third faction and I don’t think that would work, at all.  We have huge problems balancing two at this time as it is.  Horde is the ‘good’ faction to be right now for whatever reason.  I don’t recall if there is a legitimate reason they are good because of racials or whatever, but let’s say there is no in-game reason currently.  It doesn’t matter, because one way or another all the ‘good’ players are pushing Horde.  Then Alliance players see their friends as Horde and they go Horde.  Other Alliance notice horde teams are pushing progression better and then they go horde.  Now Alliance see they have little in the way of groups whether it’s in towns or group finder and they go Horde where everyone is.  Snowball effect.

Anyway my solution was not a third faction but a friendly Horde/Alliance setup. I was thinking about how Sylvannas burned the world tree and how some horde, Tauren in particular, were very against this.  Tauren by their nature, and possibly also blood elves, if we’re going by lore, would not approve burning the tree, much less civilians.  Other races may roleplay that way too.

So I would suggest Horde and Alliance can mark themselves as ‘neutral’.  This would mean they could party with any Horde friends who are also ‘neutral’. Now I could see this as being a real big problem if everyone just marked themselves as neutral and we’ve be right at a 1 faction kind of thing.  For that I would think having a ‘neutral list’ would work.  I am neutral with X Horde and they are neutral with me.  But other Horde, I still have a problem with.  This way you could play with friends but not play with the other faction willy nilly. It’s like how I use to hang out with Ladiesman but when other Alliance showed up, we would fight each other. Sorta. My friendship with him, didn’t mean my faction had to be friends with him also.

I talked about this in stream last night but I wanted to write it down in case it happens.