World of Warcraft: Current Year
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Aaron
Goonsquad Officer
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If the Burning Legion factors into the next expansion then that might help explain the removal of factions, as the Allaince and Horde would then team up against this new foe... but then TBL might become a playable faction?
Why?
Yeah... I have to say I never really understood why any game maker decides to go with factions that can't associate with each other. Really creates nothing but headaches in the long run.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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Honestly, I think hard coded factions worked in vanilla, or at least during the game's prime. Not to derail, but EQ's corpse recovery and exp loss on death is a similar situation. It worked when the game first came out and the player base was thriving, but it didn't age well and players expected better, more creative designs as the game got longer in the tooth.
People have been saying for a while now that they have been hinting that they're getting rid of factions, but never seem to mention what those hints are beyond some vague connection with the war possibly coming to an end. I'd be interested in hearing why exactly you guys think that it's going to happen.
I also think hard-coded factions were okay -- or at least acceptable -- back then, but these days, with the game (and MMOs in general) making it easier and easier to get together with people to do stuff, the limitation sucks. In the live developer QA that happened recently, one of the devs said this:
Who actually has that level of attachment to their faction now? Especially when you have a race that can be a part of either faction?
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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From a business perspective, removing factions would streamline future content development. Didn't GC say the new feature would create a ton of stuff to do? Given the fact the faction stuff only makes a huge difference pre-level cap, I can't help but think the big change is something else.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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It started with the Tiger temple quest lines where you unlock the Vale. You see the Tauren paladin and the Prince chatting about unification. It continues with Wrathion's legendary questline. It's been months since I've done those so my memory is foggy. More recently there's a quest in 5.3 that heavily hints at unification (the new escort quest given by Chen Stormstout).
And then, of course, you have the assault on Org in 5.4. There are many, many signs pointing to a single faction, but nothing 100% solid (and the devs are obviously mum on the subject).
Thanks for the explanation, but yeah... I still don't see it happening. To get rid of the entire premise of the Warcraft IP (Orcs vs Humans) just seems like a barrier they wouldn't cross.
Caeden
Silver Baronet of the Realm
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I still think its scalable 5 mans and raids for old stuff at lfd/lfr difficulty level. And to be honest, I don't think removing factions would really help streamline that much since many xpacs are spent at neutral hubs. Besides, why spend so much time talking up the War in Warcraft to kill it off next xpac.
To answer your question, I'm a diehard Horde. Fucking hate the alliance and would curb stomp each one. Bunch of racist cockgobblers. Except Tirion. Tirion's my homie. I don't like Garrosh either. Most of this was tongue in cheek...
To answer your question, I'm a diehard Horde. Fucking hate the alliance and would curb stomp each one. Bunch of racist cockgobblers. Except Tirion. Tirion's my homie. I don't like Garrosh either. Most of this was tongue in cheek...
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
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There was peace for three(?) years following The Frozen Throne (the time between WC3 and WoW). I believe Horde and Alliance stopped warring to fight the burning legion in WC3 as well. There were skirmishes because of old hatreds, but nothing like entire factions. Maybe I'm just making this shit up as I go along. God knows Metzen does.
Yeah, and if the next expansion is the return of the legion then it would make sense for the factions to be at peace... but merge? No, there's just too much hatred and history there. The current leader of the Alliance would sooner commit genocide against every single Orc than to allow one of them into Stormwind.
And thinking about how they've been lamenting their choice of revamping the old world in Cata and how it ends up being too much dev time for reward: They sure aren't going to go back and get rid of all the AvH battles going on in half of the zones. It's one thing to say the Dalaran we visit is outside of the current timeline, but to say the same about half the world?
I see the war ending in 5.4, but certainly not the elimination of the factions.
And thinking about how they've been lamenting their choice of revamping the old world in Cata and how it ends up being too much dev time for reward: They sure aren't going to go back and get rid of all the AvH battles going on in half of the zones. It's one thing to say the Dalaran we visit is outside of the current timeline, but to say the same about half the world?
I see the war ending in 5.4, but certainly not the elimination of the factions.
Yeah I completely agree. To be honest even in Vanilla the level of animosity I had towards the Horde was more directed at the opposing elite guild, and their better players when doing Battlegrounds and such. At this point I feel less compelled to care because of cross sever everything. There is absolutely no sense of community whatsoever. I don't know who John Doe is from whatever realm, and I don't care, but I certainly did care when it was Extas in Peekay on the same realm.
I'm fairly confident had the proposed change to factions been implemented in Vanilla that any clamoring about disdain for the opposing faction would've been silenced pretty quickly by the instant queues for Battlegrounds regardless of your faction. I know that the horde on our server didn't enjoy two hour queues simply to get shit on in five minutes...
I'm going to be honest; this makes me happy for the main reasons being if I can change my ally casters into undead and have my draenei riding gigantic fucking wolves.
Let's do this.
Let's do this.
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You played on and off since Vanilla and never raided till LFR? You make the casuals look hardcore.
Dalien
Registered Hodor
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Be careful with that. I don't think they have actually banned anyone for using it but it is technically bannable since it alters game files.Blue postI found about it said:
For what it's worth.
Anyways, I have my doubts about them getting rid of factions because 1.) it would kill their faction change revenue which Kotick would probably never allow, and 2.) how would PvP servers work? They'd have to either unflag everyone and you manually flag if you want to (which you can do anyways on a PvE server) or make it FFA and everyone's flagged. Personally I think "world PvP" is retarded, but you know if they made either of those changes there would be an immense amount of crying over it.
It could be like Rift where the change only really applies to PVE servers, but yeah I don't think it's going to happen even though it'd be nice.