Paid faction change

[Chucktaurus-kromcrush]

May the eternal sun shine upon thee!

[Oldgrayballs-heartseeker]

Yep, just have a generic set whatever item level gear that you get when you swap. Have it based on your current item lvl. Would take all of 2hrs to assemble for every class.

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

I don’t see why paid faction change services would be an issue. I understand the perception around “changes” but having this service available is not the type of “change” that concerned me. The changes that concerned me were to the mechanics that impact the gameplay experience.

One could argue that server transfers pose just as many concerns as faction changes, yet those were allowed. Why? Because forcing players to stick with their original choice is not a great strategy. The same rationale can apply to faction, race, and appearance, which were implemented later. Did Blizzard wait to implement these later because there was something about Classic that would make it inappropriate or was it because the services weren’t developed yet / weren’t ready to be released?

I haven’t heard a good case yet as to why paid services should not be allowed, but I’m open minded.

Well written response.

[Williams-akama (Williams)]

We should be allowed to do this now that we have paid server transfer. #changes

No…

I re-rolled it was not painful; you can too.

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

Leveling isn’t difficult or painful. I’ve got 3 60’s already. I plan on leveling more alts. But I should also be able to change my mind about faction if I can change it about what server I’m playing on. What difference does it make? When you transfer server, that’s a character that appeared out of nowhere and never had to compete against the other people on that server for mobs or honor, etc. So tell me what real difference do you think it makes?

[Wreckfulsoul-rattlegore]

let horde move to alliance but not vise verse …fix faction imbalance

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

I say just let people play what they want

[Ameth-deviate-delight]

Would you allow PvE servers to transfer to PvP?

It was waaaay harder to level as alliance during the first phase, because horde vastly outnumbered alliance. It seems just as cheap to me to roll horde so that you get the benefit of leveling with the best flight paths, the best access to leveling dungeons (sfk, sm and rfk/rfd are all in horde neutral zones with close flight paths. No being ganked and quick travel to the dungeon) and the benefit of outnumbering the other faction by a large margin.

Swapping to alliance after leveling horde would be cheap, because let’s admit it, it’s waaay more convenient and easy to be horde while leveling up.

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

Yes, I would allow it, because although I will agree with you that it may have been harder to level during the first phase, it isn’t the first phase anymore. Time’s have changed, and now it’s a lot easier to level on PVP servers. I have 3 60’s already. I believe classic wow is losing a lot of subscriptions and has more raid loggers resulting in less people wandering in the world. Let people switch if they want.

[Arinowene-bloodsail-buccaneers]

It would be a simple matter of not having gear transfer over. It’s not rocket science.

And the people who start threads demanding faction changes now would switch without a pause to starting threads demanding they be allowed to take their gear with them.

I was going to quote Paddyjack and say what they said would be replaced with not wanting to get all their gear again, but then I saw that they already said that. “Suggesting a delete and reroll at this point is so idiotic, people don’t want to reroll aand lose all their money, gear, reputation etc and do all this again.”

So yeah.

[Baigujing-remulos]

Allowing faction changes does not effect gameplay. It can affect faction balance, yes, but not the gameplay itself.

Almost all faction-specific quests and items have opposing-faction alternates. Coding to swap these is not difficult. The same goes for paladin/shaman. If a player initiates a swap and there are no opposing-faction gear/quest alternates, they have to accept the loss.

Every #nochanges argument against faction changes is incredibly flawed. If Blizzard feels they can make enough money to justify it, they will.

[Cauchy-heartseeker]

If Blizzard feels they can make enough money to justify it, they will.

While money is surely a factor for most things, I think Blizzard is trying their best to make sure everyone gets an experience as close to Vanilla (1.12) as possible. Any changes they’ve made have been fairly well thought.

Layers made a lot of sense when it comes to the longevity of the servers, and to the crazy login queues. They patched it up where needed to prevent exploits.

We had free server transfers, and even faction-specific transfers to help motivate population issues… Even after we received fair warning that these issues were eminent.

Folks got carried away with gaming the battleground queue. Blizzard made the most minimal of changes it could to prevent these activities, as they were against the spirit of the game.

The company has been pretty good to us, even when we didn’t deserve it.

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

While money is surely a factor for most things, I think Blizzard is trying their best to make sure everyone gets an experience as close to Vanilla (1.12) as possible. Any changes they’ve made have been fairly well thought.

I just fell out of my chair after reading that. I had a good laugh. Thanks. If they wanted to make the experience as close to 1.12 as possible they would have reverted back to the original client and begun to improve on it from there instead of giving us this botched legion client.

Layers made a lot of sense when it comes to the longevity of the servers, and to the crazy login queues. They patched it up where needed to prevent exploits.

No, layering mode did not make sense and only spoke volumes about the antiquated infrastructure that Blizzard is working with. Sad, considering how much they profit off of us.

We had free server transfers, and even faction-specific transfers to help motivate population issues… Even after we received fair warning that these issues were eminent.

The battlegrounds are cross realm. Transferring server does not do anything to help battleground queues.

Folks got carried away with gaming the battleground queue. Blizzard made the most minimal of changes it could to prevent these activities, as they were against the spirit of the game.

This is the underlying problem; the belief that teaming up with your friends in an online multiplayer game is against the spirit of the game. What they should have done is simply even the playing field and allow everyone to queue as a 40 man group. Instead, they botched up the repair and allowed Horde to queue with 5, but Alliance can still queue 40, it just takes a little bit more time and coordination. If anything, they made it worse.

The company has been pretty good to us, even when we didn’t deserve it.

So… paying customers don’t deserve to be treated well? I personally don’t feel like I’ve gotten my moneys worth. I deal with it because I still enjoy playing the game. I just believe they could have done a lot better. What we have here feels like it was thrown together from a “Classic World of Warcraft Server for Dummies” book.

[Cauchy-heartseeker]

I just fell out of my chair after reading that. I had a good laugh. Thanks. If they wanted to make the experience as close to 1.12 as possible they would have reverted back to the original client and begun to improve on it from there instead of giving us this botched legion client.

They explained why they did this, and it made good sense to me. It’s a retro-fit.

No, layering mode did not make sense and only spoke volumes about the antiquated infrastructure that Blizzard is working with. Sad, considering how much they profit off of us.

Uhh… the old client would have been antiquated. The new client, which was based on Legion, allowed for this. Allowing more people on a server was a good thing. On Heartseeker, it’s normal to see both Stormwind and Ironforge bustling during evenings and on weekends. I don’t think it would be if they kept the original population caps.

The battlegrounds are cross realm. Transferring server does not do anything to help battleground queues.

This is true, but it’s indicative of a company who’s trying to work with its customers. They were giving us a way to help ourselves.

This is the underlying problem; the belief that teaming up with your friends in an online multiplayer game is against the spirit of the game. What they should have done is simply even the playing field and allow everyone to queue as a 40 man group. Instead, they botched up the repair and allowed Horde to queue with 5, but Alliance can still queue 40, it just takes a little bit more time and coordination. If anything, they made it worse.

I’m not following…

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

Uhh… the old client would have been antiquated. The new client, which was based on Legion, allowed for this. Allowing more people on a server was a good thing. On Heartseeker, it’s normal to see both Stormwind and Ironforge bustling during evenings and on weekends. I don’t think it would be if they kept the original population caps.

The new client allowed for what? The old client is fine bro. It plays perfectly on modern day computers. They could have just increased the population caps on it and run the servers on better hardware that can handle the increased load.

This is true, but it’s indicative of a company who’s trying to work with its customers. They were giving us a way to help ourselves.

To me, it’s a company who is just throwing random solutions at problems without giving it much thought. It certainly wasn’t sanctioned by the player base.

I’m not following…

Which part are you not following? Blizzard is trying to prevent people from premading in a massive multiplayer game. Somehow you translate this to “gaming the battleground queue”. Same difference. It’s trying to stop people from playing a multiplayer game with their friends, which goes against the entire idea of multiplayer.

[Glinda-azuresong]

People almost chuckled at the thought of character transfers, and it happened relatively fast. There would be no difference for faction.

Server transfers were available in Vanilla. Faction change, not so much. Not impossible we’ll get it, but highly unlikely.

More importantly, it isn’t the panacea people think it will be.

[Cauchy-heartseeker]

The new client allowed for what? The old client is fine bro. It plays perfectly on modern day computers. They could have just increased the population caps on it and run the servers on better hardware that can handle the increased load.

Not really. Private servers were had lots of issues. Things “worked,” but not well. Just jacking up population caps wouldn’t work well. The game was developed based on the population cap then. Just increasing it would cause way too much competition, and render the game unplayable.

To me, it’s a company who is just throwing random solutions at problems without giving it much thought. It certainly wasn’t sanctioned by the player base.

Far from random, and definitely sanctioned by the player base.

Which part are you not following? Blizzard is trying to prevent people from premading in a massive multiplayer game. Somehow you translate this to “gaming the battleground queue”. Same difference. It’s trying to stop people from playing a multiplayer game with their friends, which goes against the entire idea of multiplayer.

Stacking a group to participate in PvP was never intended. The premade games ruined things for everyone who wasn’t involved in the premade groups. The player base spoke out against this, and changes were made.

Retail has rated battlegrounds and arenas. If you want to play with elite groups, there’s a place for you.

[Mightycow-kromcrush]

Not really. Private servers were had lots of issues. Things “worked,” but not well. Just jacking up population caps wouldn’t work well. The game was developed based on the population cap then. Just increasing it would cause way too much competition, and render the game unplayable.

Private servers actually had a lot less issues than classic. In fact, all of the bugs you see on the bug report forum related to spell batching – those bugs didn’t exist on private servers because there simply was no spell batching. The most popular private server had an average of 15000 people online at any given time, with no lag, and there was no problem with competition. It was actually a more authentic vanilla experience than classic. So, sorry, you’re wrong about this. I played on Elysium and Lights Hope from the day it opened until the day it shut down. Sure they had some issues, but not nearly as many bugs as classic and the developers actually fixed obvious bugs on a regular basis and stayed in touch with the community. You’re lucky to get a blue post here once a month.

Far from random, and definitely sanctioned by the player base.

You’re delusional if you believe this.

Stacking a group to participate in PvP was never intended. The premade games ruined things for everyone who wasn’t involved in the premade groups. The player base spoke out against this, and changes were made.

Retail has rated battlegrounds and arenas. If you want to play with elite groups, there’s a place for you.

Again, you’re 100% wrong. Both WSG and AB allow full premades, and that is mostly what you will find in there. Right now WSG is 100% premades on Alliance side. And if stacking a group to participate in PVP was not intended then why did they just recently allow groups to join AV as 5 man party? You don’t have to be elite to play with your friends. It’s counterintuitive to try and prevent it.