There I was on my worgen wishing I could do all content with my friends on the Horde side but not wanting to change races and I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if buying a faction change did not make you do a race change, but buy an actual faction change without otherwise changing your character?
I think there are plans to eventually lower all the barriers when it comes to queueing for cross-faction gameplay, but why not include this in the mix? Sure, I’d be a traitor to my faction…but is that such a bad option…?
Character treachery motivation: “Sure, Slyvanas ruined my kingdom, killed a beloved prince, drove my king near mad with grief and then burned my new home to the ground in an act of genocide and destruction unheard of, but she seems sorry and she’s really pretty…”
I have to respectfully disagree. Things are already confusing enough with how cross-faction play works—figuring out who can do what with whom in parties, guilds, and even queues is a mess sometimes. Blurring the line even further by combining faction change and race change by default would just add to the chaos.
There should still be some distinction between the two systems. A faction change is a big deal lore-wise and gameplay-wise, and race change has its own implications—especially considering racials, aesthetics, and immersion. Keeping them separate keeps things clearer and gives players more control over each individual choice.
It’s important to preserve that clarity, especially as the boundaries between factions continue to shift. Making every change too convenient could dilute the impact of each decision.
I wish they’d just let us pay for a racial change while looking like whatever we want. I swapped to Zandalari because it sims higher, and I will swap to Velf once we get to Mugzee prog. I wish I could consistently look like a dwarf or mechagnome regardless of racials though. Would happily pay 40 per time for it tbh
No, it would be both dumb and confusing to regularly see “Horde” Worgen or Dwarves running around. Use your novelty toys like orbs, noggenfogger, deviate delight, atomic recalibrator, etc to mix things up for a bit of a different “feeling” while playing.
But otherwise, no, you should not be able to make a Horde toon and faction change so you can be an Alliance Blood Elf.
Yes and this is already confusing imo. I just see pandas and geckos as “it’s” as opposed to caring what faction they are on.
I think it would be cool to have a defector questline where your character could join the opposing faction, but it should be long and grindy and miserable so you have to earn it.
This was one of my favourite things in EQ2. You could faction change and keep your race, and all in game. You would have to betray your faction, and then build up rep with the new side til you could officially join them, but it let you basically play whatever race you wanted in whatever side you wanted.
For example, my sister prefered the look of the even fairy race, but liked playing on the good side. She would start an evil fairy, betray them, and switch to the other side.
Edit: Whoops, responded before I saw another poster had already brought this up.
This is what people were asking before allied races happened, in fact what many people assumed allied races would be: opposite-faction versions of existing races.
Grimtotem for Alliance, Defias for Horde, some troll tribe for Alliance (take your pick), Dark Irons for Horde, etc.
This whole post sounds exactly like it was written by an AI. And, considering the absolute stupidity of a lot of the forum-goers recently, it would’nt surprise me if there were bots here. 10 posts? Lol. Bought account, now a bot. It rhymes!
I like this idea. And why not. An individual citizen would be able to form their own opinions and allegiances.
And those who’re saying it would be too confusing, lol. It wouldn’t. There’s already multi-faction races in the game and they’ve been in it since pandaria. It’s not hard to tell if a Pandaren etc are members of the horde or alliance. All you have to do is mouse over them and read the tooltip.
Appreciate the skepticism—it’s fair in today’s internet climate. Just to clarify though: I’m very much a real person. I do use ChatGPT to help word my responses more clearly and effectively, not because I lack the ideas, but because I want to express them as well as possible. Think of it like players who use rotation assistance add-ons—not because they can’t play, but because it helps fine-tune performance. Same principle here. The thoughts are mine; the tool just helps sharpen the delivery. That said, I get that it can come off a bit “too polished” sometimes, but I’d rather be clear than chaotic.
The best solution is to decouple race from faction, and allow faction changes in-game without a service fee on some reasonable cooldown(every month or two).
The game has become essentially a lobby game with a thin veneer of MMORPG slapped on. There’s not much reason for faction v faction to even exist at this point, especially given how ridiculous it is from a story perspective.
How many times do the horde/alliance join forces, only to have some very forced conflict, before buddying up again, before it stops?
That’s just not how it works. Faction is built into the races, which absolutely leads to some nonsensical outputs. I’d just prefer them to sort out the faction system so that you can do everything with whoever and communicate outside of war mode.