8.1 is bringing to us a somewhat unexpected raid: the Siege of Zuldazar. Now, the idea of an Alliance/Horde raid is something I had expected to happen, but it appears that rather than a bunch of mechanically-identical encounters (like the Icecrown Gunship Battle) we'll actually be getting the same fights - just in a different order, in which the Alliance sees the Horde's fights through a flashback (presumably taking on the appearance of some opposite-faction counterpart, like my Human Paladin becoming a Tauren or Blood Elf) and vice versa.
Through broadcast text and other hints, it's possible to put together something of a timeline of the raid. Let's take a look at what we can find:
SPOILERS AHOY
There's a death count from this raid, and some major figures are being taken out, but not everyone you fight.
The battle appears to be related to the Horde's theft of the Abyssal Scepter - at the end of the 8.0 Horde War campaign, the Horde infiltrates Stormsong Monastery and steals this powerful magical artifact that can be used to devastate the Kul Tiran fleet. The Alliance, naturally, wants to get it back.
The Horde apparently is outmaneuvered as the Alliance feints an attack through Nazmir, when their real forces are actually heading straight for the harbor. Thanks to the limpet mines we placed on the main Zandalari ships in the end of the 8.0 war campaign, half the Zandalari fleet is destroyed before they can rally to defend the harbor. So the Alliance is able to attack Dazar'alor, charging up the pyramid and attempting to capture Rastakhan.
When cornered, it appears that High Tinker Mekkatorque is the one who demands the King's surrender, which he refuses to do. In the end, the Alliance winds up killing Rastakhan in the ensuing fight. It's not how they would have wanted it to end, but the mission, it appears is successful.
Meanwhile, the Horde, realizing they had been caught out of place during the invasion, rallies to try to defend Dazar'alor. They attempt to pursue the retreating Alliance forces, pushing their way down through the city and eventually fighting High Tinker Mekkatorque. The High Tinker winds up frozen somehow - it's not clear if it's some goblin device (Gallywix apparently has his own mech suit) or if it's some malfunction of his suit, or even a safety feature, but Mekkatorque is left frozen solid, and no one on the Alliance side appears capable of thawing him safely. (I do wonder if, like Magni, this could set him up for a return in the distant future.)
The Horde attacks the Kul Tiran fleet as Jaina leads them away from Zandalar, but while she is a boss, she does not die, and manages to cover the Alliance forces' withdrawal.
So what's the aftermath?
The Alliance doesn't conquer Dazar'alor, leaving it to the Horde, but they do appear to succeed in their mission. Indeed, this apparently serves to rally the Alliance, and we hear that across Azeroth, the Alliance is winning the war. What's more, the Zandalari fleet - the main reason the Horde had sought to ally with them - is devastated while the Kul Tiran fleet is at full strength.
On the other hand, the Zandalari are more motivated than ever before to fight the Alliance, who see them primarily as the force that burst into their capital and killed their beloved king.
It is pretty interesting though: Unlike the Siege of Orgrimmar, which shared victory between the Alliance and the rebellious faction of the Horde as equal partners, this shows a battle in which the Alliance has truly secured a definitive win, and the Horde are forced to do damage control only.
I think the Alliance has needed something like this for a while - the attack on Undercity didn't feel like much of a victory once it was revealed to just be an elaborate trap set by Sylvanas. But more importantly, I think this is something that gives the Horde a chance to really feel like the aggrieved party. If we are to buy this faction conflict, I think that both sides need to have strong motivations, and the various explanations given by Rexxar, Lillian, and Garona have felt pretty half-baked and unconvincing, especially when you consider the events of Before the Storm.
I think that there is a problem with the identity of the Alliance that Blizzard has muddied more or less since day one - the Horde is meant to seem them as intolerant and tyrannical, yet the experience of playing an Alliance character is generally one in which you're always doing unambiguously moral things.
I think that you run the risk of alienating some Alliance players if you take the Alliance to a dark place - you could imagine a version of World of Warcraft in which the Alliance is more authoritarian, kind of making them the Lawful faction in comparison with the Chaotic one. But in practice, the Alliance has generally been pretty firmly Lawful Good while the Horde is basically Good Except When It Come to the Alliance. I know Horde players don't really get to see this, but Horde forces literally nailed civilians to walls in Brennendam (the town in Stormsong Valley,) and when that's what we see the Horde doing, it's hard to have much sympathy when they complain about an Alliance that refuses to "just let them be." If, instead, we saw Alliance forces burning Forsaken at the stake, for example (maybe the Order of Embers gets a little more intense in their witch-hunting mission) then I think we'd see a Forsaken that feels more justified in what they're doing. But that would mean a much darker Azeroth, and I don't know if that's the direction that Blizzard wants to take things.
The Alliance doesn't have to feel terrible about this attack on Dazar'alor - it's a reasonable, tactical strike against enemy assets - but it's also just close enough to being unprovoked that the Horde can feel some righteous furor over the death of Rastakhan.
Now, the question is where this is all heading. I'm still very curious to see if this expansion truly "resolves" the faction conflict or, more likely, that we'll see this current war die down in a fragile truce. On one hand, the latter would preserve the mechanics of the faction divide in the game, but on the other, it would make a lot of this fight feel sort of pointless.
I'll tell you that my dream for the end of Battle for Azeroth is that we see a lasting peace established between the factions that rolls over into mechanics - allowing friends across the faction divide to run dungeons and such together. Those who refused to settle for peace could go for War Mode, and that might have more profound changes to the experience of the world. Imagine, for example, a town in the next expansion that is willing to accept envoys from the Alliance as long as they remain peaceful, but if you're in War Mode, you are to be killed on sight.
It's a little crazy to think that the Siege of Zuldazar is actually only the first official, major raid of the expansion. We've got the Crucible of Storms as a mini-raid follow up to it, but then presumably we'll get at least two additional major raids to follow.
I do suspect that we're going to see the focus of the expansion shift away from the faction conflict - though not give it up entirely - after Crucible of Storms. My guess is that from there we'll head to Nazjatar to fight Azshara and then possibly Ny'alotha to fight N'zoth.
The other possibility, of course, is that if Azshara is the "Gul'dan" of the expansion, they might be setting her up to lead us into the following expansion. While I feel somewhat confident in a Death-themed expansion 8, I've certainly been wrong in the past. If we don't fight N'zoth here, it could easily happen next time. The question, then, is who the final boss of this expansion will be.
Would they do another faction-divided raid like Siege of Zuldazar? Might we fight Sylvanas or Anduin, depending on which faction we are a part of? That would certainly make this a true Alliance v Horde expansion, but I'm also skeptical that they would commit to this unconventional raid type before they had seen the reaction to Siege of Zuldazar (there's no way they aren't already working on the final raid of BFA in some way or another.)
Much as I felt with 8.0, I really don't know where we're going next, which is exciting, and makes me very eager to pore over every bit of material we can get.
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