We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. 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.
As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at World of Warcraft Community Site as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.
So many possibilities this could open up. Allowing people to change Faction could let us experience another side of the game: Different cities, explore new faction/racial themes, play with new models/racials/cosmetic changes - definetely a lot to think about. If you've been playing the same faction since WoW was released, this sort of change could definetely have some appeal. Interesting way to spice up the third expansion, change your faction! I'm already seeing the comments in guild chat, "Lets go horde for next expansion!".
Most of the problems are technical. Blood elf paladins with the alliance charger, invalid flight points, faction-specific items, etc. Lots of variables that will need to be special-cased.
Assuming that Blizzard sees this as a revenue source and doesn't plan to implement a "betrayal" questline like EQ2, we can anticipate a race changing service will be added as well. I sincerely hope that the charge will be reduced or entirely negated on inequally populated servers.
The first one that springs to my mind is faction-specific items. Off the top of my head, I guess it's mostly cosmetic stuff like mounts, tabards, and pets. Even though it doesn't affect gameplay, a lot of players love to collect that sort of thing, and I will be interested to see how they handle it. The three obvious options that come to mind:
1) Vanity items transfer over.
2) Vanity items are converted into cross-faction equivalents.
3) Vanity items don't transfer at all.
If it's #1, I imagine a significant subset of the population would be willing to transfer over and back so that they can collect the cross-faction mounts and such. It'd essentially be another license for Blizzard to print money, but sort of silly from a lore perspective. And IIRC most non-dropped mounts are bind on use, so it really only takes a couple entrepreneurs before half the Horde is riding around on mechanical turkeys.
If it's #3, I think that'd kill the service for anyone who's put significant time into their character. For #2, I guess it would depend on the implementation. If I've collected all of the nightsaber mounts, for example, are they automatically converted to a specific corresponding Horde faction, or do I get to pick which mounts they become? (This also raises the question of how reputations would transfer over, actually... even more important in some cases).
I guess there's also the possibility of farmers using it to exploit cross-faction price differences. That would really depend on the server; I'm not sure how many have large enough discrepancies that you could make significant arbitrage profits, particularly given bag/bank size constraints.
Edit: I forgot the race restrictions on most (all?) faction mounts, which sort of negates the concern of a few people muling them cross-faction to auction. It could still happen though, depending on how they handle the case where you learn the mount, then swap factions.
Most of the problems are technical. Blood elf paladins with the alliance charger, invalid flight points, faction-specific items, etc. Lots of variables that will need to be special-cased.
Assuming that Blizzard sees this as a revenue source and doesn't plan to implement a "betrayal" questline like EQ2, we can anticipate a race changing service will be added as well. I sincerely hope that the charge will be reduced or entirely negated on inequally populated servers.
It's interesting to think what would happen were it like the EQ2 setup. You'd have access to any racials without being faction restricted.
On the other hand, they are referring to this as a "service", which sounds like it will be a paid instant change as re-customization is now. It does seem likely that generalized paid race change would go along with this, unless you are permanently restricted on your original faction to the race that you originally rolled or something.
I can see many many people Alliance side on my server (Thrall) using this feature to become Horde so they have access to more raiding guilds. This is good for Horde because it would mean an influx of potential recruits (some with experience and gear!) while it would only weaken Alliance even further. This could easily tip the population scale on some servers.
I personally don't have any solid like or dislike to it right now. I see it bringing good and bad with it.
Well the way I see it is it's another opportunity for finding a guild. I'm not a guild hopper by any means but things happen, guilds fall apart, work/living situations change and you end up needing a new guild. Being able to switch factions means you now have more options when finding a guild.
Of course it introduces another level of risk for transfers, spend 25 bucks to switch servers, 25 more (just a guess) to change factions, 50 bucks and at least a month cooldown if you find out its a bad fit.
I'm not really much of an RP type though my tendancies generally lie on the "good" side. As such given two equal choices I would choose Alliance, but given a slightly better choice on Horde I would have no hesitation switching. Not enough to ever really change how I play though, so I don't see much loss switching to a character of a different faction without the role playing progression.
If there were more differences besides cosmetics and minor racials between the factions it might mean something but thats not the case so there is no reason to not allow this to be implemented.
I'm amazed they're going ahead with this, I don't think anyone honetly expected them to ever implement something like this. The man-power and thinking involved in making the transition smooth is going to be very high but I immagine they could make a large amount out of this service.
Reputation seems like a really tricky problem as does vanity items. Let alone all the quests/achievement tie ins.
If they're going through with this they've either got to make it totally sound in objective terms, they've said repeatedly they wouldn't allow advantages at a premium but this could be just that. If they simply "wipe" the character when it gets transfered, only allowing gear/joint achievements/reputations then it won't be tempting for most people and it wouldn't be justified in it's implementation. To me this is scary.
For them to make any money out of this (which is what it seems is the major reason for it's development) they need to transfer gear/pets/mounts/achievements over and this is going to get into some very very dicey territory. Maybe this is why they finally decided to give horde an equivilent of the wintersabre grind?
This will be extremely interesting and nerve-wrecking to watch unfold and could have some major implications on the game if it is not done carefully.
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
Recently i've read comments thrown around, that a World of Facebook is the only MMORPG that could hope to compete with WoW.
Jokes aside, social networking is big business. WoW, despite all its efforts to make content/raiding more accessible to players, still puts up a solid barrier between letting people assimilate and network between Alliance and Horde. Choosing opposite factions to your friends (or meeting new friends who are opposing faction) severely limits the activities you can do ingame together.
Having permenant mutually exclusive factions always was a huge barrier in this regard. But we all accepted that it was simply a part of the game, one of the things that simply would never be changed.
I'd love to know where the directive came from to greenlight this change.
Plus companies love revenue streams, as someone said in guild. I still never thought I'd see the day this was announced, though.
One huge issue is if they don't have any kind of restrictions on switching factions when one faction is already dominant. I'll use Mal'Ganis as a convenient example, since it has a heavy Horde population. (I've seen it estimated by websites at 5-6:1 ratio) I could easily see Alliance guilds saying "screw this, we'll go Horde." I think servers (especially PvP ones) are healthier with balanced factions.
One other thing this will do is broaden your recruitment pool even more. You'll no longer be limited by those pesky faction requirements!
Plus companies love revenue streams, as someone said in guild. I still never thought I'd see the day this was announced, though.
One huge issue is if they don't have any kind of restrictions on switching factions when one faction is already dominant. I'll use Mal'Ganis as a convenient example, since it has a heavy Horde population. (I've seen it estimated by websites at 5-6:1 ratio) I could easily see Alliance guilds saying "screw this, we'll go Horde." I think servers (especially PvP ones) are healthier with balanced factions.
One other thing this will do is broaden your recruitment pool even more. You'll no longer be limited by those pesky faction requirements!
I think if there's anything this is meant to do, it's to try and improve population equilibrium across servers. I don't know if Blizzard finds it advantageous for there to be a 5-6:1 population ratio on a server -- this is a way that players/guilds can help to balance that out.
When it comes to what changes to what, I imagine that the best solution is equivalent exchange, but there's already some deep-seated differences involved here: Alliance characters start at friendly with all 5 factions, but Orc/Tauren/Troll characters and Undead/Blood Elf characters have a discrepancy there. The Tranquilien faction has no equivalent on the Alliance side, unless they implement a Hand of Argus faction in the Draenei starting area. The Loremaster achievements have dramatically different values for each faction on Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Hell, just how is this going to work in general with questIDs? Some people in Blizzard are going to be given the very hard job of making everything match 1:1 so that a character can transfer over without having to file a GM ticket to get things back.
I'm also fairly certain that a change like this is going to be more semi-permanent or even irreversible: switching from Alliance to Horde and then switching back will probably not be allowed because of the ramifications with faction-specific items, recipes, etc. Or it might require a server jump as well.
In terms of all the things they said they'd never do or had no plans for, this is certainly one of the most unexpected. It makes sense because what faction you're on doesn't really change the name of the game, it just changes who you're playing with and which NPCs you report to. I am fairly certain, however, that they will never implement a race change or class change feature that IS a dramatic game change, and those would be too open to abuse for powergaming or flavor-of-the-month incidents -- it would be a nightmare, and I hope they don't go that route.
Personally, I'd be interested if they found a way to make it an actual "defection" element, where your character stays the same but just changes allegiances. They referenced that in the original manual, and while that's where a lot of ideas went to die, it still would have added a lot of depth to the game.
This could get very very complex..... quests are different for factions, mounts, auction house, and so on. If they pull this off without a hitch i will be very surprised.
I would think it'd just about have to be a race change. For one thing it'd break the language barrier, (I don't know about you casters but my Int is way too low to be learning a new language overnight), and secondly I just don't think Blizzard would want to create a situation where you look at a Tauren but don't know whether he's Alliance or Horde.
Some kind of restriction based on faction balance wouldn't be unprecedented since you already can't get paid transfers to grossly overpopulated realms.
I'm sceptical, but I'll remain quietly optimistic that they'll do it right.
There seems to be a conflicting idea of what this means. Reading the comments, it seems as though some people think you'd just be switching factions. I don't think is going to be the case. If you look at the quoted Blue, you'll see it says, "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." I'd imagine that means if you're a Blood Elf Paladin, you will have to change to a Human or a Dwarf if you switch factions. Your rep would flip over to the Ally equivalent as would your mounts/racials. Pets wouldn't have to change b/c it's possible to get any pet so far in the game, regardless of faction. I'd love to see a Blood Elf Alliance character or a Horde Human but like stated above, I think the ramifications of that would be too great.
This will also put racials back under the microscope, and it makes me think they'll have to allow same faction race changes if they allow this as well, that is of course assuming there's freedom in choosing your race when you change faction, there's been little to no details on the specifics.
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One huge issue is if they don't have any kind of restrictions on switching factions when one faction is already dominant. I'll use Mal'Ganis as a convenient example, since it has a heavy Horde population. (I've seen it estimated by websites at 5-6:1 ratio) I could easily see Alliance guilds saying "screw this, we'll go Horde." I think servers (especially PvP ones) are healthier with balanced factions.
I rather suspect they will prevent faction transfers to the dominant faction on extremely lopsided servers, similar to how paid character transfers are disabled to extremely high population servers. If not, the dominant faction on many servers would simply become more so, which is probably not in anyone's best interest.
This will also put racials back under the microscope, and it makes me think they'll have to allow same faction race changes if they allow this as well, that is of course assuming there's freedom in choosing your race when you change faction, there's been little to no details on the specifics.
Being able to change race and not necessarily changing faction would sound very interesting. I'm wondering if this whole thing would come with a name change aswell; like it does now with the sex/looks transformation option. Something around 20 or 25 Euros seems likely.
IMO being able to change race without changing faction would be completely obsurd. How would you tell who is alliance or horde? A blood elf alliance? Human Horde? umm what?
It says in the comment that it will allow players to change FACTION, so the different race factions would probably be out of the question anyways.
I honestly think they should just allow both factions to communicate with each other if they really are after a more social friendly environment. Seeing "kek" gets old
IMO being able to change race without changing faction would be completely obsurd. How would you tell who is alliance or horde? A blood elf alliance? Human Horde? umm what?
I was more referring a change on the Horde or Alliance side itself; so e.g. a Tauren Shaman to either an Orc or a Troll - as they are the only ones who can be shamans.
Blizzard have just cracked open a whole new can of worms. Once again they seem to be making out that they are trying to do players a service but to me it looks just like another money-grabbing scheme.
The complications that arise from this transition between factions will require a lot of work and I imagine they are going to charge even more money for this service than for the other cosmetic changes previously made available.
The whole concept of these two warring factions and the sense of 'character' has been blurred further and further by name changing, character re-customization and then gender changing. Faction swapping opens all of those wounds up all over again.
Call me a conservative wow-player but this makes me rage.
I think that racial changes will be a given when changing factions. If, however, they implement racial changes within a faction, the problem of people switching to the race with the most powerful abilities for your class comes to light. This would be somewhat prevelant in raiding, and more so in PVP. For example, a top tier PVP Death Knight (or top tier raider) may feel pressure to switch races to be an Orc rather than a Blood Elf.
* Will faction-specific reputations, achievements, and/or vanity items transfer over?
* Will it allow for same-faction race changes without requiring a double-tranfer?
* Will it work on a PvP servers with multiple characters, or will it require a server transfer first?
I suspect that everything faction-specific will translate over, race changes will be allowed, and a server transfer would be required for PvP servers. I also suspect the feature won't be live until the next expansion.
I wonder if they'll loosen up racial restrictions on professions with the advent of faction changes. I mean, there's no real lore reason behind Blood Elves being unable to be warriors (although I guess gnomish shaman would be a bit trickier to justify).
I doubt they'll change the available classes to each race at all, really. The current race-class combinations are allowed or disallowed based mostly on balance reasons, with the occasional lore tossed in.
As for Gnomish Shaman... that would be disturbing. I once turned my shaman into a leper gnome using a Hallow's End wand, and the result was a shaman that could drop totems bigger than he was. It was literally impossible to target me if I dropped the Omni-Totem (turning 90 degrees each time, so the totems stack). It was pretty ludicrous.
So, in the end, I don't expect them to open up restrictions. If anything, it will merely add extra limits -- going from horde to alliance shaman, for example, will be severely limiting.
I remember them posting a while ago saying that racial changes were not in the pipeline because they didn't want to create FotM races and make people feel like they had to pay to change races just for min-max purposes.
The purpose of Faction changing is for people to be able to play with their cross-faction friends, nothing more, that doesn't mean same-faction race changes and I'd be extremely surprised if this was an option. In fact I'd expect a very long cooldown on the process and possibly no option to pick what race you are after the transfer just to stop people doing a back-and-forth move.
06/29/09, 5:24 PM
