Merging of the Factions

Community WoW Community Council
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Edited and Continued in Post 12 because of the PTR “bug”.

So as we all know this has been requested more than just a lot over the course of the last couple years. Starting even before the extinction of the Alliance commenced but after it had started reached a new level of demand.

We know that it was stated that its now on the table of the Devs as its an issue that can no longer be ignored (it shouldn’t have been in the first place but that’s my opinion). More frequent news on that would be highly appreciated. Especially since while a lot of people expect it to come in the very least with 10.0 even if desired for 9.2 there are questions as to how it turns out or what the first thoughts are regarding how its being executed.

For instance. Does it only apply to pugs? If yes, this wont really help Alliance since a lot of guilds (and its players, aside from the few abandoned people) moved to Horde due to the bigger recruitment pool since in the end the game still evolves around Guilds even if you can play the game “solo”.

What I would suggest would be to have a merge with both factions entirely that also allows people to join Horde Guilds on Alliance Toons or vise versa. From a Lore PoV this isn’t much of an issue since we players are most loyal to Azeroth anyhow. Our own factions are of lesser concern for us in this regard.

For the Cities and WPvP i would say that in warmode the old rules apply (aka Alliance toons vs Horde toons) and given warmode is entirely optional and doesnt net that many benefits anymore unlike the “old days” this shouldn’t be an issue. For the cities however i would say that Horde toons arent allowed to enter Stormwind and co and Alliance toons arent allowed to enter Orgrimmar and co. Since for the NPCs this merge would still feel “hmmmmmmmm…imma raise the pitchfork just in case” and nobody should expect NPCs to go “HUZZAH!” at every opposite faction hero they encounter. In fact quite the opposite (also it would still allow the old pvp achivs for faction leaders to be made obtainable). We have an abundance of Neutral cities where we players can meet.

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I’d agree with this; it should be an opt-in system as well. You don’t even need lore or much tweaking with NPCs to be able to do this; just a small questline that gives you a toggle right beside War Mode. Only toggle-able in the two major cities, maybe even just making crossfaction out in the world the ‘non-warmode’ but everything stays the same in usual warmode, so world PvP is still incentivized with the WM bonus.

The questline could be any sort of generic story about the player character overcoming their own bias and working with “the enemy” to reach a higher shared goal. The toggle should let you group, speak, join guilds, and queue with the opposite faction, with SW/Org being off limits perpetually to the opposite faction. Maybe for a week or two when you first access this toggle, you get treated a-la death knight and just get pelted with fruit and opposite faction NPCs are that dark orange color. Maybe there’d be a system where if you act a fool in a city, you’d get teleported out like in Dalaran and Shattrath.

Alternatively, this could be a thing to really work towards, but not with the endpost being the crossfaction, but rather, things like understanding Common when spoken by NPCs and PCs. Something like the slow unlocking of the language as shown in the 9.2 preview video would be very cool. We could even use the primal, life-creating Zereth Mortis where we start to really lay down our weapons, to be the start of the unlock that would be opened with 10.0. Being able to eventually be a ‘double agent’ and unlock Alliance reps (maybe not core ones? I dunno) as a Horde would be very cool, even if you started off as ‘hated’. This would also pave the way for more transmog opportunities.

I wouldn’t really want this to be an expansion devoted to the concept of unlocking crossfaction; there have been countless times now that we’ve been ‘at war’ and then immediately work together whenever there’s a common enemy. I think at this point uniting under the banner of Azeroth as a whole, especially after this whole Shadowlands ordeal, is something that is almost as common as the ‘red v. blue’ trope in Warcraft. I mean we have mercenary mode for PvP- and I understand that it was created out of a need, not a want, regarding queue times- so something like a PvE mercenary wouldn’t be too crazy of an idea.

Having a system operate this way would still reinforce the solid “Horde” and “Alliance” identities (which I do feel is important to keep) while having some wiggle room in between. This would dramatically reduce queue times for queued content and open up TON of options and possibilities. Imagine a world where it’s opt-in only so as to not upset the folks severely loyal to their faction, while still keeping Org and SW (maybe racial starting zones as well?) as safe bastions. Players would still be Horde/Alliance; you would always be a Horde Orc Rogue for example, but you would be toggling into a system that allows crossfaction to be reasonable and realistic for ingame opportunities to flourish.

After an expansion [that is focused on something else] passes, maybe then can we start to see Neutral Orc Rogue or Alliance Troll Druid, both of those coming with their own repercussions and unlocks. If this is put in in an expansive way, it should span multiple expansions and be entirely unrelated to any sort of borrowed power. I would hate to see, for example, us putting a bunch of effort into a, say, gnomish engineering device that lets us speak crossfaction and such for an expansion to defeat The Bad Guy, then having that device ‘malfunction’ and break at the end of the expac. It should be treated on the same par as the Allied races, meaning: something that’s cool, something that has a small unlock cost, something you have to opt into, and something that isn’t made into a massive ordeal that takes up an entire main storyline. Definitely at least not at first.

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If you consider the technical elements of the factions, such as all the faction-specific quests and everything tied to them, I think merging the factions will be too big of a job, and even if it was doable, it would probably hurt a lot more people than it would help. Faction identity is fairly important to a lot of people, and we shouldn’t take that away from them by simply deleting the factions.

This is pretty much the ideal solution I think, and it wouldn’t necessarily require too much work. But I don’t know if cross-faction is the ideal solution, I’d rather have it be the option to become neutral.

A human will always be Alliance and never Horde, but can be neutral and still play with Horde players - they just won’t get access to any Horde content. If you enter any settlements of the opposite faction, you would be rightfully attacked, but outside of them you can team up with your Horde buddies and do quests, dungeons, raids, et cetera. Maybe also PvP? Makes a bit less sense for that lorewise, but we do already have the mercenary option…

And if the lore decides to go in the direction of true peace between the factions, we could definitely start to move towards being able to access the other’s cities… the embassies were added fairly recently, what if we were able to visit the cities through the embassies, but not have total access to the entire cities to start off with?

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Those could still be in the game. Im mainly about being able to be in a group and guild with characters of opposite factions. The respective Alliance and Horde quests could still be kept and further advanced while allowing players to play all the group content together as a guild etc.

If one wants to call it then then by all means sure. It would still be a removal/merge of the factions in terms of playing together.

Exactly. We already have the mercenary option for PvP so thats fine. And for Arena/RBGs players of the same faction are fighting one another on a regular basis anyhow so the groups now being mixed wouldnt make much of a difference since the old pvp saying of “if its red, its dead” wouldnt change.

Ye that goes sort of along with what i said where people of the opposite faction are not really welcomed as of yet in the main cities by the NPCs n stuff.

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I know this is something people really seem to want but as a horde diehard literally never making an alliance character out of principle cause of how great pvp servers use to be. I really dont want cross faction PvP OR PvE forced upon me

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I am well aware of that point of view that people have and im not going to disregard it. But from what i see is that even if cross faction was a thing you would not be forced to play an alliance char in the very least. Technically one could also refuse to group up with Alliance players at all.

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I feel like the technology has got to be there, or at least be expanded upon. We can queue as mercenary for PVP – Alliance BG queues are ridiculously short in comparison to Horde. We can also now freely swap between covenants, and have been able to swap with Scryers/Aldor by questing and grinding for a decade+ now. We also went from being on strict server types to being able to toggle on and off war mode.

There needs to be something that works for the greatest number of people. Lore-wise, I don’t think it makes much sense for us to play Cross-Faction without doing some kind of quest chain to become either “neutral” or a member of society or join the opposite faction. I can tell you I would 100% do this on my Dwarves and Light-Forged + Regular Draenei because they are just SO NEAT. I love them. Every single one of them. And I want to be able to do content with my Horde-heavy friend list. I think the opposite - of doing some kind of quest chain on my of my Blood Elves to do a pug with my Alliance friends would but just as fun.

I want there to be some way that we can fix faction balance (as we know, Alliance is getting hit incredibly hard) without losing character identity.

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Maybe we need something like mercenary PVP for PVE. You become a Mercenary and you can queue in PVE in the other faction? Maybe we can start with that?

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We could try that for 9.2. However i have my personal doubts it would achieve what is desired for the long run. We could test it non the less however as i see no harm in doing it.

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There is no reason to NOT let the two factions group together to do content. We always end up working together lore wise, and alliance side is practically dead compared to horde in terms of participation. Very little amount of guilds doing mythic raids, m+, pvp, etc.

At times it’s like playing on a dead Classic server.

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As long as its not required to get certain things like mounts etc. Destroys the game fantasy for me

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Time to Update this as i dont like making a new thread about this.

As we all, or at least many, know, there is currently a “bug” on the PTR that allows cross faction guilds. And player opinion is incredibly one sided regarding it. For the love of god keep it.

I heard people say you said because of technical limitations this wasnt possible, but this turned out to be false as we can see. However as i cant find this statement i will take this with a grain of salt for now. If there are any issue this causes with other stuff then i IMPLORE you to fix this part but keep the Cross Faction Guilds.

Just enabling Cross Faction the way you announced it to be will not have a significant impact on the imbalance we currently face. It would be at best a bandage fix on a gaping flesh wound. Alliance will not recover from it. Aside from boosters getting a new chunk of customers that have to rely on them for the higher content anyway. Guilds with too many cross faction people will be inable to earn either Guild Achivs or get Ranks on WoWProgress and the such. The latter making recruitment, across all levels of progress. Be it Mythic, Heroic or Normal, and absolute nightmare. At worst guilds wont even pop up at all because they wont have a single kill be regarded as “guild kill”.

The comments on WoWhead dont look any different in this regard.

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