“Race≠Faction” hopes aren’t dead yet

[Wingspan]

They are probably just for us who can't see the difference between an orc and a Human. Why else would it be there right? Must be the only reason. I don't see them touching Factions or Cross Faction PvE after the answers they gave. They sounded pretty clear on that. And if there was some changes, they would have said so during one of the panels at Blizzcon.

The faction barrier will fall a bit at a time, based (like nearly all WoW things) on what brings a better profit. From what I have seen, which is minimal at this point, it looks like the next expansion’s quest experience will be nearly identical regardless of faction... so that would be step one. Keep world design cheaper and keep it so they can still make money from faction transfers and re-rolling.

Eventually though, the game population will dwindle to the point where merging the factions or allowing cross-faction grouping will be needed to keep servers healthy (because at some point, the disparity will cost them too much money). Right about then, there will be a miraculous story-driven reason for it to happen.

All that said, it’s probably about two “bad” expansions away before things get to that point.

[GrenGarm]

Just let it go. Factions have been a thing for 15 years and somehow it didn't stop people enjoying the game.

But it did. Like a lot.

In the original Classic era, faction imbalance and world PVP led to a lot of PVE players -- on PVE servers -- completely locked out of questing in certain zones as the dominant faction just ripped through towns and cities.

For new players who want to raid, picking the wrong server meant rerolling or giving up on raiding entirely until Blizzard offered the option to switch races/factions. Now you just have to pay to correct your mistake, but maybe a new player just quits the game instead.

Alliance guilds and Alliance population in general have been plummeting the past 5+ years. Are that many people switching factions, or did a lot of people just quit instead? WoW's overall metrics seem to indicate the latter.

"Just let it go" is what we should be saying to Blizzard when it comes to this faction nonsense.

EDIT: Grammar

[Tipton]

They did say they'd look at Server Merging this week.

IMO they need to get rid of the Server Model first. Being a member of 'EU-Shadowsong' used to mean something 10 years ago, but that ship has sailed.

They could get rid of Servers, they've got the technology. The only thing that may be stopping them is the micro transactions earned from all the Server transfers + Alliance to Horde race transfers.

Let's see if their true to their word and look at more connected realms, or if they err on the side of keeping all those lucrative micro transactions.

[Ethas]

Without factions Warcraft is not Warcraft. So hard pass from me too.

[Xilurm]

Might aswell make another MMO. There is no need to ruin factions. It's one of the things that makes WoW the MMO that it is and not Korean MMO #369

[Zyky]

A lot of the issue with not uncoupling factions is that the Alliance is literally dead right now. At prime time every night there's less than a dozen groups running 10-12 keys Mythic+ keys, and even less running 14-16 keys. The playerbase is simply put dwindling, in the nicest way to put it.

[Amsden]

It's never going to happen. You're just beating a dead horse at this point.

- - - Updated - - -

A lot of the issue with not uncoupling factions is that the Alliance is literally dead right now. At prime time every night there's less than a dozen groups running 10-12 keys Mythic+ keys, and even less running 14-16 keys. The playerbase is simply put dwindling, in the nicest way to put it.

Removing combat racials (because Blizzard has never been able to balance them) would help on that front.

[Xath]

It is dead and buried.

They were quite emphatic on Alliance and Horde and the division between factions being pillars of the game world.

They are not in the business of playing with their words in order to obfuscate some grand reveal, particularly at a major event such as Blizzcon when all cards will be on the table.

The factions and their associated restrictions are going nowhere and it is best people accept this as the state of the game going forward.

So was classic for half a decade.

[prwraith]

We had meaningful conflicts before, the problem are the writers not the factions

Didn't care about faction conflict in vanilla...don't care now

[Zyky]

It's never going to happen. You're just beating a dead horse at this point.

- - - Updated - - -



Removing combat racials (because Blizzard has never been able to balance them) would help on that front.

I mean racials don't have much to do with it. Both factions have a race in the top 3 for every spec in the game.

[Obelisk Kai]

So was classic for half a decade.

That they changed their minds on classic is not a catch all retort that puts everything they say into question. There were specific circumstances to that and it was an entirely different situation to removing the faction divide.

[Xath]

That they changed their minds on classic is not a catch all retort that puts everything they say into question. There were specific circumstances to that and it was an entirely different situation to removing the faction divide.

To allowing cross faction grouping it's really not, the Alliance is dying in terms of raiding. It's gotten to the point where even long established guilds like Midwinter and ScrubBusters have swapped to horde because they can't recruit on Alliance.

[Super Kami Dende]

Warcraft has been about Factions and the Races within them for over 2 decades now. maybe it isn't the franchise you are after.

- - - Updated - - -

To allowing cross faction grouping it's really not, the Alliance is dying in terms of raiding. It's gotten to the point where even long established guilds like Midwinter and ScrubBusters have swapped to horde because they can't recruit on Alliance.

butchering lore and making cross-faction a thing purely for the 1% of hardcore raiders is just absolute stupidity.

[Obelisk Kai]

To allowing cross faction grouping it's really not, the Alliance is dying in terms of raiding. It's gotten to the point where even long established guilds like Midwinter and ScrubBusters have swapped to horde because they can't recruit on Alliance.

Mythic raiding guilds form a small proportion of the overall raiding scene. Conversely, the faction divide is something that affects everyone from the lowliest newbie to the mightiest veteran. Removing the faction divide to fix Alliance mythic raiding is sacrificing something everyone has for the sake of a tiny group of players.

The faction divide is seen as a fundamental pillar of the game by Blizzard and while you are free to argue against that, given how often they repeated how important it is over Blizzcon I don't think you are going to have much success in persuading them to abandon them the system.

[Xeenith]

horde players are more hardcore for pvp or pve... alliance are more casuals
2 different ways of playing that don't meet together often, that's all

[Xath]

Warcraft has been about Factions and the Races within them for over 2 decades now. maybe it isn't the franchise you are after.

- - - Updated - - -



butchering lore and making cross-faction a thing purely for the 1% of hardcore raiders is just absolute stupidity.

Yeah nothing to do with there being maybe 4 arena teams in the q at peak hours 0 rbgs teams and maybe 5 raids 10 M+ total for alliance. It's not 1% the alliance is dying.

- - - Updated - - -

horde players are more hardcore for pvp or pve... alliance are more casuals
2 different ways of playing that don't meet together often, that's all

No they aren't this is complete bs rofl

- - - Updated - - -

Mythic raiding guilds form a small proportion of the overall raiding scene. Conversely, the faction divide is something that affects everyone from the lowliest newbie to the mightiest veteran. Removing the faction divide to fix Alliance mythic raiding is sacrificing something everyone has for the sake of a tiny group of players.

The faction divide is seen as a fundamental pillar of the game by Blizzard and while you are free to argue against that, given how often they repeated how important it is over Blizzcon I don't think you are going to have much success in persuading them to abandon them the system.

It's not just mythic raiding as you would know if you didn't have such blind alliance hate as evidenced by your signature.

[Aeula]

Core Races being able to choose a faction actually sounds far worse than a faction merge to me. There’d be no way to escape those damn Vulpera.

Not to mention that you wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance what faction someone belongs to. Which would hurt the game more than many would realise. Void Elves are bad enough due to them stealing the blood elf silhouette.

The factions, ultimately, are the races they’re made up of. Their core ideals and goals are basically the same, it’s the races that cause division

[Ange]

Alliance guilds and Alliance population in general have been plummeting the past 5+ years. Are that many people switching factions, or did a lot of people just quit instead? WoW's overall metrics seem to indicate the latter.

Blizzard told us that from the real numbers the shift overall is not that massive.

1. The raiding population is shrinking since WotLK
2. The last 2 expansions SPLIT the shrinking raiding community into M+ and/or Raiding parts
3. MYTHIC/HIGH-END raiding shifted to horde because of the significant horde racials that affected MYTHIC/HIGH-END raiding

Maybe the new mecha gnomes on PTR with the current racials are a sign that blizzard is using racials to force a balance in the high end raiding population.

Not sure if blizzard has to do anything to change the community, since the game is allready shifted to offer more choices for a faction with issues.

First they intruduced mythic+ as a sub-part gearprogression to raiding. In the following expansion it was allready crowned to on-par with raiding and shadowlands announced that the major gearprogression pieces - legendarys - are coming from solo content and not from raiding.

More and more lore storytelling is removed from raiding and more and more geraprogression is removed from raiding.

Raiding is allready just a mini-game in BfAs endgame and with legendarys disconnected from raiding, the full tranformation to a mini-game will be complete.

[Obelisk Kai]

It's not just mythic raiding as you would know if you didn't have such blind alliance hate as evidenced by your signature.

If you wish to play a Horde race, you have to play Horde. That is not an unreasonable requirement in a game with two diverse factions. It is in fact the logical consequence of having a two faction system.

[Fistfighter]

I don't care for lore reasons. I just wanna raid with my buddies on both factions, how hard is that for blizz to understand??? Just make them look like humans like in Caverns of Time, I don't fucking care, just bring the game into 21st century and let me play with my friends.