Faction Neutrality Options (The Poll)

[Mysterymask]

So Faction Neutrality is a hot button issue.. so I brainstormed/armchair deved some ideas for discussion and made a poll that will eventually turn into why Sylvannis is Danusars waifu and why Ion's head belongs on someone's mantle because this is MMO Champion.

Option 1: Everquest style!

So for those of you who haven't played Everquest, EQ had a multitude of races and some of them hated each other. Dark Elves couldn't just walk into Freeport, Iksar were hated by anyone NOT Iksar, and Humans couldn't walk into a Troll village without being viciously murdered. HOWEVER you were allowed to group with them despite these differences. WoW I think could adapt this style pretty easy. Lore wise it's simple, Tyrande can hate Bob the Undead priest all she wants and Lorethemar can totally hate Steve the Night Elf Death Knight for existing. HOWEVER Steve wants a healer and Bob is a good one so he's willing to look past that. Where lore fails RP prevails! As such Steve invites Bob to his guild and he now raidheals for him just fine. Bob however cannot enter Stormwind and will still be killed on sight. Steve on the otherhand will be murdered viciously for even walking over to Durotar. This way the faction war is still represented in the story, PVP remains the same and only difference is you can talk to each other and throw insults and the PVE part is happy. Arena can be cross faction (since faction conflict barely exists in Arena anyway).

Option 2 Pandaran/Covenant Style
So to preserve the faction war why not remove the race barrier? Say anyone at level 10 after the initial leveling can choose Horde or Alliance. You would have humans in the Horde and Orcs in the Alliance if they so choose. Make it better by offering a Covenant style, very annoying, 2 week cooldown quest to defect if you so choose (with the option to pay to change intact). This way the faction war is intact, lore barely makes sense anyway, and you can be whatever race you want and stay with your friends!

[Lochton]

I'd rather say the Everquest option and not the mixing option.

[Saltysquidoon]

'Covenant style' makes no sense because blizzard has always framed the factions in warcraft games around and being informed interracial conflicts. No one cares about your enlightened snowflake human that knows orcs are mostly good boys now, joe the dirt farmer still hates orcs.

The 'best' solution is to allow players to complete content with whoever they so choose and decouple content completion entirely from the story (like PvP).

[Ivarr]

Covenant-style subfactions but there's constraints on which races get to join which sub-factions according to what makes sense within the lore. Some of the sub factions can be joined by specific races from both the Alliance and the Horde.

The sub-factions won't be one-off gimmicks of an expansion, they will persist. The relationships between these sub-factions will wax and wane throughout the story. There will be mutual trust and feuds, there will be cease-fires and betrayals. There will even be conditional relationships that can be broken if the players cross certain thresholds in the game.

The further a player commits into these subfactions (voluntarily, they're no longer part of some main campaign), the further they'll enjoy new perks while losing others. They could gain access to specific capitals and lose access to others.

With this many new factions in the game, it suddenly becomes more interesting to compete over zones. It's no longer this one-dimensional thug of war, any faction can contest a zone and claim it as theirs, enjoying buffs and access to quests, vendors and even instances for as long as they hold it.

Allied factions get to share in the spoils of victory. Neutral factions get to hang around and hostile factions BTFO.

[Zyrinx]

It would be really hard to retrofit the EQ system at this point.

Personally I prefer a system in which maybe you start at hated with the races of the current other faction, but are able to somehow get to neutral with them.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

There’s nothing I want less in wow then any form of race mixing even for game play reasons. If any thing they should get more restrictive and stop giving us expans based around neutral factions.

[Kithelle]

There’s nothing I want less in wow then any form of race mixing even for game play reasons. If any thing they should get more restrictive and stop giving us expans based around neutral factions.

How would that work? How would the afterlife choose sides? What you think they spend their days watching the living..."Oh I really like how nice the Alliance is!" "Oh man that Horde is so cool!"

Faction war expansion totally flopped, want the game to die because you seem to hate cooperation that saves the universe?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

How would that work? How would the afterlife choose sides? What you think they spend their days watching the living..."Oh I really like how nice the Alliance is!" "Oh man that Horde is so cool!"

Faction war expansion totally flopped, want the game to die because you seem to hate cooperation that saves the universe?

Preferably we wouldn’t have stupid after life expans or if we did A/H would be choosing sides just like they they have done in the past.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Where is the option for neither?

[Schizoide]

Back in Everquest you could actually build factions with everybody, so a dark elf would be welcome in the human city etc. That would be my preference.

This would of course be a gameplay contrivance and not reflected in the lore or instanced PvP.

[SunspotAnims]

Seriously if you want to solve issues with the faction dichotomy just allow social and grouping features to function across factions. My mind continues to be boggled at how anyone thinks that adding a third faction or allowing factions to be picked independently of race is going to solve anything more easily or more justifiably than just letting people group with whoever they want to group with.

[Bodakane]

I think keep the factions, but they need to be based on ideology not race. Let every race join the faction of their choice. That makes for a better and more rich story anyway.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Where is the option for neither?

Said like someone who doesn't know how to bias a poll. How else can you proclaim that 100% of respondents are in favor of some sort of faction neutrality???

[AngerFork]

Of the two, Everquest's style sounds better. The Pandaren/Covenant one would still have the same issues in place as people played the game longer and would likely make issues like the mass exodus to Horde worse.

The main catch I see with this is grouping with people in the other faction in War Mode. One would think that group permissions would have to override faction war issues, otherwise people would be summoning others to dungeons just to get killed. You'd likely want to either make group members invulnerable or give some sort of immunity cooldown post summons like people get rezzing in the Maw.

[FuxieDK]

I vote for option #3:
Races and factions function as they normally do in WoW......HOWEVER, you can via a quest chain become a renegade.

Being a renegade, you will start working on the opposite factions' reputations, increasing them from hated (attacked on site) to neutral (can enter towns), Honored (enter cities), revered (enter capitals), exalted (fully accepted into the faction and mount reward), all the while your old faction rep decrease, making capitals/cities/towns dangerous places to be.

Naturally, Org/SW would be the first rep to work on, but e.g. a renegade Troll won't be able to enter IF, unless he have also worked on that rep (Humans might like him, but dwarves still don't).

[Lynnaroo]

start at hated with the races of the current other faction, but are able to somehow get to neutral with them.

This would be pretty interesting. If implemented with reputations it could make them more important (making them more than just cosmetic/achievement grinds), or just add some flavor and depth WoW desperately needs. However, it could become a nightmare grind fest, unfortunately.

[Zyrinx]

This would be pretty interesting. If implement with reputations it could make them more important (making them more than just cosmetic/achievement grinds), or just add some flavor and depth WoW desperately needs. However, it could become a nightmare grind fest, unfortunately.

Right but a totally optional one, and one that actually adds back some actual RP elements to the game, otherwise we're seriously trending towards a lobby with dungeon gates in it.

Theyve copy pasted the open world content for the last 3 expansions. There needs to be a change. I feel like there's a lotta players who care more about their characters than other things, I know I did, but the game is a dead end for them right now.

[Mysterymask]

Where is the option for neither?

Not answering the poll

[Queen of Hamsters]

The only system I'd take is cross-faction guild membership and group play in instances. Gameplay reasons, nothing more. No Taurens in Stormwind, no f-ing Gnomes in Org.

And it would definitely not make use of the Dazar'alor raid's cross-faction stuff where your character became locked to the "opposite race", the player would keep their appearance when joining groups with their cross-faction friends.

[Puupi]

Factions can exist.

Just cross faction grouping made possible for all content aka RIFT style.