Its the worst idea I’ve ever heard about the game. In today’s age weakness and complaining is seen as strength so that why the same few posters keep bringing it up. Its like asking left and right should be 1 party in politics.
when the game is doing poorly it’s harder to find people on low pop factions. This ends up with people being unable to play the game.
As i keep saying, it’s a far simpler solution and a viable one that has been proven to work in other mmo games for the problem than trying to alter base game code. I’m pretty sure if they could have accomplished that without breaking the game, cross faction would have already been implemented years ago.
I don’t 100% trust all of those third party data collection sites but they are making an effort to determine the player base. Blizzard refusing to release that information only indicates those 3rd party efforts are more than likely accurate to some degree.
That isn’t why i’m referring to them as lazy and/or selfish. The overall leveling process to get to that expansion is the reason why i say it. Most seem to act like it’s a difficult thing to do when it really isn’t. Even getting through the SL content now is relatively easy and a toon can be maxed out in level before even completing said content. This is something a majority of the remaining player base wanted to happen and blizzard made it so as a means to provide more accessibility to the newest content. Now those same people are screaming for something else that would allow them to not have to invest any time in the game just to get what they want like a toddler screaming for it’s pacifier. I do think it’s reasonable that people should have to pay for that time so blizzard can make a profit with the system blizzard currently has in place for that very purpose. I even tossed out the bone of an idea that maybe blizzard could provide a free character server or faction transfer per whatever time frame they might believe would be fair as a means to give said people what they want in that regard for at least one character so they could play with their friends. I was met with some pretty hostile reaction to that in another thread. So, it doesn’t seem like that’s what they really want. Seems more like they just want the game ruined a little bit further just to see if they can get blizzard to do what they want. I could be wrong though. The hostility i received from said people though is rather telling.
That’s the core of what i’ve been trying to say. If people would focus more on their own play time rather than trying to convince blizzard to drastically alter the game where it might end up costing even more players to quit, this community might not be so toxic.
Just that, trying to cover all bases so i don’t have to again. Been trying to make this point to others far too many times. Most of which gets met by complete trollish behavior from some of the most ill behaved people on this forum. Needless to say it’s gotten rather frustrating.
This is something that is bad design philosophy across the entire game industry that people who work in development have tried to bring up. There’s a certain time frame that gets referred to as crunch time where they rush through everything at the end just before release that burns them out and part of why there’s such a high turnover rate in the industry. Until they change that design philosophy, they’ll likely never be able to develop enough content in many games across multiple companies that experience this issue. That’s a top down problem in most companies and typically something that stems from their publishers who are only in it to keep their investors happy. They’ve focused so much on that it’s become a detriment to everything else about game development. It’s similar to what’s been happening in the film industry and why we see so much garbage get put on the market that flops.
None was taken and i certainly hope i haven’t given any either.
I have no interest in “cross faction” play and I hope it’s never implemented. It’s disgusting enough that I have to interact with alliance NPCs to advance the storyline.
Simple math. The player base is dwindling. One faction is near non-existence in America anyway. Cross faction allows people to play their favorite races without the hindrance of allegiances. Many people from the alliance came to the horde only because of the population differences. If you can get in a group for mythic plus in an hour vs 3, what would you pick? It’s a vicious tornado that keeps self feeding itself as less and less players are available for content.
wiggles toes
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Alliance is the only faction in oce.
But yeah factions are cool
Basically, Alliance is dying and there is nothing blizzard can or is able to do.
More and more players faction change to Horde, even in servers who have been Alliance bastions like https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/pju07s/state_of_alliance_from_the_top_alliance_raiding/
This issue isn’t even exclusive to high end raiding like Ion previously said, finding groups to covenant rare summons on alliance takes a lot more on my main than on my horde alts, same in terms of transmog raid groups.
Cross faction is kind of a white flag of defeat in the sense of “we give up on alliance” but still allowing us to play with races and quests of alliance while being allowed to play and pug with what is the majority of the playerbase (horde) and without dishing out $$ to faction change and server change (maybe).
In the end, this is an issue that either gets solved by itself slowly (by people paying $$ to faction change until alliance is nichests of niches) or blizzard introduce cross faction and gives the coup de grace.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I would love at least one cross-faction dungeon because it makes sense if both sides face the same threat. I don’t want that all the time though. And why can’t orcs speak common, or humans orcish by now. How every two-syllable word is recognizable to the other faction… After my first trip to Mexico I knew how to order a beer and ask for the toilet!
They are talking about cross-faction dungeons and raids.
Blizzard gave up on Alliance a long time ago. It is the Horde’s world and we should accept it.
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I don’t think Blizzard intends to do much about it. They know that more and more Alliance players will just switch to Horde to more easily do various group content (eg. alliance guilds switching to horde because the pool of recuits is too small on alliance). Blizzard may see that as a “reasonable” outcome. I don’t think they care if one faction is becoming the “go-to” faction for certain things.
I think there are a lot of players who want to play Alliance races but can’t because they also want to run high keys and/or Mythic Raid.
I’d love to play a Dwarf Shaman or a Worgen Warrior for example but both of my Raid groups are Horde.
Maybe realize Merc Mode is Horde-Only because it specifically is aimed at reducing queue times and Horde has all the PvPers so their queues are long?
Maybe don’t pretend killing a 2-minute world boss once per week with 0 communication or pulse needed is “a fair amount of cross-faction play”?
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I want to plant my Horde characters’ garrions onto Lunarfall soil 'cause Frostwall sucks!
They think it will save the game. It might have the opposite effect.
If the alliance has finally realized they have been utterly defeated, and they wish to surrender and beg for acceptance into the Horde faction. We’ll think about it.
My point is skip the server merger. You will likely have pops increase again when your product draws people back in.
Population issues are sometimes player driven for sure. Ppl migrate to different servers in groups for whatever sometimes. Server mergers are a bandaid and hame inprovement is the solution imo. I think the server merger works if the main issue is simply more servers then they would ever need and in that case sure I agree. I also think they had noteworthy need at one point so servers have to be reused again so maybe easier to leave them on? I dont imagine many ppl know what other role/s servers might play outside of simply a place to play on so maybe there are factors there too? We dont know. The only base game code Im suggesting they change is the one they will change as the progress the game to an experience with all the things an expansion should provide that keeps people playing because its good. Server merges, cross faction…its all addressing the pop issues. The most notable factor is the experience of the game itself. People are moving to stuff they enjoy more. If 50% of the pop that left came back that no doubt addresses pop issues.
The game itself is the issue for a lot of ppl and making a better product will do so much more for the game than bandaids but I understand your point. To me the point Im making matters more but I certainly get what you are saying.
Its easy to speculate that the 3rd party sites are right or close to it but thats all we can do. All we can do is speculate. Maybe sprinkle in some perception based on players standing around in the main hub. I recall many expansions ago ppl from low pop servers complaining about this same issue. Its been an issue forever and it certainly tirs back to the hame experience as well as the time it took between patches and how long it took ppl to do what they wanted to do before their break. Game companies understand this and no doubt factor it in. The population ups and downs are multiple factors so really I cant say what will really be the best fix for it but no doubt its a problem that existed before expansions like WoD so I contradict myself in my point a smidge I suppose.
You might not be referring to the leveling process but you arent noting the time investment with current expansion to get renown cap or Korthia rep…I could spell it all out but the point is getting to cap isnt the predominant issue though as I also pointed out. If it takes 14 hours of efficient or thorough play to get to 60…and you can dedicate 2 hours…that isnt lazy either. Its restricted by external life factors so for some people yes absolutely thay is a lot of time. Thats 7 days to cap alone. No it isnt a lot if we decide to compare it to classic. But that ignores the point and doesnt change the argument presented. Everyones time available to do a thing is limited by the time they have, not the time it takes.
The free transfer thing i can understand but then you have to decide what constitutes these standards that make this free thing you normally pay for fair to reward for free. Blizzards accounts and metrics would have to decide that. It could work but for them it might not be worth the time invested. Who can say.
This community will always have its toxicity regardless if what gets offered or how perfectly executed. People who can criticize in a non constructive manner will do so. I agree with you that it does get tiring though.
Im not sure what bad game design has to do with work place related issues but game design isnt built around such things as Im sure you know. Work does get impacted by it and I think thats what weve seen over many years sadly with WoD and debatably SL but SL is really tough for me to embrace in that manner as SL HAS content its just currency and time heavy/gated. I assume you are famliar with current events. I cant say much more without risking the entire thread get 404ed so I will leave you to that.
Unless you mean the concept of only so much content can be put in a patch cycle. Thats entirely legitimate and entitely true. The amount of metrics required to make sure ppl play for 7 months until the next patch cycle. Time it takes to create assests…so much to list there.
Im sure there is crunch time and I have heard of it. Its unfortunate but crunch time is part of a lot of companies. Things happen that mess up the schedule and there isnt any way to make it never happen. Id rather wait longer and have less people suffer crunch time than try and meet the deadline and have a less that expected outcome, both from a player perspective and if I were in their shoes. If that last half of the qoute is what you refer to, then I totally get your point.
No. I mean having friends on your B-tag runs an exception to grouping that ignores Faction. Also, if that cross-faction friend is on your B-tag, then when they speak you can understand them. The B-tag communication is extended into the game in /s, w, p, i, etc.
It would be very controllable by Blizzard. Too many cross-faction groups building? Limit your cross-faction b-tag friends to a cap. It also doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater in that those cross-faction that are not your friends can’t understand you. They could take it one step further and maybe not understand what their same-faction friend is saying when targeting an opposite faction friend. There are all sorts of nuances that they could build into the system that would limit and preserve the Faction divide, while allowing players to play with whom they want, regardless of faction.
I think it would be the quickest to implement. Although, they have been updating and revising the code for quite some time - so I would also not assume that cross-faction grouping would be the task you think it would be. Their main concern is the design of their cross-faction solution. No one has shaken their head and claimed that the code-base is an issue or a factor in their decision. Their willingness to cite it as an issue is as recent as server merges, and as old as the request for Classic servers. That they have not thrown this card on the table is indicative that it is not a huge hurdle.
At the end of the day, we live in interesting times and I look forward to the steps forward in the future to allow cross-faction grouping, hopefully w/out fully sacrificing the Faction divide.
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See, you’re mistaken. If we had done that, it would mean that our accomplisments would be noticed. By the look of my non-existing house and/or stronghold and how coldly they treat me whenever I’m being addressed, it’s plain to see that you’ve saved no lives and done no deeds worth mentioning.
This isn’t wrath, cata or mop levels of population anymore. Too many servers have too few players on them, especially for alliance side. If they don’t do server mergers at least with the low pop servers bare minimum, they are going to continue to lose players just by attrition.
That’s the point about the population. The numbers of servers are no longer necessary in relation to the numbers of subs. Merging them sooner than later will stem the hemorrhage and if anything new ends up drawing back a larger subscriber base, they can start entirely new servers to support said growth. This was a realization bioware came to way too late with Star Wars Tor by which point they had lost more players than they likely would have otherwise had they acted sooner. But hey, i guess sometimes people just want to make the same mistakes without learning from others.
This isn’t the argument being had by most of the people that want cross faction. Their main argument is that they simply wish to play with their friends on another server or in the opposite faction. Server merger can solve that and providing a free faction change for said players to make use of for one character. Honestly though, they could just as easily start a new toon on whatever server or faction their friends are on and level said toon with the time they’re spending complaining on the forums about it. That is a waste of time in my opinion.
With the above provided to some extent, they could then invest whatever time they had into doing just that.
Like i said, that’d be up to them. They could even base it upon each new expansion and provide it as a one time thing sort of like the character boosts as motivation to actually purchase more.
That’s just it, all that gate locked content is locked because there isn’t enough content there. If there was, they wouldn’t have locked it to the degree in which they have this expansion. Nor would they be locking content in 9.2 for that matter. By comparison, WoD actually has more content to go through, the vast majority of which is not gate locked (at least now anyway). Playing through old content, i noticed i could invest more time and get more out of even a bad expansion like that compared to SL. Their team dropped the ball hard with this expansion. It’s really up to them to pick it back up and pull another Legion type expansion out of their hats. If they don’t, the next one will very much be a proverbial death blow to their population and their subs will likely drop to a point that the game model will no longer justify a subscription based service except for being able to access the newest content (just like what happened to star wars tor).
It’s a dated practice to say the least for game development. The sad part is that i don’t think there’s a viable alternative. For example, RSI (the developer of the star citizen game) has opted for a different approach towards development by basically trying to remove the goal posts. Their own MMO is stuck in a perpetual alpha stage of development hell because of it. If there are no clear goals to achieve, they’re proving nothing of substance actually gets done. Kind of sad really but oh well.
The btag system is simply a chat program. It isn’t exactly tied to the base game code that would allow for cross faction play. For cross faction communication, yes, it would absolutely work since it simply allows people to chat across their accounts already (being able to do so in game while they’re on the opposite faction like providing them the ability to see what that player is saying so long as they’re on their RealID friend’s list would be interesting if they could implement that or maybe providing players the in game option to learn a second language for their characters as a passive ability). Grouping with other players is an issue with the base game code that would have to be altered to allow for cross faction play regardless of what you’re saying. If they’ve spent any amount of time on trying to alter that code to implement such a system, then if they get remotely close to accomplishing it, they’ll wait to announce anything until they’d be ready to add it in. I still look to Ion’s most recent statement about that as i already pointed out in how he said there were more issues than just narrative structure preventing it. That to me indicates it’s the game code and they don’t want to just say they can’t do it. That would just mean they don’t want to even try. If they try and fail then they can go on to make such a statement that it just isn’t something that can be done without breaking the game. If they succeed then maybe it’ll be added but i still would not want it to. To me, that just isn’t what this game is. The unique thing about the game was there being a factional divide. Cross faction play would ultimately destroy that exerience for many players, especially the veterans of this game (the ones that have spent most of their time on one specific faction, be it horde or alliance).