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World of Warcraft: The Faction Switch
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Daniel Growns gives his two cents on the upcoming World of Warcraft factions switching feature.
Only announced recently, Blizzard's move to allow players to change the faction of their character is one of the most talked about topics in the game. The forum post where we heard about it is already 250 pages long. World of Warcraft is a game that has seen many large changes in its most recent patch notes, which some believe to be diluting the game for the masses. In this article I wish to find out the motives for Blizzard deciding that a faction change is in order.
This topic has interested me so much that I was just itching to research it. After a while, I found out that in the past Blizzard had said that faction change was a feature they would not be implementing to the game any time soon. Crygil, one of Blizzard's Blue posters, stated three main points as to why it would not happen soon. These are the following:
;)
Read The Faction Switch
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I love how people complain that WoW is being dilluted "for the masses". 11 million people play the game, how much more "masses" can the game be? Of course Blizz is tuning the game "for the masses". The "masses" have a *LOT* of money. The ifrst 3 years of the game's life, Blizzard tuned it to the top .5% of players who pushed the raid envelope, while 75% of the paying customers never SAW the content, much less experienced it...that's not a good business model for sustaining a product. Sure the new model is alienating that top .5%, and they're whining like they're 99%, but WoW is better (from Blizz's perspective) for the changes.
That said, I'm not sure how this faction change will work in the long run for the game. One of the things that seems to carry communities beyond the first few years, even when a game has cooled down (EQ, UO, et al) is the sense of "identity" people have. When tBC came out and each side ended up with both pallies and shaman, the game got a bit more "generic". Being an alliance paladin meant less, being a horde shaman meant less, because you weren't "special".
In a year, I see cries of "For the horde!" shifting to "For the...uhh...which faction am I now?" I'm obviously not saying WoW is doomed and people will flock away in droves, because that's not going to happen. However, people are going to shift around a bit, friends will become separated, and in general I feel that this is less a move for "the masses" and more a move towards "generic".
MMORPG posted an article a bit ago about the "second string" devs taking over games after they've been out for awhile. This is the kind of move one expects from that level of development. "How can we make the game easier to manage and yet squeeze more money out of the customers while we still have them?"
My 2 copper, for what it's worth.
This game is like the walking dead. I played it when the lvl cap was 60 and if u had blues man u were good but if u had a purple u were godly. Felstrikers owned all. Now this game is for the just born ahahah U FAIELD BLIZZARD EVERYONE WAS WONDERING WHAT WAS GONNA BEAT WOW. looks like wow is killing itself ahahah. i love it.
Now Playing: Guild Wars 2/ Diablo 3
Looking for group for Deadmine, will gear check. This how WOW is now. It's about numbers period. Player skill means NADA, if you dont have a minimum of x% of hit, x% of crit, x% of damage, x% of defense, you SUCK.
If there something we learned over the year from Blizzard, is that if you whine enough you'll eventually get what you want. Just look at the infamous pve to pvp transfer, they said NO will never happen for years, then POoF !, it's OKAY now. Now they are doing something even drastic, allowing someone to chanage race and faction.
I bet next thing will be a paid service for instant level 55 characters.
Yes, WoW is definitely on a negative decline. The whole achievement thing at first I thought it was kind of a neat idea and to give players somethin to work for in their downtime.... Now Achievements have, imo, really hurt the game with people saying stuff like: "LFG Ulduar pst [Epic] and Achievement" While I do understand that you have to be geared very well to do it, on the other hand, lets say you WERE geared well enough, but because you don't have the achivement, this douchebag won't invite you. And this happens with the FIRST 10 man... Naxx. Achievements just really discussed me now. And now this faction thing? Yeah, I don't agree with that either. I've also heard that there's a CHANCE that Blizzard may allow warriors to tank in Arms or Fury, if they do that... then I believe that will mark the final nail in the coffin.
I don't see WoW as being on a steady decline, honestly i've seen more and more of my old friends returning to the game.
Also a few friends who've been alliance ever since launch have told me that they will make one of their alts Horde so I can play with them. Including my brother who I've never got to WoW with cus he hates leveling and never wanted to reroll but has an alt at 80 already.
I see Faction transfers as a way to make it so friends CAN play together.
This will be good for the community.
It's definately not on the decline, it's on the rise, because it's easier and more accessible. All the players who rant about how it sucks and is declining are the ones who were cut out when Blizz changed their target demographic. They're the "loud" minority, the 5% who sit on the forums and scream at the top of their lungs vs the 95% who quietly play the game and enjoy the heck out of it.
If you were collecting the checks, which would you rather cater to?
Looking for group for Deadmine, will gear check. This how WOW is now. It's about numbers period. Player skill means NADA, if you dont have a minimum of x% of hit, x% of crit, x% of damage, x% of defense, you SUCK.
If there something we learned over the year from Blizzard, is that if you whine enough you'll eventually get what you want. Just look at the infamous pve to pvp transfer, they said NO will never happen for years, then POoF !, it's OKAY now. Now they are doing something even drastic, allowing someone to chanage race and faction.
I bet next thing will be a paid service for instant level 55 characters.
This is so true, I got tired of people always complaining about my gear and how crappy it was. Im sorry I don't have the best gear in the game because I don't want to do the same damn shit over and over again.
Man im glad I don't play this game anymore, LOL at the paid service for instant leveling or, heck Blizz might even offer a service to have people play the game for you.
"So yeah my Rogue just got to level 75 yesterday"
" Awesome man, that guy playing the game for you is awesome. That's 3 levels this week right?"
"Yeah I wouldn't know what to do without him, acting all cool and bragging about my character is taking up all my time."
I can see it now.
Looking for group for Deadmine, will gear check. This how WOW is now. It's about numbers period. Player skill means NADA, if you dont have a minimum of x% of hit, x% of crit, x% of damage, x% of defense, you SUCK.
I lol'ed at the gear check for Deadmines, cause now you can get free runs sometimes by a high level just becase he or she wants an achievement, wort case you can pay 20g for the run, or whatever the price is.
Def gotta be 540, for any tank you simple cant tank without that, all other stats dont matter as much no1 cares how much crit % u got, if you can not hit around 3k damage on bosses in 25m nax and you are dps, then ya U do suck.
Lately though its been about achievement checks then gear hehe
i see more and more leaving and those that are there now are only playing till aion comes out . other than that the faction switch is just another thing that shows how dumbed down warcraft is becoming .
i think faction changes are great.... i really enjoyed them in everquest 2 YEARS ago. the quest for changing faction, was a lot of fun. really rough on a pvp server when your neutral and both sides can take you a part. i've never liked the forced faction play, doesn't make sense why you can't choose who you'd like to fight for..... nice to see WoW is almost with the times....
Actually as a fan of both the books and RP I'm not going to knock this option. It allows for ideas that follow more closely to the storyline.
It would allow the option to play as a human sympathizer for the orcs having seen the treatment of their noble race and what happened in the prison camps. Also along with storyline it now makes more sense for groups such as the Argent Dawn to exist or even variants of the Cenarion Circle. Not all of the high(blood) elves were evil and power hungry, etc
I do see how it can pollute the game otherwise as well though and get a bit confusing. After a while you get used to charging to defend a location after hearing the Horde or Alliance are invading. Could make skirmishes quite interesting (trigger happy?)and wasteful for casters not identifying friend or foe right away. I would hope Blizzard would make the cost for such a change hefty and more challenging. How much more difficult would it be to complete quests as Horde in Alliance territory for example?
Am I walking in blindly - no - I am still wary especially after staff changes that they may be shooting for some marketing goals that have sickened me when run by other companies in the past (EA for example). Greed tends to ruin even the best companies and marketing knows know bounds when it comes to greed. Probably one of the reasons I can appreciate what Christopher Tolkien (Tolkien Foundation, etc - Even though I hear he can be nasty when someone does something he's against with his father's and his work) has done keeping his hands in all of the Tolkien works to ensure everything is as close as it can get to authentic.
Going with the flow - for now
I personally find the game as it is to be more than a tad boring. Sure, I will play occassionally if I get bored enough, but what I would really like is for the faction switch to be implemented in a way that allows you to keep the same species but switch it to another faction. This would allow for more interesting PvP situations since you could have "underground" rebel camps and spies in your midst. Oh the possibilities.
Anything to keep the masses playing. This lets some who have never tried the other side do so, causing them to play more.
Also, I bet if you change the side of one character on a pvp server, you must change them all, OR transfer (which costs more money).
So anywhere from 50 to however many chars you have on that server. (Up to 10, so 250 bucks.)
Gear check for Deadmines is funny, but its not much of an exaggeration. I closed my account a couple of months ago and and that time, the lfg channel was inundated with "pst with crt/hit/dmg, gear links" etc. As someone mentioned, WoW back in the day was a challenge. And those who had purples were indeed epic.
I remember being a nub like lvl 30 following a guy around on a bug mount because Id never seen it before and I assumed he was super powerful and had worked very hard to aquire all those shiny glowy enchants and gear. It gave the game a sense of mystery and excitement to fulfil and explore. And now with the current WoW version, anyone with enough time or gold can grind out or purchase all the epics they would ever want and apparently now switch factions?? Very anticlimactic.
Its the same reason I dont use cheat codes in games, it ruins the enjoyement for me. Sadly with Blizzard and all the changes they have made since Burning Crusade and onward, its a case of too much content to fast.
Silly Blizzard, WoW is for kids...
If you can find a guild of grown-ups that care about playing for fun then there wouldn't be as much whining.
The game and market changes so that must update it. Who wants to play an outdated game?
As far as numbers go, I nor my friends play with the obsessed kids that live to make smart remarks about gear when it's obvious that gear drops are luck based, not skill based. If you can elude the kids with no self respect, all of the changes and gameplay in this game are great and obviously superior to anything out there.
As far as race changes go, it would be something interesting, but I would like it to be more like EQ in the fact that you could betray your city and become friendly to the opposite faction versus just buying some plastic surgery and changing yourself.
However they do this, it will be marketable and many people will do it, so I don't see the big problem. Let people play how they want to play and just have fun. Again, just dodge the whiny jerky kids with no lives and you can really enjoy this game now and with every change.
LOL
QFT
Yeah, that's what most people on MMORPG.com don't seem to understand. It's a VERY very small minority of gamers that even know this site exists, much less come here on a regular basis. Just because you're well known on a gaming forum on the "interwebs" doesn't mean that you're a majority anywhere. So frankly, most of the opinions we all waste time typing here, will not only never be read by a Blizzard developer (or most other developers, for that matter), but they're certainly NOT going to be acted on just because 100 people on some web forum don't like this or that. Puhleeease.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I think the Faction switch is a good idea. It just isn't going to bring me back to the game. I find it to be an extremely boring game with too many eletist jerks and uber kids that think the have huge e-peens! But thats just my opinion. Hope it all works out for the people that still play.
Trust me,Im a doctor!
i see more and more leaving and those that are there now are only playing till aion comes out . other than that the faction switch is just another thing that shows how dumbed down warcraft is becoming .
Aion will not hurt WOW in the long term. Aion is the antithesis of why WOW appeals to so many: WOW gives you choices, Aion makes them for you. WOW gives you two sides with multiple starting and leveling areas. Aion makes you start in the same place and do the exact same quests along the same linear path everytime.
How is a faction change dumbed-down? By giving the player a choice, its makes people dumber? The quoted text from laughing-man is a great example of why this is a good change. And its not like its not going to have consequences. There will most likely be a cost associated with it and a cool down. Also there might be other issues like achievement loss, quest issues, etc...
I don't think of giving player's choices as being dumbed down....I see it as smart business sense and if more MMO's were as accessible as WOW, maybe, just maybe, they would be as successful.
The statement about Aion being the "antithesis" is wrong on so many levels. It's quite obvious you haven't played any game that offers real choices and paths to explore because I assure you WoW is one of the more structured and path restricting games. Now, I will admit that Aion, from what I've seen, is more restricting but it's quite difficult to argue that either offer very many choices.
In regards to why this is a bad change, it will destroy what little "faction pride" is left among the community (and I use that term loosely). Playing the original game the most, I've seen that faction pride all but snuffed out as the game progressed. It began with the Battlegrounds and the PvP ranking system. Gone were the days of entire forces fighting over Southshore and Tarren Mill simply because they were the enemy and they must die. Then came the Normal to PvP transfers, which Blizzard adamantly denied would ever happen from the get-go. This will be the final nail in that particular coffin.
Some may argue that they just want their shiny purple text and don't care about this particular aspect, but I have to ask; why even have two factions at this point? Everything PvP leads to Arena anyway and they've all but destroyed the storyline and faction backgrounds from Warcraft. What's stopping it from going that far?
If WoW is dying why is mys server so frakking full! I have played my share of MMORPG's and I rarely saw the number of people I see in this game in any of those other games. I use to play some games that I could litterally play for days and not see another player unless I really wished to, like SWG, Vanguard, Asheron's Call, Dark Age of Camelot. I am not so lucky in WoW. Even in the starter zones you'd think people would find no use for them. Not! I see characters running around in all the zones and areas of all levels. Why? Because Blizzard gives you more to do than just quest and PvP. There are achievements(which can give some nice items to your character), than there are reputations with NPC factions you can gain favor of that opens up new quest and again gives you access to new items and even special mounts.
Anyone that knows me knows I have a dificult time playing WoW because I really dislike some of it's game play, and no WoW is not my favorite game, but even I can see why everyone and their mother loves to play WoW. The game is freaking incredable. Huge in scope. Rich in Lore. And to a point for most it is just fun to play.
Is WoW perfect? NO But it is a far cry better than any other fantasy MMORPG on the market. I have been playing on and off now since its release and I still have tons and I mean lots and lots of things I haven't seen or done yet. WotLK is the single best expansion I have ever seen made to a game. It is rich in lore and detail and brought so much more to the game in so many ways. I suspect that the best is yet to come for World of Warcraft.
This has also been my experience, and I too have been playing off and on (more on, with the exception of a couple month-long or so breaks). I actually agree with everything you said. Funny thing is....apparently....most of the people that play it DO. The ones that don't....come here and whine about it. The way I feel about that is......if you don't enjoy a game, simply don't play it. But just because you don't enjoy a game, doesn't make the 11 million other people that do enjoy it "wrong." There should be all kinds of games for all kinds of people. And literally....a lot of people and their MOTHERS (and fathers and nieces, nephews, and neighbors) play WoW.
WISHING WoW would "decline" or go away....just won't make it so. People need to let go of their varied disappointments and disillusionments (if that's even a word) and just go play something else. It's not that hard to do.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Warcraft is being made constantly easier " dumbed down " . A faction switch is just another way of making it easier .Rather than leveling an alt you now just have to pay a fee and suddenly your night elf becomes a troll . If your side loses most battle grounds just change then change back when you get all your gear . Its mircotransactions by any other name .
It wont end here either . The next logical step would be pay a fee and get your hunter changed into a rogue etc .
Its a sets a precident . Its a bad idea and it will hurt Warcraft in the long term although i think it ll be very popular amongst people who arn t thinking it through properly .
This has also been my experience, and I too have been playing off and on (more on, with the exception of a couple month-long or so breaks). I actually agree with everything you said. Funny thing is....apparently....most of the people that play it DO. The ones that don't....come here and whine about it. The way I feel about that is......if you don't enjoy a game, simply don't play it. But just because you don't enjoy a game, doesn't make the 11 million other people that do enjoy it "wrong." There should be all kinds of games for all kinds of people. And literally....a lot of people and their MOTHERS (and fathers and nieces, nephews, and neighbors) play WoW.
WISHING WoW would "decline" or go away....just won't make it so. People need to let go of their varied disappointments and disillusionments (if that's even a word) and just go play something else. It's not that hard to do.
The fact that you not only used the "subscriber" numbers in an attempt to prove an assinine point coupled with the fact that you seem to have an issue with anyone disagreeing with your viewpoint further proves my stance. It's gotten to the point that objective criticism is viewed as bashing when it's merely expressing an opinion or (hopefully) unbiased fact. No one is attempting to say "you're wrong" for enjoying the game.
As for Wrath being the best expansion (to any game ever? really?) I couldn't disagree more. While it was slightly better than TBC, it still doesn't hold a candle to the original game in scope and feel.
The only issue I have with the game is the crowd it's attracted. Most, it's their first MMO and will probably be their only one. Every friend I've had start with this game refuses to play anything else and to top it off, every other company seems dead set on copy this fluke of a design. I say fluke simply because all the ingredients came together to make it work and will probably never see a repeat of such elements creating this money juggernaut.