This is the first in what I hope will be a 3-5 part series on my predictions/guesses/vain hopes for future major changes in the World of Warcraft universe. Obviously, these ideas are the spawn of my own fevered imagination and have very little, if any, basis in reality or probability.
Since I'm starting something pretty big here, I figure I may as well start off with a big idea.
Prediction: The Horde and the Alliance will be broken
Now, I do not mean that they will be dissolved entirely. But I do believe that some shuffling of factions is in order. Both major factions will continue to exist, but as much less finitely established entities. This will not happen with the next expansion (that'll be Northrend), but I hope for it in the one following.
The current roster shows:
- Alliance - human, night elf, dwarf, gnome, draenei
- Horde - orc, troll, tauren, undead, blood elf
Now of these large factions, there are several races that don't really fit in with the original Orcs vs Humans conflict. They have their own ideologies and their own agendas.
The biggest of these differences of agenda is in the relationship of the Forsaken with the rest of the Horde. They are downright hostile to life in general. They are openly evil. The only reason they're in the Horde is because Thrall is very... open-minded and accepting. I do not suspect that he will kick them out, they won't stick around long enough to give him the chance. I predict that the Forsaken will betray Thrall. This will precipitate things on the Horde side.
The undead have plenty of motive and plenty of opportunity to turn. Once the Scourge are finally dealt with, they have nowhere else to expand... They also have a very ready potential alliance in their new neighbors, the Blood Elves. Belfses have literally no history of alliance with the Horde, so it stands perfectly well to reason that they would be willing to jump ship when the corpses do - especially if they see more magic to be had in the bargain than if they stick with Thrall. Perhaps their deal might be that the Blood Elves get Outland + Quel'Thelas and the Forsaken get the rest of Azeroth?
The betrayal should occur as an unannounced major world event preceding the release of an expansion. The expansion's name should be announced as one thing up until this point and then a change of name alluding to the Betrayal should be revealed.
The Alliance will also splinter apart. The two problem races on the Alliance side are the Night Elves and the Gnomes. I believe that the gnomes will separate relatively peacefully, finally having built up enough resources to re-establish a new city over the ruins of their old capital. There will be nothing personal in the separation, just a differing of opinions and a desire to get back to their own lives - and out of the war.
The Night Elves aren't very nice people. They're also not very well grounded in the subtleties of reality. They have their own major agendas and eternal hatreds to pursue. I suspect that with the undead/belvish betrayal happening, with the gnomes withdrawal from the Alliance, and with whatever else is happening in the game universe at the time, the night elves will become fed up with Stormwind and Ironforge's general lack of action. They will want to strike out on their own and escape the constraining influence of the other peoples' religions.
I suspect that the Tauren will also become fed up with the warchief's poor judgement in admitting any and all strays. They will separate from the Horde in a similar manner to the gnomes' departure from the Alliance. Thunder Bluff will maintain friendly ties with Orgrimmar, but will no longer war against people like the Night Elves simply because Thrall says so.
The three splinter races (gnomes, cows, and nelves) will probably become something like the goblins. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Undermine opened and goblins became a playable race at this time. My prediction remains the same whether or not this happens, but it's more fun if it does, so I'll just assume that goblins become playable 
Balancing The New Factions
With the events of the Betrayal and the more peaceful splinterings of races, we wind up with a list that looks something more like this:
- Horde - orc, troll
- Alliance - human, dwarf, draenei
- Betrayers - undead, blood elf
- Non-aligned - gnome, tauren, night elf
Now, there are some pretty big balance problems with this. The Horde is reduced to a single capital city and the Alliance keeps three (even if Ironforge's population drops somewhat).
Population-wise, the current division is 57% Alliance, 43% Horde characters. If the faction lines were redrawn right now, the new numbers would be 33% Alliance, 12% Horde, 23% Betrayer, 32% Non-aligned. Now, these numbers fluxuate wildly between different servers. Terenas (my current server), is 75% Alliance, but Sargeras (my original server) is dead even, and Detheroc (spin-off server from Sargeras where I lived for a while) is actually 65% Horde.
PVP servers in general are the ones that would have the most problems from a wild imbalance in faction makeups (for obvious reasons). At present, however, PVP servers are slightly imbalanced in favor of the Horde (51%). The new faction devisions would have a very interesting effect on these servers: 27% Alliance, 14% Horde, 28% Betrayer, 31% Non-aligned. Tells you something about the general psychology of people who play on PVP servers, ne? They're all steenking elves and corpses 
Now, one way to smooth this imbalance out a bit would be to also remove the Draenei from the Alliance. After all, they live on another continent and are only connected to the mainland through a Night Elf harbor and they've not got a long history of friendship with the Humans and Dwarves (whose cities are very tightly connected together and may as well be one big town anyway). Moving them would account for 7% of the population on PVP servers (8% across all servers). This puts the imbalance on PVP servers into a much more reasonable 1.4 to 1 ratio of Alliance to Horde - especially when you consider the large number of crazy elves and zombies who're not part of either "core" faction.
But really, the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance ceases to be very interesting on a grand scale at this point. The real interesting conflict is Betrayers vs EVERYONE. They'd have a similar imbalance, with 3 Alliance/Horde characters for every 2 Betrayers on PVP servers, but the only places where world PVP really matters are chaotic madhouse gankfests where the general server population doesn't come into play very heavily - Throwing a 3rd contender into all world PVP objectives isn't difficult at all. Horde would still win with roughly the same frequency, and Alliance would probably lose a bit more often.
I hope for (but realize the improbability of) some way for the newly weakened Horde and Alliance to become slightly less aggro to each other. Perhaps allowing members of the opposing factions to achieve "unfriendly" status with each other.
New battleground games would evolve specifically for the purpose of Betrayer vs Horde and Betrayer vs Alliance action. There should possibly also be a new Betrayer vs Everyone battleground (put 15 of them them in the middle of a map they must defend against 10 Alliance on one end and 10 Horde on the other - Horde and Alliance would be unable to attack each other on this map).
But what of the non-aligned races? They make up a substantial percentage of the population after all.
I propose that they still be allowed to interact amicably with members of their former coalition - achieving exalted status among those factions and that members of the factions likewise still be allowed to achieve status with the splinter groups. However, I also propose that they be allowed to achieve friendly status with members of the other coalition (and vice versa). Non-aligned races would be allowed to max reputation with each other.
What is the trade-off, then, for non-aligned races? They lose the ability to participate in world PVP events (ie, no cows running Halaa), but that's not much of a loss. They should lose the ability to participate in BG's unless they personally side with one side or another. You can pick a side and as your rep increases with one side, your maximum rep with the other side decreases.
"Non-aligned" players start off at neutral with their former allied races and at 1500/3000 hostile with their former enemies. At this point, they have a potential maximum rep of exalted with former allies and honored with former enemies. Every rank increase with one group decreases maximum potential rep with the other. Thus achieving friendly with the former enemy factions will actually decrease your rep with the other side down to a maximum of friendly. If you progress into honored with either one, your rep with the other side will drop down to neutral, etc...
Non-aligned players who wish to interact with both sides must be careful not to advance too far with either faction or risk losing friendly status.
Players of different races must be at least friendly with each others' respective home factions if they want to party together. Guild registration will take some major thinking to iron out
The blood elves and undead are something of a problem. They used to be hostile to the Alliance and vaguely tolerated by the Horde. They have done nothing to endear themselves to the Alliance and everything to put themselves onto the Horde's blacklist.
I think they should be capped at unfriendly with members of both sides and at neutral with all non-aligned races except goblins.
As mentioned before, I think they should get their own BG's. But there's also the issue of Arathi Basin - which is really an undead vs humans conflict. Similar concerns exist with night elves and WSG, but that one's easier to resolve. I think that it should be possible for all-Betrayer teams to participate in the horde side of AB and for all-NE teams to sign on to the alliance side of WSG w/o necessarily earning rep with the alliance. AV isn't as much of a problem since it is dwarves vs orcs. Eye of the Storm is draenei vs blood elves, so I think allowing all-Betrayer teams in the horde slot there works as well.
Conclusion
Guilds are the biggest potential casualty from a shakeup like this. Every Horde guild in the game would become severely gimped and most Alliance guilds wouldn't fare much better. There would be a coup, people would go on hunger strikes, and marches would be organized. They can't afford to break guilds up.
No, Perhaps this would be best as an entirely new server type - especially if they were very magnanimous with their character/guild transfer policy. It's more interesting than the way EQ2 handles cross-faction/alignment guilds (which is by simply ignoring that there's an issue) and far more interesting than a generic 'coop' type server (cf DAoC). Cross-server BG's probably mean that even if you're undead on a 3-faction server, you can still play with Horde in AV matches.
But whether or not you agree with me... Blizzard is heading in that direction.
- Blood elves and undead are neighbors, they start off neutral with all other horde races except each other. In life, the leader of the Undercity was an elf from Silvermoon...
- They've been promising us language skills forever now...
- PvP objectives have moved the bulk of the interesting fighting off into self-contained (controllable) arenas...
- We've had events like the opening of Ahn'Qiraj where the Horde and Alliance cooperated against a greater threat...
- As you get further and further into the game, you encounter more and more factions that aren't divided along racial lines...
Could it work? Probably. Will it happen? Probably not. But I still wish it would. It's hairy enough of a gambit that it just might breathe life back into the game when it starts looking dated and running out of steam 2 years from now.
