I never want to play an undead because I found them gross. And the smell! I have a very sensitive nose.
But it was son’s main (healer) from van thru Legion (he quit the game at that point) and he said I should at least do the starting zone because the stories really explained their plight.
And he was right. I loved the stories and, by the end, all I felt with sorrow and sympathy. And now I have two!
And how does that negate my suggestion? It doesn’t. Warlocks and Shadow Priests could still choose either faction as neither faction is inherently evil or good. The factions are like politicians, both are full of it and only care about themselves, at the expense of those who are part of it.
It will happen at this point (at least in raiding and even M+, if I had to guess). They can implement it and still retain the factions - it doesn’t necessarily mean they have to throw out those constructs.
God I hope you’re wrong. Mercenary mode is a bandage that doesn’t address the full desire.
I don’t want to play some random Horde NPC when doing dungeons or raiding with my friends. I want to play my character, with my race appearance and my mogs.
IMO, they need to strip factions from systems outside of quests. Guilds, parties, open world enemies (so grouping to kill world bosses, star mobs, etc), and raids should all be cross-faction. Keep the faction divide for quests to allow for faction-specific quest lines.
At this point, I would rather have a more personal set of stories based around class and my character specifically. The last few expansions have all been this grand fight, but I think I want to get back to something simple now. I’d rather buy some land somewhere, build a house and decorate it, maybe help out the locals, help smooth over a transition to a world economy after the Horde and Alliance make peace. Maybe help the Death Knights find a new place in the world after everything has happened. Maybe my rogue starts doing assassinations/covert actions for the new Horde/Alliance government setup…taking out those who are plotting against the new peace initiatives.
I guess what I’m saying is that I would like for them to put more emphasis on the class/personal fantasy at this point. We’ve taken care of so many of the big threats, now it’s time to put the world back in order and there are a ton of stories to tell in order to set that up.
High end pvp community would definitely appreciate this speaking as a 3k+cr resto druid having to play horde because that’s where my teammates are. I personally will, and know a lot of druids, preist, hpals or even monks, shamans would like to go or try alliance races if faction barrier is not there.
…meaning, I personally would like it to belike Warmode, in that if you wanted the factions to remain as they are now, with, as you call it, “The Faction Barrier,” to remain in place, that would be the default.
If you wanted to remove it, the interface could have a switch that’s something LIKE the one for Warmode, and perhaps call it, “Mercenary Mode,” that you could switch on to do just that: remove the faction barrier.