Cross-faction soon?

[Biomega]

The only thing that can be done is to incentivize being Alliance, either by making racial traits more attractive or making them visually more attractive. Do we have a perspective outside of this that is causing the mass exodus from the alliance?

The "exodus" is precipitated by a self-reinforcing vicious circle: there's fewer guilds/groups doing high-end content on Alliance, so people interested in that kind of content go over to Horde; this drains the number of available players interested in doing high-end content on the Alliance side, which as a result means there are fewer guilds/groups on Alliance doing that content; which then means... etc. etc.

They're already trying to make Alliance "more attractive". They gave them an elf race (big draw to a lot of people), Alliance racials are almost universally better in most forms of content, etc. But that doesn't really compensate for the social/community reasons that lie at the heart of the problem, because the marginal gains on racial power do not outweigh the MASSIVE impact of the social/community environment even (or especially) for high-end play. So they'd either need to overbuff things to such a ludicrous degree that it'd be trivial on Alliance vs. hard on Horde (unlikely to happen, and destructive in its own way) or find some other solution people haven't thought about yet.

Or - and this is my own preferred option - they introduce some kind of "reset" button that reshuffles the entire A/H distribution at once. Something like e.g. a Light vs. Void expansion pack where every player now has to basically choose a new faction. Also has the advantage of doing away with racial/races being tied to faction, easing the strain on balance and cosmetics even further because people don't feel "forced" to flock to the new hotness.

But whether or not something of that magnitude will be done, or indeed whether or not Blizzard actually WANTS to do something that radically departs from their AvH identity, is unknown as of yet. Maybe they'll just accept the status quo and sacrifice the enjoyment of Alliance players as the lesser evil, because fixing it would take too much work to cover lost revenue from the few players still remaining on Ally anyway...

[Tziva]

Or - and this is my own preferred option - they introduce some kind of "reset" button that reshuffles the entire A/H distribution at once. Something like e.g. a Light vs. Void expansion pack where every player now has to basically choose a new faction. Also has the advantage of doing away with racial/races being tied to faction, easing the strain on balance and cosmetics even further because people don't feel "forced" to flock to the new hotness.

But whether or not something of that magnitude will be done, or indeed whether or not Blizzard actually WANTS to do something that radically departs from their AvH identity, is unknown as of yet. Maybe they'll just accept the status quo and sacrifice the enjoyment of Alliance players as the lesser evil, because fixing it would take too much work to cover lost revenue from the few players still remaining on Ally anyway...

At this point in the game's lifespan, any sort of faction divide is going to be detrimental to the playerbase as long as it keeps them segregated from grouping. This is true no matter what the factions are or how they are determined. Aside from the fact that PvEers are always going to go where everyone else is for the purpose of grouping and recruitment -- whether that is Horde or Alliance or some new faction -- I don't know that there are enough active players in end-game to adequately justify keeping the populations isolated from each other.

People have a lot of great ideas for story justification, new factions, or freely chosen factions instead of race-locked, and these are all fine ideas, but at the end of the day, we really just need to be able to play cooperatively with each other. Personally, I'd love if factions were just killed and I could occasionally bring my human to my troll's raid and vice versa, but at this point I'd settle for some kind of mercenary mode quickfix where my human morphs into an orc when I group with Horde. The situation is serious enough that even a shitty bandaid solution is better than nothing in my opinion.

[Biomega]

At this point in the game's lifespan, any sort of faction divide is going to be detrimental to the playerbase as long as it keeps them segregated from grouping. This is true no matter what the factions are or how they are determined.

That's not an unreasonable position. It would erode a lot of the fantasy, but there's no doubt it would MASSIVELY improve group gameplay options for a lot of people.

I'm not sure there really aren't enough players to maintain a healthy faction balance, though - at least in principle. How feasible it would be for implementation is a question to be sure, as is the amount of influence Blizzard could or should exert on maintaining that balance within the community (sponsoring streamers to maintain the divide for example, etc.). I'm putting a reset out there more as a thought experiment than anything else - realistically I don't think Blizzard will do it, and it very well could just come down to them either A) not doing anything; or B) just enabling cross-faction play for instanced content of all kinds.

[InflaterMouse]

The "exodus" is precipitated by a self-reinforcing vicious circle: there's fewer guilds/groups doing high-end content on Alliance, so people interested in that kind of content go over to Horde; this drains the number of available players interested in doing high-end content on the Alliance side, which as a result means there are fewer guilds/groups on Alliance doing that content; which then means... etc. etc.

They're already trying to make Alliance "more attractive". They gave them an elf race (big draw to a lot of people), Alliance racials are almost universally better in most forms of content, etc. But that doesn't really compensate for the social/community reasons that lie at the heart of the problem, because the marginal gains on racial power do not outweigh the MASSIVE impact of the social/community environment even (or especially) for high-end play. So they'd either need to overbuff things to such a ludicrous degree that it'd be trivial on Alliance vs. hard on Horde (unlikely to happen, and destructive in its own way) or find some other solution people haven't thought about yet.

Or - and this is my own preferred option - they introduce some kind of "reset" button that reshuffles the entire A/H distribution at once. Something like e.g. a Light vs. Void expansion pack where every player now has to basically choose a new faction. Also has the advantage of doing away with racial/races being tied to faction, easing the strain on balance and cosmetics even further because people don't feel "forced" to flock to the new hotness.

But whether or not something of that magnitude will be done, or indeed whether or not Blizzard actually WANTS to do something that radically departs from their AvH identity, is unknown as of yet. Maybe they'll just accept the status quo and sacrifice the enjoyment of Alliance players as the lesser evil, because fixing it would take too much work to cover lost revenue from the few players still remaining on Ally anyway...

I think a better fix for this would be to allow faction reputation grinds, renown achievements/progression and overall raid achievements to go account wide. This would be a much more attractive fix in my opinion and wouldn't mess with the foundation of the game itself. This would allow people to play any faction they wanted and not have to worry about a "re-grind" on everything that is important for their character.

If you're exalted on 1 toon you're exalted on any toon or new toons across the entire account (or a faction based alternative). Renowned 60 on your main? Any cov you join, when you hit 60 you're insta 60 and everything that comes with it. This would be more attractive to me regarding playing a different faction.

This would also keep from messing with the building blocks of the story.

- - - Updated - - -

At this point in the game's lifespan, any sort of faction divide is going to be detrimental to the playerbase as long as it keeps them segregated from grouping. This is true no matter what the factions are or how they are determined. Aside from the fact that PvEers are always going to go where everyone else is for the purpose of grouping and recruitment -- whether that is Horde or Alliance or some new faction -- I don't know that there are enough active players in end-game to adequately justify keeping the populations isolated from each other.

People have a lot of great ideas for story justification, new factions, or freely chosen factions instead of race-locked, and these are all fine ideas, but at the end of the day, we really just need to be able to play cooperatively with each other. Personally, I'd love if factions were just killed and I could occasionally bring my human to my troll's raid and vice versa, but at this point I'd settle for some kind of mercenary mode quickfix where my human morphs into an orc when I group with Horde. The situation is serious enough that even a shitty bandaid solution is better than nothing in my opinion.

I would rather them consolidate servers again than cross faction anything, just my opinion I know.

[Tziva]

I would rather them consolidate servers again than cross faction anything, just my opinion I know.

Oh, I agree that server consolidation is definitely needed; they should be merging much more aggressively and it's unfortunate that they stopped when they did. However, that doesn't really solve the problem. Merges would only help mythic Alliance guilds that aren't on high pop realms (as those wouldn't be merged anyway) and most Alliance doing mythic are already on the few realms with sustainable populations out of necessity. It doesn't do anything to help the normal or heroic raiding scene or mythic keystones, which can already function cross server. Considering there's very few Alliance mythic guilds to begin with and the fact that normal/heroic/keys encompasses a much broader subsection of the population, this isn't the solution we're looking for. The Alliance PuG scene is a wasteland, especially if you play on offhours. Having larger realms makes a lot of things nicer, but not the ability to find or fill raids and keys.

Luckily those two aren't mutually exclusive and ideally we'd have both. Realistically though, I'm not holding my breath for blizzard to do either.

[WowIsDead64]

Covenants hot swappable, the AOE cap removed and now for the trifecta... possibly cross-faction M+/raiding. It's a good time to be a WoW fan.

edit: I'm aware he said there is no "quick solution," but this is something that's been on their radar for awhile. Personally, I'm fine with the faction divide but it looks like there are a lot of ideas swirling around at Blizzard.

This is common problem with Wow, that has been plaguing it for many years. Some solutions of problems are needed ASAP. But devs want to do it "slow but properly", instead of providing partial but quick solution, and therefore solution of problems takes too much time and problems cause too much damage as result. In this case quick solution would be to just allow cross-faction raids and M+. Things, like lore justifications for it, i.e. quest lines and other crap - can wait for any amount of time.

[Raetary]

It would cause the factions to mix, it's not needed and would shit on the entire story of the game. Yea, it would change the game, totally change it.

You are wrong on every account.

No, it wouldn't allow factions to mix, it would allow players to mix.
Something that we've been doing lorewise since the fucking get go.

The players have been, and should be from a gameplay and story point of view, independent.

Unless Blizzard wants to rename the game into World of Hordecraft in a couple years time, it absolutely is needed.

would shit on the entire story of the game

Ah yes, the entire story of game.
Nvm that it entirely revolves around horde and alliance setting their differences aside to work together, lol.

[Sin of Pride]

Oh, I agree that server consolidation is definitely needed; they should be merging much more aggressively and it's unfortunate that they stopped when they did. However, that doesn't really solve the problem. Merges would only help mythic Alliance guilds that aren't on high pop realms (as those wouldn't be merged anyway) and most Alliance doing mythic are already on the few realms with sustainable populations out of necessity. It doesn't do anything to help the normal or heroic raiding scene or mythic keystones, which can already function cross server. Considering there's very few Alliance mythic guilds to begin with and the fact that normal/heroic/keys encompasses a much broader subsection of the population, this isn't the solution we're looking for. The Alliance PuG scene is a wasteland, especially if you play on offhours. Having larger realms makes a lot of things nicer, but not the ability to find or fill raids and keys.

Luckily those two aren't mutually exclusive and ideally we'd have both. Realistically though, I'm not holding my breath for blizzard to do either.

I think next expansion will more or less merge the factions to what extent I don't know but I doubt you will see fp and cities shared. I always thought FFA pvp factions (raptors, blood coins, n'zoth) worked better for pvp rather then simply allowing one faction to drop a raid group on a zone and break it.

That said blizzard needs to get a realty check on their situation... I know I get a lot of flack when the first piece of advice I give new players is to reroll on a raid server and get off the dead new player servers with people screaming they might not want to play mythic...

That really begs the question though why allow new players on servers that will require they pay a server transfer cost to experience parts of the game.

[Clozer]

Don't forget to rename it World of Peacecraft.

The next expansion logo is gonna be an Orc and a Human sitting in a bar next to each other with a big heart emoji between them. Yay will be a great expansion. For sure.

[psyquest]

They can keep the war but help players with the following:

allow guilds to have horde and alliance characters. Players would share a chat and be able to raid together. Players in the same guild are neutral to one another and can chat to one another.

For all PVE activities in game allow grouping regardless of faction to do pve content.

For pvp: grouping for wpvp make you into a mercenary mode where you are the faction that the RL selects.

If solo activities and questing, you play your own faction.


This means wow can keep the war bit. pvp is mostly unaffected but players that want to do organised content can more easily recruit and find people.

[Raetary]

Don't forget to rename it World of Peacecraft.

Because warcraft can only be warcraft with half-assed nonsensical faction wars, right?
Nvm that the franchise revolves around conflict between H+A vs *greater evil* since fucking WC3.

And that's even beside the point that CFP does not even impede on the HvA conflict, all it does is turn something into a feature that the PC already does and has done from the very get go.
The Factions would be completely unaffected.

If anything, distancing the PC from the factions gives the writers more flexibility as to what they can do with them.

[Clozer]

Because warcraft can only be warcraft with half-assed nonsensical faction wars, right?
Nvm that the franchise revolves around conflict between H+A vs *greater evil* since fucking WC3.

And that's even beside the point that CFP does not even impede on the HvA conflict, all it does is turn something into a feature that the PC already does and has done from the very get go.
The Factions would be completely unaffected.

If anything, distancing the PC from the factions gives the writers more flexibility as to what they can do with them.

The whole fundament of the Warcraft Universe is built around the conflict between the Horde and Alliance. But hey who cares that this Orc/Human killed my whole family let's raid together.

[onesBronson]

I would love to see cross faction interaction in WoW aside from lore aspects. Even if its only a minor feature to help out with raids and mythic+. Playing my horde characters is all fine and dandy as groups are easy to find, not as much for my alliance toons. This is the only thing thats holding me back from running high end content for my opposite faction alts.

Frankly I don't care which faction is superior in popularity anymore. So long as this barrier still exists, then my least favorable alts on the other side are doomed to be left behind for good.

[evertonbelmontt]

The truth?

There probably are some really hard to fix technical limitations preventing this from happening and they are since Legion trying to fix that.

Its the only reason I can think of that they would not do it for the money ALONE.

The ammount of money that would flow in would be absurd. My entire guild mostly came from alliance (myself included) and we would gladly pay to be human/NE/Dwarf/etc again in a hearthbeat if we could raid mythic crossfaction. In more than one character for sure.

People would race change a lot too for mythic raid encounters, pvp players, etc

[Biomega]

I think a better fix for this would be to allow faction reputation grinds, renown achievements/progression and overall raid achievements to go account wide. This would be a much more attractive fix in my opinion and wouldn't mess with the foundation of the game itself. This would allow people to play any faction they wanted and not have to worry about a "re-grind" on everything that is important for their character.

If you're exalted on 1 toon you're exalted on any toon or new toons across the entire account (or a faction based alternative). Renowned 60 on your main? Any cov you join, when you hit 60 you're insta 60 and everything that comes with it. This would be more attractive to me regarding playing a different faction.

This would also keep from messing with the building blocks of the story.

That wouldn't solve the group activity problem, though.

Your Alliance char would be max Renown and exalted with everything, but there still wouldn't be nearly as many people running M+ or mythic raids on that side compared to Horde. I don't think that Renown/reputation etc. are what's holding people back from going Alliance - it's the fact that it's so much harder to find groups for anything.

[AngerFork]

The only thing that can be done is to incentivize being Alliance, either by making racial traits more attractive or making them visually more attractive. Do we have a perspective outside of this that is causing the mass exodus from the alliance?

The mass exodus from the Alliance isn't being caused by the racial traits, at least not anymore. Arguably, the Alliance has better ones at this point with things like Shadowmeld & the crazy stuff Mechagnomes have. The problem is, as Ion correctly stated at Blizzcon, a "social" problem at this point. The high end guilds all went towards the Horde which caused high end players to follow them which diluted the recruitment pool for Alliance raiders. This has led to more guilds going Horde to get more recruits, which leads to more players going to the Horde because that's where the guilds are...etc. It's a seemingly never-ending cycle that really doesn't have an elegant solution. Adjusting racials to be more attractive would likely either do nothing or just shift the high end players all to the Alliance, pending how strong the new racials were.

At this point, it is not an exaggeration to say that raiding on the Alliance is self-handicapping, due to the difference in guild/players available. Without some sort of cross-faction raiding, it's hard to see what actually would fix this issue.

I think a better fix for this would be to allow faction reputation grinds, renown achievements/progression and overall raid achievements to go account wide. This would be a much more attractive fix in my opinion and wouldn't mess with the foundation of the game itself. This would allow people to play any faction they wanted and not have to worry about a "re-grind" on everything that is important for their character.

If you're exalted on 1 toon you're exalted on any toon or new toons across the entire account (or a faction based alternative). Renowned 60 on your main? Any cov you join, when you hit 60 you're insta 60 and everything that comes with it. This would be more attractive to me regarding playing a different faction.

This would also keep from messing with the building blocks of the story.

While I don't disagree that account-wide reputations, achievements, renown, etc would be good for the game in general, I can't see where this does anything to help with the Alliance-to-Horde exodus we've been seeing. This just means that people would have less grinding to do on their newly transferred Horde alts used to get raiding mats for their now-Horde mains. If I'm a raid leader recruiting who sees this high end faction population disparity, what about account wide renown would cause me to not opt to move my guild to the Horde where most of the high end raiders/M+ personnel are?

Why exactly would this incentivize anyone to actually raid on the opposite faction rather than just maybe make another alt?

[Polybius]

The whole fundament of the Warcraft Universe is built around the conflict between the Horde and Alliance. But hey who cares that this Orc/Human killed my whole family let's raid together.

Wtf. Have you even played the games? Nevermind distinguish mechanics from lore?

[Myradin]

Wtf. Have you even played the games? Nevermind distinguish mechanics from lore?

Honestly his silly reply made me think of how its actually kinda strange how many major chars actually have very little experience with the other faction killing family members, and when it is, its the old demon controlled horde from when they were barely a toddler.

He also phrases it like raids are some family friendly party or something, and over half of them are about stopping world domination and another chunk about saving the whole universe. But nah, lets be grumpy about the other side while at the same time accepting quests from people of the other side.

[Laurathansal]

THey need to end factions in instanced PvE and PvP, or they need to make their realm merging a lot more dynamic, in a way that realms low on alliance instantly link with servers which are high on alliance to make sure both factions are balanced for the people playing in those realms.

I'd prefer if factions were maintained, but If a technical solution such as above is not possible, then I'd rather not have factions at all.

We've pretty much fought together in nearly all expansions to defeat badies, so why not?

[Tojara]

Honestly it's too much of a hassle to try and maintain factions by limiting what you can roll or any of that other jargon to try to force things to be equal.

Just let Horde/Alliance do instanced PvP and PvE together, and perhaps just be in the same guild. If it's a problem from a story perspective (going forward), just swap the faction upon entering a raid like they did in BoD.

I'm going to guess that with barriers lowered you would probably see loads of Alliance who were 'forced' to play Horde swap back, and plenty of Horde that just prefer the way certain Alliance races look (or meta gaming racials) to play Alliance. Hilariously enough you would probably see way more race swapping if you lowered these barriers and likely bring the factions from a number perspective close together.

Arenas already make sense for having different races teaming up anyway. Narratives and story can still be changed around if needed by forcibly swapping races in say a raid encounter if need be. For whatever else, who really cares? Maintaining faction specific quests and world PvP is about all that really matters.