Faction Changes Coming To World of Warcraft

A Blizzard representative today announced that they're working on a service for players to switch factions in World of Warcraft, going from Horde to Alliance or vice versa. "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." They also said there would be "some rules involved with when and how the service can be used."

Interesting option to offer but really desired?

[ran93r]

Some of my guild have on occasion mused about switching faction, still under the "grass in greener" assumption that the opposing side has less asshats or are better at pvp. Be warned, the asshats are everywhere.

Re:Lame

[fractoid]

Yeah, the first time or two. I have two level 60 alliance, two ~70 horde, and three 80 horde. New classes are still fun to learn and master but there aren't many quests I haven't done multiple times and the pre-60 quests are nauseatingly familiar.

And the last line I used was just as true back when UBRS was 'endgame' as it is now. The levelling process is basically a glorified tutorial in how to use your class. Disagree? Check most characters' /played time, I bet the average character at level cap has spent more than half of their playtime there.

Long story short, there are still bits of the game I have yet to get sick of but I have to go through a lot of the boring repetitive bits to get there and that annoys me.

Why would you have to change your character?

[yogibaer]

Why not simply change factions, with whatever character you have? It is a bit pointless to change character (or morph into another). The real social interaction (or call it Paranoia) would start, if - with the click of a mouse - yesterday's enemy could be today's friend and vice versa. Whole guilds changing sides would also be a nice touch especially in PvP mode. Again: With the click of a mouse, in the middle of a battle. All the cold-war amneties in mercenary heaven. "You do not pay me enough and I'll go rogue" is a whole new business model, a whole new industry waiting to be born. "Realpolitik" in the virtual world. Bliss :-)

Betray your faction

[serano]

I've always thought they should have a special quest that lets you betray your faction. At the end of that quest you are officially part of the other faction. Because of your betrayal, you wouldn't be accepted back into your original faction, so this would be a one-way switch.

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been levelling two alts right now, one for mindless relaxing because it doesn't need a perfect spell rotation to do raid DPS, and a healer.

With the exp changed, its a nice break to level an alt in the old world, and get to level 65 without setting foot in Outland. Its also a nice change of pace to finish up all the quests in Outland which should end someone up at level 72-73 before starting in Northrend. The added levels make the final push to 80 easier, although if one just uses gear found in quests along the way, they won't be as geared as someone who started at 58 or 68 in Hellfire or Borean Tundra. That's always easily fixed by a trip to the AH though, and/or a couple account bound items such as the shoulders and a weapon.

Faction changes are understandable, but there are some head scratchers. A lot of people have a ton of mounts. How will Blizz devs handle the faction specific stuff? Turn kodos into elekks? Similar with race. Its obvious what druids would end up as if they jumped factions, but what about other classes.

Finally, I play WoW because RL friends do. Once you hit 80, you are pretty limited in what you do. You can do dailies so you can earn faction and gold for some armor pieces the 20,000 gold mount, 5000 gold epic flying, and skill up a profession. You can raid the same two raid zones over and over again, both in 10 man, and in 25 man every week, as well as the small raid zones like VoA, OS, and EoE. You can spend your time in the same BGs and arenas and grinding PvP gear. Finally, you can run the same seven heroics. This gets old after a bit.

There are other MMOs out there with a lot of interesting content. EQ1 and EQ2 come to mind. Yes, they have less population than WoW, but almost everyone knows their class and is able to function in a group. Content is also plentiful.

This is not good

[ITJC68]

As a WOW Player I think the reduction of time for the mounts makes sense. Walking around was the worst part of leveling. However leveling a "toon" from 1 to 80 should remain. That is how you learn how to play the toon. Especially if they are an entirely different class like cloth armor from plate. I have plate toons (Pally and DK) and I enjoy them at level 80 as well as when I was leveling them. Clothies have their advantages and I will be working on one for various reasons but starting at level 1 is good. I will have to learn how to attack and work on strategy to become proficient with the class. Changing this would be a mistake IMHO. Also allowing people to take a high level toon and switch sides I have mixed feelings about. I think if they allow it they should loose all achievments that are not available to the other side. Not get the equivalent. There should be a penalty for changing sides otherwise people will do it for various reasons that could ruin the game mechanics and achievments.

Re:They are badly losing people...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think WotLK was when a lot of people realized that the last glimmer of challenges and "player skill" in WoW have been patched out. It's been reduced to basically a complete skill-less game.

You could always macro to some extent even before Wotlk. When the game first came out there were mods that would make decisions on what to do for you. Healbot was this way I think, where it would pick the most efficent spell to use.

Blizzard's concept right now is to have Normal modes for players who are not hardcore and hard modes for the people who want a challenge. If WoW was so easy, why doesn't 75% of the player base have their Rusted Protodrakes by now? Should be easy to do if WoW wasn't a challenge in any aspect of the game. According to WoWProgress only 18 guilds have taken down Agalon between the US and EU. Ensidia just got a 72 hour suspension for using an exploit to do the last achievement that hasn't been done by anyone yet. Couldn't do it how it was susposed to I guess. Blizzard isn't going to cater to the top 1% of the playerbase, and why should they? Why is the top 1% of the playerbase/guilds used as a measuring stick on what is challenging anyway?