HIya
Choices are entirely meaningless when it comes to race, faction or class currently. Tauren rogues sneaking about? Yeah what a glorious class fantasy as they stomp all over the battlefield with their hooves silently. Whoever thought this was a good idea, my goodness. Now I suppose the counter argument is “No Tom I’m okay with that my friends a cow farmer and he wants to be a Tauren Rogue because he loves Assasins Creed games, this is how he will craft his fantasy.” Fair enough, but guess what, now I and many others can’t craft ours! We remember doing the questline with the tauren in Warcraft 3, if they were going to be rogues I think that would have been the best time; to avoid the Centaurs and avoid extinction. Old news? 2004 Irrelevant Lore? Stubborn? No, wise, keeping to the roots of the game, keeping things making actual sense. Putting the fantasy side of the game first, instead of trying to please everyone. Picking the wrong faction by mistake? What the heck, some friends you’ve got there if they don’t even tell you what side they’ve chosen, unrealistic don’t you think? Do you really think they implemented X Faction to remove barriers for players who were too incompetent to ask their friends which faction they play? I don’t, I think it was to liven up the game in a time of desperation where content hadn’t been flowing for almost a year and their loyal customers yourself included had been paying £10 a month for nothing new (Shadowlands).
Cross Faction was never here before and the game was very successful, there was never ANYTHING stopping you playing with friends if they were on the opposing faction. It’s like saying “Hi mom, I’m going icescating tonight, my friends are the ice ring all I’ve got is roller scates can I go?” The answer should be NO not until we buy you some icescates. In this analogy the icescates purchase represent your investment of time into leveling a new character on the faction of your friends. Is it really a bad thing, to have to do that? I think not, I think if anything it encourages and forces people to level which is a good thing in an mmorpg. This whole “wwaaah torghast nothing should be forced upon us we should be able to do anything” ethos has been taken to extremes in my bold opinion.
I really like your idea of the covenant themed battlegrounds, but it wouldn’t solve the problem for me that I’m fighting as Alliance beside a big ugly troll? I hope that is fair and reasonable. We’re Knights in armor living in Castles and Cities, they’re tribal with tusks and barbarian style armor (skulls of their enemies). They’re RED, we’re BLUE you’ve always had to choose, commercials, everything has always been “choose” now we’re ripping that away as if there’s no consequence. Nothing can replace or substitute for the faction system design in my opinion it’s a part of what makes this game great and was a part of it even in the Warcraft days. Do you think I picked to play the Orc campaign instead of the human one when my big brother gave me a go? Hell no! I made a choice and the experience was different, I invested and chose a side essentially. Now you can still choose a side in WoW today as people have written above, but you’re still forced to fight outside of the original fantasy in World of Monsterwars (who’s the enemy, does it even matter, can you tell the difference?) and Fairycraft (Nightfae Soulshape, why is that possible on a non magical character is what a returning player thought looking at Shadowlands content)!
“I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing” fair enough, thanks for honesty I strongly disagree. The moment that the Halls of Fame for PvE Raiding Guilds are combined and it’s a mixture of both Horde and Alliance Guilds the competitive flame that was burning between the factions will be fully extinguished. Does this matter to you? Probably not, to other players it definitely is. As years have gone by, they’ve aimed to get their Guild Alliance or Horde on the top 100. This is another example of what can be done to take advantage of the Faction Systems, the only reason there is imbalance is due to overly powerful Racial Abilities and no changes. You cannot argue with it being possible that people have some sense of belonging or pride in their Faction, you can pretend if you like, and even if I am wrong and all of this is a load of rubbish: Why is it of value to shut the door on opportunities (competitive events, think streamers, think conventions, think merchandise) related to Faction which will ultimately help the game suceed by sticking to it’s long rooted identity? All so that we can help poor Timmy who picked the wrong faction as he forgot to ask his mates? Or so that we can gain from pretending that the Xfaction was a barrier to participation because it sounds nice and all inclusive?
Rated Battlegrounds for example, are still low population so low infact that I was one of probably 10 players running teams via the LFG in the buildup to Prepatch. Did Cross Faction help that situation? No, I’d say it made it worse, far, far worse because they made this game seem silly to all those PvP only players who’d fought against the opposing faction and have their very best memories of this game in doing so.
I think everyone draws the line differently to what they’re willing to accept, gnomes in Orgrimmar is coming unless people start supporting my posts as they have now done, so thank you for your great reply and I’m glad we found some middle ground ^^
and competitive). Does making all of me and my friends have either horde or alliance flags to wave mean we can’t be competitive and have fun? No, we can but it’s a far lesser fun than we used to know as it’s disconnected from our past experiences entirely and we’ve built up a passion for The Alliance or For The Horde (some of my friends are horde no matter what I’m doing or what I say to convince them otherwise). Why would I want them to play the Faction they don’t hold as their favourite? Because that’s the fun of it isn’t it, that’s why footballers support one team. We’re cutting off the ability to be able to support a Team, and making this a nice happy place to be where everyone is friends and on the same team for the good of the realm and that doesn’t sound like Warcraft to me.
Hopefully my reply here will not annoy, I will stand by what I said in my original post I do think this is an issue and I do think we’re heading in the wrong direction as many returning players will lack relativity. That relativity is something we should be using, to climb out of low popularity and into high popularity for WoW!
I genuinely like reading your threads.