Faction-Change Service - Q&A

[Boubouille]

Faction-Change Service - Q&A
The Faction-Change announcement has been updated with a Q&A

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.

Updated 7/1
Due to the many questions that have come up with the announcement of this new service, we wanted to take the time to answer the ones we can at this point in time.

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

Q. Will I be able to choose the race on the opposite faction that I want to change to?
A. Yes, but you will only be able to switch to a race that has your class type available to it. So if you play a human paladin, you’d only be able to change to a blood elf paladin.

Q. How much will it cost?
A. We do not have further information on this at this point in time.

Q. Will I be able to switch back to my original faction but a different race?
A. No. You will only be able to switch back to your originally chosen race.

Q. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

Q. How often can you change your faction?
A. We do not have any information to share on this at this point in time, however we will have restrictions on the frequency by which players can change their faction.

Q. How will this affect the balance of Horde and Alliance on the realms?
A. We are taking great care in how we implement this new service in order to maintain balance between the factions on the realms but do not have any further details to share.

[lepino]

Jazzy

[Mumiz]

[lolbrobot]

fairly informative, and i came out of that q&a knowing far more than i did before.

not implementing a same faction race change, and having to return to the same race if you change back to your original faction is probably one of the worst ways this could be handled.

[olhakio]

o nice

had to logg in so not first

[Deathcold]

I personaly dont like the idea, but i guess others do, anyway...

[trapp]

And the last step will be Class change : preview Next year !
/spit at this change for the good the sake of wow.

From a guild perspective it's pretty awesome, but i'm really sadly seeing another thing taken off the horde / alliance fight-differences.

[WhatAreMelon]

i'd rather have race change. i'm sure its on its way but it just boggles the mind that they would rather do faction changes first.

[Nitroxide]

Tbh i think alot of people would rather stay their faction because of friends etc so it wont change alot.

We said the name when gender changes came,we said the same from PVE to pvp transfers.

It isnt that-a-big deal

[Genesys]

it's pretty stupid you can't change for example orc rogue if your already horde and play ud for example. why would'nt you? this would only benefit the alliance person who is lucky to have the options available.... they really should allow you to be able to choose race of your own faction that is elegible for the class.....

[BigPapi]

i'd rather have race change. i'm sure its on its way but it just boggles the mind that they would rather do faction changes first.

/Agreed

I mean with faction changes you are implementing race changes...so why not have that as well? Also, another thing taken off the horde/alliance fight differences? This was taken away when they made paladins playable by Horde and Shamans playable by Alliance.

[Daisuke]

First page. QQ inc.

[Rezman]

I would rather see a quest line you can do that would cause you to become a traitor to your current faction and gain rep with the other faction. This would mean you change factions keeping your current race and all items. You would start off neutral rep with the new faction's cities/races and need to gain rep if you wish.

After a several month cool down you can redo the quest line changing back to your original faction however your rep will be reset back to neutral for all the cities.


As to having several characters on the same (pvp) realm for both factions. I'm not sure how this would be worked out and don't know how Blizzard will be doing this with the current faction change.

[Skulli]

Race changes would cause problems like "every shaman is an orc or hunter an orc etc".
They said that before and thats why i am abit confused that you can pick a race on opposite side.

[Blightyboy]

Q. How will the switch between reputation, gear, mounts, etc be handled?
A. We’ll have more details for you at a later point in time, though we plan to keep these as close to a reflection of the other faction as much as possible.

That's good to know. I'd hate to lose pretty much everything A-H faction-related.

[Zuule]

So i guess if you are on a PvP server you have to change ALL of your characters to the other faction? Since a player cannot have both alliance and horde on the same server?

[xenast]

I'd like to know how they plan to handle quests and achievements such as Lore Master.

[Algos]

When they first announced this service, they talked about it in terms of "friends who leveled up on the opposite faction can now join their opposing faction buddies," so you would think that a server change would be included in the mix. Hell, charge $25 bucks to change faction and another $5 or $10 to include a server change in the mix. One of my close friends has been wishing and hoping that this service was implemented so he could bring his NE druid over to my server Horde side, but if it's gonna cost him $50 bucks to do it I doubt that will happen.

[one_entity]

Q. Will we be able to switch between the races on our own faction?
A. No. Players will only be able to switch to a race of the opposite faction.

What.The.Fuck.

That has got to be the dumbest thing they ever did. Period.

"Yeah, you can change Race AND Faction. But changing only race? Are you insane? It can't be done!"

Seriously, what the fuck is the reason behind that move?!

[Pewpewarrows]

I really don't see why they don't just add own-faction Race changes. I mean, with this Faction change system you CAN change your own Race, you just have to pay twice. First to switch to the opposing faction, and then back to your original.

So stupid.