First off. I’m very excited for this, for a number of reasons. To name a few, recruitment and being able to trial raiders before they have to transfer, and ease of pugging both PvE and PvP content.
I do, however, have a few questions.
Will cross-faction, same realm (connected-realm) mythic raid be allowed before HoF closes and cross-realm mythic opens?
Will there be any change to the HoF system?
Will you be able to summon people of the other faction? (using warlocks or summoning stones)
In warmode, will you be able to see party members on the map? We know we can kill party members (not sure how I feel about this tbh, but maybe its the right answer)
Are cross-faction guilds on the table if this transition goes well?
Will there be any changes to “guild progress”?
How will trading work? Instanced trading I assume will work like cross-realm does now, looted items, no gold or other items, what about same realm, cross faction?
Will faction specific transmog rules be loosened at all?
Will questing / custom groups be cross faction as well? (World bosses, rep grinds, etc)
I’m sure I’ll have more questions as I digest the info and read the post a few more times, and I’m sure my fellow council members have their own questions as well!
This is a pretty great way of doing it while making it non opt in which I really like I just hope it revives some Wpvp stuff with organised PvP events and such in WoW. Examples like duel tournaments and Rp PvP events
I think the way implementation has been described in the post is really good. I think this is the most natural way to introduce cross-faction play, and I really commend Blizzard for taking this step. I’m really pleased that it remains an opt-in system and places the emphasis on the factions’ identity, and I especially like this part of the post:
Following the events of Battle for Azeroth , the Alliance and Horde are poised in an uneasy armistice. The factions still stand apart, and even as some of their leaders cooperate in the Shadowlands, countless members of each faction will neither forgive nor forget the wartime actions of the other. For every Jaina, there is a Genn, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon. But why shouldn’t players be able to make that choice for themselves, especially in cooperative settings where the story revolves around coming together to overcome dire threats?
… thus explaining why cross-faction stops at the borders. While many players would have preferred the system to go wider (such as allowing players to visit the other faction’s capitals), I think that is something that does not necessarily fit the lore right now and should rather be reconsidered later in the story, if it makes more sense then.
I do, however, have some questions regarding the system, I might as well start echoing/elaborating on some of the questions already posed:
I’m guessing converting the guild system to be cross-faction will pose some technical challenges, but it is probably worth doing. If part of the goal of cross-faction is to let players play with their friends, it would be great to be in the same guild as them - communities just haven’t been able to hit quite the same way as guilds.
I’m assuming a lot of questing will be hard to do with one another because many quests are Horde/Alliance specific, but it would be nice to be able to do this with friends of the other faction. Perhaps going forward, more quests will be designed with this in mind?
Other questions:
Communication. We’re able to chat through party chat and the usual, but if you want to chat with the other faction outside of that, will you still need to use the Elixir of Tongues? Could Elixir of Tongues get a toy equivalent, or a skill book/toggle instead, so that we don’t need to use precious inventory space for this?
I’m also a little unclear on why team members will be hostile if they are of the other faction while in war mode, would it not make sense that they would instead be unfriendly if you are teamed up? I don’t want to beat up my friends :< (read: get beaten up by friends)
Oh, and a random suggestion; for the legacy content that will be disabled, could it not be fixed by having the legacy content be viewed from the point of view of the group leader? For example, if your leader is a night elf, your group is going to shoot down Saurfang in Icecrown Citadel. I’m not sure how difficult it would be to implement that.
I think this would be cool, but I also see why they wouldn’t want to do that if the idea is to retain faction identity. (Even if I am of the opinion that giving people the option to break with the identity that you are prescribed is a good thing that reinforces those identities.)
Would it also be cool (maybe specifically from an RP perspective) to be able to gain reputation with the opposite faction to be able to enter their cities? (when not in warmode)
I think that would go against the opt-in idea of it, you can’t opt out of having night elves in Orgrimmar, or forsaken in Ironforge. But it would be cool if we could get embassies or something alike… and generally more cross-faction areas.
And thats where we need clarification. Is the whole Guild topic off the table for faction merge or is it not. As stated communities are not the same as Guilds in the old fashioned sense. Yes this faction change was badly needed and is utmost welcome but without it also having an effect on guilds those guilds will continue to suffer.
Alliance Guilds will continue to consider going horde for recruitment since they still need 80% of the group to be consisted of guildies to be counted as guild kills (which is also relevant for sites like wowprogress for proper recruitment. If the API doesnt transmit “guild killed boss X” the site wont properly display it). Or Hordes going Alliance for OCE (i believe it was OCE where alliance reigns supreme). This is an issue not just for mythic guilds but also for guilds that progress heroic or normal.
Also many people who would have loved to go Alliance (or go back to Alliance) will choose not to because it bars them off their Guild as they cant join it. Causing a lot of problems despite this change being intended to do good only.
If its of technical nature that its not implemented yet then a statement in this regard would be utmost welcomed and saying it comes at a later date after the technical issues have been dealt with would be fine with everybody and those that still nag about it taking longer in old forum fashion can just be safely ignored.
Not a RPer but i can see the interest in that. However, in my opinion, this would need to be strictly connected to established lore in the game. Lore that would have to be created specifically for it to allow those cities to accept/welcome said accounts into their cities. And it shouldnt just be a reputation farm but also be tied to a very very neat RP quest chain.
I’m certainly open to the idea- being that I play primarily neutrally-aligned characters, and my main is an Argent! To acknowledge the other replies, I do agree there’d need to be a lore-abiding purpose for it. As well, language barriers would need to be tweaked.
Perhaps it’s something that could give our Allied Race Embassies more purpose? Talk to Aysa or Ji and teleport to the other faction’s main city to act as an ambassador, etcetera. Would be a good excuse to rework the cities, like Orgrimmar, too.
My guild and I were discussing this new announcement throughout the day today and we feel this a great change for the game itself.
We have a few guild members that have main characters on the Alliance side and have been unable to raid due to Alliance population numbers being a lot lower than the Horde. So now they will be able to raid with our guild on their Alliance characters if they choose to do-so.
I saw an idea similar to this earlier on the General Discussion Forum. This would actually be a pretty cool idea to implement into the game itself. From the idea I read on the General Discussion Forum is that if something such as this were to occur, There could be a reputation grind you could do for the opposite Faction’s cities.
You would gain rep by doing things for them, But you would lose reputation from them if you engaged in activities such as World PvP. Doing Battlegrounds would not damage your reputation status however.
As cool as that sounds I think that if I had the moment of being attacked by someone and was worried about losing rep with the faction they were while they tried to kill me. It would kind of really be lame. Now on the other hand if I wanted to share the zugzug by going to stormwind and killing my own guildies that would be pretty awesome. I think the interaction needs to be more positive and less punishing.
The day someone says heroism and I get that buff I sure hope my orc ancestors forgive me
Dedicated servers with an optional way to play the game would probably split the community a bit - but then again, dedicated RP servers are every roleplayer’s wet dream :>
On the whole “visiting the other faction” stuff; I think tying it to a rep wouldn’t be great, especially if it’s one you’d need to consider while playing the game. I do love the idea from an immersion point of view, but it would negatively impact the way you play the game by limiting what you can do/force you to do something when you lose reputation. I think a quest line that would introduce you to the other faction is better. I still stand by my post above in that it would go against the opt-in nature of it, though, so rather than just visiting the other faction’s capitals, I think they should rather create cross-faction spaces within/near the cities in the form of embassies or the like.
Locations are actually a pretty important part of faction identity, and if the goal is to preserve faction identity, limiting where you would be able to go, what NPCs you are able to interact with as a result, would be important. BUT… in the future, perhaps these barriers might slowly start to erode, and we’ll get more access to one another’s factions and services as a result.
Oh, and the real reason I’m posting today; Ion’s interview with IGN, summed up by wowhead here:
As suspected, open world content is going to be difficult to do, but I do hope (as I posted in my initial post) that they will take this into consideration when they’re making new quests. I don’t really expect them to go back and change how old quests work.
Guilds are at least being considered, and it’s good they’re listening to feedback - especially since the feedback in this thread so far has been: give cross faction guilds :>
I’m glad they’re taking their time to decide what to do - because it’s not going to be undone afterwards. This is one of the reasons I’m a little apprehensive about cross-faction in cities, by the way, because once those floodgates are opened, they cannot be stopped, and some players will be really unhappy if they go to Orgrimmar to find it filled with gnomes, or visiting Stormwind to see a bunch of tauren making their home in the throne room.
Though it was stated we’re likely not going to get another “all-consuming” faction war, I think that just means it’s not going to get as big as the former wars were; there’s probably going to be little skirmishes and disputes here and there. Perhaps it would even open for narratives about each faction being splintered into having a more neutral body, and a secondary war-hungry body. Who knows what the future holds, really.
Guilds are the most requested thing I’ve seen. I’m sure its been on the radar long before we heard about any of this, and there may just be some code restricting it that will take longer to rework, or saving it for 10.0 maybe?
So cross-faction is on the PTR now and I just read up on wowhead’s coverage on it, I had some thoughts to share!
The opt-in nature of it feels really well implemented, although I will say that I would have liked the option to invite someone from the opposite faction without requiring a community/battle.net friendlist/group finder tool to actually do it. Perhaps adding an option that you can toggle on your character would allow you to accept invites from members of the other faction, making them inviteable through /invite (player) and right-clicking their character portrait?
The language barrier concern I had was thankfully addressed :> It’s great that you’re able to communicate with each other while in a group. I’d still love to have a better way to do cross-faction communication outside of groups for RP purposes, the language potion takes up a slot in the inventory after all!
Cross-faction trading seems like a really good tool to have, the AH is already cross-faction after all, but why is it restricted outside of instanced areas? Also, cross-faction mailing is fantastic for altoholics like me, I rarely see fit to play my Horde characters because my main focus is on Alliance these days, but now I’ve got some more incentives to play them :>
I really, really want this! The guild I’m in is cross faction and although I’m one of only two people in the horde side guild, I’d love to be able to play my horde toons during ally side guild content.
I feel like they should have introduced a “Human” language, and just made Common a bi-factional language. And just make “Human” the base language for the Alliance (since it’s the human language after all lol)
Then have an opt-in on the language menu to understand Common.
That way if you don’t want to understand the opposite faction, you won’t, but if you do, it works that way.
I said what I said in another thread:
Please reconsider not adding this feature to random dungeons and raids. If your concern is not forcing it on people, simply make it an opt in on the LFD/LFR screen, like it is for the group finder.
Without giving us the option, you are essentially implying that outdoor/LFR/LFD players endgame isn’t important, only M+, raiding, and rated PvP.
The fact Rated PVP (Where Horde v Alliance is at the forefront) is being given the option before the most widely used PvE features is silly.
