Faction Changing

[Arvin]

We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

As with all of the features and services we offer, we intend to incorporate the faction-change service in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience on the realms, and there will be some rules involved with when and how the service can be used. The number of variables involved increases the complexity of implementing this service, but we plan to take the time needed to ensure that it lives up to expectations before officially rolling it out. We’ll go into much more detail on all of this here at World of Warcraft Community Site as development progresses. In the meantime, we wanted to let you know that because this type of functionality requires extensive internal testing well in advance of release, you may be seeing bits and pieces of the service in the test builds we use for the public test realms moving forward.




Sounds good, easier to recruit now.

[Kytele]

inc wave of alliance bads coming to horde side on the premise of 'oh horde plays better HURR HURR'

[aurik]

Lots of details needed on how they plan to implement the transfer. Will quests be reset? Faction-specific reputations? Will faction-specific mounts/tabards be transferred?

Lots of logistical issues to work through.

[SilverBreeze]

Oh to be Horde again....

Would be nice in case something ever happens to my US guild and there's a Horde US guild I want to join and don't want to reroll.

[Boyiee]

inc wave of alliance bads coming to horde side on the premise of 'oh horde plays better HURR HURR'

you act like the same thing isn't going to happen the other way around.

edit: im super excited for this. I knew they would implement it sooner or later, and while it can still be 3-6months till we see it, it's still awesome. I rerolled alliance to play with some RL friends and left my old Horde guild that used to be just outside of top100 US. Now I have a way with playing with them again since my RL friends kinda failed at uld and are all disappearing.

[Eaglestrike]

inc wave of alliance bads coming to horde side on the premise of 'oh horde plays better HURR HURR'

You say this like it didn't already happen.

[Kytele]

On the one hand I can see where there would be benefits. People who left to play other factions can now switch back without having to play brand new toons to 80 and that's all well and good. Still though, the details of implementing this and the impact of it after it goes live are still things that need to be hammered out cuz I know of a lot more people who regret rolling Alliance than Horde.

[Lee]

This change is god damn ridiculous. What's next? CLASS CHANGES? Probably, considering back in the day we thought Faction changes were impossible due to it's difficulty to implement.

[Correction]

I'm on a realm with very strong PvE presences on both Horde and Alliance, so I guess I'm failing to see the panic about a flood of 'bads' from either side of the fence. What threat do they pose as long as you're already in a guild that has recruitment standards beyond breathing with your mouth closed?

[Kurp]

transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm.

I wonder if they are going to lift their policy of allowing you to roll characters of only one faction on PvP servers.

It's going to be interesting to see how they handle this along with the things Aurik mentioned. There are so many things to consider.

[fantasticdan]

I wonder if they are going to lift their policy of allowing you to roll characters of only one faction on PvP servers.

It's going to be interesting to see how they handle this along with the things Aurik mentioned. There are so many things to consider.

The only real options are requiring a server transfer at the same time, or shifting the faction of all characters you have on said server. I can see them offering both.

As for mounts and tabards, I believe blizz recently evened out the numbers so both factions have exactly the same amount. Maybe each faction specific item will have a corresponding one on the other, that it automatically turns into when you change factions. IE: when switching from alliance to horde, tabard of stormwind could turn into tabard of undercity, horse mounts could turn into skeletal horse mounts, etc.

[Lexa]

I don't care much about the faction change; just means we'll get rid of some of the annoying "AHMAGAWD HORDE ROX U SUX!" kids who think being horde will automatically make them uber in BGs.

Race change, though. Oh man.

Pretty pretty pretty pretty PRETTY please let me be a draenei druid. Please, Blizzard. PLEASE! It's all I want in life!

[Tonko]

I doubt they'll allow un-creatable class/race combinations. What will likely happen, is allowing race changes within the restrictions of the given system.

My Tauren Shaman can be an Orc. <3

Finally.

[Arvin]

I doubt they'll allow un-creatable class/race combinations. What will likely happen, is allowing race changes within the restrictions of the given system.

My Tauren Shaman can be an Orc. <3

Finally.

fuck that i'm going troll.. (from tauren) they're buffing berserking!

[EternityEnd]

Uh, they haven't said that there will be in-faction race changes.

[Tonko]

It's only 20% haste, Orcs for Enhancement still get 5% more pet damage (Wolves), Axe Expertise (if some decent Axes get implemented) and Blood Fury, which even if we don't consider Orcs superior racial stats (Str + Int) is worth more DPS than Berserking after it's improved.

322 AP for 15 seconds > 20% haste for 10 seconds.

[Tonko]

Uh, they haven't said that there will be in-faction race changes.

What's to stop someone from going to a different faction for a month, or two, or whatever the cooldown is on the transfer, and then going back?

Sure, they MIGHT implement something to keep this from happening, but it would be far easier to just allow race changes.

Charge a fee, make a bundle.

[avelle]

Been waiting a long time for this, too bad I quit a while back.

[Guitarman]

As for mounts and tabards, I believe blizz recently evened out the numbers so both factions have exactly the same amount. Maybe each faction specific item will have a corresponding one on the other, that it automatically turns into when you change factions. IE: when switching from alliance to horde, tabard of stormwind could turn into tabard of undercity, horse mounts could turn into skeletal horse mounts, etc.

I can completely see the home cities of your new faction all being at neutral when you switch. Factions both sides can grind rep with? Ehh. Maybe, but I can see all your rep going back to zero. Has to be some kind of caveat to all this.

It's all just speculation until bliz releases more info to us anyways.

[Bardlet]

This both excites me and makes me me a little wary. I wouldn't mind being a BE Priest >_> and these days on Ner'zhul, Horde guilds seem to be infinitely more successful progression-wise than Alliance-side (it also doesn't help that at least one fairly decent Alliance guild is discussing changing servers, because Ner'zhul is starting to suck ass), but at the same time... I have a feeling that this is going to eff things up on PvP servers. :< We'll see.

On the upside, I can now attempt to start coercing my RL buddies to swap sides and come play with me! <_<;