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."

Comments

Lame

[tuxedobob]

Yet another step closer to "everything for a price" and another step away from the original vision of the game.

Re:Lame

[fractoid]

And yet, if you're Alliance and all your friend are Horde, it's yet another reason not to quit. See how those things go hand in hand?

Re:Lame

[fractoid]

Dude, have you tried to level a new character recently? It's a long, boring solo grind because so few players are still levelling. It'd be fun to do with a bunch of friends, but face it - the original, populated game that we played back in vanilla is gone. The real game starts at 80.

Re:Lame

[fractoid]

3 hours a day for three months may not qualify as 'hard' but it certainly qualifies as 'far more time than I should have to waste doing something I'm already sick of in order to get to the bit I would find fun'.

Secondly, because 90%+ of a server is at level cap, large parts of the early game are unavailable because it's impossible to find instance groups.

Lastly, there's the quality issue. The lowbie content is just not as good as the later stuff. In the four years between launch and WotLK, Blizzard's team has learned a HELL of a lot about MMO design. The quests in Northrend are far more varied and interesting than the ones in vanilla content. It's like being made to read all of Dickens' schoolwork before you're allowed to read Oliver Twist.

Re:Lame

[node 3]

It's a business. Period. Their customers are the players. If the players want 55 free levels, faction changes, name changes, welfare epics, and on and on and on, and are willing to pay for it, either through a direct fee (name changes, faction changes) or by virtue of continuing to pay their monthly fee, they will keep getting it because at the end of the day, Blizzard, and every other major game manufacturer cares about one thing and one thing only: MONEY.

This is a fundamentally incomplete view of reality. While there are certainly people at Blizzard for whom the company is only about money, there are also people who are there because they want to make great games.

In order for a company to be truly great, it has to make a place for those types of people. I don't know first hand whether Blizzard is such a company, but looking at their products, it would appear to be the case.

On the other hand, companies that are only "about one thing and one thing only: MONEY", as you put it, are soulless places that I think should not be encouraged to exist in such a form.

That's not to say that money isn't important, but when you choose what you want to do in life, what your passion is, you don't choose to do that simply because of the money, but because it's what you love. By stating that businesses are solely about money, and nothing else, you make it just that much more difficult for the truly great companies to exist.

Re:Lame

[Opportunist]

Leveling in a new environment and doing new quests can be fun, don't you think?

No, not really. Instead of slaughtering 50 Murlocks for their eyes for Count Hurburk, you slaughter 50 Murlocks for their fins for Grunt Gruggrug. Instead of delivering this important set of papers to Councilman Elebuk, you deliver this package of food to Guard Urgel. Instead of...

Re:Lame

[Jim_Maryland]

IMHO there's no reason why one should have to spend weeks leveling up a character to fill a gap in one's guild.

Remember back when you started your first character? Did you find it easy or difficult to find players for group quest or running instances? I only started playing after TBC was out for a while and I hardly did any quest that required groups since finding players to work with was almost impossible. While I can appreciate starting at level 55, I can also see the benefits of keeping a population stream working through all the levels (even if some are going to speed right through them).

Re:Lame

[knight24k]

Dude, have you tried to level a new character recently? It's a long, boring solo grind because so few players are still levelling. It'd be fun to do with a bunch of friends, but face it - the original, populated game that we played back in vanilla is gone. The real game starts at 80.

You're kidding, right? I have 3 80s and could level another if I wanted to in a month, probably less if I really pushed it. I have done 35 levels in a weekend. Leveling is so insanely easy now that I can get to Outland in less than 2 weeks, Northrend the week after and max out to 80 the week after that. When I started a DK (as everyone did when they came out) I was 70 in less than 5 days and no I don't play WoW every waking moment. I have a full time job. I play a few hours a night and probably quite a few on the weekend and some days I don't play at all. Outside the initial burst of levels at the low end I can usually do 5+ levels a day on the weekend and 1 or 2 levels a day during the week depending on what level I am working on. The only levels I usually have an issue with are between 55-58. I tend to run out of quests and have to resort to instances or outright mob grinding.

Yes, this is all solo. If my guild helps it goes by way faster as we can grind instances and level faster than the quests, but I like questing and it takes so little time and depending on the server there are still a lot of players either leveling alts or new to the game. ZF, ST and BRD groups are still fairly easy to come by, but it is true that many of the former high end instances are pretty vacant.

Still, if I want to I can get any class to 80 in a matter of a few weeks. That is actually not really that long considering at launch it could take at least 2 months or more to get to 60 and that was with pretty much every zone filled with people. Well, considering I don't have to fight over quest mobs now, maybe all those people were slowing me down. =)

Re:Lame

[tuxedobob]

I'm one of two people I know of on my server with the Insane title. Back at level 60, I was one of a handful with a Winterspring Frostsaber. Both (at the time) required a lot of hard work, and after a while having to do what is necessary for the reputation grinds got a little tiresome. In the end, of course, I completed both of them, and it's a lot of fun to show the title, or back then, the mount. There's a fair amount of entertainment that goes into, "Oh, wow, you have that?"

Moral of the story: putting effort in to achieve a goal is fun.

Re:They are badly losing people...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've noticed something. We hear from people who have done the majority of the content that WoW has, they beat Vanilla, they beat BC, they made good progress in WotLK. But then the game changed and it was ruined! Because there isn't a single chance in the world that after you spent 4 years beating all the content, both PvE and PvP that maybe you just got tired of the game? For instance, I love pasta. But if I ate great big helpings of pasta for dinner 4 or 5 days of the week for four entire years, I bet I wouldn't like pasta as much. And no, its not because someone 'ruined' pasta, it because I got tired of something I did a lot of.

Re:Plz don't quit our game

[Canazza]

Time travel! It's the answer to everything!

And yet..

[leathered]

EQ(II) has had the option to betray your faction from the get go..

So what other "innovations" can we expect from Blizz in the years to come; player housing, guild halls?

Re:Why would you have to change your character?

[TheThiefMaster]

EVE Online has had that all along...
Characters switching sides frequently sabotage their old corp or steal as much as they can :)

Re:They are badly losing people...

[Anonymous Coward]

You learnt to play a bit (rank 11, 2000 rating isn't anything special) when your class was the OP one. You've just failed to learn to play again now that things have changed and you aren't OP. Also, they're not badly losing people.

Re:They are badly losing people...

[Opportunist]

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.

Now, it wasn't a hard game from the start. But it was good, quick fun. A bit like the fast food of online games. It's not really rewarding for a long time and getting anything ain't something you brag about because you know you could put a 6 year old there and he'd succeed (and if you don't have a 6 year old handy, slap together a script), but it was ok for the time.

The rewarding moments ceased to exist with the advent of certain abilities that made even the tank scriptable. AoE aggro that can essentially not be broken. Now where's any kind of challenge left? That you can fire your spells and styles in the correct order to maximize damage (because you won't have to worry about aggro anymore, at least if the tank is at least as good as a small script)? Please, google the correct sequence...

I don't want to brag to others how much I accomplished, but at least I want to have the feeling that I didn't just waste my time doing something anyone can do. But that seems to be the appeal, and I don't care too much that people want to play that. To each what they like.

What bugs me to no end, though, is that other MMO makers dumb and water their games down in an attempt to attract the WoW players. Even EQ2, which started out as an insanely HARD game. And I mean insanely hard. I don't mind challenges, but EQ2 was like pulling teeth, without any kind of drugs, every single level was a battle, right from the start. After a few months it had a fairly good challenge level and was quite playable. In the meantime, it has been reduced to lalaland as well. And it's not any better for any other game that I'd know of.

So, IMO, essentially what keeps WoW afloat is that there are no real alternatives if you're fed up with EZ-Mode gaming. The rest of the games have been turned into copies of WoW, so you can just as well stay there.

How so?

[Sycraft-fu]

At this point, all the fees they have are related to meta-game type things only, none are related to in game content. You pay to access the game, you don't pay a special fee for access to raid content. Likewise they offer you the ability to transfer to a new server to play with friends, not the ability to buy gear. They sell a change of appearance, not a bag of gold. Now they are going to offer the ability to change sides.

The idea seems to be that if you make a meta-game choice you later dislike, you aren't stuck with it. You can change your mind. In the game world itself, you have to do everything in there with the tools available. This purchase system is only for things that you don't control in game and that really don't have an impact on gameplay.

If they were selling in game items and such, yes I'd dislike it. However they aren't, they are just saying "If your friends play on a different realm or a different faction, you can pay to switch over and go play with them."

Also the fee seems to be as much based on making people think about it and only do it if serious as making money. I'm sure they don't mind the extra cash, but notice that they also impose time limits. You can't transfer characters all the time, there's a 30 day limit. If it was only about money, they'd let you transfer as often as you liked to make more fees.

This seems to work. Because of the fee and the time limit, you don't see people jumping servers often. It is reserved for those that have a real reason.

Re:WOW ain't packing so much WOW anymore

[Yosho]

You know that this isn't the first time Blizzard has lowered mount requirements, right? It sounds like /you're/ one of the "noobs" who hasn't paid your "dues in sweat." Real men got their mounts at level 40 and paid 90 gold just for the riding skill. Except Tauren, who couldn't even use mounts.

Or maybe -- just maybe -- players getting a land speed increase so they can get from 20 to 30 a little faster isn't the end of the fucking world. Let's face it, getting through those mid levels in Azeroth is boring as hell, especially now that the old zones are practically empty. The point is that Blizzard doesn't want players to dread spending hours doing things. If that's the kind of game you're looking for, maybe Final Fantasy XI is more your style?

Re:Yet again, they further homogonize the game

[BobMcD]

More to the point: what's the bloody point?

You're looking too deeply, my friend.

It is a game (and a hobby).

The point is to enjoy the time you spend doing it. This should help some do that without impacting other's ability to do the same.

Does there need to be more of a point than that?