With the Pandarens, it is now established that quests can be made that determine your faction affiliation. Course this only works if the Alliance or Horde get clearly established identities. Right now we are dancing around the chairs of Good and Evil, singing the song of Morally Grey. Till the Horde and the Alliance establish what they stand for, then this concept doesn’t work but, assuming they did…
Faction Defection Questline
A large questline can be introduced, resulting in a final scenario using a re-purposed Expedition Isle. The end scenario is your character, trying to get through a gauntlet, surviving hunters from your faction as you try and wait for pickup from the faction you are wanting to join.
Anyone who finishes this, keeps their current race and class, but joins the other faction. For this, they should carry a ‘Buff’ called ‘Turncoat’ which introduces a penalty to gold looted, reputation gained and vendor pricing (As your newly joined faction doesn’t and never will entirely trust you), a minor damage increase in PVP against those of your former faction (As you know exactly how to fight them) and double honor and small bounty to anyone of your former faction who kills you (As traitors carry a higher reward in war as opposed to rank and file soldiers)
If the Horde ever fully commits to being the evil faction and the Alliance ever fully commits to being the good faction…this could work.
Also, this could work in the creation of a third faction for people to join (The Lich Queen’s Scourge?)
I’m in favor of it as long as it’s long and grueling. It would have to take many months to complete, during which time you’re hostile to both factions. Warmode would be automatically turned on and you shouldn’t be able to step foot into either factions cities other than for a stealth quest.
yes, but the pandaren were built with that from the ground up. races like the worgen and forsaken werent. in fact some races should never be able to get along like the worgen and forsaken, worgen hate forsaken too much
I’m more speaking of game mechanics than faction history. The Pandarens introduced a quest that let’s you determine the faction, and has the mechanics to show a race/player can exist in a state of null-faction.
In fact we even have a 120 Pandaren who has NEVER left the Isle, so he is the strongest player of the ‘Neutral Faction’
Why would you want that? this type of gameplay IMHO is for players that dont care about the factions at all. Why make me PvP because I dont want to follow Sylvanas?
Everquest 2 has used something similar to this for years.
The defection quest is long and grueling, and while you are on it, you are not welcome in either faction’s cities (separate Exile establishments for things like inns and vendors.)
They also put a time restraint where you couldn’t change back for like six months or something, if you found that you didn’t like the faction you were joining or some such.
I did it with a character of mine, though since I never considered changing back, I never bothered to remember the details of that part.
As long as there is consequence and deterrence so the player doesn’t make this decision lightly (or for something as silly as transferring gold, etc.) then I would be all for it.
If the whinging Horde “safe space” types want to feel bad about wartime acts, then we don’t need them here anyways – all they’re doing is wasting resources.
I wanna just not have a faction. I would give up being able to ever pvp in this game in exchange for being able to enter all capitals and raid with all my friends on my battle tag.
Actually they have a faction swap in game currently for NPC factions in both BC & Wrath expansions. The BC one features a Neutral Scyer/ Aldor who you do a repeatable gathering quest for that gets you to neutral status with the faction you are wishing to swap to while the quest decrease the rep of the current faction your with.
The Wrath version is saving whichever factions NPC you wish to join whilst letting your current factions NPC die. (this would be the Oracles/Wolvar)
I could see them doing something along those lines but on a larger scale to swap between the Horde & Alliance.
That being said since they can charge you money to swap now making it free in game is highly doubtful it will ever happen.