With 10.1's xfaction guilds - do races or the game need to be tied to 2 factions?

[username993720]

For gameplay purposes, it sounds great. People have always wanted to play together.
Lore-wise, less so. It defeats the purpose of having opposing factions in the first place.

[Itisamuh]

For gameplay purposes, it sounds great. People have always wanted to play together.
Lore-wise, less so. It defeats the purpose of having opposing factions in the first place.

Even in lore the factions are so similar and work together so often that them being split stopped making sense well over a decade ago.

[tromage2]

My god no please no!! Gnomes in Horde what a joke.

[username993720]

Even in lore the factions are so similar and work together so often that them being split stopped making sense well over a decade ago.

In PvE.
PvP makes no sense.
Where's faction pride? Where's the animosity between the races? They didn't join one faction for no reason.

[AngerFork]

Personally, I'd still argue there's too much tied into the two factions to just fully eliminate them off hand. Putting aside the history of the faction conflict (which shouldn't just be thrown aside, it's a massive part of WoW), we still have to consider the rest of the in-game pieces for this. Allied Races are still unlocked by their appropriate factions and those storylines/quests also play to the factions. The Vulpera specifically help out the Horde in theirs. The Nightborne scenario specifically shows the leader of the Blood Elves stating why he doesn't want to join the Alliance. If you are making a faction neutral, you almost have to throw out some of those things.

But beyond that, we also have the introduction questlines as well as the 10-60 leveling experience. For a new player, they'll go to Exile's Reach, but then they go right to BfA afterwards where the faction conflict is huge. Perhaps that'll change to Dragonflight in 11.0, that could help some. But there's also the race specific intro quests that still strongly reference the faction split. We'd be talking about either taking those out entirely or having to remake several of them if we're removing the factions properly.

But just for the sake of argument, let's say we can successfully separate out all of the in-game references and truly remove the faction divide entirely. Why then would we want to just reshuffle them into new factions after we're done as OP suggests? Why not instead let the races tell their stories individually more than just tying it into factions? Imagine how it would be if the Night Elves really could be separated from the factions for now, then join one later if it narratively makes sense. Or perhaps if the Blood Elves had actually joined the Alliance when Garrosh was in charge, only to leave as soon as Jaina purged Dalaran. You could do so much with the story in those cases, and there's plenty more to add. Why then would I want to just add two more factions and reshuffle the deck chairs of races in each faction?

[Grimbold21]

What is it with people and wanting to bring down the things that built the brand in the first place?

[Soon-TM]

In PvE.
PvP makes no sense.
Where's faction pride? Where's the animosity between the races? They didn't join one faction for no reason.

Faction pride went down the drain the day they decided to drop the villain bat on the Horde for a second time just for lols and giggles.

[username993720]

Faction pride went down the drain the day they decided to drop the villain bat on the Horde for a second time just for lols and giggles.

That was a lousy copy of Garrosh's reign.

[Dejiko]

You should be able to freely choose your faction, regardless of the race you want to play.
PvP doesn`t need to make sense, just pit folks against one another in battlegrounds and arena.
The story is far more interesting when it doesn`t center on this old, dusty and decrepit plot of "other side bad."

[Mace]

The Faction seperation of players should never have been a thing in the first place. They should have been relegated to story purposes. Player characters are individuals with their own motivations and decisions, not extensions of Horde or Alliance.

Logically, yes, there is no reason players need to be in factons.. but i think they were trying something new that their predecessors hadn't done before.. Don't know why they decided on two factions instead of the 4 or 5 that came on after WC3.


What they should have done is allow players to move in between the 4 factions in game, with bonuses and penalties associated. [This is not faction change service - in game you can opt to join another faction, but it is a big thing.

For game balance reason, when one faction was over populated on a realm, a bonus of some sort would be rewarded or given to players who joined the low pop factions until things equalised.

They would design a system that would make all the factions attractive, but while it gave incentive for you to switch, it also came with a heavy enough investment as a drawback or some other draw back too such that it would be enough to get some players to switch, but not have everyone feel they had to switch. incentives could include lowering of the faction change requirements in addition to other rewards or buffs.

Other things they could do would be to slap on cooldowns on changing factions.. and then lock faction changes once things stabilised - this would ensure stable faction balance for long periods, they could also give a realm wide buff once populations have equalised.

Off course they'd open up faction changing once the imbalance occurs, but the only way that can happen is if people create new characters/new players coming in or paid faction changes - which would be the only other way to change factions during a lock.


With guild membership being free of faction restrictions, this wouldn't be a problem.

In fact, thinking of it, they can actually do this NOW. With the current two factions or actually give Warcraft 4 factions and operate it this way.


Whiles the races move ot the new faction, players of that race are given a choice to move with their race free of charge, and instantly receive the faction moving buff as well as a special buff/reward for going home with your race.. This is until the new factions are filled up and the populations equalised. Character creation will change to reflect 4 factions now

- - - Updated - - -

You should be able to freely choose your faction, regardless of the race you want to play.
PvP doesn`t need to make sense, just pit folks against one another in battlegrounds and arena.
The story is far more interesting when it doesn`t center on this old, dusty and decrepit plot of "other side bad."

I think the system i outlined above can actually work quite well. It allows players to move between factions as they choose in-game or be associated with none - [joining one of the 4 player factions will have benefit.] Pvp would also be a lot more interesting in war mode, with faction allegiances mattering, a free lance player would be able to attack any player except those he is in a group with, while those in a faction will all be friendly to each other. There would be advantages and disadvantages of being solo off course, factions can't talk to each other in general channels, so faction less players will only be able to communicate in neutral city in the general chat and trade channels there. They would off course be able to /say and party up via the LFG tool.

In this new format as well, learning racial languages could be a thing too, unlocked or progressed through with reputation. It would work like the social points system in SWTOR -, once you've reached a certain reputation with a race, things like grouping with players of that race would also add points to your language skill, the more players form that race the faster you learn a language. Doing quests with players from a particular race will also contribute points to your language learning, including just being in a group with them.. however you would have to be within a 600 yard radius of them if grouped - the point is you're learning their language.

Other things that could happen is that players can put their language to teach mode which would increase the bonus you get while grouped with them.. I wonder if they could even add some sort of bonus if you talk to them in party chat - but that might be going too far.

There are other things that can help you increase language, like special quests etc, the bonus of this off course is you will be able to understand another players language in /sway

[huth]

Logically, yes, there is no reason players need to be in factons.. but i think they were trying something new that their predecessors hadn't done before.. Don't know why they decided on two factions instead of the 4 or 5 that came on after WC3.

Look up Dark Age of Camelot. They weren't. But unlike WoW, DAoC was a PvP focused game. There, it actually made sense. In WoW, it was always more of a detraction than a benefit and didn't even fit with the lore which regularly had them cooperating. There's no real benefit to forcing players apart outside of situations where the mechanics actually require them to be seperate groups, such as PvP.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

do races or the game need to be tied to 2 factions?

Yes. This is World of Warcraft, not World of Peacecraft. Us vs them is part of the core identity of WoW.

[WowIsDead64]

Yes. This is World of Warcraft, not World of Peacecraft. Us vs them is part of the core identity of WoW.

How many times should I say, that Warcraft - is name, that is inherited from RTS game? Faction war is ok for RTS game, where player picks his faction for one match only. It's not ok for MMO, as it causes virtual racism and, as result, toxicity. Players hate each other for no reason - just for having different preferences. And the worst thing - devs feed this hate via making "Horde/Alliance are villains" mirrored PVP quests. This isn't acceptable. Exactly the same players play both factions. There is no reason for them to hate each other just for faction choice. PVP should be based on more "local" things, like being put to different teams.

"Enemies by default" - is another faulty concept, that causes lots of toxicity. As I see, devs still make pseudo-PVP quests, where quest items aren't shared, so players have to compete for them, even if they belong to exactly the same faction. Blizzard should do, what other game devs do. PVP should be completely voluntary choice, not forced thing.

[username993720]

How about players forming the Alliances, as we are already sort of the leaders of our factions.
History is full of short-term alliances and interest-driven pacts, pitching enemies with each other to annihilate a common foe or gain riches at the expense of others.

[huth]

Yes. This is World of Warcraft, not World of Peacecraft. Us vs them is part of the core identity of WoW.

It's World of WarCraft, yes. Not "World of WarBetweenAllianceandHordeCraft". We've had more wars against other factions than between those two at this point.

Your argument doesn't track and means nothing.

[Malcho]

Without Guild vs Guild FFA PvP and eventual regional claim, I think they are missing the mark of how good this could be.

[Mysterymask]

Oh man can't wait for the lore about the legendary Naga Stole My Bike and how they came to the decision to invite the guild leaders gnome DK Alt

[GreenJesus]

No.
And trying to force it out of the game completely, or just not matter at all for new races, is obnoxious, and goes against the spirit of the franchise.

If anything, most forms of gameplay it doesn't matter in means they can actually go harder on the concepts.

Can't worry about putting cool races on the "dead" faction and wasting resources on it when people can't play it.
Faction exclusive stories? Again, no need to worry about a lack of people doing it when folks can just roll the alt with no worries if it's not their faction or main.

Story's had races going to factions when we weren't in a full blown war, and we've been also scuffling and in conflicts - not a full blown war like BFA - since Vanilla.
Player characters are also outside the cycle of what the NPCs go through and do. We've always worked together, but the NPCs are going to be varied.

If you don't like factions, this is not the IP for you.
Everything being neutral is flat out boring and them taking away one of the major things that makes this franchise what it is isn't going to get more people to return. If anything, it's driving away OG fans.

This is a good point. They can tell whatever story they want without having a certain faction facing gameplay repercussions from it. MoP and BFA effectively had the Horde split and dismantled, but for gameplay purposes they kept it going. They can even have 3rd or 4th factions without it impacting gameplay.

Such as blood elves and forsaken leaving the Horde in pandaland.

[Mace]

Personally, I'd still argue there's too much tied into the two factions to just fully eliminate them off hand. Putting aside the history of the faction conflict (which shouldn't just be thrown aside, it's a massive part of WoW), we still have to consider the rest of the in-game pieces for this. Allied Races are still unlocked by their appropriate factions and those storylines/quests also play to the factions. The Vulpera specifically help out the Horde in theirs. The Nightborne scenario specifically shows the leader of the Blood Elves stating why he doesn't want to join the Alliance. If you are making a faction neutral, you almost have to throw out some of those things.

YEh, in retrospect it really hurt the lore to throw the factions back inot conflict and limit them to two..especially after such a massive event like WC3, and then all the other massive events - you mean they are still massively fighting?

WE shoudl have had war mode a long time ago, with only some lore aiding the conflict, like they did in legion when it was largely one race against the other fighting, and firends chiming into help rather than the entire factions fighting.

In making the factions neutral you have to show how they go from being aligned only to one faction to being their own people again. I hope they show that.

But beyond that, we also have the introduction questlines as well as the 10-60 leveling experience. For a new player, they'll go to Exile's Reach, but then they go right to BfA afterwards where the faction conflict is huge. Perhaps that'll change to Dragonflight in 11.0, that could help some. But there's also the race specific intro quests that still strongly reference the faction split. We'd be talking about either taking those out entirely or having to remake several of them if we're removing the factions properly.

But just for the sake of argument, let's say we can successfully separate out all of the in-game references and truly remove the faction divide entirely. Why then would we want to just reshuffle them into new factions after we're done as OP suggests? Why not instead let the races tell their stories individually more than just tying it into factions? Imagine how it would be if the Night Elves really could be separated from the factions for now, then join one later if it narratively makes sense. Or perhaps if the Blood Elves had actually joined the Alliance when Garrosh was in charge, only to leave as soon as Jaina purged Dalaran. You could do so much with the story in those cases, and there's plenty more to add. Why then would I want to just add two more factions and reshuffle the deck chairs of races in each faction?

Werne't the races originally meant to be factions in and of themsleves? by becoming playable/ Prior to Wow, weo nly had smaller races join bigger ones in a faciton, but big races like the Night elves and the Undead were their own faction.


Nothing wrong with having factions, though being locked to two was very limiting, with factions being a lore thing only, it allows things to change up quite a bit, this is what I am in favour of. Sure, people become friends and work together, they can become a faction or not, but the story is now free to do whatever it likes and develop however it likes rather than feel it hast o be locked.

If you want factions, then let their be a serious gameplay thing for having so, like i suggested earlier on, that just allows players in War Mode to work together , but not necessarily locked, becuase they can move factions, either sticking with thier race wherever that race is or going somewhere else.

[Tanaria]

It's just down to gameplay.
Guilds aren't lore based. Their will always be a Horde and an Alliance.

Guilds will just be an in-game mechanic where players can just play whatever they want. If somebody hated Troll Druids and wanted to be a Night Elf Druid and still raid, they can do that. Likewise, if somebody didn't want to play a Night Elf Priest anymore and really wanted to play a Blood Elf Priest for raiding, then that can happen now and still be within the same guild.

Perhaps RP'ers are happy with this change as well